Resumen de The Weimar Republic: a failure of representative institutions?

Edgar Feuchtwanger

• The Weimar Republic is usually regarded as a theoretically near‐perfect, but practically deeply flawed representative system. Particular features of it, among them the electoral system, producing a large number of splinter parties, and the strong presidency, with emergency powers opening an easy route to authoritarianism, are held to have contributed to the failure of the first German democracy. This article argues that these alleged shortcomings did not or need not have had the damaging consequences attributed to them. It claims that the political system established by the Weimar Constitution was a finely calibrated, if complex system that could have been adequate to the needs of a modern pluralist society, especially if the powerful Länder governments, such as that of Prussia, are also taken into account. It was therefore the deliberate refusal of significant social groups to accept pluralist democracy rather than flaws in the representative system that led to ultimate failure.