THE LECTORAL SYSTEM OF GERMANY - Essay Example

The parliament is usually given fourteen days to elect its chancellor officially after the final election results. Normally, elections happen after every four years and the same process begins all over again. There are no by-elections in Germany - if members of the Bundestag die or resign in office, those next on the list of the party in the appropriate State/Land automatically succeed them (Welle, 2009, para13). 30 Like all countries in Western Europe that have adopted the proportional system, Germany has more than twenty percent female parliamentarians, which clearly indicates a strong correlation between the type of electoral system and the level of female representation.

As expounded earlier on, Germany uses a mixed or double electoral system with both a proportional representation system and single member constituencies and each of them selects half of the Bundestag members. However, the election of the majority of German female politicians is through the proportional representation list. Unlike in other countries such as the United Kingdom where voters and local parties object to having imposition of all-women shortlists on them, the list system in Germany has enabled parties to increase the proportion of female members of parliament in the Bundestag quickly.

  38 The system of proportional representation also includes a quota that requires from each province, a minimum of two female delegates. This means that the parliament body will be at least twenty-five percent women. In full representation, there is an increase in the access of greater number of candidates. Sun argues that holding all other factors constant, under proportional representation system, the likelihood of electing women is almost twice as compared to majoritarian systems. Furthermore, under full representation system, measures such as quotas for minimum number of candidates aimed at increasing the representation of women are much easier to implement since the