The Merkel Republic: An Appraisal 9781782388968

Citation preview

The Merkel Republic

THE MERKEL REPUBLIC An Appraisal

edited by

Eric Langenbacher

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2015 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2015 Berghahn Books Originally published as special issues of German Politics and Society, volume 32, numbers 2 & 3. All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Merkel Republic : an appraisal / edited by Eric Langenbacher. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-895-1 (paperback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-178238-896-8 (ebook) 1. Germany. Bundestag—Elections, 2013. 2. Merkel, Angela, 1954—-Influence. 3. Merkel, Angela, 1954—-Political and social views. 4. Elections—Germany—History-21st century. 5. Political parties— Germany—History—21st century. 6. Political candidates—Germany—History—21st century. 7. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. 8. Coalition governments—Germany—History—21st century. 9. Cosmopolitanism— Political aspects—Germany—History—21st century. 10. Germany—Politics and government—1990- I. Langenbacher, Eric. JN3971.A95M48 2015 324.943’0883—dc23 2015010335 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78238-895-1 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-78238-896-8 (ebook)

CONTENTS

List of Figures Introduction: Merkel’s Nachsommermärchen? Eric Langenbacher

vii 1

Chapter 1

Follow-up to the Grand Coalition: The German Party System before and after the 2013 Federal Election Frank Decker

26

Chapter 2

Chancellor Hegemony: Party Politics and the Bundestag Party System after the 2013 Federal Election Charles Lees

48

Chapter 3

Past Imperfect, Future Tense: The SPD before and after the 2013 Federal Election Jonathan Olsen

61

Chapter 4

Small Parties and the 2013 Bundestag Election: End of the Upward Trend? David F. Patton

73

Chapter 5

Many New Faces, but Nothing New? The Sociodemographic and Career Profiles of German Bundestag Members in the Eighteenth Legislative Period Melanie Kintz

92

Contents

Chapter 6

Closing the Gap: Gender and Constituency Candidate Nomination in the 2013 Bundestag Election Louise K. Davidson-Schmich

102

Chapter 7

Immigration into Politics: Immigrant-origin Candidates and Their Success in the 2013 Bundestag Election Andreas M. Wüst

121

Chapter 8

The Reluctant Cosmopolitanization of European Party Politics: The Case of Germany Lars Rensmann

136

Chapter 9

European Integration and Party Competition in German Federal Elections Steven Weldon and Hermann Schmitt

162

Chapter 10

The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis: Two Puzzles behind the German Consensus Wade Jacoby

177

Chapter 11

Merkel 3.0: German Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the 2013 Bundestag Election Jackson Janes

192

Epilogue: Concluding Thoughts on the 2013 Bundestag Election Jeffrey Anderson

203

Index

207

•••

vi • • •

LIST OF FIGURES

Figures Figure I.1.

Share of Second Votes for Parties Below the Electoral Threshold Figure 2.1. The Eighteenth Bundestag Election of 22 September 2013: Percent Vote Share and Percent Change since 2009 Figure 2.2. The Development of the Bundestag Party System, 1949 to 2013 Figure 2.3. Number of Minimal Winning Coalitions and Coalitions with Swing in the Bundestag Party System, 1949 to 2013 Figure 3.1. Public Support for Parties, 2010-2013 Figure 3.2. State Election Results for the SPD 2010-2013, Gains and Losses Figure 3.3. Comparing Perceptions of Parties’ Issue Competence in the 2013 Federal Elections Figure 6.1. Percentage of Women among Wahlkreis Nominees Figure 6.2. Percentage of Women among Wahlkreis Winners Figure 6.3. Nominations for Open Wahlkreise vs. Incumbent Nominations Figure 6.4a. Where Women Won Wahlkreise in 2009 Figure 6.4b. The Two Largest Parties’ Female Nominees in 2013 Figure 9.1. Salience of Europe in National Level Elections Figure 9.2. Salience of European Integration for German Parties Figure 9.3. Party Positions on European Integration Figure 9.4. German Party Positions on European Integration

13

49 51

53 64 64 67 105 106 112 115 115 168 169 171 172

List of Figures

Tables Table I.1. Table I.2. Table 2.1.

Table 2.2. Table 4.1. Table 6.1.

Table 7.1. Table 7.2. Table 7.3. Table 7.4. Table 7.5. Table 7.6. Table 7.7.

German Economic Performance, 2009-2016 Bundestag Election Results, 2013 and 2009 The Eighteenth Bundestag Election of 22 September 2013: Distribution of Seats in the Bundestag and Change from 2009 Voting I-power in the German Bundestag: Normalized Banzhaf Scores, 1949-2013 Small Parties’ Second Ballot Vote Share in Recent Bundestag Elections Determinants of an Incumbent Wahlkreis Holder Losing in the 2013 Election: Logistic Regression Results Modes of Candidacy Average List Place of Immigrant-origin Candidates by Party, Gender, and Mode Immigrant-origin Candidates by Party, Candidates Projected to Win, and Elected Candidates Share of Foreign Citizens in Constituencies with Different Types of Candidates Parliamentarians of Immigrant Origin Elected to the Bundestag in 2013 Termination of Bundestag Presence in 2013 The “Career MPs” of Immigrant Origin in the Bundestag

•••

viii • • •

2 8

50 54 75

109 122 124 124 126 127 129 130

INTRODUCTION Merkel’s Nachsommermärchen?

Eric Langenbacher

A Märchen for Merkel Not once during the campaign—or actually over the whole course of the seventeenth Bundestag (2009-2013)—was it ever really in doubt that Angela Merkel would continue as chancellor after the 22 September 2013 parliamentary election. Despite the vicissitudes of governing for eight years, most in the midst of the financial and Euro crisis, she has achieved and sustained some of the highest approval ratings of any postwar German politician. Voters trust Merkel as a good manager of the economy and an honest steward and defender of German interests in Europe. Her carefully cultivated image as a steady, reassuring, and incorruptible leader, coupled with her political acumen, ideological flexibility and, at times, ruthlessness—captured in the dueling monikers of Mutti Merkel and Merkelavelli1—are the keys to her profound success. She is the first female chancellor, the most powerful woman in the world, and the fifth most powerful person overall.2 With ten years in power (as of 22 November 2015), she is the third-longest serving chancellor behind fellow Christian Democrats Helmut Kohl with sixteen years in power and Konrad Adenauer with fourteen, and, currently, she is the longest serving head of government in the European Union. Even more importantly, in the summer of 2014, soccer fan Merkel presided over a real Sommermärchen (summer fairy tale) with the men’s national soccer team’s victory in the World Cup (the country’s fourth such title, but the first since reunification).3 She has presided over a prolonged export boom, resulting in a record-setting current account surplus of 7.4 percent of GDP in 2014.4 Economic performance has remained solid, especially compared to EU partners, many of which are in recession—German GDP grew by 3.9

