Some questions on the effectiveness of and issues with proportional representation in Germany.

The other worrying element of this system is potentially less cooperation among a government made up of more and smaller parts. Does this lack of unity lead to less effective government (and to what extent), or do the circumstances of PR force politicians to work together with others outside their own party lines?

Mate, the very last thing you want PMs to do is to cooperate. Fight, argue, discuss: but not cooperate.

If you want to know what you get when they "cooperate", just watch a "debate" in our "Bundestag".

Three third of the PMs are not even there. There is no rule that they need to show up and since it doesn't matter anyway, they don't. Because there is a gentlemen-agreement between all parties that if some of the PMs aren't there, the other PMs "compensate" for it, so that the percentages of votes per party are the same as if everybody was present. Ergo, there is no reason for anybody to actually be there. They have lunch, they nap, they do PR. Just because they are members of Parliament doesn't mean that they go to the Parliament.

All issues at hand, that are the foundation of new laws, are discussed behind closed doors anyway, where the public (and the PMs) can't watch. After consensus has been reached within these meetings, an employee of the ministry responsible drafts the law. Often enough this employee is a lobbyist of an external company. So when stuff reaches the parliament, all is said and done to begin with. At this point, the "discussion" is already over. Since the PMs in the room have not been present for any of these "workshops", nine times out of ten the people in the Parliament have no idea what they are voting for.

To work around this issue, there is a convenient "briefing" beforehand that tells them how the party "wants" them to vote on each subject. In theory you could vote differently. But if you do that too often, you might realize that come the next elections you suddenly have moved down quite a few ranks on the list of candidates... and since it's first-come first-serve, this means you won't be PM again. So, in the end, you will vote the way the party wants you to if you want to keep your job.

Since the whole thing is so utterly ridiculous to begin with, half of the speakers don't even care to speak. They just put their speech down as an addendum to the protocol without reading it and either leave, or snore their way through the whole thing, since nobody cares either way. Sometimes the opposition tries to put on a good show, but in the end it is just that: a show, with no real impact on the results whatsoever.

Now, in theory, at least within the government itself there could be discussion. But! In reality the governing parties won't just diverge from their plan. They actually sign a contract before they start their term. "You give me my populist crap A and you can keep your promise B--I give up on C if in return you don't do D." They know exactly that if they diverge from it even a Centimeter, it will be tit-for-tat. Meaning: even within the government there is little to no real discussion, except for PR purposes and internal power struggles.

So: I think we could do with a little less "cooperation".

Finally, corruption is a big issue. It's not that there are people with bags of money walking around. It's more like: "we would like you to come and give a paid speech at our conference and maybe later at dinner we might have a nice little chat". Parties even "rent" out stalls on their party meetings to companies, and the more money you pay for your stall, the more of the minister's "ear" you can expect to get at the event. That sort of thing...

And of course: none of this is considered "corruption", because it is not exactly a bribe. It looks like a bribe, smells like a bribe, and works like a bribe. But technically: it's not a bribe and therefor it's legal.

tl;dr say as we say, don't do as we do.

/r/germany Thread