Forum: Author Hangout

but also gives smaller parties their due representation in parliament

Smaller parties which get under 5% are out of luck, although there are a couple of exceptions there:
- if a party wins sufficient "direct" seats then they get seats allocated in proportion to their "party" votes (i.e., the second one). The Linken benefited from this yesterday. I'm not sure what "sufficient" is, they have three but the figure may even be one.
- the SSW have "protected" status for some legal reason, they picked up one seat yesterday - afaik the first one ever. They represent the Danish minority in the border areas.

There was an amusing case back in the late 1980s where the CSU - a powerful regional party from Bavaria - won every single district. Unfortunately this meant that their leader - Franz Josef Strauss - was out of luck, he was in first place on the Bavarian CSU slate but that was insufficient in this case.
Some other poor sap had to resign his seat "for health reasons" to make room for him. He (Strauss) died a couple of years later.

It's the other way around. If one party has more "direct" parliament seats than warranted by their share of the "party vote", the other parties are allotted extra seats.

So the number of seats in Parliament is not a fixed number?

Correct.
There is a base number but a few extra ones get tacked on to fix the problem Argon detailed.

If one party has more "direct" parliament seats than warranted by their share of the "party vote", the other parties are allotted extra seats.

Germany is a federal republic and the seats in the federal parliament are distributed among the 'Bundesländer' (very roughly like the US states) according to their population.
Thus the number of voting districts depend on the population. Voting districts do not cross regional borders.
In Germany people have to be registered in their residing community and this residential registration determines their voting district (no voter registration needed).

The total seats in parliament are double the number of voting districts, half of them go to the winner candidate of the voting districts, these are called 'Direktmandate' (direct mandates). The parties make lists of their preferred candidates for each 'Bundesland' which may or may not contain district candidates. From this list top down comes the other members the party can send to parliament if the party wins more seats than direct mandates.

A party may apply for voting in all or some or just one 'Bundesland'. Their candidates on the list there however must reside in this 'Bundesland'. Therefore nobody living in another 'Bundesland' can vote for them. And the 5% of votes necessary to send candidates from the list to parliament are counted against all German votes, thus regional parties may not get seats in parliament. The exception as Dinsdale wrote is a party that wins three or more direct seats. With only one or two direct seats they cant send additional members according to their party votes.

Because of the federal structure of the election a party may win more seats in one 'Bundesland' than they get seats allocated in proportion to their "party" votes in this 'Bundesland' and the other parties get additional seats for compensation. The same party may get compensation seats in another 'Bundesland' due to another party winning more direct seats there.
By law it's 598 seats, but due to overhang and equalisation seats we had 709 members of parliament, now it will be 735.

HM.

So, isn't it basically so, that as closer and messier the election, the more there would be seats in the parliament? One party massive victory sweeping through many federal lands would likely reduce the total number, or does it accumulate over time?

In the immediate postwar years there were a fair number of parties around, they gradually got whittled away until there were basically just three in 1961: CDU/CSU (right), SPD (left), FDP (central). The FDP were far smaller than the others. This usually meant the government was usually formed by whoever the FDP joined in a coalition.

The emergence of the Greens established another party. Reunification has added two more - one to the right of the CDU/CSU and one to the left of the SPD, although both are "national" parties in the sense they have candidates everywhere. There are another 20 smaller parties but they rarely get the 5% they need, at least at the national level.

With six parties splitting the votes (5 with Direktmandanten), some candidates are getting "Direktmandanten" with as little as 30% of the vote which is why the total number of seats is drifting upwards. This is increasingly being seen as a problem but solutions are short on the ground.
(I'm ignoring the SSW here, they have exactly one seat).

So, isn't it basically so, that as closer and messier the election, the more there would be seats in the parliament? One party massive victory sweeping through many federal lands would likely reduce the total number, or does it accumulate over time?

