The behaviour of political parties and MPs in the parliaments of the Weimar Republic

Copyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.Analysing the roll-call votes of the MPs of the Weimar Republic we find: (1) that party competition in the Weimar parliaments can be structured along two dimensions: an economic left–right and a pro-/anti-democratic. Remarkably, this is stable throughout the entire lifespan of the Republic and not just in the later years and despite the varying content of votes across the lifespan of the Republic, and (2) that nearly all parties were troubled by intra-party divisions, though, in particular, the national socialists and communists became homogeneous in the final years of the Republic.Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstan

Representation of women in the parliament of the Weimar republic: Evidence from roll call votes

This is the post-print version of the article which has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input in Politics and Gender. Copyright @ Cambridge University Press.In modern democracies, the representation of voter interests and preferences is primarily the job of political parties and their elected officials. These patterns can however change when issues are at stake that concern the interests of social groups represented by all relevant parties of a political system. In this article we focus on the behavior of female MPs in the parliament of Weimar Germany and, thus, in a parliament where legislative party discipline was very high. On the basis of a dataset containing information on the legislative voting behavior of MPs, we show that gender, even when controlling for a battery of further theoretically derived explanatory factors, had a decisive impact on the MPs’ voting behavior on a law proposal to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.Zukunftskolleg (University of Konstanz) and the German Research Foundatio

Die Deutsche Nationalversammlung und Weimar: On the Creation of Democracy in Weimar Germany

This paper is a historical analysis of the creation of the Weimar Republic, as well as a political analysis of the Weimar Republic’s constitution. In reviewing both Weimar’s history as well as the constitution, I hope to inspire learners to look back to the Weimar Republic, and not focus primarily on the failures that led to the rise of the Nazi Regime, but rather celebrate the successes that the drafters of the constitution were able to achieve. I review the history of the 1918 November Revolution, the history and party programs of the three important parties of the Weimar Republic, the process of the drafting of the Weimar Constitution, as well as analyze the constitution. It is important to review the Weimar Republic because many provisions in the constitution are basic tenants for modern democratic countries, and so it is important to not only recognize the failures of the Weimar Republic, but also the successes in expanding liberty to the German people

The social bases of political cleavages in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933 (1992)

This article focuses on the divided and scattered political affiliations in the Weimar Republic which helped to provide an environment that supported rapid political changes between 1919 and 1933. Using methodologies of historical electoral research, this article considers cleavages between party blocs on a federal level by analyzing the stability within and voter fluctuation between political parties. These voter fluctuations are also analyzed by considering the social background of the eligible voters, as well as by religious denomination. An ecological regression analysis and aggregate data analysis determine the stability of voter blocs and note a number of reasons why the NSDAP received such a large number of votes from a rather stable voting system in March of 1933

A Problem of Perception An Analysis of the Formation, Reception, and Implementation of National Socialist Ideology in Germany, 1919 to 1939

This thesis seeks to dispel the notion that Nazi ideology was merely an afterthought to numerous actions taken by the Nazis. The first chapter discusses how Nazism’s earliest adherents internalized notions from World War I into an ideology that would motivate the early Nazi Movement to launch the Beer Hall Putsch. The second chapter focuses on the Nazi Party’s electoral tactics and how those actions correlated with entrenched Nazi ideological notions of recognition and community. Finally, the third chapter will seek to demonstrate that the numerous repressive measures implemented by the Third Reich were part of a general plan to prepare a future generation of Nazi citizens for, the worldwide struggle for existence. This work exists as a counter to a considerable amount of literature in the historiography that, by maintaining Nazi ideology and Nazi actions were two separate entities, belittles the importance of Nazi ideology thereby fundamentally misunderstanding Nazism

Party Government in Germany and Austria: A New Perspective from the Power Index Approach

Based on the Banzhaf-Coleman approach to the analysis of political power, this article presents a new analysis of government coalitions. The party systems and types of government formation in Germany and Austria can be compared over time in a new systematic way from 1920. The findings support the theory of democratic stability that emphasizes the power balance between the major right- and left-wing groups in the party system. It can be achieved either by power alternation or through consociationalism

Towards the Holocaust: the social and economic collapse of the Weimar Republic

The social system of Weimar Germany has always been controversial. From the start 1Weimar society was characterized by a peculiar fluidity: between 1913 and 1933, the German Reich, commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic, was a virtual laboratory of sociocultural experimentation. In the streets of German towns and cities, political armies competed for followers--a process punctuated by assassinations and advertised by street battles embroiling monarchists, imperial militarists, nihilistic war veterans, Communists, Socialists, anarchists, and National Socialists. Parliamentary activity involved about twenty-five political parties whose shifting alliances produced twenty governmental cabinets with an average lifespan of less than nine months.https://surface.syr.edu/books/1016/thumbnail.jp

Centralizing Tendencies in the Public Sector in Germany

This paper investigates the long-term trend and the underlying determinants of public sector centralization in Germany from 1871 until today. The institutional and the quantitative review of the German history provides no conclusive evidence for a continuous process of government centralization as suggested by Popitz' "law", but rather for some distinct developments caused by the effects of wars and regime changes. Accordingly, whereas the role of the central government increased continuously at the expense of the state governments untilWorldWar II, after 1950 the state level regained importance. An empirical analysis for the period 1950 to 2001 reveals a signidicant decentralizing effect of per capita income growth, but provides no clear evidence for a causal relationship between economic and European integration and fiscal decentralization in the case of Germany. --Public Sector Centralization,Popitz' Law,Determinants of Centralization,Germany

The two Hindenburg elections of 1925 and 1932: a total reversal of voter coalitions [1990]

"This article compares the two presidential elections of 1925 and 1932 in an attempt to determine the shifts between these two elections which brought Paul von Hindenburg to power. Although this article does not attempt to add to the historiography of Hindenburg's election and the subsequent deparliamentarization which has often been thought by historians to have eased Hitler's transition to power, it attempts to use statistical verification to underline a number of hypotheses generally agreed upon by historians, but which lack substantial evidence. In considering Hindenburg's election, a number of variables are considered, such as: which parties the Hindenburg voters came from, why Hindenburg was backed rather than his oppositional candidate Wilhelm Marx, and what social background the Hindenburg voters had. Also, the commonly held belief that many of the communist voters fluctuated from the communist party candidate, Ernst Thälmann, to Adolf Hitler is statistically analyzed." (author's abstract

Complicity in the Perversion of Justice: The Role of Lawyers in Eroding the Rule of Law in the Third Reich

A fundamental tenet of the legal profession is that lawyers and judges are uniquely responsible—individually and collectively—for protecting the Rule of Law. This Article considers the failings of the legal profession in living up to that responsibility during Germany’s Third Reich. The incremental steps used by the Nazis to gain control of the German legal system—beginning as early as 1920 when the Nazi Party adopted a party platform that included a plan for a new legal system—turned the legal system on its head and destroyed the Rule of Law. By failing to uphold the integrity and independence of the profession, lawyers and judges permitted and ultimately collaborated in the subversion of the basic lawyer–client relationship, the abrogation of the lawyer’s role as advocate, and the elimination of judicial independence. As a result, while there was an elaborate facade of laws, the fundamental features of the Rule of Law no longer existed and in their place had grown an arbitrary and chaotic system leaving people without any protection from a violent, totalitarian government