Liberal Constitutionalism in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848: An Inquiry Based on Roll-Call Analysis

1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Mattheisen
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
German History ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
German State ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism

There are few politicians in German history who have so persistently held the attention of historians as the moderate liberals of the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848. That is not astonishing, for these moderates held political power—or thought they did—at a true historical watershed, and they provide one of the very rare examples of German liberalism at the helm. But it is surprising that after more than a century of historiographical scrutiny it is still possible to disagree about what sort of regime they really intended for the German state they believed they were creating. The parliamentary debates were stenographically recorded, the committee minutes have been published, their constitution was promulgated, and the leading participants have written their memoirs. Yet enough ambiguity remains to support quite drastically differing interpretations of their political and constitutional purposes.

Conflict Displacement and Dual Inclusion in the Construction of Germany

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Obert ◽  
John F. Padgett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Organizational Innovation ◽  
German History ◽  
German State ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Multiple Network

This chapter focuses on the nineteenth-century formation of Germany. Organizational innovation was the assembly by Prussia of geographically disparate German principalities under the new constitutional umbrella of Reichstag, Bundesrat, and chancellery. Organizational catalysis was the emergence of political parties and interest groups—and underneath those, of German nationalism—to manage the constitutional core. The multiple-network invention was dual inclusion: namely, the stapling together of the deeply contradictory principles of democracy and autocracy through “Prussia is in Germany, and Germany is in Prussia.” This deep contradiction built into the heart of the German state generated a sequence of new political actors in German history.

scholarly journals The opportunism of populists and the defense of constitutional liberalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Lane Scheppele
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism ◽  
Public Critique

AbstractLiberal constitutionalism is under attack from a new breed of autocrats broadly classified as populist. These populists understand the weaknesses of constitutional liberalism and attack their opponents with criticisms that take advantage of internal weaknesses of the theory. But a closer analysis of theoretical framework used by populists to substitute for constitutional liberalism reveals that they are not really committed to populism in any serious sense. Instead, they have abandoned liberalism in the quest for raw power. Focusing on Viktor Orbán of Hungary and his chief ideologist András Lánczi, this article shows how their public critique of liberalism has attempted to wrong-foot their critics and how their recipe for gaining and wielding political power is only populist to the extent that these leaders are determined to (and often succeed in) winning elections. By peeling back the cover of populist ideology to look at the theories of legitimation under which they rule, however, we can see that the new breed of autocrats aims at primarily constitutional deconstruction through the concentration of political power in one leader. This sort of challenge to liberal constitutionalism is easily countered.

FEDERALISM AND THE OLD AND NEW LIBERALISMS

2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob T. Levy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Public Philosophy ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism ◽  
History Of

The transition from a relatively federal to a relatively centralized constitutional structure in the United States has often been identified with the shift from classical to welfare liberalism as a matter of public philosophy. This article argues against that distinction. The liberal argument for federalism is a contingent one, built on approximations, counterbalancing, and political power. A more federalist constitution is not automatically a freer one on classical liberal understandings of freedom. Neither is a more centralized constitution automatically a better match with the ideals of welfare liberalism. The article sketches a constitutional history of federalism from the founding, through an era in which centralization was aligned with skepticism about liberal constitutionalism (for both meanings of liberal), to an era in which centralization was aligned with increases in liberal freedom (for both meanings of liberal).

scholarly journals Channeling Janus: The Birth of the West German State and Rebirth of the German Nation

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Jacovou
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German State ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
German Nation

CESAA Essay Competition 2018 – Undergraduate winner: Jack JacovouThis essay will submit three arguments which will sustain this thesis respectively: 1) the incorporation of expellees, the expellee movement, and their irredentism which romanticised the Nazi period, saw a form political extremism rise as a direct consequence of the breakup of Germany after World War II (WWII)1; 2) the decline of the German Communist Party (KPD) and National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) reflected Germans becoming critical of the political extremism prevalent between the 1919 until 19452; 3) influenced by both the War and German history wholistically, the Allies and Germans crafted a Basic Law (Grundgesetz) which embodied a strong parliamentary and federal system.3 With all this in mind, the first argument to highlight how Germany drew upon its history to craft new political institutions and a new culture, is the incorporation of the expellees and their irredentism.

