 Let's talk about governance and policymaking this time. Governance and policymaking in the Federal Republic of Germany. So most of my discussion will be confined to the Western part of Germany. When the Federal Republic was formed, 1949, the goal of the Republic was to work towards reunification. And when a unified Germany was blocked, the idea of a unified Germany was blocked, everything was feeling a little bit of transitional. So the ultimate goal of reunification was there, and let's wait until the reunification to use a constitution. So a halfway house between a constitution and nothing was a compromise called an institution called Grundgesetz, which means basic law. So instead of a constitution, the Germans adopted what's called the basic law. But later on, it got regime-like, it got institutionalized. It's the constitution. It's the functional equivalent of a constitution. In a way, it is a constitution. It is the constitution of the Federal Republic. And even after reunification, the tradition continued. It was supposed to be transitional, but still with the annexation of the Fife Lander to Western, like Federal Republic of Germany, they kept using the term Grundgesetz, a basic law as the constitution of the enlarged, reunified Federal Republic of Germany. And the second goal is, or has been, as it is ingrained in the Constitution work to ensure lasting democratic order. So the memories of the experiences of World War II was fresh, so we have to work toward ensuring lasting democratic order. So the idea of never again. We don't want to go back to those days. We have to avoid the failure what led us to, or within the Weimar Republic, what led us to Hitler. So the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic, let's learn our lessons. Let's learn our lessons. Let's lesson draw or draw some lessons. Why did we have this? Because we had this, we had Hitler rising, because we had emergency powers allowing centralization of authority. So the fact that the Weimar Republic institutionalized emergency powers, so the Chancellor could declare emergency powers, suspending democratic rights, civil liberties, this led us to catastrophe. And secondly, political parties, the political system was highly fragmented. And with a fragmented political system, we had ultimate instability. Fragmentation, many parties not being able to agree on top of this instability, or produced instability. And this led to the government seizing emergency powers. So breaking legislative deadlock. Legislative deadlocks were frequent 1930s, late 1920s, well, all 1920s, all throughout 1920s, early 1930s. So breaking legislative deadlock is very important. So we have to keep our system stable. So we have to have such a system that it's less fragmented, that it is solid, that is based on cooperation, collaboration, no more stalemates, no more gridlocks, and that there wouldn't be overly strong executive, and that there wouldn't be the option of emergency powers. So extraordinary circumstances brought catastrophes. So we have to be very careful with respect to how we form our new governing template, i.e. the Grundgesetz, the basic law. So the solutions were that let's have a system, a democratic system based on rule of law, a federal system in which we have, in a way, check some balances. So there is no one centralized power. Power is diffused to the Lander, the 11 Lander of the time, plus the five now 16, and that let's have a social state. And that there would be, as I said, a rule of law accompanying a democratic political system. How do we do this? Let's have federalism, but not only federalism, but also a weaker presidency, weaker executive, so that there would be no possibility of arbitrary power. So weaker presidency, federalism as, in a way, providing checks and balances to or into the system so that there wouldn't be possibilities of resorting to arbitrary power. And second institution is constructive vote of no confidence. So that is an important element of the system of Grundgesetz, of basic law. I'll explain this further, but perhaps it may be a good time to talk about this. We haven't talked about the German political system, but what it means is that we've seen some systems, we've seen three political systems up until now, in case of a vote of no confidence, in case a government is threatened, the chancellor is to be dismissed or removed from office. The Grundgesetz ensures, or wishes to ensure, that a new government is in place, and it would replace the outgoing government almost immediately, almost simultaneously. So if a government is to be removed, there has to be change of guards in the sense that the next government has to be ready to be approved. So the dismissal and approval, it's within 48 hours. And dismissal is the process of dismissal, a removal is not completed unless the new government comes to power. So in rare cases of this, there has to be a constructive vote of no confidence, so no confidence, a vote on no confidence, but it has to be constructive in the sense that it allows the next government to basically start governing. So the Bundestag, the legislature may vote on this, but it's a consecutive dual vote in effect because a removal or a dismissal happens only with, only when it accompanies a coming into office, a successor comes into office. Okay, why do we talk about all this? Why did the Germans have designed, devised this system? Because of instability, fragmentation, and also fears of fragmentation, fears of instability, and also fears of executives' arbitrary control. As you can see, it's supposed to be a system, stable system, defragmented or unfragmented system. What are the basic principles of the Grundgesetz? One basic principle is federalism, which in a way inhibits, which is supposed to inhibit centralized power at the national level. But when you look at