Macht braucht Kontrolle

A gripping report on the unstoppable decline of our party democracy. The political class shapes the rules that are meant to restrain them, often to their own advantage. Parties are usually less concerned with solving problems than with securing their interests in power, positions, and income. The risk of abuse becomes most apparent when parties set their own status. This has consequences at all levels: for the selection of political personnel as well as for the quality of politics. The gap between democracy and reality is widening, and political discontent is spreading.

For over 40 years, the well-known and feared constitutional lawyer Hans Herbert von Arnim has uncovered numerous cases of abuse of power and many unreasonable laws enacted by parties for their own benefit. He has achieved significant success: salary increases had to be revoked, excessive pension regulations were reduced to a reasonable level, multiple payments were restricted, and self-serving actions from the public treasury were curtailed – he overturned the threshold clauses in European elections before the Federal Constitutional Court, and his expert opinions contributed to rulings on salaries and party financing. Thanks to Arnim and a shaken public, attempts at abuse – at the federal level, in the states, and in the EU – met with outraged resistance. However, over the years, the political class has increasingly refined its methods to evade controls and even passed blatantly abusive laws.

Now, Hans Herbert von Arnim traces the causes of this fatal development and shows how it came to be and why the public has grown weary of effectively countering this highly effective appropriation of power by the parties. He points out the wounds, reveals what is lacking – and how necessary control can be achieved.