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private. The number of plenary sessions is relatively small by comparison to other parliaments.
There is an awareness in Germany that this penchant for privacy creates an obstacle to the development of an informed public opinion. Yet there is an actively interested public, its political interest catalyzed by the mass media, and it increasingly intrudes on the privacy of parliamentary decision making. New parties and a new generation of political leaders seek to appeal to this public. As a result there has been a gradual expansion of opportunities for public sessions. This expansion, moreover, was accelerated by the entry into Parliament of the Greens, who prompted a sharp increase in parliamentary questions, short debates on current issues, roll call votes, public committee hearings and open investigating committees. The general trend can be measured: twenty years ago public sessions constituted one-fifteenth of the sessions of Parliament; ten years ago they constituted one-eighth; today they constitute one-fifth. This is still a relatively private Parliament but it is changing. Thus although the roots of the Bundestag lie in German history and German culture, its vitality arises in part from its adaptability to the same conditions that affect parliaments in other countries.
The increasing visibility of the Bundestag has been accompanied steadily throughout its history by a growing public regard for the individual member. Lagging behind public respect for the Member of the Bundestag as an individual is public understanding of the work of the members collectively and the public's ability to distinguish between the accomplishments of the Bundestag and the accomplishments of the executive branch. This is the result of a serious dilemma. The growing complexity of political issues has produced a growing reliance within Parliament on specialization among committees and on a specialized staff. The development of parliamentary staffing has gone ten times farther in the Congress of the United States than it has in Germany, but outside the United States and Canada the Bundestag has developed the largest parliamentary staff and one of the most specialized committee systems in the world. Even so neither staff nor committee system may be adequate to their task of coping with the increasingly technical questions that are posed in domestic and foreign policy. A still further division of labor within Parliament and further development of parliamentary staffs may well be a necessary counterpart to a much more rapid proliferation of specialists in the executive agencies and the interest groups. Were the Bundestag not to emulate that development, it would be increasingly incapable of making judgments independent of the ministries and the private interests.