The Fe deral Government : Germany

The Federal Government, the cabinet, consists of the Federal Chancellor, who is chairman of the Cabinet and head of government, and the federal ministers. The Chancellor alone chooses theministers and proposes them to the Federal President for appointment or dismissal. He also determines the number of ministers and their responsibilities. Certain ministries are mentioned in the Basic Law: the Federal Foreign Office as well as the Federal Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Finance and Defence. Institution of the three latter ministries is a constitutional requirement. The Chancellor is in a strong position primarily due to the fact that it is he who lays down the guidelines of government policy. The federal ministers run their departments independently and on their own responsibility but within the framework of these guidelines. In a coalition government, the Chancellor must also take account of agreements reached with the other party in the coalition.

This explains why the German system of government is often referred to as a “Chancellor democracy”. The Chancellor is the only member of the government elected by parliament, and he alone is accountable to it. This accountability may manifest itself in a “constructive vote of no confidence”, which was introduced by the authors of the Basic Law in deliberate contrast to the Weimar constitution. Its purpose is to ensure that opposition groups who are in agreement only in their rejection of the government but not as regards an alternative program are not able to overthrow the government. A Bundestag vote of no con-fidence in the Chancellor must at the same time be a majority vote in favor of a successor. Of the two attempts to bring down a Chancellor with the help of a constructive vote of no confidence, only one has succeeded. That was in October 1982, when a no-confidence motion removed Helmut Schmidt from office and put Helmut Kohl in his place. The Basic Law makes no provision for motions of no confidence in individual federal ministers.