This post is an analysis of the most likely outcomes of the upcoming German Bundestag-elections. Originally written for an international public, we decided to post it on JPoX as well, mainly as a reflection of the current political party-system and to assure our readers, that whatever the actual outcome of the elections, no big change is going to happen in actual German politics. We think that this circumstance highlights the need to think further among democratic lines and see how political systems can be improved, so that election results again play a functional in the political process.
For further information about the challenges to political parties and their leaders, we would like to recommend our video interview with Dr. John Hulsman ; for more information about propaganda within the political process (and how it helps shape the outcome of elections), we recommend the interview with Albrecht Müller .
Elections in Germany
As the 2009 elections in Germany are drawing to a close, and the established five parties continue to change and adopt their statements about probable coalitions on a daily basis, many people, especially from abroad, are wondering what could be the outcome of all of this in the weeks and months after the 27th of September – what kind of political changes will occur, in which directions Germany will go, and so on. From a German perspective, the answer is surprisingly simple: regardless of who will be voted into power the weekend after next, nothing much will change.
The reason for this is straightforward: it is because of the options for political cooperation currently feasible in the eyes of the German parties. And it is because of personal animosities nurtured within the political personnel currently active at the helm of the parties.
The German political landscape
In the German political system, there are at the time being at least five parties that you can be sure will be represented in the next German Bundestag: the Christian Democrats‘ Union (CDU), the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, the Free Democrats (FDP), and the Left Party. CDU and FDP are considered centre-right; SPD, Greens and Left Party are different shades of left. Realistically, at least one of the two bigger parties, CDU and/or SPD, has to be included in the future government in order to form a majority in parliament. Let’s have a closer look at the options available for forming Germany’s next government.
The Christian Democrats’ options: aiming for the driver’s seat
The Christian Democrats, currently the party with the best polls in the elections, would like it best to work with the Free Democrats: they share quite a lot of common ideological and political ground to stand on, as well as a long history of coalitions in the past. Both parties together form the so-called “civic camp”, the bürgerliches Lager, an expression that exists only in Germany, implying that only these two parties’ voters are indeed citizens. Anyway, they are natural allies, so if they would be able to form a (comfortable) majority, they will certainly do so.
Should this not be possible, most likely because of a lower-than-expected performance of the CDU, the CDU would also be willing to form another so-called grand coalition with the SPD, just like they did during the running election period now coming to a close. That would work as well, as it has in the last four years, and it would work well for the CDU. The SPD would probably lose even more acceptance with its voters than it already has, but that of course would not be the CDU’s problem.
Furthermore, according to CDU leadership, they could also imagine to enter a coalition with both the FDP and the Greens, if nothing else was feasible – a so-called Jamaica-coalition, named after the Jamaican flag for no other reason than its colours being black, yellow and green, which happen to be the colours of the three parties as well. All in all, the CDU has a variety of options at hand and is pretty likely to find itself in the driver’s seat again. Prospective change in overall driving style, whatever the coalition: none whatsoever. The CDU has already been able to follow its party line pretty straight in the last election period, and that despite its partner being the SPD. The Liberals in overall are even more in line with CDU politics, and the Greens in any likeliness would not be able to exert too big an influence – a look to the German city-state of Hamburg provides a hint, as a CDU-Greens-coalition is currently in power there.
The Social Democrats’ options: musical chairs
The SPD is tracing the CDU with quite some lag. Still the second largest of Germany’s parties, it has lost numerous of its voters to all other parties or the non-voters during the last four years, mainly due to the politics approved and implemented by SPD members of the cabinet. However, in theory a number of options are available to the SPD as well.
At least in its election statements, the SPD leadership prefers a coalition with the Greens to all other options. Yet, that coalition is not very likely. It would necessitate that the SPD recovered from its 20%+x approval ratings within one week, and the Greens to make a really strong stand in the polling booths. That will most likely not happen.
So, the next best option is to form the so-called traffic light-coalition with the Greens and the FDP (aptly named due to the three party-colours red, yellow, and green). The SPD would go with it, the Greens might play hard to get but eventually give in, but the FDP has clearly stated that they are only willing to govern in a CDU-FDP-coalition and under no other circumstances. Besides that, forming a coaltiton with the FDP would claim the very rest of the SPD’s credibility with its traditional voter base, due to the nominally very different alignments of the two parties’ programmes. So, the traffic light is rather unlikely as well.
Thus, the SPD will have no other option to govern than to enter another grand coalition after the elections – provided the CDU’s and FDP’s results are too low to form a majority, and the SPD still jumps the 20%. They should be able to do so, and in fact despite any current rhetoric entering another coalition with the CDU is the Social Democrats’ only hope for power in the next election period.
