Weimar Republic sans proportional representation

MrHola

Banned
Let's just say that Hugo Preuss has a change of heart when writing the Weimar Constitution. Instead of full PR, he introduces a threshold of, say, 5%. If a party gains less than 5%, that party would be excluded from the Reichstag, but not so in a Länder's Landtag. This precaution would probably exclude the Nazis from 1924-1930 (if they manage to get in in 1930 at all). So they can't use parliament as a platform.

Any consequences for the Republic?
 
Proportional representation merely gave effect to the real problem: that Weimar parties represented constituencies, without representing the whole nation. A strictly sectional party system, especially once spread amongst so many groups, would always lead to disaster.

If anything, first-past-the-post would lead to disaster earlier; a party elected solely upon the votes of a particular segment of the community would govern without a national mandate. But even if not, the divides in Weimar society would still have produced sectional parties, they would have gained representation through geographic constituencies anyway, and the whole bloody mess would still have happened.
 
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