Eric Langenbacher

percent in 2010, 3.7 percent in 2011, 0.6 percent in 2012, 0.2 percent in 2013, 1.5 percent in 2014, and 1.1 percent (predicted) in 2015.5 Public finances are sound with the debt burden returning to around 80 percent of GDP and the deficit at only -0.1 percent in 2013, following a budget surplus of 0.1 percent in 2012. Already in 2014, the federal government achieved its long sought-after schwarz-null—a fully funded budget with no new debt— for the first time since 1969.6 Table I.1. German Economic Performance, 2009-2016 Year

Real GDP Growth Rate (%)

Budget Deficit/Surplus (% GDP)

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

-5.6 3.9 3.7 0.6 0.2 1.5 1.1** 1.8**

-3.0 -4.1 -0.9 0.1 -0.1* 0.2 0.0** 0.2**

Public Debt (% GDP) 77.5 86.2 85.8 88.5 85.9 83.9 79.8**

Unemployment Rate (harmonized) 7.64 6.97 5.83 5.38 5.24 4.99 5.1** 5.1**

Source: http://data.oecd.org; http://www.oecd.org/economy/germany-economic-forecastsummary.htm; http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/government-debt_gov-debt-table-en; accessed 1 March 2015. * The OECD has a 0.1% surplus for 2013, but official figures now record a slight deficit. See http://www.dw.de/german-economic-growth-flat-in-2013-but-deficit-under-control/a-17362284. ** projected

In light of French stagnation, Italian dysfunction, and British withdrawal from Europe, Merkel has overseen an unprecedented rise of German influence and power in the European Union and beyond. Moreover, the so-called German model, in disgrace by the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, has seen a comeback. Countries around the world—including the United States—have grown to admire the German system and are even trying to emulate parts of it.7 It is truly Merkel’s Germany today, dare one say, Merkel’s Europe. Not surprising, therefore, was the resounding victory of her Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU /CSU or the Union parties) in the 2013 election. In fact, her victory was so decisive that her party came within a handful of seats of achieving an absolute majority—a feat only achieved once in postwar Germany by Konrad Adenauer in 1957 at the height of the Wirtschaftswunder. As much as Merkel’s re-election was seemingly overdetermined, election night did generate several surprises, most notably the failure of the Liberals (Free Democratic Party, FDP)—the •••

2 •••

Introduction

junior coalition partner since 2009—to surpass the 5 percent electoral threshold. They are thus not represented in parliament for the first time since 1949. This outcome also necessitated a new coalitional partner for the Union, which, as expected, turned out to be the Social Democrats (SPD). These parties negotiated yet another grand coalition (after experiences from 1966-1969 and 2005-2009)—replete with a detailed 185-page coalition agreement8—sworn in almost three months after the election on 17 December 2013. In light of the importance of Germany in European and global politics today, and the current resonance of the German system abroad, this edited volume is devoted to the 2013 Bundestag election and its consequences. The contributions assembled below delve into a variety of salient issues, including the campaign, partisan politics, issues of representation, government formation, and domestic and foreign policies. The reader should gain a fuller understanding of the German political situation, as well as some insight into what one might expect looking into the future. Merkel is at the pinnacle of her power, but her era could come to a close over the next four years. Who and what come next? Moreover, despite the outward signs of success, many challenges have festered underneath the surface— problems that will eventually emerge and demand action. In a few short years, Merkel might very well paraphrase the apocryphal words of France’s Louis XV: “aprés moi le deluge.” At the least, her stunning electoral triumph, her Herbstmärchen (autumn fairy tale), may turn out to be much more ephemeral, a Nachsommermärchen (Indian Summer fairy tale).

The Campaign Onlookers inside and outside of Germany agreed that the 2013 election campaign was one of the most boring and inconsequential ever—even more so than 2009, which was memorably likened to “a city council race in Würzburg.”9 Observers widely lamented that the parties did not address the big, existential issues that Germany faces—rising income inequality, stagnant wages, widespread “precarity,” crumbling infrastructure, and lack of domestic investment. This is not even to mention deeper structural issues such as the aging of the population, immigration and integration issues, and, of course, the specter of the simmering Euro crisis. But then, certain highbrow types always think there should be much more thoughtful debate about a political system’s challenges in some kind of fantasy Habermasian public sphere. Yet, even by more realistic standards, candidates dis•••

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cussed very little of substance during either the six “hot” weeks of the campaign or in the months preceding this phase. Each party had a substantial enough electoral platform. The centerright parties resisted tax increases and more European oversight of the economy and banking sector. The center-left and left parties advocated higher taxes and more supranational oversight, and everyone seemed concerned about educational outcomes, affordable housing, and, of course, noise (Lärmschutz).10 Only a few issues appeared to gain any kind of traction: proposals for a minimum wage, plans to address rising rents in many cities, lowering the retirement age, a potential toll for foreign cars on Autobahns, or financing more daycare places. There was only one televised debate on 1 September between Merkel and her Social Democratic challenger (Peer Steinbrück)—the so-called Kanzlerduell—and another one for the top candidates of the other, smaller parties. Even this failed to generate much drama, although Merkel (Greece never should have been let into the Eurozone) and her opponent (the banks are responsible for the Euro crisis and should be held accountable) landed a few punches. Comedian and co-moderator Stefan Raab’s smart-alecky behavior stole the show—as well as the presumably patriotic necklace that Merkel wore—the so-called Schlandkette, which even generated its own Twitter account.11 Pundits largely blamed Merkel and her party for this state of affairs. The CDU centered its campaign almost completely on the figure of the Kanzlerin. Campaign posters veritably fetishized Merkel, with outsized photos, and more often (especially in the much derided three-story advertisement near the main train station in Berlin) simply depicting her hands in her famous, rhombus-shaped (Raute) gesture—“Maxima Merkel” as Der Spiegel put it.12 Slogans were simple—“gemeinsam erfolgreich” (successful together); “damit Angela Merkel Kanzlerin bleibt” (so that Angela Merkel remains chancellor); “Cool bleiben und Kanzlerin wählen” (stay calm and vote for the chancellor)—perhaps summarized simply by “weiter so” (more, onwards, forward), or “Angie.” As Merkel put it at the end of the Kanzlerduell—you know me, you trust me, let’s continue. This encapsulates Merkel’s appeal: no drama, trustworthiness, the reputation for sound management, studiousness, and hard work. Many commented that it was a classic Christian Democratic campaign strategy dating back to the Adenauer era of “keine Experimente” (no experiments). This resonated deeply with an older, conservative German electorate that is deeply satisfied with its prosperity and economic achievements, as well as a little proud, even smug that Germans have been doing so well despite the misery from the financial and Euro crisis •••

