The Kaiser's Personal Rule

How accurate is it to say that the period 1890-1914 was the Kaisers Personal Rule?

The German state was forged out of the fires of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 by the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Prussia was by far the largest and most dominant state of the 25 unified in the creation of Germany, with the King of Prussia automatically becoming the Kaiser (Emperor) of the German Reich. In 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II ascended to the throne, obtaining absolute and total control of the country. However, there is still debate as to whether Wilhelm II exercised full control of Germany or if true power lay in the hands of others in the years preceding the First World War.

Some historians, such as John Röhl, have tried to argue that the period

The constitution also allowed for the Kaiser to appoint and dismiss the Chancellor of Germany, a very powerful position in its own right, at will. The Kaiser also possessed the ability to dissolve the German Parliament, the Reichstag, with the approval of the Bundesrat, the German equivalent of the House of Lords, where 58 members represented the 25 federal states of Germany. This meant that if the Kaiser disagreed with the views held in the Reichstag, he could dismiss all members and call for new elections. However, there is no example of Wilhelm II ever exercising this power. The Kaiser was also able to completely ignore the views of the Reichstag if he wished to do so, allowing for him to more or less dictate German politics, as legislation only required the approval of both himself and the Chancellor to become

Caprivi attempted to work more closely with the Reichstag than previous Chancellors, and sought to lift the anti-Socialist laws imposed upon the country by Bismarck in 1878, such as the banning of trade unions, and by 1912, the trade unions would represent over 2 million German workers. Caprivi also attempted to destroy the reliance of German agriculture on import tariffs and boost industrial exports. The elites saw this as an attack against them, as the Junkers were enraged with the reduction of their farmers’ incomes due to cheaper produce becoming available from abroad, and the Industrialists vastly opposed the emergence of socialism and trade unions, which would severely damage their profits. This led to the Junkers and Industrialists putting enormous amounts of pressure upon Wilhelm to remove Caprivi, especially through the use of protests by the Agrarian League. Caprivi was forced to resign in 1894. The power of the elites to control German politics can also be seen in the adoption of both Weltpolitik and Sammlungspolitik. Despite the previous argument that these policies were the ideas of the Kaiser, it can be argued that they were actually implemented by the elites for their own benefits. Firstly, the adoption of Weltpolitik required the building of battleships to bolster the strength of the German navy, and some ships, such as the SMS Schleswig-Holstein, cost