The debate on democratization and parliament in Germany from 1871 to 1918

Abstract

ABSTRACT The political setting of the German Kaiserreich founded in 1871 was based on a constitutional monarchy and endowed with a parliament (the Reichstag) elected by means of universal and democratic suffrage. Therefore, the question of democratization concerned specific issues: the extension of the vote to women and younger people, the reordering of the constituencies, and the reform of the graded suffrage in the federal states. However, the political system on the whole could not be considered as thoroughly democratic, since the Reichstag was flanked by a Federal Council (the Bundesrat) whose members were not appointed on a democratic basis, and the government did not derive from the parties that had won the elections. Hence, in the course of time the debate on democratization became intertwined with the claim of strengthening the political power of parliament. This article focuses on the positions of two outstanding democratic thinkers (Hugo Preuß, Max Weber) and of the leading social democratic intellectuals (Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein) and intends to reconstruct the meaning they ascribed to the process of democratization in connection with the essential role they attributed to parliament.