4 •••

Introduction

surrounding them. Indeed, unemployment has fallen to an almost historic low, youth unemployment is negligible—under 10 percent, versus an EU average of 23 percent and over 50 percent in Greece and Spain—and taxes have not risen.13 Berlin is finally booming for the first time really since before 1945, nation-wide growth is projected to accelerate in 2014 and 2015, and even Eastern Germany is doing reasonably well.14 The Union would not have benefited from a deeper debate about issues. Merkel basically had to show up and smile—or show her hands—and that is exactly what she did. Not everyone has been completely taken in by Merkel’s appeal. Some liken her to a “schwäbische Hausfrau”—a hard-working, thrifty, perhaps stingy, southern German housewife. Guido Westerwelle was the first of many to refer to her as “Mutti”—mommy—although I always thought she more resembles a “Tante” (aunt)—reassuring, supportive, but also at times patronizing, and even a bit suffocating. More negative is the “Merkelavelli” description, pointing to how well, even ruthlessly, she has played the dirtier game of politics behind the scenes, outmaneuvering enemies and friends, co-opting others’ positions, and eliminating rivals. Of course, outside of Germany there is a legion of criticism, especially from the “peripheral” economies that have been in a depression for years now (blamed on Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble). Images of Merkel depicted with a Hitler moustache or Nazi uniform have been rather ubiquitous in Greece, Italy, and Spain. No longer confined to extreme fringes on the left and right, even mainstream publications like the New Statesman have asserted that Merkel is the most dangerous person in Europe since Hitler with “her” austerity doctrines.15 The February 2014 issue of Harper’s had a cover of a Nazi uniform with the swastika replaced by a Euro symbol over the headline “How Germany Reconquered Europe: The Euro and its Discontents.”16 The French have long deemed her “Madame Non” and the British love to compare her to their divisive “iron lady” Margaret Thatcher—albeit without the world-changing vision. Less explosively, others have pointed out that “Merkelism” is a tactic of demobilization and depoliticization—consisting of vacuous platitudes, small-step pragmatism, content-less pronouncements, and now a healthy dose of personality cult/hero worship. Some highbrows feel that she damages Germany’s public and democratic culture in such a “Biedermeier” or new Eisenhower era.17 There are fears that her wishy-washy slogans will prompt—or with the rise of the anti-Euro Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) have already prompted—a more extremist ideological reaction. Some criticize Merkel for having no grand vision, of being ideologically amorphous, •••

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tacking left or right, appropriating seemingly resonant policies (Energiewende) first from the SPD and then the FDP. It was rumored that despite a degree of ideological convergence, the Greens would not seriously contemplate joining a coalition as long as Merkel remains in power, precisely because they fear her opportunistic embrace would co-opt and strangulate them. Given Merkel’s unassailable position in the pre-election polls, it almost seemed as if the other parties had given up before they even started. Indeed, their campaigns ranged from lackluster to mediocre, and even shambolic. The Greens could not really recover from a bizarre scandal about permissive attitudes towards pedophilia that some prominent party members such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Volker Beck endorsed decades ago.18 They also had environmentally friendly campaign posters that quickly disintegrated in wind and rain—interpreted as a symbol of their campaign missteps.19 More generally, despite pervasive support for an environmentalist agenda among the public, the German electorate remains uneasy about spiking energy prices and the perverse effects of subsidies for green energy. The SPD’s campaign seemed cautious and predictable, stressing the minimum wage, lower rents, and vague calls for more social justice. Their slogans surrounding “Wir,” (we) “Das WIR entscheidet” (the we decides) were widely panned as vague and undifferentiated from the other parties.20 But then, the most prominent leaders—Peer Steinbrück, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Sigmar Gabriel—had to be careful as many of them were in government during the Red-Green coalition from 1998-2005 or with Merkel from 2005-2009 and thus share some responsibility for current policies, a point Merkel gleefully hammered home during the televised debate. The party thought it could achieve a breakthrough with the choice of Steinbrück (finance minister from 2005-2009) as their chancellor candidate—considered a witty, straight-talker, but also a bit of a loose cannon. His candidacy never took off and there were some missteps—such as reports about the fees he had received for speeches, complaining about the chancellor receiving inadequate pay, or deriding cheap wine that he presumably would never touch, expressing a kind of effete elitism at odds with the traditional culture of the oldest working class party in the world, which, incidentally, celebrated its one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary in 2013. In an act of seeming desperation, he posed for a controversial magazine cover in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, smirking and giving the Stinkefinger (the middle finger) to the camera. The FDP was almost invisible, had vacuous slogans—“die Mitte entlassen” (relieve the middle), “damit Deutschland stark bleibt” (so that Ger•••

6 •••

Introduction

many remains strong)—and made an amateurish, last-ditch “second vote” effort, which Merkel assiduously blocked. The party clearly saw the writing on the wall and barely tried to campaign. The Left Party used virtually the same slogans as they always have, recycled from the late nineteenth century—“Miete und Energie: bezahlbar für alle” (Rent and energy: affordable for all), “100% sozial,” “Teilen macht Spass: Millionärsteuer” (sharing is fun: millionaire tax). The insurgent anti-Euro AfD had quite the presence— apparently benefiting from a surge of private donations. “Mut zur Wahrheit: Der Euro ruiniert Europa! Auch uns!” (Courage for the Truth: The Euro is ruining Europe! Us too!); “Der deutsche Frühling beginnt im Herbst” (the German spring begins in autumn); “Griechen leiden. Deutsche zahlen. Banken kassieren,” (Greeks suffer. Germans pay. Banks cash in); and “Einwanderung braucht strikte Regeln” (immigration requires strict rules). The right-radical NPD also caused controversy with its xenophobic posters— “Maria statt scharia” (Maria [depicted as a blonde woman] instead of sharia [with a woman wearing the niqab]); or “Geld für die Oma statt Sinti und Roma” (money for grandma, instead of Sinti and Roma).

Results and Current Trends In contrast to the campaign, election night was rather dramatic or at least surprising. With 41.5 percent of the second votes, the 311 CDU /CSU seats came within five of an absolute majority. No one expected this decisive a victory for Merkel. The headlines the next day proclaimed—rightfully—the Merkel Republic. This was her achievement and her triumph. She is now the third-longest serving postwar chancellor and the only European leader to have been re-elected (twice) since the beginnings of the financial and Euro crises in 2008. Amidst the jubilation at the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in the Tiergarten on election night, Merkel was typically humble, although visibly happy, thanking her team and already looking forward to the task of forming a new governing coalition. The FDP had an apocalyptic evening. The party and its leaders proved hapless in government, seemingly unable to come through on any of their 2009 campaign promises. The leaders’ missteps plagued the Liberals, especially Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and party leader Philipp Rösler, whom Merkel also constantly outmaneuvered. In the end, only she could claim credit for and benefit from the economy’s strong performance after 2010. On election night, the FDP garnered only 4.8 percent of the vote, almost 10 percent less than in 2009, coming in below the all•••

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Table I.2. Bundestag Election Results, 2013 and 2009 2013 Percent Second Vote CDU/CSU SPD FDP Greens Left AfD Others All < 5 percent

