The following excerpt is from an alternate history novel. Can you critique the system of government described in the excerpt? What are the benefits? What problems might arise from this system? What could be improved? On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being an authoritarian dictatorship and 10 being a direct democracy, how democratic is this system? It should be noted the current year is 1896. In this timeline, Prince Fredrick is exiled to the American colonies after pissing off his father. Through a serious of events, he becomes King of Britain and forms a personal union between the mainland and British North America.

"The country’s official name is: GERMAN FEDERAL EMPIRE (DEUTSCHES BUNDESREICH), short form GERMANY (DEUTSCHLAND)
The people are known as: GERMANS. Very occasionally ‘BUNDESGERMANS’ to distinguish from German-speakers outside the Bundesreich.
Capital city: Dresden (1.1 million)
Largest city: Hamburg (1.2 million)
Flag: A white cross with green in the top left and bottom right cantons, and blue in the top right and bottom left cantons.
Population: 48 million.
Land area: ca. 584,500 sq. km.
Economic ranking: Currently ranked 6th, having risen sharply into the top five around the midpoint of the nineteenth century as it industrialised but has since been overtaken by those countries with greater natural resources from colonial programmes.
Form of government: Federal limited constitutional monarchy. The monarch’s de facto power depends less on what the constitution says and more on how successful their policy interventions have been perceived. With what is widely regarded as the failure of the Kulturkrieg, the current Bundeskaiser has been forced onto the back foot by the Bundestag. The situation is further complicated by the federal nature of the German state and the fact that it is composed of five lower-level monarchies, High Saxony (more properly translated into English as Upper Saxony, but the misnomer has stuck), Low Saxony, Billungia, Swabia and Bohemia. These kingdoms themselves have varying balances of power between king and Diet, ranging from the near-absolute monarchy of Billungia through High Saxony, Bohemia and Swabia to the fiercely parliamentarian crowned republic of Low Saxony. The King of High Saxony is the eldest son of the Bundeskaiser and therefore also the crown prince of Germany as a whole, whereas the other monarchies have their own royal lines, not all of whom are branches of the House of Wettin.
Foreign relations: Despite French paranoia of the hostility of a united Germany, following the Unification War and the defeat of the Isolationsgebiet, in the absence of any common foe to unite against, divisions emerged—between monarch, Bundestag and people, between central government and federal kingdoms, between classes and their political parties, between religious and linguistic groups—which have hampered attempts to create a coherent German foreign policy. More recently (from the 1880s onwards), as limited consensus has been reached on many of these questions, Germany has forged an alliance with Danubia (helped by a royal marriage) based largely on mutual defence and military cooperation—which has also extended to Danubia’s existing ally Poland. However, German attempts to pressure Bavaria into the so-called Pressburg Pact have failed, in part due to reluctance on the part of both Danubia and Germany to fully remove their mutual tariff barriers.
Military: The German military is considered to have some of the best equipment (and the industrial base to supply itself) in Europe. Training is more variable and influenced by the highly federal nature of the state, with High Saxon troops generally considered to be the best regulars but elite groups are often recruited from the fringes, in particular the mountaineering Alpentruppe from Swabia.
Current head of state: Bundeskaiser Johann Georg (since 1872) (House of Wettin) (usually given in the original German form by convention)
Current head of government: Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor) Alois Dörflinger (Populist Alliance) (since 1890)"