Concordance democracy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As consociationalism a type which is popular rule referred to the aims, the largest possible number of actors ( parties , associations , minorities included, social groups) in the political process and decisions by creating a consensus meeting. In this respect, concordance democracy is a form of consensus democracy in which majority rule as a decision-making mechanism does not play a central role in the political system. The counter model to concordance democracy is called competitive democracy or majority democracy .

The term concordance democracy , which is mainly used in relation to the political system in Switzerland , was made fruitful as a social science term at the end of the 1960s, particularly by Gerhard Lehmbruch in German and Arend Lijphart in English ( consociational democracy ). Lijphart names six elements of the definition: large multi-party governments, cultural autonomy, proportionality of the authorities, protection of minorities, social segmentation and elite cooperation. On the basis of 10 indicators, he differentiates between unitary and federal consensus building in concordance democracies.

There are no pure forms of concordance democracy or majority democracy. In Europe, Luxembourg's political system is considered to be markedly democratic in concordance, Switzerland , the Netherlands , Belgium and Austria ( system of proportional representation of the countries, social partnership ) have or have shown democratic concordance features. Germany's political system is also seen as a hybrid between concordance and competitive democracy. Within Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia is a state with a strong tradition of concordance democracy.

Concordance Democracy in Switzerland

Switzerland's concordance is not mandated by its constitution - unlike, for example, the consideration of the various parts of the country - but rather has slowly emerged over the decades through the strong minority protection in Switzerland - recognizable by the right of referendum or the number of estates - or has been further developed as a result of the threat of a referendum .

The Swiss government, the Federal Council , consists of seven members. When Ernst Nobs, the first Social Democratic Federal Councilor, was elected in 1943 , all major parties were involved in the government. His successor, the Social Democrat Max Weber , resigned in 1953 after a lost referendum on the financial reform, and the Social Democratic Party was again in the opposition. In 1959, after the resignation of four federal councilors, the so-called magic formula came about , in which the most important parties were represented according to their weight in the seven-member Federal Council: the FDP , CVP and SP received two seats each , one from the BGB , the predecessor of the SVP . This party composition remained unchanged until 2003. In the elections on October 19, 2003, the four Federal Council parties achieved a total of 81.6 percent of the vote and together occupy 217 of the 246 seats in the United Federal Assembly , namely 171 out of 200 in the National Council and 46 out of 46 in the Council of States (as of December 2003).

If the concordance is carried out on a proportional basis, all parliamentarians, their parties - and above all all voters - are proportionally represented and can concentrate on factual disputes and solutions "on an equal footing". They can continue their work before and after the elections without any major upheaval. The parliamentarians do not have to delineate themselves continuously in the coalition- opposition appearances that are usual in competitive systems . Neither do they, like the governments, have to form coalitions after the elections, or spend a lot of time searching.

The idea of ​​the Swiss concordance democracy aims at stability and continuous development. Because there has been no actual opposition in parliament for a long time. In Switzerland, it is also not possible at any level to overthrow the government by means of a motion of no confidence . Since the Federal Council - like the cantonal and communal governments - is a collegial authority whose seven ministers determine the government policy represented externally through binding, internal majorities, a ruling party can temporarily oppose the government. This, and even if the people at the ballot box against the government's opinion, does not mean that the Federal Council has to resign. The forces that are defeated in a vote must submit to the committee or the people and allow their further government work to be determined by the resolutions passed. The concordance requires that all members have a strong ability to reach a consensus, otherwise government activity can be blocked.

Possible problems and their solutions

Even in a concordance democracy, strongly polarizing party politics can cause problems. On the other hand, there are fears that a well-functioning opposition standing outside of the concordance could also permanently block the Swiss political system through a flood of referenda and initiatives. This led to the government involvement of CVP in 1891 and the government involvement of the Social Democrats in 1959 and was a factor in the election of Christoph Blocher in 2003.

However, it is part of the tradition of concordance democracy that candidates who do not have a majority can be prevented while formally maintaining the concordance, in that the parliamentary majority elects more moderate representatives of the respective party instead of the candidates nominated by the party.

This happened particularly frequently with candidates from the SP: For example, party president Walther Bringolf , who was nominated by the SP in 1959, was not elected because of his communist past and Hans-Peter Tschudi entered the Federal Council in his place . 1973 Willi Ritschard was elected to replace the then party president Arthur Schmid . In 1983, when the SP nominated the politician Lilian Uchtenhagen as the first woman for the Federal Council, the Federal Assembly elected Otto Stich , who in retrospect, however, proved to be such a capable social democratic finance minister that the bourgeois majority often regretted having elected him.

There was a scandal in 1993 when Christiane Brunner was nominated by the SP and Francis Matthey was elected instead . As a result of the election there were nationwide protests, particularly by women, so Matthey decided not to accept the election. Ruth Dreifuss was elected in his place .

In December 2003, the SVP, as the largest party in the National Council (People's Chamber), but not in the Council of States (Länderkammer), claimed a second seat in the Federal Council, Ruth Metzler (CVP) was not re-elected in favor of Christoph Blocher, whereupon the Federal Council is now divided into two SVP, two FDP, one CVP and two SP members. This was justified with the transition from content to numerical concordance.

