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East Germany Legislature
The unicameral People's Chamber is described in the
Constitution as "the supreme organ of state power in the German
Democratic Republic." According to the Constitution, the
"principle of the sovereignty of the people" defines the role and
function of the chamber. Before 1963 the People's Chamber
consisted of 466 members; since then it has consisted of 500
deputies, elected for a 5-year term. Men outnumber women deputies
by more than a factor of two. Although the deputies of the
People's Chamber are nominally responsible to their
constituencies, they are constitutionally directed to "fulfill
their responsible tasks in the interest of and for the benefit of
the entire population."
Article 55 of the Constitution directs the People's Chamber
to elect a "Presidium for the duration of the legislative term."
In 1987 the Presidium consisted of the president of the People's
Chamber, a deputy president, three SED members, two LDPD members,
a representative from each of the other three small parties, and
two representatives from mass organizations. Sindermann was reelected in 1986 to his third five-year term as Presidium
president. The membership of the chamber as a whole consists of
representatives of the five political parties and members of four
mass organizations: the FDGB; the Free German Youth (Freie
Deutsche Jugend--FDJ); the Democratic Women's League of
Germany (Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands--DFD); and
the East German Cultural League (Kulturbund der DDR).
Because National Front policy has dispensed with competitive
elections, a formal agreement assigns a fixed number of the 500
seats in the People's Chamber to each National Front organization
according to a formula that has not varied since 1963.
As the dominant party, the SED is alloted 127 seats, which
constitutes the largest bloc in the People's Chamber. The FDGB
with sixty-eight seats ranks second. Each of the other political
parties is allotted fifty-two seats, the FDJ forty, the DFD
thirty-five, and the East German Cultural League twenty-two.
Since many deputies of the four mass organizations are also party
members, the SED's share of the chamber seats in effect exceeds
50 percent.
Under the Constitution, the People's Chamber is responsible
for determining "the basic principles of government policy and
implementing those policies." It is theoretically empowered to
elect, supervise, and recall all members of the principal
executive organs of the government: the Council of State, Council
of Ministers, chairman of the National Defense Council, attorney
general, and Supreme Court justices. In practice, however, these
positions are filled by party organs outside the chamber's
control. The chamber is also constitutionally empowered to
determine administrative principles, supervise government
activities, and approve or renounce state treaties. In the 1980s,
the chamber generally has met only three or four times a year for
one-day sessions and has rarely cast a vote that is not
unanimous. In earlier years, the chamber met more frequently.
The Presidium of the People's Chamber is primarily a
coordinating agent for chamber business. The fact that the
chairmen of the parties and mass organizations do not occupy
Presidium posts indicates its relatively insignificant function.
The People's Chamber thus has comparatively less stature than the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
The People's Chamber also has standing committees--fifteen as
of the ninth electoral period in 1986--with jurisdictions
corresponding to major areas of public policy, such as national
defense, foreign affairs, industry, labor, social policy, and
culture. Although the size of each committee is not fixed,
chamber deputies generally constitute the majority of each
committee's membership. Additional members, however, may be drawn
from outside the chamber. Each committee meets at least once a
year to receive reports from SED officials, nominally satisfying
the constitutional requirement that the government be accountable
to the people.
In practice, the People's Chamber has been relegated to a
subservient role, and its function in the legislative field has
been largely pro forma, approving measures authorized by the
supreme organs of the SED. The deputies are constitutionally
required to hold regular consultations with their constituents,
providing them with reports on legislative activities; to explain
the policy of the socialist state to the citizens; and to listen
to the latter's criticism and suggestions. Even though such
sessions are rare in practice, the People's Chamber is a vital
government institution because the function of mobilizing public
support for the goals of the party and state is deemed important
by the party.
Despite superficial similarities between the formal
responsibilities of the chamber and those exercised by its
parliamentary counterparts in Western Europe, the People's
Chamber does not function as an independent entity. Unlike the
West German Bundestag, for example, the People's Chamber does not
permit the articulation and legislation of opposing views. The
SED, however, does ensure that the political parties and mass
organizations that play important roles in mobilizing public
opinion are given representation in the chamber. The basic rule
is that opportunities to participate in the Marxist-Leninist
system issue from constitutional guarantees as well as from the
ideology of the party itself, which emphasizes mass participation
in an effort to legitimize its policies. In the People's Chamber,
however, the "right and obligation" to participate is based on
the SED's conception of how much representation each political
party and mass organization deserves. The party specifies what
share of workers, bureaucrats, and members of the intelligentsia
should serve in the People's Chamber as well as the ratio of men
to women. At election time, the National Front presents a voting
list to the electorate that is designed to conform with SED
guidelines.
The responsibilities of the chamber representatives can
conventionally be divided into two distinct, though related,
activities, both of which highlight the mobilization function of
the People's Chamber. First, the deputies are expected to keep
the population informed about major policy initiatives that have
been presented by the SED to the People's Chamber for legislative
action. This process, beginning with the decision of the party to
put forward a legislative initiative and continuing through the
actual publication and explanation of the law to the citizenry,
theoretically requires continuous interaction between the
deputies and the population. It is uncertain whether the flow of
information and discussion is two way, or whether in fact the
People's Chamber is simply required to propagandize on behalf of
party policies with little concern for the various public
interests and demands as specific pieces of legislation are
processed through the various phases of drafting and modification
during the five-year legislative cycle. Second, the chamber's
fifteen standing committees give deputies the chance to inform
themselves about the activities of the various ministries within
the Council of Ministers. In fact, there are limited
opportunities for committee members to specialize in one or more
substantive policy areas. Committees also have the right to
require the presence of ministers as well as heads of other state
organs at their deliberations. Obviously such contacts should
increase the members' knowledge and political insight and enable
them to convey a more realistic image of the legislative world
and the impact of policy to the constituency.
The actual degree of effectiveness of the People's Chamber is
questionable. First, direct control over the operation of the
People's Chamber by the SED is exercised through the network of
overlapping memberships, which align the mass organizations to
the party. For example, in 1985 the share of SED members among
the mass organization deputies was as follows: sixty-one of the
sixty-eight deputies of the FDGB were also members of the SED, as
were thirty-six of the forty FDJ deputies, thirty-one of the
thirty-five DFD deputies, and sixteen of the twenty-two deputies
from the East German Cultural League deputies. Although it was
highly unlikely, deputies holding dual memberships theoretically
could support positions of their organizations opposed to SED
policy. Second, there is little evidence to suggest that genuine
debate on legislation takes place within the chamber, although it
could be assumed that the differing opinions represented in the
legislature would engender occasional conflict between different
legislative groups. The scant evidence to date suggests that the
national legislature affirms but does not debate policy. Third,
the amount of time actually spent in session is not published by
the legislature. Overall, these factors suggest that the People's
Chamber performs largely ceremonial and opinion-mobilizing
functions, which, albeit important, do not make the chamber a key
policymaking institution.
Data as of July 1987
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