Gorkem Ercan

Institutional Design of Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany Gorkem Ercan

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - Germany, printed single-sided, grade: -, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH (FY), course: German Politics and Culture, language: English, abstract: In 1949, the Basic Law was written in Germany in order to keep certain aspects according to certain rules. This literature review examines certain historical events and defines which instruments exist in the Basic Law to prevent those historical events from happening again. Furthermore, it includes constitutional norms, which then are applied to Lijphart's (1999) question of whether the Consensus Model of Democracy or the Westminster Model of Democracy is better. The paper then discusses pros and cons of the mentioned models that are mentioned and concludes with a decision towards one of the two.