Vote of confidence procedure and<i>Gesetzgebungsnotstand</i>: Two toothless tigers of governmental agenda control

Abstract

This article discusses two crucial devices for governmental control of the parliamentary agenda in Germany from the point of view of comparative politics. The vote of confidence procedure makes a contested policy an up-or-down proposal by linking it to the continuity of government, whereas the Gesetzgebungsnotstand gives government a last-offer privilege on a bill. The peculiarities of constitutional norms and political practice of the German procedures are singled out vis-à-vis the expectations assumed by internationally applicable standard rational choice models. It turns out the empirical German-style rules of the devices do not meet requirements being considered important for models to work. In contrast to most other parliamentary democracies, the German design makes the two instruments useful only under very special conditions, which explains why the Gesetzgebungsnotstand has never been used so far and the vote of confidence to control the agenda only on one occasion.