[EM] The electoral system of the Weimar Republic

[David Catchpole]

To my knowledge, it was MMP as it is now... but don't quote me! I'll
follow this up after I've searched the web. One book you may or may not
get your hands on is one from just before Hitler became Chancellor, called
"Proportional Representation"- it's a seminal work on the subject of PR
and was commissioned by the US Proportional Representation Society

I do know that Hitler's rise is often blamed on PR. That's not very
accurate. At most times, the Nazis where over-represented because of the
geographical distribution of their vote, which is the fault of FPP and
single-member seats rather than PR. Also, all the other Right-wing parties
of the time were particularly feral (including those that led to the
modern Christian Democratic parties) and an "unholy alliance" of sorts was
formed to punish the Left, which span out of control as the Nazis got more
and more concessions from the other parties using the threat of violence.

Under MMP, a certain number of the seats in a house are selected by
single- or small-number-member seats. There is then an "At Large" process,
where another lot of members are elected at large to make up (or
approximate in some way) the proportions of the at-large vote that each
party got.

On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, mordles wrote:

> Was it some form of proportional representation, first past the post?
> Were the constituencies single member or multiple member?
> 
> There is a massive amount of literature about this turbulent period,
> but my search for definitive answers has been fruitless.
> 
> jdm
> 
>