In the 2007 Federal Council elections , Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf was elected as the "explosive candidate" in place of the incumbent SVP Federal Councilor Blocher through a strategy led by the Graubünden SP National Councilor Andrea Hämmerle ; she accepted the election against the will of her party leadership and the SVP parliamentary group . The SVP subsequently excluded the re-elected SVP Federal Councilor Samuel Schmid and Widmer-Schlumpf from participating in the parliamentary group and declared “going into the opposition” until two candidates nominated by the party had been elected to the Federal Council. While the SVP parliamentary group itself and many commentators abroad viewed this as a collapse of the concordance system, Swiss parliamentarians from all other parties saw the concordance being preserved and even strengthened in terms of content in the new constellation.

Even within the SVP, the move into the opposition of the more radical Zurich and Eastern Switzerland wing was not undisputed - the more moderate Bern and Graubünden cantonal parties of the SVP stuck to "their" locally very popular federal councilors, and the incumbent government councilors of the SVP, which are integrated into cantonal concordance systems, were radical Very skeptical of opposition politics. As a result, local sections called for the incumbent SVP Federal Councilors to be reinstated in the parliamentary group, while others demanded exclusion from the party. On June 1, 2008, the central board of SVP Switzerland excluded SVP Graubünden, including Federal Councilor Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who belongs to the cantonal section. You and other more moderate SVP politicians then founded the BDP.

In the Federal Council election in 2008 , the long-time SVP President Ueli Maurer was elected to replace the resigned Samuel Schmid , which brought the SVP back into the government and ended its opposition.

For the 2011 Federal Council elections , where u. a. the question of the re-election of Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf was at the center, the concept of concordance has been the subject of various interpretations. Since in the National Council elections in autumn 2011, in addition to the BDP with the Green Liberals ( GLP ), another Center Party had entered the National Council, representatives of the CVP , BDP and GLP claimed this seat of the BDP as their joint and demanded that the FDP , which had lost a considerable amount of votes in the elections, is to cede its second Federal Council seat to the SVP, which was rejected by the SVP and FDP.

Comparison with competitive democracy

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The political scientist Arend Lijphart examined the distinction between competitive and concordance democracy in his study "Patterns of Democracy". In doing so, he set up ten criteria, which a concordance or make a majority democracy. In his further research, he compared these two ideal types and found that concordance democracy was no less efficient, but more representative than majority democracy. He thus seems to classify concordance democracy as superior to majority democracy. The distinction between consensus and concordance is also worth mentioning. The consensus democracy striving for power-sharing, the concordance democracy, however, requires them and prescribes that all of the key groups are considered.

The term consensus democracy is often equated with concordance democracy. If one examines the interaction of political forces, one speaks more of concordance democracy (as a counter-model here, competitive democracy). If, on the other hand, the way of finding an opinion is chosen as the distinguishing feature, the terms consensus democracy and majority democracy are used .

literature

  • Roland Czada, Manfred G. Schmidt (ed.): Negotiating democracy, mediation of interests, governability. Festschrift for Gerhard Lehmbruch . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-531-12473-0 .
  • Clemens Jesenitschnig: Gerhard Lehmbruch - Scientist and Work. A critical appreciation . Tectum, Marburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8288-2509-3 , chap. 3 (on the scientific genesis of the analysis category "Concordance Democracy")
  • Gerhard Lehmbruch: Negotiating Democracy. Contributions to comparative governance . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-531-14134-1 .
  • Gerhard Lehmbruch: Concordance Democracy. In: Manfred G. Schmidt (Ed.): Lexicon of Politics, Volume 3: The Western Countries . CH Beck, Munich 1992, pp. 206-211.
  • Gerhard Lehmbruch: proportional democracy. Political system and political culture in Switzerland and Austria . Mohr, Tübingen 1967.
  • Arend Lijphart: Thinking about Democracy. Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice . Routledge, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-77267-9 .
  • Arend Lijphart: Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries . Yale University Press, New Haven 1999, ISBN 0-300-07893-5 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Zapf: Development as modernization. In: Manfred Schulz (Ed.): Development. The perspective of development sociology. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1997, p. 31ff.
  2. ↑ Clemens Jesenitschnig: Gerhard Lehmbruch - Scientist and Work. A critical appreciation. 2010, op. Cit. , Chap. 3. There with further evidence.
  3. ^ Manfred G. Schmidt: The political system of Germany. Institutions, decision-making and policy areas . Beck, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-60390-7 , pp. 35/36.
  4. ↑ Guido Wärme : It's terrible, but it works! ( Memento from August 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Lecture from December 9, 2010. In: Insights and Perspectives. Bavarian magazine for politics and history. Issue 04/2011, accessed on the blz.bayern.de portal on December 7, 2013.
  5. ^ The Swiss system of government is falling apart ( Memento from December 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Financial Times Deutschland. December 13, 2007.
  6. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) CVP opinion@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.cvp.ch
  7. ↑ Between anger and joy. on: swissinfo.ch , December 13, 2007.
  8. ↑ Opposition strategy causes red heads in the SVP. ( Memento of December 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ SVP base doesn't believe in the opposition. In: Sunday newspaper. December 16, 2007.
  10. ^ SVP Switzerland excludes Graubünden section . In: NZZ online. June 2, 2008.
  11. ↑ The future lies in the small concordance . In: NZZ online. January 10, 2009.
  12. ^ Manfred G. Schmidt: Theories of democracy. An introduction. Wiesbaden 2008, p. 320.

Web links