The Blossom of Small Radical Parties

Course: Germany in the Twentieth Century

Introduction

            The Weimar Republic that lasted from 1918 to 1933 represented one of the most politically unstable period in modern German history. During its fourteen years of lifespan, the Reichstag of the Republic was dissolved over and over again, while popularity of various parties, both big one and small one, wildly fluctuated. Yet an even more interesting phenomenon of the Republic, however, was the fact that the small and often radical political parties played an abnormally important role in the Reichstag. This appeared to be the consequence of the underlying ideology of the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Electoral Laws of 1920, since these two politically documents were apparently written to create a new Germany with absolute democracy.

Freedom and Rights

            Before a party of any size could exercise any influence in the Reichstag, they must first be created. For this matter, both the constitution and the electoral laws provided the small political parties with the essential conditions that would allow them to be formed without encountering any obstacles. For instance, article 124 of the constitution said that “all Germans have the right to form unions and associations [… and that] these rights shall not be refused to a union on the ground that its objects are of political, social-political, or religious nature.” (Hucko, 176-7) At the same time, article 4 of the Electoral Law mentioned that “anyone who is 25 years old on the Election Day and is a national citizen for at least one year can be candidate.” (documentArchiv.de) Together, these two articles made it extremely easy to create a new political party, regardless of how radical it was. In short, the constitution and the electoral law ensured that the first step of running a party would be a breeze.

            The success of these small parties was also partly due to the low requirement to be an eligible voter. The very first article of the electoral law mentioned that “anyone who is a national citizen on the Election Day and is at least twenty-one years old can be a Reichstag voter. Each voter has a vote.” (documentArchiv.de) Strictly speaking, this article alone wouldn’t help small radical parties to thrive IF Germany was not in turmoil. Nevertheless, in an unstable era such as the Weimar Republic, these young, immature, and often impulsive individuals were almost guaranteed to give their votes to those radical parties that promised an aggressive administration that would break the status quo. In short, by allowing these young people to vote, the radical parties were almost guaranteed to get substantial support from them.

            Solely based on the evidences presented in the last two paragraphs, namely the low requirement both to form a party and to be a voter, one could already have a broad idea about the underlying spirit of the constitution and the electoral law, which was to make Germany as democratic as possible. This put the small and often radical parties in a good position to start in.

A Discriminating System

The political freedom granted by the constitution and the electoral certainly helped the small parties to thrive in the Weimar Republic. A more important factor that contributed to their blossom, however, had something to do with the mechanics of the entire electoral system. And, before one could comprehend the relationship between the system and the thrive of the radical parties, one must first understand the structure of the system.

The system worked in a way that ensures no single vote is wasted. The word “waste” was crucial to make sense out of this complex electoral system. Suppose for the moment that there are two candidates from two different parties. Candidate A gets a million votes, while candidate B has only 60,000 votes. Candidate A is clearly more popular than his counterpart. Nevertheless, if only 60,000 votes are all that is required to secure a deputy seat, then 94% of the votes that candidate A received can said to be wasted. Hence, without any channel to transfer the excess votes to the candidate’s allies, an electoral system can’t said to be democratic because a huge amount of votes can be left out.

This is precisely the scenario that the electoral system of the Weimar Republic tried to avoid. Consequently, to render the system as democratic and as egalitarian as possible, the Republic allowed the excess votes to get transferred to elsewhere.

The electoral system used by the Weimar Republic was a modified “proportional representation” system. First of all, article 9 of the electoral law divided Germany into a number of constituencies, and then further divided each constituency into a number of electoral districts (documentArchiv.de). Then, article 23 of the law ordered the returning officer of each electoral district to “announce not later than the fourth day before the election the district lists of nomination (Kreiswahlvorschlag) as well as the national list of nomination (Reichswahlvorschlag) to which the lists of nomination from the constituency have joined” (documentArchiv.de). These two types of “lists” were crucial to the entire system and therefore deserved special attention. Each district list of nomination of a particular electoral district contained the names of the candidates from the same political party; the list would be directly voted by voters of that electoral district; an electoral district might have more than one district list of nomination; a national list of nomination contained the names of the candidates from the same political party, but these lists would not be voted directly by voters of any electoral district; a party might only have one national list of nomination for the election.

During the election, voters were not giving their votes to any particular candidate of the district list of nomination of his or her electoral district. Rather, according to article 24 of the electoral law, the ballot that each voter submitted “may contain only name of a single district list of nomination.” (documentArchiv.de) In other words, people were not voting “persons” but “parties” in the election.

Next is the determination of the election result. Article 29 of the electoral law said that an election committee “states how many valid voices are delivered and how much of it is allotted to every district list of nomination.” (documentArchiv.de) Then, article 30 of the electoral law stated that “deputy seats are assigned to every district list of nomination with [every] 60,000 votes delivered to it” (documentArchiv.de). These seats, according to article 33, “are distributed to the candidates after their sequence in the list of nomination” (documentArchiv.de). However, it was almost certainly the case that the total number of votes delivered to each list would never be exact multiples of 60,000. In this case, “these votes whose number is not sufficient to dispatch one deputy seat to a district list of nomination become […] the votes of the constituency pool (Wahlkreisverband) [of that party]” (documentArchiv.de article 34). Also, “if a district list of nomination contains fewer candidates than the number of deputy seats allotted to it”, then these remaining votes will also go to the constituency pool of that party.

