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German Parliamentarism in 1848: Roll-Call Voting in the Frankfurt Assembly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Donald J. Mattheisen
Donald J. Mattheisen*
Affiliation:
University of Lowell
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Extract

The reputation of the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 has undergone a partial revision in the last few years. Its members used to be considered political novices from whom one could learn little about how to run a parliament (Huber, 1960: 613 is typical). Ziebura (1963) was perhaps the first to challenge this view. He showed that the Frankfurt Assembly was, in fact, run in a very professional way: It created sophisticated and disciplined political parties, and these parties actually exerted effective control over parliamentary business. They even joined together to form a coalition that gave reliable political support to a German provisional government. Kramer (1968), Boldt (1971), Botzenhart (1977), and Langewiesche (1978) have subsequently documented the skillful organization of these parties and their attempts to control members, to create extraparliamentary connections, and to maintain both a formal government coalition and an organized opposition. Kramer (1968: 175-178) has shown that they were particularly successful in applying party discipline to voting behavior: The results of voting could often be foretold simply from a knowledge of how the parties stood on the question at issue.

Type
Research Note
Information
Social Science History , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , Fall 1981 , pp. 469 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1981 

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