it this way, this is not a departure or a rupture from the past. Remember, it's in a way a return to pre-1870s. Remember the map of German lands, German Empire and German Empire. Remember we talked, I showed you, that there are principalities, kingdoms, city-states. So the idea of federalism had been there, subsidiarity had been there, okay? All these principles, decentralized ways of governing, had been there before 1870s, before unification of Germany under Bismarck. This is no alien. So the idea of federal ways of doing things, organizing your political system, is no alien to German lands. And methods to prevent party fragmentation. One is that there is a national threshold of 5%. This is 5% of the vote for seats in the Bundestag. So there's a national threshold at the federal level. Intervals for elections are set for four years, almost written on stone. So there's no snap elections, there won't be snap elections. The chancellor or even the president cannot call for a snap elections. So we know that the last elections, the next elections is upcoming in 2017, minus 4, 2013, minus 4, 2009, minus 4, 2005. So the intervals are set like written on stone, like seriously determined. And we've been having elections like that in the post-World War II era. Constructive vote of no confidence, once again, unless a successor is guaranteed to have a vote of confidence, there won't be a vote of no confidence to the outgoing government or cabinet. So outgoing has to be accompanied by an incoming. So successor has to be there in place. We all see and we all vote for it for us to be able to send the outgoing government. This was the case in 1982. Excuse me, when CDU leader Helmut Kohl formed the government after the outgoing coalition of SPD and CDU, which we shall be talking about later. The chancellor has increased powers. So over time this has been strengthening, vis-a-vis the president. There has also been strengthening of the executive, even in Germany, which is so wary of increased or of the possibility of having arbitrary power. And presidents do not have emergency powers. So this is against the Third Reich in a way, in contrast to the Weimar Republic. No emergency powers in the sense that we have, for example France, we don't have the same institutional apparatus in Germany as we have elsewhere. What does the German government system look like? It's a federal system with 16 lenders. Each of these 16 lenders have parliaments. I got this from your textbook, by the way. So they all have their own parliaments. They all have their governments. And we have a system of parliamentary democracy. So we don't have a parliamentary system. I'm sorry, a presidential system. Although we have a president, it's the passive wing of the executive. So we have the federal chancellor, the functionally equivalent of what we have in Britain or in France as the premier, the prime minister, the chancellor who forms his or her cabinet. We have the Bundestag directly elected with the public or through the public. The public directly elects Bundestag and the public directly elects in these 16 lenders, the parliaments. We have the Bundesrat, which represents members sent by the 16-lander governments. And when the 16-lander governments elect or send members of the Bundesrat, and we have the Bundestag and the land governments, their representatives, they form the federal convention which elects the federal president. So it's the Bundesrat, members of the Bundesrat and the 16-lander governments. So the lower house in the parliament, the federal parliament and the land-lander parliaments, they form the federal convention and elect the federal president. So it's a system of parliamentary democracy which means effectively the executive dominating the legislature because we've talked about this before, executive dominating, de facto dominating the legislature. This is the case because we have the Bundestag, the parliament out of which we have the cabinet. And the cabinet has to enjoy confidence in the parliament as long as the executive, the cabinet enjoys confidence of the parliament. It stays in power. As long as it does so, it will be able to dominate the parliamentary agenda. Is that clear? So de facto, the executive will be dominating the legislature. And in this case, there is some kind of a fusion of powers as opposed to the principle of separation of powers because you have the executive dominating the legislature. That means that these two powers are in a way fused. Is this clear? Okay. Oh, you had a question? Okay, that's a good question because I didn't explain it well. I will explain this further later on. But Bundestag is the lower house of the German parliament. Bundesrat is the upper house of the parliament. Okay, so it's a bi-cameral two-chamber parliament. The Bundestag is, whenever we refer to the parliament, we refer to the Bundestag. And the Bundestag is the upper chamber in the parliament, which is, I mean, their members are elected in two different ways, which we shall talk about a bit later. The executive, when we look at the system, there's a division between the chancellor, which is the head of government, and the president, which is the head of, or who is the head of the state. There is a very clear distinction between rights and responsibilities among these two executives. The president has a weaker ceremonial and therefore not political role. He is the head of the state. He is elected for five years by the Federal Convention. Okay, so he's chosen by the Federal Convention and in general is supposed to provide continuity in case of crisis. So as you can see, the system inserted the presidency as a caretaker. So continuity in times of crisis. And the Federal Convention, the Bundestag, members of the Bundestag, 630 members of the Bundestag, plus an equal number of delegates from state