Constructive Vote of No Confidence

Explanation

The constructive vote of no confidence was designed to prevent the governmental instability of the Weimar Republic, where coalitions collapsed repeatedly without agreed successors. Under this mechanism — used in Germany, Spain, and Hungary — a parliament cannot remove a government unless it simultaneously elects a new prime minister by majority vote. This means an opposition must agree on a replacement before it can oust the incumbent, making it much harder to topple governments. Germany has used it successfully twice: Helmut Schmidt was replaced by Helmut Kohl in 1982, and the mechanism served as a model for Spanish constitutional design. It is widely regarded as one of the most successful innovations in constitutional engineering of the 20th century.