PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The constitution of the Weimar Republic was progressive and promisinng in many respects. However, it established parliamentarism only half way, with a parliamentary right to overtrow government, but with the right to select and appoint the chancellor in the hands of the president, who could also dissolve parliament at wish, and had extensive emergency powers. The demerits of that design, for which Hugo Preuss, the drafter of the Weimar constitution, had relied on a theory of parliamentarism developed by the alsatian jurist Robert Redslob, contributed to the eventual failure of the constitution, whereas the oft-blamed instruments of direct democracy did not. The main reasons why the first Geman democracy failed are fully external to the constitution.