41.5 25.7 4.8 8.4 8.6 4.7 6.2 15.7

Seats

Percent Seats

311 192 63 64 -

49.4 30.5 10.0 10.2 -

2009 Percent Second Vote 33.8 23.0 14.6 10.7 11.9 6.0 6.0

Seats 239 146 93 68 76 -

Percent Vote Change Percent (2013 from Seats 2009) 38.4 23.5 15.0 10.9 12.2 -

+7.7 +2.7 -9.8 -2.5 -3.3 +9.7

Source: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/bundestagswahlen/BTW_BUND_13/index.html

important 5 percent threshold for being eligible for seats. Thus, for the first time since the Federal Republic was formed, the FDP lacks representation in the eighteenth Bundestag and its market liberal profile will not be heard. The atmosphere at their campaign night event was funereal and the purge of top leaders (Rösler, Rainer Brüderle) started the next morning. The party now places all of its hopes on thirty-six-year-old Christian Lindner from North Rhine Westphalia who became the new party chairman in December 2013. The Union parties gained 2 million second votes from the FDP—other supporters stayed at home or defected to the insurgent AfD. Interestingly, all pollsters had the Liberals over the 5 percent threshold in the weeks before the election—and they were rather defensive after the fact about their erroneous predictions, noting that the actual result was “within the margin of error.” By early 2015, there were few signs of recovery, with the party hovering between 3 and 4 percent in polls. It garnered only 3.4 percent in the May 2014 elections to the European Parliament,21 and in the fall 2014 Land elections, did not surmount the 5 percent threshold (2.5 percent in Thuringia, 1.5 percent in Brandenburg, and 3.8 percent in Saxony). Many pundits believe that the party is finished, although it did well in Hamburg in February 2015, actually increasing its vote to 7.4 percent and greatly boosting Lindner’s position.22 Assessments of the SPD’s performance depended on the eye of the beholder. Some journalists spoke of the “second worst electoral result in the party’s history,”23 with 2009 being the nadir. Others saw improvement. The party did marginally better than 2009—increasing its share of second votes by 2.7 percent to 25.7 percent. Yet even the party faithful saw this as a lackluster result. The heartiest cheering at the SPD election •••

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Introduction

night party in Kreuzberg’s Willy-Brandt-Haus occurred when the prognosis came in that the FDP would not surpass the 5 percent threshold—Germans did coin the word schadenfreude after all. Of course, the party’s structural predicament with an exposed left flank from both the old-old leftist Linke and the new-left Greens has not improved. There is increased talk about the two epochal mistakes of the Social Democrats failing to integrate the Greens in the 1980s and the PDS/Left in the 1990s and 2000s. Even further, the discourse about whether the SPD can even (or should) still be considered a catch-all, people’s party (Volkspartei) with only about a quarter of the electorate and their old bastions, the unions, seemingly in terminal decline, will certainly continue.24 Indeed, the party leadership is in a bind—they have to move to the center to govern with Merkel, but cannot afford to alienate their ideological left, with other parties waiting to pounce on the disaffected. Gabriel even felt compelled to put the coalition agreement to a vote of the party’s membership and there was substantial worry that the laboriously negotiated document would not be endorsed. In the end, 75 percent did vote for the agreement and it should be noted that Gabriel was quite astute in using this tactic to his party’s benefit. He got much more from Merkel—control of six out of sixteen ministries, including powerful portfolios such as foreign affairs, economics, and energy, justice, and social affairs, as well as policy concessions like a minimum wage and a lowering of the retirement age—than was expected, given that Merkel needed only five seats to gain a majority and that the SPD leadership at least was seemingly desperate to regain power. As former party heavyweight Franz Müntefering once memorably put the pragmatic case for governing: “Opposition ist Mist” (opposition is dung).25 In any case, about eighteen months after the election, the party had not really gained nor lost support, hovering between 22 and 26 percent according to surveys.26 It scored well in the European Parliament elections at 27.3 percent, a 6.5 percent increase from its 2009 result. Its performance in the September 2014 Thuringian election, however, was abysmal, losing 6 percent compared to 2009 and amassing only 12.4 percent of the votes. Much controversy surrounded coalition negotiations in late 2014 as a RedRed-Green government was formed under Left Party leadership (Bodo Ramelow)—the first time the Left Party has led a Land government.27 Many predict that this augers closer collaboration among the leftist parties at the national level—until now the Left has not been considered an acceptable governing partner (koalitionsfähig). Although this might allow the SPD to regain national power in the medium term, it is a fraught strategy that could backfire and accelerate the Social Democrats’ vote loss. •••

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The Greens lost 2.3 percent, winning 8.4 percent of the second votes. Although a decline of 2 percent of the national vote does not appear excessive, this represents a 21.5 percent decrease from their 2009 level of support. Moreover, the outcome seemed much worse because the Greens had been riding very high in the polls in the years before the election. In mid2011, for example, they were polling over 20 percent, so that their actual 2013 result was 60 percent less than their peak. At one point, they were even more popular than the SPD, prompting much speculation that they were fast becoming the new center-left Volkspartei (people’s party). They also experienced a string of major victories at the state level—results often interpreted as harbingers of national trends. Most notably, in March 2011 they scored a plurality victory of 24 percent in Baden-Württemberg and now lead that government in conjunction with the SPD—the first time that the Greens have ever been the senior coalition partner at the Land level. Thus, the 2013 national outcome was perceived as an utter failure. There was a major leadership shake-up in the days following the election with the experienced Jürgen Trittin and Claudia Roth both stepping down, eventually replaced by Simone Peter and Cem Özdemir. Since the election, the Greens have recovered slightly, averaging 9 to 11 percent in polls. The Left lost 3.3 percent compared to the last election and came in at 8.6 percent, an almost 30 percent decline from their 2009 totals. Despite its losses and the almost constant prognostications of the party’s terminal decline with an aging eastern electorate and the retirement, death, or decline of charismatic founding leaders like Oskar Lafontaine, Lothar Bisky, and even Gregor Gysi, the Left, always propagandizing, spun their result. They celebrated becoming the third largest fraction in the new parliament and the largest opposition party, as well as rather cockily expressing their desire for a red-red-green coalition, pointing out that the three leftist parties together had a majority. The Left has held up well in surveys—by early 2015 averaging 8 to 10 percent. In the 2014 European Parliament elections, they scored 7.4 percent of the vote, and they continue to prosper in eastern Germany, now leading the governing coalition in Thuringia after receiving 28 percent of the vote. The Greens and Left are the only two opposition parties in the new Bundestag. The governing parties have rarely dominated to this degree with 80 percent of the seats, compared to 73 percent for the 2005-2009 electoral period and 90 percent from 1966-1969—conferring a visibility and responsibility from which both leftist groupings potentially could benefit, especially if the Social Democrats take a hit due to the inevitable compromises involved with assuming a share of governing responsibility. In light •••

