Abstract

Parliamentarism in the Times of the Corona Pandemic

A Counter-Tale Against the Supposed Decline of Parliaments During the Current Health Crisis

During the Covid-19-pandemic, there were frequent complaints in Germany about a weakening of the Bundestag and the state parliaments. This paper explores, if the constitutional complaint that the federal and state governments bypassed the people's elected representatives in the Covid-19-pandemic is justified. It does so in three steps. First, it seeks to situate the debate about a de-parliamentarization during the health crisis within the overall context of the latent discussion of the weakening of parliaments. In a second step, it outlines the arguments critics have used to accuse the parliament of its weakening in the pandemic. In a third and last step, the paper develops a counter-narrative to this criticism of de-parliamentarization. The paper comes to the conclusion that – even though parliamentarism unmistakably faced unprecedented challenges during the health crisis – the situation of parliaments in Germany was by no means as dramatic as it has often been described. Critics have been all too quick to extrapolate from problems of individual legislative and constitutional issues to problems of the entire parliamentarism of the Federal Republic.