“…even if it does pass, that would only force the incoming Berlin city-state government to debate the proposal.”<p>Putting aside my views on the proposal itself, I think I can state with near 100% certainty that the city state government is not going to respect the will of the people in this instance.<p>The reason referendum results are always way more left wing than the policies of the city government is that while you can’t bribe the whole populace, you can certainly bribe any representative government.
Does Germany have a Supreme Court or maybe a Constitutional Court? It feels to me you need a strong independent judicial branch to act as a check against the tyranny of the majority. You know there was that episode a while ago when a majority of the German electorate was quite happy to expropriate a certain minority, how did that work out?