legislatures, land parliaments. Okay, another 630 something delegates. They make up the almost 1,300 member Federal Convention. Joachim Kaouk is the current president since 2012, 2012. So the Federal Convention will be convening next year to be choosing the federal president. The chancellor elected by majority of the Bundestag, leader of the party with the majority of seats in the Bundestag, the usual regular way. There are limits and power of the chancellor because the Bundesrat must ratify all legislation that the Bundestag passes. The executive, the active wing of the executive, the chancellor and her cabinet may dominate the legislature. But that's not the end of the story because whatever the legislature passes has to be passed, I mean, I'm sorry, whatever the lower house of the legislature passes, has to be passed in the upper house. So whatever the Bundestag passes has to be passed by the Bundesrat. Please. We don't call that a veto, but it has legislative power. So yes, so they can block legislation. Veto is generally, we use the term veto for the executive. That's why I hesitate to say veto, but blocking power. Angela Merkel had been the chancellor for more than 10 years. We hear she's running again in 2017 and that the chances are that she will be leading the country for another four years. So all legislation to be implemented has to be passed by the Bundesrat too. Bureaucracy and policymaking. Well, Germany has always been endowed with a powerful and meritocratic bureaucracy protected, insulated from political pressure, highly proficient, very efficient by German standards. And policy implementation, however, takes place at the land level. Federal level, bureaucracy, designs, help design, help inform. But implementation takes place at the land level. I'll talk about this a bit later on. Semi-public institutions. We have strong state or centralized, I'm sorry, state had been discredited in the 1940s when the founding fathers were writing up, drafting the Grundgesetz. So federalism is very important. The excesses of Nazism and because the Americans were involved in writing up the constitution, drafting the constitution, the importance of private sector as opposed to a centralized state had been important in the writing process of the Grundgesetz. This country, this political economy is also run by democratic corporatism, as I have given examples, as I've tried to explain to you, which is rooted in medieval guilds. Remember we talked about city-states in medieval times? Craftsmen, tradesmen, guilds were important in economic organization. So negotiating, bargaining, consulting, cooperating were very important instruments dating back to medieval guilds. These are inclusionary systems of interest intermediation guilds have been. So in a way democratic corporatism combines representation, interest representation, policy making, but also implementation. So implementing policies, implementing whatever has been decided is through this tripartite system of bargaining, negotiation, cooperation, consultation and all that. And one, there are institutions of workers' participation. Unions are very important, have historically been important, especially in post-World War II era in the Federal Republic. Codetermination is an important institution here. Workers have a voice, they get voice opportunities in processes of collective bargaining. They sit on boards of directors of large firms. So they co-determine certain policies, they co-determine the fates, the life, the future of institutions. This has been changing over time, but this has been an institutionalized way of interest intermediation, representation and implementation as was the case or has been the case in the past. And works councils, we talked about this, they represent workers inside the firm. They address shop floor grievances, firm level affairs. They also voice all kinds of interests at the firm level. So this is, as you can see, what also Leipart models as consensual style, consensual model of governing, model of democracy. As opposed to majoritarian models. As you can see, it's a networked society, chambers of industry, chambers of commerce are very important, works councils are important, unions are important, business associations are important, both at the land level. In fact, even research is organized. I am part of the Turkish delegation to Horizon 2020, which is the research institution of the European Union. I tend to see that, yes, there is, we make decisions with the federal research institutions, but there are research organizations at different land level. I meet, for example, sometimes with the Bavarian Institute or institution for research. So each and every land has their own institutionalized regimes of governance which involve all kinds of networks. So chambers of industry, chambers of commerce, unions, parties, they're all organized at the land level too. This, in a way, attests to the networked character of German society. So these semi-public institutions are important. With respect to military and the police, as you can imagine, Prussian history till 1945, powerful, centralized, aggressive military. So the military had been placed under tight control, very tight controls in the Grand Gazette, under tight legal as well as treaty control, so international treaties. So defense only in Europe. So they can defend German lands in Europe or they have to be working with NATO. So the German military cannot step outside of Germany unless treaties allow. Unless international community allows it. But there's also universal conscription. But it may involve not only military but also civilian duties. The police is organized at the land level on a land basis. They're supposed to protect human and civil rights too. Judiciary, we have an independent judiciary which is an active administrator in the system. Active