Conscience or Strategy: Voting in the Bundestag and the Weimar Republic

Article 3 of the Weimar constitution defined the colors of the national flag. This was one of the most contested issues in the Weimar Republic. In this paper we analyze the precise voting process leading to that decision. We combine two methods of analysis: First, we recall in some detail the historical and political context. Second, we use recent advances in social choice/mechanism design under incomplete information that allow us to precisely analyze the employed voting procedure and, together with the historical record, to explain and interpret the observed outcome.

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