With the constituency pool of each particular party gathering all the excess votes coming from each district list of nomination, “another deputy seat is allotted with [each] 60,000 remainder voices” (documentArchiv.de article 31). These seats, according to article 31, are assigned to the remaining candidates of each district list of nomination after the number of remaining votes of each list (documentArchiv.de). The votes that remained after this second round of allotment would be transferred to their national list of nomination (documentArchiv.de article 31)

Meanwhile, “the remainder votes [in the constituency pool] remain unconsidered if at least one of the connected district lists of nomination obtains below 30,000 votes” (documentArchiv.de). In this case, all the votes accumulated in the electoral pool would be transferred to the national list of nomination (documentArchiv.de article 31).

With all the votes accumulated by each national list of nomination from their corresponding constituency pool, the election committee “assigns a deputy seat to every national list of nomination on 60,000 remainder votes” (documentArchiv.de article 32). Also, “a remainder of more than 30,000 votes is retreated as full 60,000” (documentArchiv.de article 32). If it happens that “a national list of nomination contains fewer candidates than deputy seats allotted to it, the remaining seats remain unoccupied” (documentArchiv.de article 34).

Such a long and complicated way to allot deputy seats. Anyhow, despite its complexity, the spirit of the system was rather evident: to let no single vote be wasted. The system ensured that all the excess votes that each party received at each level would get combined and then transferred to an upper level where these unused votes could be used again. In fact, there were only two instances where a vote would remained unused after the entire process, namely, if the national list of nomination has a residual votes of less than 30,000, and if the national list of nomination contained fewer candidates than the number of seats allotted to it  (which is highly unlikely to happen anyway).

Other than rendering the election extremely egalitarian, this spirit also led to the rise of small radical parties. This was achieved in at least two ways.

First, this system made it easy for small parties to secure a deputy seat by concentrating in one particular electoral district. Under this so-called “proportional representation” electoral system, small parties did not need to obtain majority vote in a particular district (the case with a plurality system) in order get a seat in the Reichstag. Rather, it would be enough to obtain only 60,000 votes in order to get a deputy seat. As a result, these small parties did not have to engage into a full-scale battle against other bigger parties under this type of electoral system. Hence, the chance of securing a seat is now much bigger.

Second, the Weimar system allowed votes to be accumulated and reused, and this gave a huge advantage to small parties that usually had thin votes scattered all over the country. In an electoral system where votes cannot be gathered together and then reused in another around of seat-allotment, all the scattered votes (< 60,000) that the small parties received in each district would be discarded. This put these small parties in a serious disadvantage position. The three-level system that the Weimar Republic employed, meanwhile, combined all these scattered votes that these parties received in each electoral district. This gave them a huge advantage because as long as a party had 60,000 votes in any constituency or 30,000 votes in the national level, a deputy seat would be assigned. In short, by combing up the votes from all over the country, small parties with votes scattered all over the country could easily obtain a few seats in the Reichstag.

To sum up, this discriminating system no doubt put smaller parties in a privileged position, at the expense of bigger parties. This is because the Republic decided to use a somewhat modified “proportional representation” system that allowed small parties to combine their scattered votes and then reuse them. As a result, the supposedly egalitarian system turned out to a discriminating system in favour of small parties.

Simple Majority

Not only had the electoral system gave a lift to these small parties, but the mechanics of the Reichstag also helped to strengthen their position.

According to article 32 of the Weimar constitution of 1919, “for a decision in the Reichstag to be made, a simple majority of votes is required” (Hucko 156). This article alone certainly provided no advantage to small parties. Nevertheless, the story was totally different when there was at the same time a discriminating proportional representation system such as the one mentioned in the previous section. Because of the discriminating system, there were hardly any parties which could obtain more than 50% of the seats in the Reichstag. However, because a simple majority was required to pass anything in the Reichstag, the bigger parties were then forced to form coalition with smaller parties in order to get the Reichstag working.

Such coalition enormously benefited the small parties in at least two ways. First, because their votes could often have an incredible influence (they would certainly be neglected if there is a majority party), they therefore had a certain amount of bargaining power when negotiating a coalition with other parties. So, these parties were actually a lot more involved in national affairs than one might have imagined, and this significantly strengthened their position and status within the Reichstag.

Moreover, forming coalitions with bigger parties gave them more exposure to public media than they otherwise would get if there was a majority party in the Reichstag. Because the name of the party appeared in the newspaper whenever they form a temporary coalition with other parties, voters would feel more familiar with them.

In short, the requirement of a simple majority to pass anything in the Reichstag, when combined with the discriminating proportional representation electoral system, created a situation in which bigger parties were forced to form coalitions with small parties. This gave enormous status and exposure to these small parties.

Conclusion

The blossom of small and often radical political parties of the Weimar Republic was partly due to the underlying ideology of the constitution and the electoral law. These two political documents were so committed to bring a highly democratic and egalitarian culture to German political arena that they made the requirement both to form new parties and to be a voter extremely low, that they allowed small parties to avoid fierce competition against big parties, that they allowed the scattered votes of the small parties to be accumulated and reused, and that they implemented an inappropriate simple majority rule in the Reichstag. The eventual failure of the Republic was partly due to this spirit of absolute democracy of the constitution because the constitution could withstand a reality check. In times of great perils like the post-war Germany, economic restoration and national unity should prevail everything else, including democracy or some other utopian-style ideologies. The end result of this blind commitment to an untimeliness ideology was the eventual dominance of Nazi, which dragged the entire Germany into even a greater chaos in the following decade.

References:

documentArchiv.de. http://www.documentarchiv.de/wr/1920/reichswahlgesetz_1920.html

Hucko, Elmar M. The Democratic Tradition. New York: BERG, 1987.