The Economist explains

Why Germany’s parliament has more members than ever before

Electoral reform and the entry of new parties combine to bulk up the Bundestag

By L.R.S. | BERLIN

TODAY, October 24th, the newly elected members of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, will take their seats in the plenary chamber for the first time after a federal election last month. Over the past few days, builders have been busy adding seats to accommodate them: with 709 members, 78 more than during the previous session, the parliament is now larger than at any time since the federal republic was founded in 1949. Why is the Bundestag expanding?

Slight fluctuations in the number of MPs are nothing new. In theory, Germany’s parliament has 598 seats: 299 MPs are elected directly; the other half enter via their party’s list. German voters cast two votes: one for a candidate in their constituency (where the first-past-the-post system applies) and one for a party list. The total number of seats a party occupies is calculated based on its share of the list vote. If a party is entitled to 20 seats but wins only 15 constituencies, the remaining five seats will be filled from its list, with no effect on the total number of seats in the chamber. But if a party wins more constituencies than it is entitled to based on its list vote share, these seats are not taken away. They are added to the plenary chamber, raising the number of MPs. Though the number of these so-called “overhang seats” has historically been low, they were found to be unconstitutional because they allow a party to occupy more seats than its vote share suggests it should, to the detriment of other parties.

Electoral reform in 2013 sought to remedy this. Since that year’s election, other parties have been awarded compensatory seats to eliminate the unfair advantage gained by winners of overhang seats. In the last parliament, this produced only 33 extra seats. This year the number of extra seats shot up to 111, for two reasons. First, many voters remained loyal to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in their constituencies, but used their second vote for other parties on the list. As a result the CDU/CSU ended up with 43 more MPs than the number of seats allotted by vote share. Secondly, the re-entry to parliament of the Free Democrats and the first-time entry of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) meant that two more parties had to be compensated, adding further seats.

By some estimates, the new Bundestag could cost German taxpayers around €200m ($235m) more than the previous one over the next four years, reviving calls for a new round of electoral reform to cap the number of seats. More immediately, it is causing tensions as the new MPs and their staff squeeze into their offices. One member of the AfD complained that being forced to share offices with the FDP until new ones are ready early next year amounted to “bullying” of his party. Expect more squabbles over space until a new government is formed later in the year—at which point the bulky new Bundestag can get down to work.

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