"Who he is: Schulz, 61, is a former president of the European Union"
No, he is the former president of the European Parliament. Also the German system is very different from the US and the chancellor is the most powerful political position in Germany, but not the equivalent to the US president.
Some of the important differences: the German chancellor gets elected by the parliament, based on a proposal by the German President. With a majority in the parliament he/she can also be removed from office (happened to chancellor Helmut Schmidt). The German chancellor has no term limit.
You could think of the chancellor of Germany as the equivalent to the Prime Minister of the UK: elected by parliament and holds the real power in the country.
The president of Germany would be more like the Queen in the UK: head of state with mainly ceremonial powers, but doesn't take much of a roll in actually running the country.
The chancellor was originally a subordinate position to the King of Prussia and later the German Kaiser. After 1918, the Kaiser was replaced by the president, who had a much more diminished role than the Kaiser did, and the chancellor undisputedly became the most powerful position.
In the US, the president is both of those positions rolled into one, with the exception of being elected by the states rather than by Congress.
> If the 62-year-old Merkel wins, it'll be her fourth term in the post. And if she were to serve a full term, she would tie with Helmut Kohl as Germany's longest serving post-war chancellor (16 years).
Very interesting; is there no limit to consecutive terms in the German government? Wonder what the pros and cons are to this approach (I'm posting from the US where the limit is two consecutive terms).
The pro being the moment you're elected to your final term you lose all accountability to voters. Only the other government people can get rid of you, typically with a much higher bar than what would be needed in an election.
In Germany the president is limited to two 5 year terms. Neither the president nor the chancellor are not elected directly, but by a majority of the members of parliament. This majority can shift during one election period if coalitions change. This could also lead to a new chancellor without a new election.
The president is elected by the Bundesversammlung[1] which consists not only of members of the parliament but also of an equal amount of representatives of the states.
One argument for a non-limited number of terms is to avoid the 'lame duck president' or a 'hyper-active president' - both acting like being unconstrained from the need to win the next election.
Minor nitpick: it's not just consecutive terms, the US president can only serve two terms ever (plus up to one half of an additional term if they came into office because the elected president was removed somehow).
Generally, the rationale of term limits seems to be to prevent a dictatorial or monarchistic system from emerging.
However, consider the rise of the National Socialists in Germany: In 1930, they first got a result > 3% in a federal election. By the end of 1933 all other political parties were banned. No practical term limit could have prevented this dictatorship, even though they never got more than 44% of the vote in a federal election, i.e. never enough to really change the constitution by democratic means. So we definitely know that term limits are not a completely reliable measure.
> Generally, the rationale of term limits seems to be to prevent a dictatorial or monarchistic system from emerging.
In Brazil, we didn't had reelections in the executive branch. 20 years ago the president bribed the Congress to change the Constitution so he could be reelected.
It has been a disaster!
The person in power would use all the government machine for his/her reelection. The election of a second term becomes almost a plebiscite of yes/no if the person must continue.
The renovation of the elected politicians has come almost to a halt. The emergence of new politicians were stifled. A real mess.
For most of US history we didn't have term limits either, it was just a tradition after Washington didn't run for a third term. It wasn't until 1951 that it actually became law.
>What's the point of this convoluted system? It allows voters to split their vote between parties. They can vote for a local candidate from one party and cast their second vote for a different party.
That's not really the point of the second vote. If we would only have the first vote we might have 599 representatives that only were able to get 20% of the votes in their district (the remaining 80% being spread across other candidates with a vote share of <20%). With the second vote we ensure that at least half of the seats are distributed proportionally across the parties and smaller parties have a chance to get into the Bundestag.
I don't know why you say 'at least half', but the parties that got less than proportional number of seats (usually everyone except the CDU and sometimes SPD) gets Ausgleichsmandate ([leveling seats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_seat)) so that the parliament as a whole is representative proportionately to the second vote (excluding parties with less than 5% of votes).
The 42 parties mentioned in the article are just a curiosity. Because ballot sheets are issued on state level to use US terminology (Länder in German) no voter has the choice between all of them. More importantly more than 30 parties have not the slightest chance to win a single seat.
