In Germany's
current post-electoral forging of the coalition set to govern
Europe's biggest country for the next four years two options are
probable at the moment: a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Merkel's CDU
with the Social Democratic SPD party, or a coalition of the CDU with
the Green party.
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| The CDU/CSU (Conservatives; black/blue) have gained 311, the SPD (Social Democrats; light red) 192, the Left Party (dark red) 64 and the Greens (green) 63 seats in the 18th Bundestag (Federal Diet) of Germany |
The SPD, the oldest party in the current party system, existing for 150 years and having been the senior government party in Germany for about twenty years in the 1970s to early 1980s and late 1990s to mid 2000s, has almost been reduced to a second-rate political force in Germany in recent years. It has overall lost about 10% (at least a few million) of their voters since being voted back into power in 1998 after sixteen years of constant CDU reign. These losses were mainly due to the party's swing towards the centre under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (compare to British “New Labour” of PM Tony Blair from 1997). This paradigm change, coming at a time of economic crisis in Germany at the beginning of the last decade (2001/02), led to the most significant reforms in economic and social policies in post-war Germany; they, dubbed “Agenda 2010”, were of a neoliberal character that couldn't be accommodated completely with those truly and ideologically committed to the century-old tradition of Social Democracy. Thus, a breakaway faction of the SPD in the former West Germany (WASG, “Electoral Alternative for Social Justice”) split off and aligned itself with the Socialist Party in the former East Germany (PDS, “Party of Democratic Socialism”) to form a strong new party, prosaically named “The Left” party (“Die Linke”), today the only truly economically left party of the major parties of the country.
The Greens, for their part, are the youngest party in the current system. Their roots lie in the civil rights, ecological, pacifist and social justice movement of the late 1960's, that led to “alternative” political movements now established as “Green” or other parties in many countries. As a party, they were founded in the late 1970s in the then staunchly bourgeois and conservative state of Baden-Württemberg; they already gained seats in state parliaments in 1980 and in the Bundestag in 1982, just a couple of years later. Not considered a serious party able to participate in government for a significant time after that, they were gone from the Bundestag in the first election after the accession of East to West Germany (until today dubbed “re-unification”) in 1990, but themselves in 1998 at the latest, twenty years after their foundation, when they formed a coalition with the SPD on federal level that ruled for seven years. During this time, similar to the SPD, they themselves lost some supporters due to their initiative for German participation in military action in the Kosovo 1999 and in Afghanistan 2001 under foreign minister Joschka Fischer. They lost many left-wing voters in those years and only recovered in the late 2000s, when they increasingly became attractive for more bourgeois, but ecologically-minded conservative voters from the CDU's and FDP's milieus. Ecological matters became “mainstream” in the late 2000s, even among the CDU – e.g. the broad support for the decision to cancel nuclear energy in Germany, a debate the Greens had already started in the 1980s; Angela Merkel has taken on the “energy revolution” from nuclear to renewable energy (“Energiewende”) as a major project of hers. This dynamic and the ecological debate, e.g. on climate change being strong in Germany, brought broad support for the Greens, leading them (back) into several state governments (some of which they were voted out of in the early 1990s), even being the senior, stronger partner in a coalition with the SPD in their “home state” of Baden-Württemberg since 2011, with the first Green MP (State Prime Minister) ever. They almost seemed to be a third “Volkspartei” (major party with support among many strata of society) in the early years of the 2010s.
What is the state of the (centre-)left parties in Germany? The SPD hasn't really recovered from its worst result in a federal election ever in 2009, and the Greens, with a few exceptions on the state level, couldn't continue their winning streak of the mid 2000s and early 2010s recently, but, on the contrary, have dropped from the higher double digits (Baden-Württemberg 25% in 2011) to just below 10% (now 8% in the federal elections). They have lost many supporters either to the right (CDU) (they had gained those before, specifically in bourgeois Baden-Württemberg in 2011) or the left (to the Left Party or the newly-emerged „Pirate Party“) (for the specific reasons see “Merkel's pyrrhic victory”, 24-09-13). However, the two parties (as a coalition dubbed “Rot-Grün”) still hold a significant number of seats in the second chamber of parliament (the Bundesrat), that can block major legislation; the SPD is even part of 13 out of 16 state governments. The “Linke” has been constantly between 5 and 10% nationwide, with significantly higher results and government participation in several states in former East Germany (with the SPD). In the Western states and on the federal level, they have suffered from generally being excluded from government coalitions, with the SPD and the Greens opting to coalesce with the CDU (or FDP) instead. This has also been due to their ideologically more heavy-handed and radical wing in the West, whereas the Left in the the formerly Communist East Germany is more pragmatic (and also still has an old supporter base from the Communist era there); it is thus able to participate in most state governments there. “Die Linke” is the second-strongest party in many parts of the country there, taking in much of what would be SPD or left-wing Green clientele in the West; the (centre, bourgeois) Green and ((neo-)liberal) FDP clientele of Eastern Germany is mostly absorbed by the Conservative party CDU (as it was in these elections, where the CDU had record results there).
What is the outlook and what could this mean for the future of the German party system? Much depends on which of the two parties, SPD or Greens, will be in government as a junior partner of chancellor Merkel's CDU.
