The Bundesrat is Germany’s Senate, and it’s different from the US Senate in a number of significant ways. Like the US Senate however, it has a couple of very important purposes:
- Provide a voice for state-level considerations, and a way for less-populous states to not get drowned out by more populous ones.
- Have an Upper House of the Legislature that has slightly lower reelection pressures and members somewhat less likely to get caught up in short-lived/radical fads, who can thus serve as a check on the potentially rowdier Lower House.
The US has slightly weakened item #2, as Senators are now directly elected (they weren’t originally). But they still have much longer terms than the House, and only a portion of the Senate is up for election every 2 years.
Degressive Proportionality
One can argue about whether a state-level voice is appropriate anymore, but I am not getting into that. I’m willing to accept that states may have particular interests and that society may therefore decide that the vote of someone in a small state should have more power than mine in California. The question is, how much more power should a resident of a less-populous state have?
In the US, Wyoming is our least-populous state, with 578,000 people. California is the most populous, with 39,560,000 people. We both get two Senators. Put differently, individual Californians get one sixty-eighth (1/68) the representation of individual Wyomingites in the Senate. I am fine with Wyomingites having a vote that counts more than mine, but one person having 68x more powerful a vote than another is just too much.
And by the way, this is also an issue in the House, even though it’s supposed to be proportional. California has 53 Representatives, which is 746,000 people per representative. Wyoming gets the minimum of one representative, who represents their 578,000 people. So even in the House, Wyomingites get 1.3x the representation of Californians, on a per-person basis.
But back to the Bundesrat. It uses representation with degressive proportionality to give less-populous states greater voice, but not such an outsize role as in the US. Every state gets between 3 and 6 seats, depending on population:
- 3 seats if population < 2 million
- 4 seats if between 2 & 6 million
- 5 seats if between 6 & 7 million
- 6 seats if population over 7 million
The result is that representation ranges from 224,000 residents per seat in Bremen, to almost 3 million residents per seat in North Rhine-Westphalia (Wikipedia). In other words, Bremen voters have 13x more of a voice in the Bundesrat than North Rhine-Westphalia voters. It’s a significant boost – but it’s not 68x. I think it’s more fair, as it prevents both individual large states and groups of small states from dominating the Bundesrat.
For any math nerds who want to think about the optimal extra voice that residents of smaller states should get, here is some interesting reading on the subject.
Unlike in the US Electoral College, there is no role for state-specific representation in the election of the Chancellor. That is done by the proportionally-elected Bundestag.
Other Differences
The Bundesrat members are not elected. Instead, the state Governor-equivalent (usually referred to as a “Minister President”) automatically serves in the Bundesrat. Other seats are generally filled by state cabinet members. The individual members from a given state delegation don’t have autonomy, however. They must vote as a bloc. And if just the Minister President shows up, that’s fine – he/she/they can just say how the entire state delegation votes, and that’s it.
As a result, Bundesrat members are generally less focused on national or international politics, and more pragmatically/bureaucratically focused on how the legislation in question will impact their home states in practice. If a proposal brings home pork, great. If it’s infeasible to implement, bad news. If it limits state rights, they can get very fussy. For example, for the legislation authorizing e-scooters, the Bundesrat was mostly just concerned about the issue of sidewalk riding. They absolutely did not want a bunch of wild young scooter riders terrorizing elderly and disabled citizens on the sidewalk – that results in a lot of angry constituents. But just about every other issue in the legislation was basically unimportant to them.
Another consequence of the appointment process is that the makeup of the Bundesrat changes every time there is a state Legislature election. State elections occur generally every 5 years, with the 16 different states staggered so they don’t vote all at once. The Bundesrat makeup is thus continually changing, but is always consistent with state level representation. I don’t know that this is better or worse than the US system, it just is.
Finally, the Bundesrat has less power than the US Senate. While the Senate can initiate its own legislation (except for budgets, which the House always initiates), the Bundesrat can only respond to legislation passed by the Bundestag (lower house). It can request changes and reject legislation, but it can’t introduce brand new legislation. Given that the members of the Bundesrat already have full-time jobs running their home states, that’s probably a good thing. Again, whether this is good or bad I don’t know. It seems to function fine, though sometimes I think the Bundesrat has a bit of an inferiority complex (“we really are important, we promise!”).
Still, I do see the Bundesrat serve as a brake on the Bundestag (like in my scooter example), so it seems they’re serving their function. And since there is no executive to serve as a check on the Bundestag in the parliamentary system (the governing coalition is always aligned with the Chancellor), it’s good that the Bundesrat is there as a check on the Bundestag.