"For their second vote, they choose from a list of the political parties. The remaining 299 seats are then distributed among the parties based on the percentage of votes received nationwide. Only parties that get more than 5% of the vote nationally can send representatives to the parliament."
No. The second vote determines the overall number of seats in parliament that a party receives. Some of these seats are assigned directly based on the first vote. The remaining seats are filled in from lists of candidates that each party selects before the election.
If a party wins more seats through the first vote than it should really have based on the second vote, then that distorts the results of the second vote. Additional seats are created and assigned to the other parties in parliament to restore the proportionality of the seats based on the second vote (or at least reduce the distortion).
Things are a bit more complicated because each party selects a separate list of "fill-in" candidates for each state in which the party runs for parliament. So the national results of the second vote are broken down to the state level, compared to the first vote results of that state, and then "fill-in" candidates are picked for that state. A similar procedure is used for picking candidates for the additional seats that restore the proportionality of the second vote.
No, because those direct voting means that all people can make an educated decision on a topic. But a politicians job is exactly to free us from this work. Nobody wants to constantly mingle with politics when they can rather watch a movie or read a book.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 60.0 ms ] threadNo, he is the former president of the European Parliament. Also the German system is very different from the US and the chancellor is the most powerful political position in Germany, but not the equivalent to the US president.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The president of Germany would be more like the Queen in the UK: head of state with mainly ceremonial powers, but doesn't take much of a roll in actually running the country.
The chancellor was originally a subordinate position to the King of Prussia and later the German Kaiser. After 1918, the Kaiser was replaced by the president, who had a much more diminished role than the Kaiser did, and the chancellor undisputedly became the most powerful position.
In the US, the president is both of those positions rolled into one, with the exception of being elected by the states rather than by Congress.
Fortunately the German president makes his own speeches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_from_the_throne
Luckily Germany is no longer a monarchy, since 1918.
Very interesting; is there no limit to consecutive terms in the German government? Wonder what the pros and cons are to this approach (I'm posting from the US where the limit is two consecutive terms).
I think the norm is not to have term limits, but I could be wrong.
I guess this is one con argument for non-limited consecutive terms.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Convention_(Germany)
However, consider the rise of the National Socialists in Germany: In 1930, they first got a result > 3% in a federal election. By the end of 1933 all other political parties were banned. No practical term limit could have prevented this dictatorship, even though they never got more than 44% of the vote in a federal election, i.e. never enough to really change the constitution by democratic means. So we definitely know that term limits are not a completely reliable measure.
In Brazil, we didn't had reelections in the executive branch. 20 years ago the president bribed the Congress to change the Constitution so he could be reelected.
It has been a disaster!
The person in power would use all the government machine for his/her reelection. The election of a second term becomes almost a plebiscite of yes/no if the person must continue.
The renovation of the elected politicians has come almost to a halt. The emergence of new politicians were stifled. A real mess.
On the other hand, while the chancellor is the most powerful position in Germany it's still less powerful than the president in the US.
That's not really the point of the second vote. If we would only have the first vote we might have 599 representatives that only were able to get 20% of the votes in their district (the remaining 80% being spread across other candidates with a vote share of <20%). With the second vote we ensure that at least half of the seats are distributed proportionally across the parties and smaller parties have a chance to get into the Bundestag.
No. The second vote determines the overall number of seats in parliament that a party receives. Some of these seats are assigned directly based on the first vote. The remaining seats are filled in from lists of candidates that each party selects before the election.
If a party wins more seats through the first vote than it should really have based on the second vote, then that distorts the results of the second vote. Additional seats are created and assigned to the other parties in parliament to restore the proportionality of the seats based on the second vote (or at least reduce the distortion).
Things are a bit more complicated because each party selects a separate list of "fill-in" candidates for each state in which the party runs for parliament. So the national results of the second vote are broken down to the state level, compared to the first vote results of that state, and then "fill-in" candidates are picked for that state. A similar procedure is used for picking candidates for the additional seats that restore the proportionality of the second vote.