How does Germany fill its house of representatives?
A team project for MA279, Fall 2013
Team Members: Mary-Kate Litchfield, Katie Marsh, Chang Liu, Xingtong Lu, Ruoyu Wang
Outline:
- Number of Representatives
- Number of divisions within the country
- How many representatives each deserves
- Determine which rounding method is used to fill the house
Number of Representatives (Chang Liu)
The number of representatives of German is actually not a constant over time. And since west and east German has been separated during the cold war, the number of representative changes drastically during 1990-1994. To make it clear we use the table below to show the number of representatives over time.
Seat distribution in the German Bundestag (at the beginning of each session)
Bundestag Session Seats CDU/CSU SPD FDP Alliance '90 The Greens1 The Left2 German Party Others Sonstige
1st Bundestag 1949–1953 402 139 131 52 – – 17 633
2nd Bundestag 1953–1957 487 243 151 48 – – 15 304
3rd Bundestag 1957–1961 497 270 169 41 – – 17 –
4th Bundestag 1961–1965 499 242 190 67 – – – –
5th Bundestag 1965–1969 496 245 202 49 – – – –
6th Bundestag 1969–1972 496 242 224 30 – – – –
7th Bundestag 1972–1976 496 225 230 41 – – – –
8th Bundestag 1976–1980 496 243 214 39 – – – –
9th Bundestag 1980–1983 497 226 218 53 – – – –
10th Bundestag 1983–1987 498 244 193 34 27 – – –
11th Bundestag 1987–1990 497 223 186 46 42 – – –
12th Bundestag 1990–1994 662 319 239 79 8 17 – –
13th Bundestag 1994–1998 672 294 252 47 49 30 – –
14th Bundestag 1998–2002 669 245 298 43 47 36 – –
15th Bundestag 2002–2005 603 248 251 47 55 2 – –
16th Bundestag 2005–2009 614 226 222 61 51 54 – –
17th Bundestag 2009–2013 622 239 146 93 68 76 – –
18th Bundestag 2013– 630 311 192 – 63 64 – –
Please note: (1)
CDU: Christian Democratic Union
CSU: Christian Social Union of Bavaria
SDP: Social Democratic Party
FDP: Free Democratic Party
(2)The Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria usually are counted as one part since they don't compete with each other and hold the seats in parliament together.
From the table above, we can conclude that the number of representatives changes very little except 11th to 12th bundestag since the end of cold war. And though there are many parties take part in, the dominant parties are always the CDU/CSU and FDP, which just looks like Democrats and Republicans in United States of American.
