Sixty years on, voting rules under strain in Germany

Election rules designed to ensure the stability of post-war German governments are looking dated and calls for an overhaul could grow if a federal vote in September produces another unwieldy coalition in Berlin.

As Germany prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its post-war Constitution, or Basic Law, politicians are rightly highlighting the successes of the consensus-driven political order the country set up in 1949 on the ashes of World War II.

But political and constitutional experts are concerned Germany's hybrid proportional voting system, which bred solidity for decades, could spawn a new era of instability and gridlock reminiscent of the Weimar Republic if changes are not made.

"For 30 years Germany had one of the most stable party systems in the world but the rise of new parties has raised questions about whether we will see workable coalitions going forward," said Donald Kommers, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, who is writing a book on the German Constitution.

"A lot will depend on this election in September. If we get another grand coalition, I think we will see serious proposals for constitutional change."

While many advanced democracies, including the US and Britain, use a "first-past-the-post" system, Germany opted after the war for modified proportional representation, in which voters cast two votes - one for a constituency representative and one for a party.

To avoid the pitfalls of Weimar, where even parties with low levels of support could enter Parliament, Germany set a minimum five per cent threshold. It gave its states considerable power to influence policy in the Bundesrat upper house of Parliament.

That system worked well for decades where German politics was dominated by two big parties - the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.

But a decline in their support and the rise of new parties like the far-left Linke and the Greens have made it tougher to form stable coalitions at the federal, state and local level.

CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced into an awkward "grand coalition" with her traditional rivals, the SPD, in 2005 when neither party won enough votes to secure a parliamentary majority with its favoured smaller partner.

Since then regional elections, most notably in the western state of Hesse, have underscored the risks of a new political landscape in which five parties regularly enter Parliament.

Hesse, home to the financial capital Frankfurt, struggled for a full year under a minority caretaker government while opposition parties tried and failed to form a ruling coalition.

Polls suggest Germany's two big parties, which between them have run every government since the Nazis, will win just 60 per cent of the vote in September, well below their 2005 score of 70 per cent, which itself was the weakest total since 1949.

That has raised the likelihood that Germany will get another unwieldy "grand coalition" or possibly a partnership of the SPD, Greens and pro-business Free Democrats - a novel grouping experts fear would be unstable and plagued by infighting.

"The grand coalition delivered some results, notably on health care and federalism reform, but it served its purpose," said Juergen Falter, a political scientist at Mainz University. "There are very few reasons to think we need it again."

Even if Ms Merkel does manage to form a centre-right coalition with the FDP as she hopes, the emergence of new partnerships at state level could make it tough for the next government to get legislation through the Bundesrat.

This would complicate efforts to cope with a range of challenges, from the current economic downturn to longer-term issues like Germany's aging population.

Former German President Roman Herzog told a conference in Berlin last week that the day may be near when the Bundesrat, which requires an absolute majority to pass laws, loses its capacity to act altogether.