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Several other attempts to reform the Confederation involved retaining the Bundestag and adding a parliament and a court. One of these attempts, the proposed Reform Act of 1863, had introduced the term Bundesrath. With the dissolution of the Confederation in August 1866, [2] the diet and the federal law ended.
The reforms overall were far-reaching and hasty, yet at the same time too half-hearted to avert the threat of revolution from below. Ultimately, the people and symbols of the old imperial power remained. [20] The constitutional reform was possible only with the involvement of the majority parliamentary groups.
The leadership of the largest party in the Reichstag, the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD), and especially its chairman Friedrich Ebert, saw the party's main goal as already having been achieved by the constitutional reforms and believed that the Empire's elites would come to terms with democratisation if Germany remained a monarchy. [4]
The term "constitution" (Verfassung) was avoided as the drafters regarded the Grundgesetz as an interim arrangement for a provisional West German state, expecting that an eventual reunified Germany would adopt a proper constitution, enacted under the provisions of Article 146 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that such a constitution must be ...
On 28 October, the Reichstag passed constitutional reforms that changed Germany into a parliamentary monarchy. The chancellor and his ministers were made dependent on the confidence of the parliamentary majority rather than the emperor, and peace treaties and declarations of war required the Reichstag's approval. [ 36 ]
The leadership of the MSPD had seen its long-standing demands for a democratization of the Reich addressed by the October 1918 constitutional reforms. [2] The amendment to Constitution of the German Empire turned the German Reich into a parliamentary monarchy in which the government was no longer answerable to the emperor but to the majority in the Reichstag.
Referendums in Germany are an element of direct democracy. On the federal level only two types of a mandatory binding referendum exist – adopting a new constitution and regional referendums in case of restructuring the states. On the state level, all states have various types of statewide and municipal referendums.
West Germany was a founding member of the European Community in 1958, which became the EU in 1993. Germany is part of the Schengen Area, and has been a member of the eurozone since 1999. It is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20 and the OECD. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Germany a "full democracy" in 2022.