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of the small opposition and declining interest in parliamentary debates among the general public, reforms are now envisioned to spice things up.28 Finally, the AfD, which disgruntled intellectuals formed only in February 2013, almost made it into the Bundestag with 4.7 percent of the vote. Although focused largely on the problems of the Euro and advocating for Germany’s withdrawal (or at least reconfiguration of the currency restricted to a hard core of northern and central European countries), the nascent party has also embraced other right-populist themes such as greater restrictions on immigration and less generous welfare benefits. Despite this profile, pollsters noted that this is really a protest movement, gaining many votes not only from easterners who previously had voted for the Left Party, but also from a more educated clientele of disgruntled western FDP and CDU/CSU supporters. The success of this party shows that even Germany is not immune to some destabilization resulting from the festering Eurozone crisis. For the center-right, the rise of the AfD is structurally similar to the challenge that the Left Party presents to the SPD—creating a constraint that inhibits a policy move to the center. Merkel cannot risk more right-wing voters defecting to this alternative on her right flank, nor could the Union expect the same kind of electoral success that it has recently experienced, if this party were to institutionalize itself at the federal, state, or even European level. Recently, the classic statement of postwar Bavarian leader Franz-Josef Strauß—that there should be no democratic party right of the Union—has been frequently cited implicitly criticizing Merkel’s failure to stem the rise of this party. It is still too early to tell if the AfD will strengthen and root itself in the party system, or—like the Pirates and many others—quickly fade away. Over 2014, the party continued to make impressive gains, scoring 7.1 percent in the May European Parliament elections; 9.7 percent in Saxony, 10.6 percent in Thuringia (siphoning enough votes to thwart a continued black-red coalition), and 12.2 percent in Brandenburg. Nevertheless, in January 2015 it was polling 6 to 7 percent nationally and received 6.1 percent in the February 2015 Hamburg election. By July 2015, it was down to about 4 percent, having taken a hit from its earlier flirtation with the controversial anti-Islam “Pegida” protests and suffering from leadership turmoil that summer.

Plus ça change? The election results also raise several other issues. Polls consistently showed that voters appreciated Merkel and wanted her to continue as •••

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chancellor. They likewise revealed disdain for the FDP and wanted it to be kicked out of government. This is exactly what happened in a rare enough example of the democratic process working out as it is supposed to, especially in a system like Germany’s based on proportional representation in which voters often have little control over the eventual configuration of the government. Moreover, post-election polls show a sizeable majority supporting another grand coalition, again exactly what transpired. There is a deep penchant for Lijphartian consensus politics in Germany—once rightfully called “the grand coalition state.”30 It was also rumored that Merkel prefers such a centrist or even centerleft coalition—certainly there was much less drama between 2005-2009 than 2009-2013. (A bitter FDP functionary on election night reportedly kept calling Merkel FDJ—a reference to the former East German communist youth organization, presumably implying that she has more leftist policy preferences). Also, with an absolute majority, Merkel would have been unable to check and balance the more right-wing tendencies of the CDU and especially the Bavarian CSU. Indeed, during coalition negotiations and after the inauguration of the new government, the most tension seemed to result from within the Union parties and not with the Social Democrats. Thus, a grand coalition increased the likelihood of keeping the Bavarians in check. Moreover, the government must still garner a majority of the Bundesrat on about half of all legislation. In that territorially based upper chamber, the governing parties in the Bundestag have only twenty-seven out of sixty-nine votes as of February 2015. Although all other states have at least one of the two governing Bundestag parties in their governments, the vast majority of states will abstain from voting, maintaining neutrality. Had the Black-Yellow coalition continued, it would have commanded only ten votes, and as of early 2015 only Bavaria (six). Centrist, consensual governing is structurally preordained in the German system. This is not even to mention the many laws that are promulgated at the EU level and then rather automatically implemented domestically. The election also shows that trends previously believed to be inexorable are not. The two “people’s parties” often called the “elephants” did not continue their long-term decline—in fact their combined share of the second vote went up from 56.8 to 67.2 percent between 2009 and 2013. Although this is still far away from the peak of the two-party share achieved in 1976 at 91.2 percent of second votes, obituaries for the Volksparteien are perhaps still premature.31 Moreover, the participation rate rose from 70.8 to 71.5 percent of eligible voters, reversing another longterm trend and partially belying the allegation that Merkelism embodies •••

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demobilization. Even were one to accept that demobilization is Merkel’s tactic, it has proven at least partially counterproductive. More troubling was the second vote share going to “other” parties, which more than doubled from 6 percent in 2009 to an all-time high of 15.7 percent or almost one in six votes. Even had the FDP made it into the Bundestag, over a tenth of the all-important second votes was still lost. There are several implications. First, these votes are essentially wasted on parties that did not gain seats and that will not have their perspectives aired in the corridors of power. Clearly, there are positions supported by numerous voters that conventional parties fail to represent, pointing to a weakness or shortcoming of Germany’s representative democratic system. The rise of this “other” vote might be a kind of canary in the coalmine, indicating a degree of protest voting and dissatisfaction with the current policy course, party options, or even the system. Second, this high level of wasted votes has strengthened advocates for lowering or abolishing the 5 percent threshold, a position that the Constitutional Court may very well endorse (along the lines of its jurisprudence concerning the electoral law for European Parliament elections). Given the original justification behind the threshold, namely to inhibit small extremist parties from gaining legitimizing representation and public financing connected to this, this is potentially cause for concern. The threshold has hitherto successfully prevented right radical parties from making it into the Bundestag. Figure I.1. Share of Second Votes for Parties Below the Electoral Threshold

Source: Bundeswahlleiter; 2002 data includes 4.4 percent for the former communist PDS although they had two direct mandates.

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Some have pointed out that leftist parties have a numerical majority of seats in the Bundestag, although the SPD and Greens have consistently rebuffed the so-called red-red-green coalition—at least for now. This does not mean that Germany is somehow a (majority) center-left nation. Recall that just under 10 percent of the wasted votes went to various (center)right parties—the Liberals and AfD. The right-radical NPD got 1.3 percent. Even further, it is even unclear that the Greens should be considered a leftist party any longer with many considering them to have become “bourgeois” (bürgerlich).32 There were fascinating analyses about how many former CDU supporters moved to the Greens before their landmark 2011 victory in Baden-Württemberg.33 Once unthinkable Black-Green coalitions have already occurred in many large cities such as Cologne, Bonn, and Frankfurt, and at the Land level in Hamburg (2008-2010) and in Hesse (since January 2014). In a hugely significant gesture, Merkel even engaged in exploratory talks (Sondierungsgespräche) with the Greens in October 2013 before negotiating with the Social Democrats.3 Although nothing came of these discussions this time around, it opens a tantalizing prospect for future governing options at the national level. The Pirates, usually considered leftist, received only 2.2 percent—essentially their share in 2009. Many were surprised at the collapse of the media’s flavor of the month after a string of overhyped regional victories in 2011 (8.9 percent in Berlin) and 2012, including 7.4 percent in Saarland, 8.2 percent in Schleswig-Holstein, and 7.8 percent in North Rhine-Westphalia. There is a lesson here on over-interpreting such protest, new-media parties. In the end, there is no substitute for classic organizational virtues—a clear party program beyond a single issue (here Internet freedom), the necessity of a vetting process for members, and stable leadership. Michel’s iron law of oligarchy has once again been substantiated. It is still too early to know if the Pirates will absorb this lesson as the Greens did (albeit only partially) in the 1980s and early 1990s. If they do not, they are very likely a spent force. The new election law—an excessively complicated, verging on unintelligible, attempt to address potential problems of a “negative voting weight” and disproportions that could result from overhanging mandates—was not a factor despite predictions to the contrary. In the end, the new Bundestag will have 631 seats (33 more than the legal minimum of 598)—just slightly more than the 622 after 2009. There were only five overhanging mandates (down from twenty-four in 2009), as well as twenty-eight compensatory seats. With its “compensatory mandates” (Ausgleichmandate) the law aimed to achieve a better vote-seat correspondence, but with 15 percent of the vote wasted, this did not happen. Also, the law did not particularly aid •••

