A.  Introduction: The Political and Historical Background of the Decision

Thanks to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s decision to ask the German Bundestag (Federal Parliament) for a vote of confidence on 1 July 2005, and following on the Federal President’s dissolution of the Parliament on 21 July 2005 in response thereto, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court) was pressed into service to finally decide whether federal elections should go forward nearly a year ahead of schedule.  With the Court’s affirmative decision of 25 August 2005, Germany now finds itself in a turbulent national election campaign.

As intended, the Chancellor lost the vote of confidence in the Parliament, although he still had the backing of an overwhelming majority of his fellow Social Democrats and their coalition partner, the Green Party. In fact, most deputies cast their votes against their conscience in order to enable German President Horst Köhler to dissolve the Bundestag.  Schröder thereby used the Vertrauensfrage provided for by Art. 68 of the Grundgesetz (GG – Basic Law or Constitution). The reason for this action (of possible political suicide) was a string of election losses for Schröder’s party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the bigger partner in the governing center-left coalition. Schröder’s announcement came within hours of the historic defeat of his party in the May state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state. Not only had the Government’s approval ratings steadily eroded to around 35%, but the Chancellor’s parliamentary supporters had increasingly begun to voice their disapproval of the economic reform program “Agenda 2010,” which has come to be seen as the cornerstone of Schröder’s second term and the root cause of his Government’s declining popularity.

The Vertrauensfrage is a legal institution that can be properly understood only against the background of modern German history. The Parliamentary Council, which drafted the Basic Law after World War II, intended to prevent a “Weimaresque” situation as regards the dissolution of Parliament. During the years...