It doesn't accumulate over time.
Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting.
The direct candidate who gets the most votes is elected, even if (s)he gets only 15% of the votes. If there are many candidates in a voting district this may happen. AFAIK it didn't yet. In Bavaria the Greens won their first ever direct mandate with 27.5% of the votes in Munich-south.
If a party wins most or all of the direct mandates in a 'Bundesland' with party votes of only around 30%, the other parties will receive many compensation mandates, increasing the total seats in the parliament.
e.g. the CSU won 45 direct mandates with only 31.7% party votes so none of their list gets a seat in parliament.
The FDP with only 10.5% party votes (in Bavaria) would have won only 12 seats, but due to compensation gets 14 seats.

HM.

ETA added '(in Bavaria)' for clarification.

They try and form a coalition.
The last two have been CDU/CSU with SPD, the SPD are the largest party this time around so it's their turn to try.
It would be both possible and legal for three other parties to form a government without the SPD, I'm looking at graphs from the past and there were at least three elections where the largest party was then frozen out - it was the CDU/CSU in each case. Back then only two were required, the distribution of seats means it would have to be three now. The only possible two-party coalition would be SPD with CDU/CSU at present.

What does it mean when they say they now have to "form a government"?

Usually no party wins more than 50% of the seats. In some other European countries they may form a minority government which has to find a majority of votes for every new or changed law, we never had a minority government. To form a majority government, exploratory talks between the parties will be held over the next weeks or months to create a coalition. This coalition will name a candidate for 'Kanzler', the president will formally present him or her for election by the members of parliament. The number of votes the 'Kanzler' gets will show how stable the coalition government will probable be.

HM.

German experiences with an all-powerful figure in charge at the top have not been all that positive, the structures which have been put in place are partially designed to reduce the chances of that happening again.

German experiences with an all-powerful figure in charge at the top have not been all that positive, the structures which have been put in place are partially designed to reduce the chances of that happening again.

Exactly. It's the same problem that recently threatened the USA but was thankfully avoided.

Israel does not have that 5% hurdle, something which makes it much easier for small parties.

The system in the US pretty much enforces a two-party system, the system in Germany is designed to permit more than that. It would be very difficult to have an all-powerful leader when their party only has 25% of the vote.
Difficult, but not impossible. Afaik the Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933) had a somewhat similar system but without the 5% hurdle - probably very similar to Israel's system now - although I believe the Kanzler (Chancellor) had more power than the Bundeskanzler does today.
Hyperinflation (due to the conditions imposed in the WW1 peace treaty) and the large number of small parties, together with one of the larger ones being Soviet-orientated led to people thinking the Nazis were the lesser evil. There were other factors involved as well. The current Federal system was designed to reduce the chances of this happening again. It has been in place for 70 years and is widely accepted, although the East only joined 30 years ago and acceptance there (amongst the young, not the older generation) is thought to be lower. The last eight years has seen the two large parties in a coalition and there was a limited choice available for the disaffected. The SPD did not want to restart the coalition four years ago but when the FDP decided they did not want to play, they had no real alternative. The FDP have claimed they will play nice this time so one of the two larger parties should be able to regenerate as the opposition.

The only government "formed" is the President picking his cabinet members and such which are approved by the Senate.

That's exactly what is talked about, only the process is slightly different.

The U.S. president is not all-powerful.

He's not, but there's two roles from ordinary parliamentary system bundled in that figure in US: he serves both as President and as Premier minister who forms the government.

In more run of the mil European Parliamentary system those roles are divided, usually (but not necessarily) leaving almost entirely ceremonial duties to President (although there usually are some mechanisms provided he could use to counter the parliament, was there a conflict) and making Prime Minister explicitly dependent upon maintaining majority in parliament.

"Forming the government" in such a parliamentary system usually goes about this (it may not contain or differ from German specifics):

1) everyone freaks about election results and claims it would be impossible to form a government because no single party has more than a small fraction of the seats (it's common you need three or more parties for majority, and indeed, Dutch have lived "without" government for years (which is misleading statement, in actuality, the previous government is chugging along in those cases, even if without explicit approval of the parliament, or even if formally resigned)).