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smaller parties as it intended. It is important to note that the Union would not have had an absolute majority under the old electoral law either (although they would have been closer to the majority needing only three more seats). Besides, voting behavior and party campaign tactics have started to shift in response to the new incentive structure, making projections based on the old law highly speculative. With the advantage potentially gained from overhanging mandates now muted, there is now much more of a necessity to maximize second vote shares. Every effort will be expended to make sure that voters no longer split their first and second votes, as was increasingly common before the changes.35 This will work to the detriment of the smaller parties, especially the FDP, which successfully used this tactic in 2009. Finally, the large amount of media coverage that this election received in the international press proved noteworthy. In Europe, this is understandable given the widespread perception that Merkel essentially governs the Eurozone today. Certainly, German policy has a real and material impact in other countries, so it pays for them to care. One might even add that with the exception of Greece, most Europeans support such the German position and role.36 More surprising was that the American print media (New York Times, Washington Post) devoted numerous stories to the campaign and election results—although this trend of increased coverage of Germany goes back a couple of years and probably has much to do with a renewed commitment on the part of these news organizations to sponsor foreign bureaus in the country. This speaks to the widespread U.S. perception that Germany has become the most powerful, “indispensable” country in Europe today. Interestingly, the American media seemed genuinely to think that the German elections were a charming, throw-back to simpler, better times—a six-week, relatively inexpensive campaign instead of two-year, bankruptcyinducing trench warfare. Indeed, estimates are that the German parties spent $93 million in 2013 compared to $2.4 billion just for the 2012 U.S. presidential election cycle and as much as $6 billion overall that year37— approximately $1.16 per capita in Germany versus $7.64 or $19.11 in the United States.

The Contributions in This Volume The chapters that follow delve into many dimensions of the 2013 Bundestag elections and contemporary German politics more generally. Frank •••

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Decker kicks off the volume by noting that the 2013 election refuted a number of established hypotheses on the development of the German party system and contradicted the electoral strategies of nearly all the parties involved. The outcome was neither a further fragmentation of the parliamentary landscape nor the unavoidable establishment of a grand coalition. On the contrary, various parties failed as a result of their own mistakes in selecting adequate campaign issues, strategies, and/or candidates. He concludes that aside from party-specific questions, such as the trajectories of both the AfD and the FDP, the future of the German party system seems largely dependent on the relationships between the three left-of-center parties at the federal level. In slight contrast, Charles Lees argues that the elections brought important changes to the Bundestag party system, some of which are contingent, but others of which are more systemic and profound. The narrow failure of the FDP to surmount the electoral threshold had an impact on coalition negotiations and the improvement in the overall vote share for the CDU /CSU and the SPD, for the first time since the 1960s represents a significant, if probably only temporary, concentration of the German party system in the Bundestag. More systemically, the election saw a continuation of the ongoing redistribution of voting power in the Bundestag in favor of the catch-all parties as formateurs, despite the steady decline in the catch-all party vote. Lees also discusses how the increased importance of the potential formateuer parties has gone hand in hand with a greater focus on the individual leading candidates, and concludes that this is particularly good news for the CDU /CSU, given the political qualities of Angela Merkel and the failure of the SPD to find and support a leading candidate who can match her political acumen. The next two chapters analyze the performance and prospects of individual parties. Looking at the venerable SPD, Jonathan Olsen writes that the party saw its worst results in its almost 150-year history in the 2009 federal election. Immediately afterwards, the party worked to improve its public image and fine-tune its policies and electoral message, hoping that state elections in the ensuring period might provide some momentum going into the next national election. Yet, in 2013, the Social Democrats improved their result only modestly. Olsen explores the reasons behind the SPD’s failure to radically improve its electoral showing. Here, he argues that a combination of the impact of the past—namely, the legacy of its economic reforms during the Schröder era and the SPD’s disadvantages coming out of the previous grand coalition—as well as the weakness of its 2013 chancellor candidate, Peer Steinbrück, and the popularity of Angela •••

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Merkel best explains the outcome.The chapter therefore suggests that the immediate future does not look particularly bright for the SPD : any chances of gaining the chancellorship are largely out of its hand, dependent on both stumbles by its rival, the CDU /CSU, as well as the taming of a possible coalition partner, the Left Party. David Patton observes that in the 2009 German federal election, three small parties boasted a result in the double digits, yet four years later, none of the small parties finished above 8.6 percent and only two reentered the Bundestag. Notably, the FDP, one of the original West German parties, dropped out of the federal parliament for the first time. Yet, any talk of catch-all party revival and party system concentration needs qualification. As a group, the small parties received nearly a third of all votes cast—the second highest share in six decades. Those that did not make it into the Bundestag won 15.7 percent, a higher share than in any other federal election. Patton examines the positioning of the leading small parties in the 2013 Bundestag election campaign and their respective electoral results; highlights party systemic as well as internal party factors to explain small party performance; reassesses the commonplace classification of small parties by whether there is an established legislative presence or not; and considers the positioning and performance of small parties in the years to come. The following four contributions provide more detailed demographic analyses. First, Melanie Kintz discusses the sociodemographic and career profiles of Bundestag members in the current eighteenth legislative period. She notes that the 2013 Bundestag election saw a very high turnover in MPs. The FDP, which previously held ninety-three seats in the Bundestag, did not get re-elected, and about 100 members had announced their retirement prior to the election. The chapter looks at whether the 217 new members have significantly different sociodemographic and career profiles compared to the re-elected members. While providing an insight into the profiles and career tracks of German MPs, Kintz finds that not much has shifted. Changes in the occupational structure, however, signal that for an increasing number of MPs politics is becoming a long-term career. Louise K. Davidson-Schmich focuses her chapter on gender and constituency candidate nomination processes. Since the adoption of candidate gender quotas, women have always fared better in the “second” or PR tier of Bundestag elections than in the “first” or plurality tier, where quotas do not apply. This gap, however, has been closing. In the 2009 Bundestag election, 27 percent of the major parties’ direct mandate candidates were women compared to almost 30 percent in 2013. All parties •••

