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Originally Posted by Mr Quatro
Finally a picture from Germany by Sky that we can understand ... Seems a little confusing to me that 16 states can not agree with the central government.  |
Germany is a state of federal republican structure like the US. After all it were the allies dictating the style of the new German constitutional order, last but not least to prevent a strong central government ever taking over the whole nation once again. The authority of federal states and their political leaders more or less compare to what you see in the US. The nchamber system is sloghtly different, maybe the German federal states are seated even stronger against the central government than their American counterparts. Severla things that the fedceral minister of health wanted to do during the early stage of the pandemic, was just blocked down and "killed" by the states. Merkel as well is not above the minisiter presidents. As a matter of fact she got dismantled of her appealing authority in this pandemic some weeks ago, and de facto has no say anymore. Before, the state'S agreement with the chancellor's office was just voluntary, not mandatory.
German federalism is totally different to for example France with its not federalist, but extremely centralist organisation. Thats probabvly also the reason why the French so often can outmanouver the Germans although the Germans are financially and economically significantly stronger. This relative weakness of Germany was wanted by design. For example the French did not agree to reunificaiton as long as the Germans did not accept the premature and early implementation of the Euro and the giving-up of the D-Mark: same logic at work.