751-Sabar Institute Of Management, Tajpur - Gujarat Technological ...

Voting System
The voter has two votes. The Federal Election System distinguishes between 'First' and 'Second'
vote. However, these terms do neither refer to a hierarchical order (of importance) of the votes,
nor do they refer to a logical (chronological) sequence in a valid election process.
According to public polls, about 70% (2002) to 63% (2005) of the voters mistakenly thought the
first vote to be more important than the second. In some State Election Systems that have two
voting systems which are modeled after the Federal Election setup, the votes are called 'vote for
person' and 'vote for list'. It is important that both votes have distinct functions.
Like all political system the German has its strength & weakness.
The great strength of german political system- a deliberate feature of the post war constitutes- is
the consensual nature of its decision-making process. The Bundesrate serves as a control
mechanism on the Bundestag. Since the executive & legislative functions are closely intertwined
in any parliamentary system, the Bundesrat’s ability to revisit & slow down legislative process
could be seen as making up for that loss of separation. On the other hand, it can be argued that
the system makes decision making paque. Some observers claim that the opposing majorities in
the two chambers lead to an increase in backroom politics where small groups of high level
leaders make all the important decisions & then the Bundestag representatives only have a choice
between agreeing with them or not getting anything done at all Political events in various parts
of the world during the past decade have attracted new attention to the strengths and weaknesses
of federal solutions as a means of resolving political problems.
Conceptual distinctions have been drawn between “federalism” as a normative term, “federal
political systems” as a descriptive term referring to a broad genus of federal arrangements, and
“federation” as a particular species within that genus.
The extensive literature on the design and operation of federal systems is reviewed, with
particular attention to asymmetry among constituent units, degrees of no centralization, financial
relationships, the impact of federative institutions and the courts, and the development of multitiered
federal systems. Federal processes illustrated by patterns of formation and evolution, the
significance of the increasingly global economy, intergovernmental relations, the impact of
cultural, ethnic and national diversities, and the pathology of federal systems are also considered.
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