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experienced an increase in the percentage of women among their nominees for direct mandates between 2009 and 2013. Why have the numbers of female candidates for the 299 directly elected Bundestag constituencies been increasing? This increase is puzzling because gender quotas have not been extended to this tier of the electoral system and candidate selection rules have not changed. Davidson-Schmich explores five potential mechanisms that may be driving the observed rise in women nominated as constituency candidates. She argues that the main reasons for these increases lie in the advantages female incumbents incur, the openings presented when male incumbents retire, and the diffusion of female candidates across parties and neighboring Wahlkreise after one woman manages to win a direct mandate. In the following chapter, Andreas M. Wüst writes about immigrant-origin politicians running for a Bundestag mandate in the 2013 election, systematically analyzing patterns of candidacy and the electoral success or failure of the respective candidates and parliamentarians. The main finding is that politicians of immigrant origin are serious contenders for seats in the Bundestag, and political parties seem to have quite some interest in their election. It is increasingly the second immigrant generation that is involved politically, and, as the career patterns indicate, it is likely that many of them are going to stay longer in politics. Consequently, a closer look at immigrant-origin candidates and parliamentarians is of merit for both the study of parliamentary representation and of the political integration of immigrants and their descendants. Dovetailing with Wüst, Lars Rensmann notes that while still vastly underrepresented and lagging behind political representation in several other European democracies, more ethnic minorities and immigrants have entered the German Bundestag in 2013 than ever before. This is one of several indicators of Germany’s political departure from hegemonic ethnic self-understandings, signaling the nation’s complicated, partly still-contested evolution towards political self-conceptions as a “country of immigration.” A significant unanswered question is how and how far this process, which can be conceived as cosmopolitanization, has transformed party politics. Rensmann examines the scope and causes of cosmopolitanization in three dimensions of German party politics after the 2013 Bundestag election: political discourse and programmatic positions on immigration, citizenship, identity, and ethno-cultural diversity; the policy regime of mainstream parties on immigration and the inclusion of ethnic minorities; and the fielding of minority candidates for national public office. He argues that transformed demographic realities, value change, and new electoral demands •••

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have primarily caused the belated postethnic cosmopolitanization of German party politics. Mainstream political parties—including the center right— have been reluctant but ultimately rational strategic agents reacting to these transformations in the electoral market. Yet, the scope and character of cosmopolitanization also depend on external and internal supply side conditions that enable parties to make programmatic changes, depolarize key issues of the immigration and citizenship policy regime, and recruit ethnic minorities for political representation. In European comparative perspective, the German case may serve as a model for theorizing the cosmopolitanization of party politics. The next set of contributions looks at European issues and foreign policy. The point of departure for Steven Weldon and Hermann Schmitt is the global financial crisis that hit Germany and Europe over the past half decade. This crisis is associated, among European Union citizens, with the degree of support for European integration: those who are skeptical about the Euro and the debt crises in parts of the Eurozone tend also to be skeptical about European integration more generally. Their main question in this chapter is whether the pledges of political parties (as issued in their election manifestos) can add to our understanding of electoral choices in Germany. Relating German election results to the German data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project MRG /CMP / MARPOR research tradition, Weldon and Schmitt argue that political parties’ European pledges have been irrelevant for the vote over half a century. Yet, now that the European Union is rapidly moving in its postfunctional phase, the election of 2013 is expected to mark a turning point in that regard. Next, Wade Jacoby offers a corrective to the notion that German ordoliberal ideology is the key to understanding German policy behavior during the Eurocrisis and, by extension, to the contours of the electoral debate in fall 2013. First, the chapter shows that ordoliberal thought underdetermines policy choices. That is, different actors clearly influenced by ordoliberal thinking and often stressing different aspects of the broader ordoliberal cannon are arguing for more or less diametrically opposed policy solutions. Second, Jacoby provides evidence that this deep divide inside the ordoliberal policy community has contributed additional incentives to the tentative and inconclusive policy choices of the government throughout much of the Eurocrisis. Third, the chapter extends the analysis of this very cautious policymaking into the campaign phase and the subsequent coalition agreement. It explains why the two major German parties—including an SPD with a much thinner attachment than the CDU to ordoliberalism—sought to play down the Eurocrisis in their campaigns and •••

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in their subsequent coalition agreement. One implication is the low probability of German policy change despite ideological differences. The final substantive chapter is Jackson Janes’s assessment of German foreign policy. Angela Merkel remains arguably the most powerful politician in Europe, now in her third term as chancellor. While she enjoys popularity at home, seen as pragmatic and reliable, she faces numerous outward expectations and pressures that challenge Germany’s foreign policy of restraint. Some argue that Germany does not pull its weight in foreign policy, particularly militarily, or at least is reluctant to do so. This view is not only held abroad, but is also shared by many of Germany’s leaders— both Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and President Joachim Gauck, among others, have expressed their desire for an increased German role in the world. Many politicians, however, do not see an advantage to focusing on foreign issues in their export-heavy economy. Other challenges, including disillusionment among Germans regarding their tenuous relationship with Russia and damaged trust between the U.S. and Germany as a result of the NSA scandal, will force Merkel to set an agenda that balances domestic concerns with her allies’ expectations. The volume concludes with an epilogue by Jeffrey Anderson in which he places the 2013 election result in the larger context of German and European politics.

Looking Forward Overall, the 2013 Bundestag election campaign took place during an exceptional period of relative prosperity, domestic tranquility, and the perception of success. This was truly Angela Merkel’s Herbstmärchen (autumn fairy tale), a counterpart and even continuation of the country’s Sommermärchen during the hosting of the World Cup of soccer in 2006.3 But then, autumn is not summer—or spring, for that matter. It connotes ending and completion and the expectation of a period of cold, rest, and death to follow. Is winter approaching for the Merkel Republic? There is certainly a hefty backlog of issues that will need to be addressed sooner as opposed to later—the destabilizing export surplus, which has garnered criticism not just from European partners, but also from the European Commission and the U.S. government;39 the lack of infrastructural investment, especially in the west, the needs of which have been relatively neglected since unification and the necessary rebuilding of eastern Germany;40 stagnant domestic wages and demand; and the festering problems of the peripheral Eurozone economies. Apocalyptic scenarios could still •••