administrative law rather than arbiter only. So courts are important. They define, interpret the meaning of law. So court decisions are important. For example, Turkey and Federal Republic of Germany because of the association agreement of 1960s between Turkey and then the European Economic Community, there had been visa issues. Turkish citizens are exposed to, I mean, they are supposed to obtain a visa before entering into Germany. But even court decisions at the land level or at the city level may provide grounds for bringing a case against the German government. So courts are very important in Germany in not only implementing decisions but also defining, understanding, interpreting legislation. That's also very important. We have three significant courts. The Federal High Court, which is the Court of Appeal. From lower courts, the system of lower courts, criminal as well as civil courts, I'm sorry. So Federal High Court is one important Court of Appeal. The Special Constitutional Court, which is relegated, I mean, jurisdiction of which, competencies of which are relegated to matters related to basic law. And administrative courts, such as the Labour Court, such as the Social Security Court, such as the Finance Courts, this, that and the other, which in a way provide checks on arbitrary powers of the bureaucracy. So this is the court system. Once again, it's an independent system. Yes, I did mention that it looks like a fusion of powers. But by fusion of powers, I mean de facto executives domination of the legislature. But we do have a very strong and jealously guarded independent court system. So the judiciary is another check on the system. Federalism and subnational governance or government. We have now 16 Lander, which has, each of which has considerable autonomy. Each has their own land ta, their own regional assemblies, land level assemblies, land level parliaments. They have their own governments. The elections generally do not coincide, elections at the land level generally do not coincide with elections at the federal level. We have in Germany an interesting model of federalism, which is sometimes referred to as marble cake federalism. This is in other times referred to as cooperative federalism. Anyone who's eaten a marble cake, mosaic pasta. So as you can see, it's really mingled, elements are really mingled. The land Lander, the land level is the local level, the municipal, the city level. There each of these subnational units have a say in the system, not only in designing laws and legislations, but also in implementing laws and legislations. Therefore, it's a system of mixing of powers. It's a system of mixing of resources. It's a system of mixing programs among different levels of governance, multiple levels of governance. So federal, regional land, I mean, and local governments. And the Lander are responsible for policy implementation that have been decided at the national, i.e. federal level. It's a marble cake federalism as opposed to layer cake federalism. Marble cake is mixed and mingled and interwoven. Close cooperation is needed. That's why it's called cooperative federalism. Layer cake federalism is another system, as we see in the US. It's a dual, excuse me, dual tier system, or sometimes it's referred to as dual federalism. There are tensions between the state and the federal level. Here we do not have tensions in that respect. There is the state level and the federal level competences are clearly demarcated against one another. They're clearly marked. And there is divided sovereignty here. Here we do not have divided sovereignty because sovereignty is so interwoven. It's like a marble cake in that respect. It's not a two-layered cake federalism. In the divided sovereignty system or the dual federal system or the layer cake federalism system, state governments exercise powers without the interference of the federal level. So the federal level cannot be encroaching upon, bearing down upon the state levels. But here we have an interwoven, intermingled system. Policymaking, it lies mainly with the, I mean, the responsibility of policymaking lies mainly with the chancellor and the cabinet. So at the federal level, the executive is responsible for policymaking, especially in times of single-party governments. We have many coalitions in German history. We'll talk about that next time. So especially in single-party governments, we have the executive de facto controlling the legislative agenda. So policymaking is with the chancellor and the cabinet. Corporatists or neo-corpitists, democratic corporatists, there is all kinds of consultation. It's largely consensus-based. So policymaking and processes, and it's largely informal. So as you can see, the idea of federalism, the idea of network society, the idea of cooperation, consensus-seeking had been marking post-World War II German history. And it has been very important. I learned from a German professor, as I participated in a conference last week in Berlin, that Germany, there wasn't a culture of negotiation right in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Don't forget, this all happened, the war happened, because of gridlocks, stalemates, non-cooperative behavior. But Germany built, or Germans built, this culture of cooperation, consultation, and intermediation. That was also interesting to learn. I thought, Germans, I was under the impression that Germans had always been prone to cooperation consultation, corporatist ways of consensus-seeking. But apparently, it dawned on me that it wasn't like this before, right? What brought Hitler to power was fragmentation itself, but that this was actively cultivated by actors. In the post-World War II period. So that was what I learned here recently, and I wanted to share that with you. Okay, I'll see you next class on Friday at 9.40. I'll see you. Bye.