The options of the opposition: Babylon revisited
At least one of the opposition parties will be in the next government if a grand coalition won’t be formed again. The FDP is the only party with a realistic prospect for a two-party coalition, in collaboration with the CDU. As the Left Party will most likely stay in opposition (or have to), all other options for the Greens and the FDP will be three-party coalitions. The funny thing is that both parties do need the other one if there are not enough votes for their preferred two-party coalitions. As there is no realistic prospect for the Greens to form a two-party coalition with the SPD, they either need the Liberals for the traffic light coalition, or they do have to serve as the party engineering a majority for a CDU-FDP government. The same holds true for the Liberals: if CDU and FDP do not capture enough seats, they will need the Greens – or the FDP may serve as the engineer for a traffic light-coalition.
From an ideological point of view, both parties do prefer the coalition where the other party serves as an engineer for majority. The Greens prefer the traffic light-coalition; the FDP prefers the Jamaica-coalition. From a bargaining power perspective, they should however each prefer the respective other option. In coalition negotiations, the Greens could tip the scales and attain disproportional influence. The same holds true for the FDP: they would hold the balance of power in negotiations on a traffic light-coalition, thus be able to enforce more of their interests.
But wait a minute – what about the assumed left majority in Germany that we know about from hearsay?
The left’s self-flagellation: don’t play with that shaggy kid
In fact, a leftish majority would be very possible: there are three left parties in the German Bundestag after all, remember? And taken altogether, already today they would command a 53% majority within parliament. According to current polls, that will allocation of seats will not change significantly in the next Bundestag. So, why not that option? What’s going on?
It’s mostly personal animosities among the parties’ leaders that prevent a left coalition from happening. One of the two chairmen of the Left Party is Oskar Lafontaine, who used to be chairman of the Social Democrats from 1995 to 1999 when he quit all his offices due to strong disagreements with then-chancellor Schöder’s political course. In 2005 he quit the SPD for good and entered into a newly founded party called WASG, which in 2007 joined ranks with the PDS, the follow-up party to the German Democratic Republic’s SED. You do not have to remember all of this, the important thing is: the resulting Left Party has been pretty successful since then in terms of voter approval, recruiting its voters mainly from the east of Germany and, and that’s the catchy part, from former SPD members and voters disappointed by the party’s development since 1998.
So, we have three leftish parties, the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party. In their respective party programmes, they share a lot of goals; they would have a majority in parliament. But although SPD and Greens would work with each other, they would not, under any circumstances, work with the Lefts, come what may. This is due to the SPD’s fear of a strengthened Left Party, as well as to an ongoing German media campaign that tries to denigrate the Left Party, regardless of the Left’s actual political goals and abilities.
To sum it up: without any need to besides personal grievings and media campaigns, the SPD and Greens are highly likely to forfeit a viable option (at least in terms of shared goals and ideologies) and sentence themselves to either work with the CDU, their traditional political adversary, in one way or another, or not govern at all.
The SPD leadership’s compulsion for power: make-or-break
All in all, the SPD is the key player in the upcoming elections, as the party leadership is desperate to stay in power. The reason for this is simple: entering the opposition role, all party leaders would very likely have to step down and clear the path for a new generation of Social Democrats. The current leadership is too intimately linked to the Schröder chancellorship to survive a fall from power, which in hindsight appears to more and more SPD members like the loss of innocence of their old party, mainly but not only because of the unpopular social security laws (Hartz IV) introduced in 2005 by the Schröder cabinet – a political move which is assumed to have led to the SPD’s impressive decline in party members. Their possible successors, mainly from the left wing of the party, are already waiting in the wings.
So why not gain power with a little help from the Left Party, if power it is what it’s all about? Because the current SPD leadership during its participation in government from 1998 to today steered a course directly opposed to that represented by the Left Party (and, in fact, whished for by most of the SPD’s actual members). They may state otherwise in their election statements, but joining a coalition with the Left Party would mean to concede errors, and to pursue a policy contrary to what these leaders believe in. It simply will not happen, not as long as a grand coalition is one of the options on the table.
So what will change after the upcoming election? Not much.
Given the current decline of the CDU-FDP-option in voter approval and the extreme unlikeliness of any of the other options (SPD-Greens, SPD-Greens-FDP, CDU-FDP-Greens, SPD-Greens-Left Party), what we will get after September 27th is with high likeliness another CDU-SPD-grand coalition. Resulting changes in current politics: none. The CDU has already been able to follow its party line pretty well, and to the SPD, another grand coalition would be more like a life belt than a vehicle for pursuing its political agenda.
Should the CDU-FDP-option work out, we will see a slight turn of politics towards more liberalism, but that would probably not go too far because the conceivable lack of support of a CDU-FDP-government in the German Bundesrat, the upper house which is formed by representatives of the cabinets in the different German Länder, where they could currently count on only 29 of 69 votes – and considering the Left Party’s successes in the recent elections in the German states of Saarland and Thuringia, and the usual decline of governing parties in popularity, that proportion should not change considerably in the future.
So what will happen next in Germany? Little or nothing what could not have happened already under the rule of the current government coalition. There are only very few surprises to be expected for sure.
