Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe outcome of one of the closest elections in the German Federal Republic's history partly resulted from the serious flooding which occurred a few weeks before polling day, allowing the government to display its concern in eastern Germany. There the SPD won votes, at the expense of the PDS, which returned to the Bundestag with only two representatives. The Christian Democrats did well in Bavaria. The small increase in votes for the liberal FDP and the large increase in support for the Greens meant that the incumbent coalition could continue, with a reduced majority. Significant economic problems will challenge the new government.

There Has Been Much Concern In The Past Few Years About the 'decline of parliament' in West European democracies. In the United Kingdom, criticism of the New Labour government has included its apparent neglect of Parliament demonstrated by the style and strategies of the government, ranging from reduction in the time allotted to prime minister's question-time and the utilization of the mass media rather than Parliament as the forum for important policy statements, to the government's refusal to accept reforms to the method of appointments to House of Commons select committees, as recommended by the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Strong party discipline, coupled with sanctions which can affect the political careers of MPs for failure to obey the edicts of the party leadership, have limited the autonomy of MPs in Britain, and, to a varying degree, in other West European countries also. Certainly the German Bundestag has been criticized for being too much under the control of the leaderships of the political parties, in terms of voting on legislation, the stage-management of debates and the choice of leaders of the parliamentary parties (the removal by Chancellor Schröder of Scharping as leader of the SPD parliamentary party in 1998 at the instigation of Lafontaine, the then party chairman, is a notorious instance).