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The U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag

The U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag

Comparisons of Democratic Processes

Edited by
Uwe Thaysen, Roger H. Davidson,
and Robert Gerald Livingston

First published 1990 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1990 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The U.S. Congress and German Bundestag: comparisons of democratic processes / edited by
Uwe Thaysen, Roger H. Davidson, and R. Gerald Livingston.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8133-7346-8
1. United States. Congress. 2. Germany (West). Bundestag.
3. Comparative government. I. Thaysen, Uwe, 1940
II. Davidson, Roger H. III. Livingston, Robert Gerald.
JK1061.U17 1990
328.43'07dc20 89-27786
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29677-3 (hbk)

Contents

1. PART I
   INTRODUCTION
2. PART II
   THE UNITED STATES AND THE FORMATION OF THE BUNDESTAG
3. PART III
   REPRESENTATIVES AND THOSE THEY REPRESENT
4. PART IV
   CONSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT
5. PART V
   ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION
6. PART VI
   POLICY AREAS
7. PART VII
   MEDIA AND PUBLIC OPINION
8. PART VIII
   COMPARATIVE SUMMARY
9. PART IX
   STATISTICAL APPENDIX

1. PART I
   INTRODUCTION
2. PART II
   THE UNITED STATES AND THE FORMATION OF THE BUNDESTAG
3. PART III
   REPRESENTATIVES AND THOSE THEY REPRESENT
4. PART IV
   CONSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT
5. PART V
   ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION
6. PART VI
   POLICY AREAS
7. PART VII
   MEDIA AND PUBLIC OPINION
8. PART VIII
   COMPARATIVE SUMMARY
9. PART IX
   STATISTICAL APPENDIX

Guide

Chapter 4. The Social Composition of Congress

Chapter 5. The Social Composition of the Bundestag

Chapter 6. Congress and the Individual States

Chapter 10. Parties and Committees in Congress

Chapter 11. Parties and Committees in the Bundestag

Chapter 13. Interest Group Representation in the Bundestag

Chapter 23. The Bundestag and Media in the Federal Republic of Germany

Statistical Appendix

a. Elections and Formation of Governments

b. Organization and Operational Methods

c. Legislative Process

This book has a five-year history. Georg Kahn-Ackermann of the Vereinigung ehemaliger Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundestages (Association of Former Members of the Bundestag) and Jed Johnson, Jr., Executive Director of the Association of Former Members of Congress and of the U.S. Congressional Study Group in Germany, originally gave Impetus to the study. At a meeting in Salzburg in the early 1980s that the Association organized, members of Congress and the Bundestag came to the common conclusion that greater mutual comprehension of the two legislatures and their policymaking functions was desirable, even necessary, for a more complete understanding of the changing U.S.-German political relationship as a whole.

The scholars who have written chapters for this book try to analyze how the legislatures on the Potomac and the Rhine deal with decision-making in many fields, especially that of high technology. This emphasis, including an evaluation of how parliaments handle issues involving modern technologies, was the basis for our proposal to the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (Bonn) for the support of the German part of this undertaking. The editors wish to express their deep appreciation to the Ministry for its crucial and generous support.

We began by cataloging traditional themes that could help answer questions about changes in the Congress and the Bundestag and thus possibly about changes in the U.S. and West German government systems more generally. It was decided at the outset that an American author dealing with the Congress and a German author dealing with the Bundestag should address the same topic in each case. Twenty-six authors in all have contributed to this comparative study. As can be imagined, the problem of coordinating and integrating their contributions across the Atlantic was not an easy one.

To achieve coordination between the pairs of authors on a given topic and also among authors and editors generally, we all met twice, in Knigswinter near Bonn in 1984 and at the Wingspread Conference Center in Wisconsin in 1985. Both conferences were made possible by the fine organizational assistance and essential financial support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Knigswinter). The editors, on their own behalf and that of the authors, express their gratitude to the Foundation.

Relevance to actual parliamentary practice was an imperative to which we committed ourselves from the start. We sought to have active and former parliamentarians on both sides of the Atlantic discuss with us the intentions of the book and assertions made in the individual chapters. The legislators were part of this process in Knigswinter and Wingspread and periodically thereafter. Policy analysts should be closely associated with policymaking, we believe. For this reason we felt it important to seek legislators' comments and also to recruit as authors some policy practitioners and policy advisers as well as academic scholars.

Each pair of authors dealing with a topic tried to coordinate their work. Differing personal schedules among the authors, however, led to varying completion dates for different chapters over a fairly long period from 1985 to 1989. Where necessary, we have arranged for updating.

The quite different styles in the German and U.S. contributions also say something about differences of approach between the two sides of the Atlantic. It cannot be denied that on the German side there still exists that sort of "pedantry" that Hugo Mnsterberg once considered as being typically German as compared to American scholarship. (We are prepared to concede to potential reviewers, above all to German reviewers, that even more pedantry might have been required. But then we would have needed even more time to complete the project.)

This study has recently been published in a German edition ( U.S.-Kongress und Deutscher Bundestag: Bestandsaufnahmen im Vergleich, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen, 1988). It is identical with this book in most respects. The two editions differ from each other, however, where this is required by differing readerships, Americans and Germans.

In the English version a few charts and tables from the Statistical Appendix of the German edition have been omitted. They refer to the Congress and are available in greater detail in U.S. political science literature. In the final comparative summary section (), we have tried to take account of differing readerships on each side of the Atlantic. As a result, in the German edition the focus is upon the Congress in this comparative summary section and in the U.S. edition upon the Bundestag. Readers will also find that the prefaces in each edition differ substantially.

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