The temporal dimension of issue competition

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 708-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Schröder ◽  
Christian Stecker
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Data Set ◽  
German State ◽  
Tit For Tat ◽  
Party Strength ◽  
Issue Competition

Existing accounts of issue competition have focused on content: What issues do parties choose to compete with. We complement this literature with an account of parties’ choices on when to compete. Conceiving of the object of competition – public attention – as a common-pool resource, we explain the timing of party attempts at acquiring issues as an interdependent process. Outside of election times, parties coordinate their attempts along a tit-for-tat logic. Within election times, they raise rates of their attempts, rendering coordination futile. This especially concerns opposition parties. We test our hypotheses with a novel data set on roll call vote (RCV) requests in the 16 German state parliaments. These parliaments lend themselves to comparative analysis since they are nearly identical in institutional features and political positions of parties, yet diverse as concerns party strength and government participation at any point in time. The data set covers all 4849 RCVs held in 16.968 plenary sessions in the period 1947–2011.

„Salz in der Suppe“ oder „Klimakiller“? Empirische Befunde zum Wandel der parlamentarischen Streitkultur nach dem Einzug der AfD in die deutschen Landtage

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 622-638
Author(s):  
Jürgen Maier
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
German State ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
German States ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Right

In order to analyze whether the entry of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) into parliaments has changed parliamentary debate culture a content analysis of budget debates for the period 2012-2017 is conducted, where the frequency of interruptions and the use of uncivil utterances during the speaker’s interruption in seven German state parliaments are measured before and after the entry of the AfD . The measured changes to developments in the two German states where the AfD did not succeed in moving into the state parliament are compared . The frequency of interruptions - and thus the conflictual nature of parliamentary debates - has increased as a result of the presence of the AfD . However, there are no indications that the increase in incivility is related to the entry of the AfD into the state parliaments . The likelihood of the AfD’s confrontational appearance increases with its parliamentary significance (e .g ., the share of seats) . By contrast, it is irrelevant for the appearance of the AfD in parliamentary debates whether they are more movement-oriented or more parliament-oriented .

Origins of Modern Germany

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Von Friedeburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
German Society ◽  
German History ◽  
German State ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
And Control

This article traces the origins of German history; the outcome the Western Federal Republic of 1949–1989, curiously similar to the Eastern Franconian Empire of Ludwig the German emerging with the treaty of Verdun, and the unified Germany at the second half of the twentieth century. Early modern Germans had a wide number of varying and partly contradictory ideas about the relation of empire, nation, and fatherland. This article traces the establishment of Germany as an empire and nation. The German lands were marked by conflicts and tensions between emperors and popes, kings and higher nobility, and among regions under varying degrees of royal influence and control. This article explains pluralism in German society and the eventual formation of the territorial German state, whether the Bonn or Berlin Federal Republic is seen to be the true representative of modern Germany, the territorial state seems to remain unavoidably at center stage.

Glücksfall Bundesrepublik: New Germany and the 1960s

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARL CHRISTIAN LAMMERS
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
German History ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German State ◽  
German States ◽  
German Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Economic

The downfall and disappearance of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR, and the unification in 1990 of the two German states into the Federal Republic of Germany, the FRG, marked the end of an era. Forty years of divided and non-simultaneous German history had been brought to an end, and the national or German question had at last been solved. Since 1990 German history has continued as the history of the Federal Republic. From this perspective 1990 marked not an absolute end, but the continuity of the Federal Republic and to some degree even the triumph of the political, economic and social system of the FRG, as the inhabitants of the socialist GDR, when they had the opportunity, voted for joining the successful and wealthy West German state. The end of divided history, however, has had another consequence. Even if the era of the GDR, because of the very favourable archive situation, attracted great attention among historians, the focus of historical research has turned more and more to the history of the Federal Republic in order to analyse and explain why the FRG ended as a success, while the socialist GDR failed in its ambitions and aspirations as an alternative Germany. History demonstrated that the GDR was no German option, although for some time it was a German reality.

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