2) one or more possible coalitions forming more or less stable majority in parliament are formed in talks and backroom negotiations between parties. This typically includes trading ministries and cabinet positions, up the point responsibilities between ministries can be shifted and whole new positions formed just to get a minority partner to commit to vote with the coalition.

3) one or more candidates for Premier Minister are presented to the President. President has formal (but often ceremonial) choice whom he nominates for that role, not necessarily limited by the choices presented.

4) President nominee for the Premier minister forms a cabinet. In theory there's often quite a lot of leeway for them, in practice they're tied by the complex negotiations between parliamentary factions. Cabinet positions are given out to different parties in exchange for support.

5) Parliament votes for approval of the complete Cabinet of Ministers formed by the Premier Minister candidate as a package, complete with Program and Vision (unlike position by position as is US practice). If the vote passes, the new Cabinet is established and goes to work. If it fails, we go back to renewed coalition talks in step (2). This loop can take years, sometimes literally.

6) At any time for any reason or none whatsoever the parliament can vote to withdraw trust from the Cabinet of Ministers. If such a vote pass, we restart the process and go back to the step (2) immediately, although it can be expected that a lot of that heavy lifting is done before the vote of dismissal already.

7) Therefore, minority government is possible, but only as long the parliament cannot even unite enough to dismiss it. It's common to expect Premier Minister to resign if majority in parliament is lost for whatever reason. Successive governments can be approved and dismissed at speed, I think up to six in a year are managed by some countries. On the other hand, highly successful Premier Minister can survive many parliamentary terms and quite radical changes of it's composition as long as his or her party remains part of the majority coalition, even if the Cabinet under them may change beyond recognition in the meantime.

While in US, if President doesn't enjoy majority support in Congress and/or Senate, there's no way around and you have to live in minority government hell.

At any time for any reason or none whatsoever the parliament can vote to withdraw trust from the Cabinet of Ministers. If such a vote pass, we restart the process and go back to the step (2) immediately,

Exactly this was the situation in Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), the parliament did withdraw trust but couldn't unite enough on another chancellor, causing dissolving of parliament by the 'Reichspräsident' and new elections.

In Germany, a vote of no confidence in the Federal Chancellor requires the opposition, on the same ballot, to propose a candidate of its own whom it wants the Federal President to appoint as its successor. Thus, a motion of no confidence may be brought forward only if there is a positive majority for the new candidate. The idea was to prevent the state crises that occurred near the end of the German Weimar Republic. Frequently, chancellors were then turned out of office without their successors having enough parliamentary support to govern.

HM.

e. The people pick the government (president/VP, senators, congressmen).

Senators and congressmen are not part of the government.
(There have been cases in which the VP is mostly out, and he is never formally in.)
Think "administration."
In a parliamentary system, the executive is chosen from the legislative. The cabinet runs the civil service.
If it isa coalition, part of the agreement is often which cabinet seats go to which parties.

To non-US folks, the US cabinet and a slew of other government officers are the choice of the president. They have to be confirmed by the Senate, but it is understood that they are the president's followers. If the president chooses a member of Congress, that person must resign from Congress.

Doesn't that question presuppose that they work? As opposed to being a utterly broken hot mess.

It's one of the systems that works surprisingly well although they are trying to find a way to limit the ever expanding number of seats. The costs are running high (every seat + staff), they are running out of space to seat everyone, and the high number makes it less manageable.

That moderates the ruling coalition but it also makes it hard to initiate reforms.

I'd disagree on that. It makes it difficult to introduce reforms which do not have broad support.
The coalition led by Willy Brandt was before I was old enough to have some context but it made sweeping changes and swept away a lot of debris from the eras of the Kaiser and the Führer.
Some other coalitions since - including Merkel's - have made significant changes. Even Helmut Kohl had a go once, the Germans had a relic from WW1 and that was substantially removed around the time Britain got rid of the equivalent - pub licencing hours, the German relic was retail opening hours.

Isn't that a description of most governments? :)

Yes.