Comment by disgruntledphd2
1 day ago
> 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.
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%.
This is a good point that I didn't think about.