German Parliament Now in Cicero
Today we are happy to announce that the two chambers of the German National Parliament–the Bundesrat (upper) and the Bundestag (lower)–are now available in Cicero. Over the past several weeks, our data team has been hard at work adding this new country to our database on our quest to become the global resource for elected official information and geographic data on elections and democracy. We added this data because there is growing interest in advocacy efforts in democracies across Europe, including Germany. Adding Germany to Cicero now brings our country total to TEN (along with the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, England, Scotland, and Wales).
This expansion represents 315 new districts and 805 new officials in the database. As we do with all other additions to Cicero, we are committed to keeping this data up to date following elections and throughout the year as officials change anything from their role to their social media accounts. You can access the new German Parliament data via the API, District Match, and our custom data licenses.
What’s so special about the German Parliament?
The German Parliament uses (and in fact originated) the mixed-member proportional representation electoral system. In this system, voters get two votes: one for their constituency and one for a political party; seats are first filled with constituency candidates, and then by party candidates based on a percentage. For example, the Bundestag is required by law to have a minimum of 598 members, with 299 members being directly elected to constituencies and the rest being chosen from party lists at both the state and federal levels. This type of electoral system is not very common, especially in North America. Needless to say, there were some nuances to these chambers that we don’t come across often.
At a whopping 736 members, the current 20th Bundestag is the largest Bundestag in history and the largest chamber in Cicero by 86 officials (honorable mention to the UK Parliament, coming in 2nd with 650 members). The Bundesrat is also unique in that it is technically not an upper house of Parliament (think the U.S. and Canadian Senates), but rather a separate, continuous constitutional body in which member state governments are represented at the federal level. This means that, unlike upper houses in many other democratic national legislatures, the Bundesrat has executive power in addition to its legislative power.
In addition to being a fascinating look into the evolution of federalism in democratic governments, the German Parliament is made up of some, dare we say, faszinierend people, including:
- Awet Tesfaiesus, an Eritrean-born lawyer and the first Black woman in the German Parliament.
- Dr. (Zanda) Martens, a union secretary who represents Düsseldorf I and probably wears some seriously high-quality shoes.
- Emilia Fester, a 23-year-old Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Green Party) representative, the youngest of 47 Bundestag members under the age of 30.
Are you planning to access this new data? Is there another country you want to see in Cicero’s data? Drop us a line and let us know!
Special thanks to Keri Klinges and TJ Hare for their contributions to this blog!
