Protected against the Cabinet, against insurrections, and against individuals who have designs on their independence, the deputies of the Reichstag can and must organize themselves in such a way as to assure for their labours maximum efficiency. It is imperative that the majority shall be able to impose its will without thereby sacrificing the rights of the minority. To this effect Article 26 provides, “The National Assembly chooses its President, Vice-President, and its Secretaries. It regulates its own procedure.”
The National Assembly adopted the procedure of the old Reichstag and the new Reichstag seems to have continued it also.
Meanwhile a change of considerable importance has been adopted by the National Assembly. Theretofore the members of the Reichstag were divided by lot into bureaus, and these elected the committees. There are no longer any bureaus; and the essential machinery on which the functioning of the Assembly depends is the group or fraction, each of which consists of all the members of the Reichstag belonging to the same party.
According to the procedure of the Reichstag, no party can constitute such a fraction if it does not have at least fifteen members. To-day it is these groups that nominate the various committees of the Assembly on the basis of proportional representation.[36] The group plays a rôle in Germany much more important than, for example, in France, because of the strict party discipline that prevails in these groups. For every new question brought before the Reichstag each group assembles its members, who discuss among themselves the attitude to take and the way in which the group as a whole is to vote. When the question is most important there are held _interfractional meetings_. At these meetings are called together either all the members of certain groups, or only trusted men or the chiefs of these groups. Sometimes two or more related groups deliberate in common; sometimes they are the groups of the majority parties. Thus, either in single groups or in common the various political factions decide in advance their line of actions; and when the matter comes up for deliberation in the Assembly, everything is already decided. The public meetings of the Assembly are only a kind of show, in the course of which a speaker for each party generally mounts the tribune to acquaint public opinion with the motives that have determined his group in taking such and such a stand. A certain amount of dramatic interest is thereby lost, but perhaps the element of surprise is replaced by more thoroughly considered and riper decision.