Weimarer Republik with a weak President?

What if the Weimarer Republik had a figure head and not a president with extensive powers? Would this make the state more stable or less stable than OTL?
 
I doubt it. The crisis of the 1929 would still be there, there would be a weak party system with no party strong enough to get a majority, the inherent instability of the coalitionm, and, therefore, no government to get its laws passed in the Reichstag.

Having what "an emergency" properly defined in the bloody Article 48 would have been quite sensible.
 
Not really. Because the problems of the Weimar Republic come far less from a poor system of government and far more down to a lack of effective social consensus about whether the republic should exist. Of the major parties, only the SPD was particularly devoted to the idea of the Weimar Republic.

If a more stable Weimar Republic is to be built either the SPD needs have a crushing control of the early republican government in order to build something effective. Or a totally different republic needs to be built. Either a socialist republic that could be run by both the SPD and the KPD in tandem, creating a social majority through that alignment of forces. Or a right wing coalition needs to do the same thing in the mold of the French 3rd Republic and its party of Order.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Some people seem to forget that France had even more governments between 1919 and 1932 than Germany and continued to rapidly switch prime ministers until the third republic failed due to the German agression, not due to any internal problems.

I am far from convinced that the Weimar Republic was a failed state.
 
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