The Bundestag in the Pandemic Year 2020/21 – Continuity and Challenges in the Covid-19 Crisis

ABSTRACT

The Bundestag is a key institution in the parliamentary democracy of Germany. Assessing its role in the Covid-19 crisis considers how it adapted to secure parliamentary continuity. Comparing the activities during the pandemic to the year before shows institutional stability and high continuity of legislation and oversight activities but severe challenges to parliamentary communication. To properly understand the role of the Bundestag in the Covid-19 crisis, this analysis draws upon both quantitative and qualitative data and considers formal and informal paths of parliamentary influence. It reveals that a more nuanced assessment of the Bundestag’s role in policy-making throughout the Covid-19 pandemic is in order, and that claims of Parliament having subordinated itself to the Executive appear overly alarmist and unsubstantiated by the available evidence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I thank the editors and guest editors of this journal and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions. Editing support by Dylan Johnson is gratefully acknowledged.

2 For a more detailed analysis of the early phase of Corona (wave 1) drawing on the sources reported here as well as proceedings of parliamentary committees see Siefken and Hünermund 2021.

3 All interview statements, unless otherwise referenced, are from the research project WK-C19 (Siefken 2021), translations to English by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Sven T. Siefken

Sven T. Siefken is a political scientist at the Institute for Parliamentary Research, Berlin, and the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and visiting professor at Colorado College. He is vice chair of the IPSA Research Committee of Legislative Specialists. His current research focuses on parliaments in the pandemic and the future of representative democracy. Recent publications have dealt with parliamentary committees in policy making, with parliamentary control and with representation in France and Germany.