Accumulation of offices

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The word Ämterhäufung or Ämterkumulation (Latin cumulus "accumulation" or "accumulation") is a journalistic term from sociology or political science and describes the simultaneous exercise of various public offices and mandates on a political and / or economic level.

application

A person who carries out office accumulation, literally translated as “accumulation of offices”, also has an influential position in two different areas that can, but do not have to be, strongly interdependent.

Most examples of such exercise of power are in the fields of politics and economics. This may be related to the fact that these areas are of particularly great interest for a society and are therefore also under special observation.

A member of parliament can therefore hold a powerful position in business at the same time, be it as a board member or as a member of the supervisory board in a mostly larger company. However, these usually only appear at the national level.

However, there are also examples of lower accumulation of offices with a lower position of power, which, however, should not be explained further here.

politics

In politics, various issues are discussed under the heading of the accumulation of offices.

First of all, the principle of the separation of powers often results in the incompatibility of government offices and parliamentary mandates, the so-called separation of office and mandate . In the Federal Republic of Germany there are no regulations in this regard, so that MPs can be members of the government at the same time (exceptions are the state governments of Bremen and Hamburg ). The eligibility of senior civil servants, the military or electoral officials (e.g. mayors) in parliaments is also prohibited in some countries (although not in Germany). The principle of the independence of the MPs means that MPs can take on secondary activities in any way . On the one hand, this can be voluntary work in clubs and associations. Paid activities (e.g. on management boards and supervisory boards) are also permitted. Politicians who take on several offices because of these possibilities easily expose themselves to the charge of accumulating offices. The simultaneous exercise of several parliamentary mandates is known as a double mandate .

In practice, it is in particular supervisory board and comparable mandates in public companies (e.g. supervisory board in municipal utilities , membership in broadcasting boards or administrative boards in savings banks ) that politicians hold at the same time as office or mandate. In addition, management positions in interest groups such as trade unions or employers' associations are the main reason for the allegation of an accumulation of offices.

An accumulation of offices is often criticized for the following reasons:

  • there may be a lack of democratic control,
  • there may be conflicts of interest come
  • multiple references arouse envy.

In order to counter this accusation, MPs are often obliged to publish secondary employment .

Supervisory boards

The simultaneous exercise of a large number of supervisory board mandates is also criticized as an accumulation of offices. While in the past at the time of “ Deutschland AG ” accumulations of supervisory board mandates were the order of the day due to mutual participations, today the number of mandates is limited to 10 according to § 100 Abs. 2 AktG in order to counter the accumulation of offices.

history

In the 16th century, the Council of Trent also discussed the accumulation of clerical offices. It was not considered desirable to be bishop of multiple dioceses . In addition to exceptions such as Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg , this form of accumulation of offices was only legitimized in the period of absolutism .