ABSTRACT
A proportional system like the one adopted for the Federal Republic of Germany, is normally more likely to produce a multi-party system, making the formation of coalition governments involving two or more parties and consensus more probable. Between 1961 and 1983 the West German electoral system continued to be successful in providing the stability in electoral politics which the new republic had so desperately sought after the chaotic and negative experiences of Weimar and National Socialism. The functions of the Free Democrats Party in the party system of the Federal Republic of Germany- above all in West Germany, but also in the period 1990-98, after German Unity-disappeared when the Schroder/Fischer red-green federal governments of 1998 and 2002 took over. The type of parties which emerge and prosper in a national polity, and also the nature of that polity itself can, and will, have an effect on the electoral system.
