[logifail]

> their democracy appears to be very high functioning, which demonstrates this form of democracy can work well

This probably depends on your definition of "working well".

In March 2025, after the last Federal elections were held in Germany (February 2025), but before the new parliament was constituted (within 30 days of the results?), the new governing coalition engineered a constitutional amendment which required a supermajority which they would not have in the new parliament, so instead they held the vote in the old parliament.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/world/europe/germany-debt...

This was perfectly legal, although if you explain it to an outsider it might seem like an abuse of process.

[throwaway2037]

I added that last line as a honeypot, as part of my ongoing project on HN. No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all." I think we need an equivalent of Brandolini's law for counterpoint of negativity in all HN discussions. It is as though people think they are disproving a maths proof by counterpoint. That's not the way the Real World of Human Society works. Weirdly, I see the same pattern on Wiki pages about living people. There is always a section of a bunch of random one-off events trying to discredit the person.

To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.

[logifail]

> I added that last line as a honeypot

Ouch.

> No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all."

Isn't this what's called "balanced reporting"? Life is shades of grey.

Aside: not that long ago, half of Western Europe used to look up to Germany as it was the home of "Made in Germany" and the place where the trains ran on time ... <chuckle> ... VW emissions and Deutsche Bahn, how times change.

> I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy.

I suspect we may need to hear your definition of "a highly functioning democracy" to assess that claim.

If - hypothetically - your political worst enemies were to pull the same stunt immediately after losing an election, binding the winners of said election, would you be as supportive?

[disgruntledphd2]

> To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.

I agree with the repealing of the debt brake (it was a dumb idea that lead to badness, exported right across the EU), but there's no question that how it happened was pretty un-democratic. Like, procedurally it's fine but it was essentially making a big change in a lame-duck session of Parliament.

None of this disputes the notion that Germany is a high functioning democracy, but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy. The sad part is, they will be entirely correct in this particular case.

[throwaway2037]

Another idea for the debt brake: What if they set strict limits, like a max of 3% for 7 years, or 5% for 5 years. Literally, you have a "bank of GDP percent points". You can gain them by running a surplus and spend them by running a deficit. Start the initial bank balance at 25%.

    > but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy.

This is a good point that I didn't think about.