MPs, Factions and the Government: Levels of Legislative Activity in the German Imperial Reichstag

With industrialization in full swing by the late 19th century, Wilhelmine Germany witnessed unprecedented levels of both demand and supply of regulatory and redistributive legislation. Consequently, legislative activity in the German Reichstag grew both in terms of sheer number and complexity. But what did this mean for the interrelationship of individual MPs, parliamentary leaders and the government, i.e. who initiated legislation and why? Did something like a parliamentary majority pitted against some opposition emerge? Did parliamentary factions rather than individual MPs initiate legislative proposals? To what extent did MPs coordinate their actions across factions? Did activity in terms of proposing legislation converge around “specialists” within factions or around faction leaders? In the present paper, we, for the first time, address these questions on the basis of a series of novel datasets. Using data on all Reichstag roll call votes during the period 1890-1918 we investigate the degree to which legislative coalitions did exist and look at their temporal and policy-specific stability. We then provide comprehensive evidence on legislative activity on part of the government and on part of Reichstag members, using complete data on procedural means (motions, amendments, addresses, etc.) employed during this period, covering some 11.000 Reichstag documents. We specifically investigate the degree to which parliamentarians managed to coordinate on common proposals beyond their own faction and vis-á-vis the government. The paper primarily aims at introducing and analyzing data that is, from our point of view, crucial for understanding the foundations of contemporary parliamentary democracy but that has never been subject to comprehensive study before.