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transpire—if all of Germany’s financial promises to various bailout packages are actually called upon. After a relatively placid period, possible deflation (prompting quantitative easing from the European Central Bank), a weakening exchange rate (although this helps the German export sector), and renewed uncertainty in Greece after the January 2015 election in which the left-populist Syriza party won convincingly on an anti-austerity program has caused instability to return to the Eurozone in early 2015. Although many think that a “Grexit” would be less apocalyptic than in 2011, the consequences could still be devastating. Moreover, international crises—most recently concerning Ukraine and Russia beginning in early 2014—can have a marked impact on an exposed trading state like Germany. Over 300,000 German jobs are said to be dependent on trade with Russia and over 35 percent of Germany’s natural gas and crude oil supplies come from that country.41 Thus, if the increasingly onerous economic sanctions that the West imposed on Putin’s regime throughout 2014 persist or intensify—or if the Russian president retaliates even more, for example, by restricting the westward flow of natural gas— the detrimental effects on the German economy could be pronounced. Indeed, by 2015, the sanctions, coupled with plummeting oil prices, led to a major economic downturn in Russia. As predicted, the German economy was also impacted, shrinking 0.1 percent in the second quarter of 2014, partially due to the domestic effects of the sanctions. Finally, instability in the Middle East and elsewhere led to over 200,000 refugees fleeing to Germany in 2014—the most in the developed world—causing some tensions.42 More deeply, I cannot rid myself of the sneaking suspicion that perhaps Germany’s much vaunted economic strengths are illusory. The current economic Boomchen (boomlet), with the attendant resurgence of respect for Modell Deutschland and its social market economy, so evident since Merkel came to power, may simply be masking temporarily the inevitable death of the German system: high-value added manufacturing, export dependence, the apprentice system, the vestiges of patient capital, and generous redistribution to keep the social peace—even consensus politics. Indeed, Germany as “sick man of Europe”—the narrative not that long ago—may be coming back even more strongly than ever. The markets to which Germany has exported its precision products are becoming saturated and are starting to manufacture these very products themselves. Services have never been a particular strength, but may be the only way forward. The looming aging and shrinking of the population has barely been addressed, and, although there have not recently been race riots and successful xenophobic parties as in many other European countries, Ger•••

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many is hardly a paragon of multicultural functionality. Merkel’s policies of small steps or superficial measures have done very little to address many of these structural challenges. Indeed, a series of Islamophobic and xenophobic protests in late 2014 and early 2015 have raised concerns—above all the Pegida protests in Dresden and their copycats (Legida in Leipzig, Bärgida in Berlin). These protests gained substantial media attention inside and outside of the country, but it should be mentioned that counter-demonstrators have typically outnumbered the protestors,43 and the German political elite, including Merkel, have forcefully defended minorities, tolerance, and multiculturalism.44 Thus, Merkel’s Märchen—her electoral triumph and dominance of German and European politics—might actually be best deemed not her Herbstmärchen, but her Nachsommermärchen (Indian Summer fairy tale)—temporary, illusory, and certainly not to be generalized. More specific challenges also loom. Who comes after Merkel? She has intimated that this is her last term—that there will be a new chancellor in 2017. The center-right bench is seemingly shallow, especially after Merkel successfully eliminated so many rivals over the past fifteen years—Friedrich Merz, Edmund Stoiber, Roland Koch—to name just a few. Others have fallen thanks to self-inflicted wounds—plagiarism or corruption scandals— Theodor zu Guttenberg, Christian Wulff, and Annette Schavan. Current or former minister-presidents are lackluster—the once promising David McAllister lost a very close election in Lower Saxony in early 2013 and is currently doing time at the European Parliament. Horst Seehofer, despite a degree of rehabilitation in recent years, has some personal flaws45 and is probably too right wing or Bavarian for a national electorate. The heir apparent appears to be current Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen, who, in my opinion, just does not seem to have that leadership “je ne sais quoi” necessary for success.46 On the SPD side, besides the obvious federal ministers—Sigmar Gabriel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier—my money is on Hanelore Kraft, the current minister president of the largest Land, North Rhine-Westphalia, although she will have to face a difficult re-election campaign early in 2017 in light of the fact that her party is down about 5 percent from their 2012 result. Buzz has also surrounded Hamburg’s Olaf Scholz, who was handily reelected in February 2015.47 My dream 2017 campaign would pit Merkel against Kraft as Spitzenkandidaten. There are indeed rumors that Merkel is fully aware of her popularity and her party’s personnel weaknesses and will in all likelihood run again in 2017. The succession issue will thus be pushed into the future, but will have to be addressed at one point. •••

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In any case, from one perspective this was one of the most conservative election results in recent times. Not only did an austerity-preaching, conservative party get re-elected, but many of the old verities of the Federal Republic re-asserted themselves: the dominance of the two elephants, the fatuousness of a new media political universe, and the importance of classical campaign organization and tactics. The polls barely moved in the six months before and in the eighteen months after the election. Thus, it seems fitting to end this introduction with an aphorism from Germany’s most special partner, the French: “plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose”—at least as long as Merkel can continue to ride the momentum from her magical Herbstmärchen. But then, winter always follows autumn. One can only hope that Merkel does not preside over the development of a Wintermärchen à la Heine because Germany has currently become Europe’s indispensable nation.48 E RIC LANGENBACHER is an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government, Georgetown University. Recent publications include the paperback edition of Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Ruth Wittlinger and Bill Niven, 2015) and The German Polity, 10th edition (co-authored with David Conradt, 2013).

Notes 1. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-88963881.html; http://www.spiegel.de/international/ germany/merkel-at-peak-of-her-powers-as-she-wins-third-term-a-923814.html; accessed 10 February 2014. 2. http://www.forbes.com/power-women/; http://www.forbes.com/powerful-people/; accessed 10 February 2014. 3. Sommermärchen here refers to Sönke Wortmann’s film about the 2006 World Cup tournament (Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen) hosted by Germany. The tournament was considered a great success—even though the German team lost to eventual winners, Italy, in a semi-final. Note also that this film’s title is in dialogue with the famous 1844 poem by Heinrich Heine, “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen,” which was quite critical of the Germany of the poet’s time. 4. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-09/germany-posting-record-surplusgives-fodder-to-economy-s-critics; accessed 1 March 2015. 5. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG; http://www.dw.de/ german-economic-growth-flat-in-2013-but-deficit-under-control/a-17362284; accessed 11 February 2014; https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

PROD/PROD0000000000348526/Focus+Germany+%E2%80%93+Outlook+2015% 3A+Recovery+with+risks+.PDF; accessed 24 January 2015. http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article136295092/Schaeuble-kann-schon-die-schwarzeNull-verkuenden.html; accessed 24 January 2015. See U.S. President Barack Obama, State of the Union Speech, 13 February 2013; For an earlier generation’s take see Mortin Kondracke, “The German Challenge to American Conservatives,” The New Republic, 29 September 1979. http://www.welt.de/politik/article122306476/Das-ist-der-Koalitionsvertrag-im-Wortlaut. html; accessed 11 February 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/opinion/24iht-edcohen.html?_r=0; accessed 12 February 2014. http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2013/bundestagswahl-2013die-wahlprogramme-der-parteien-zur-bundestagswahl_aid_1039909.html; accessed 11 February 2014. https://twitter.com/schlandkette; accessed 11 February 2014. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/wahlkampf-riesenplakat-der-cdu-zeigthaende-mit-merkel-raute-a-919905.html; accessed 10 February 2014. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Unemployment_ statistics; http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/europes-record-youthunemployment-the-scariest-graph-in-the-world-just-got-scarier/276423/; http://epp. eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:General_government_ debt,_2011_and_2012_(1)_(general_government_consolidated_gross_debt,_%25_of_ GDP)_YB14.png&filetimestamp=20131028094529; accessed 10 March 2014. http://www.dw.de/berlin-sees-growth-accelerating-hikes-2014-economic-outlook/ a-17178637; http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/ 131213/germany-berlin-tourists-airbnb-economy; accessed 10 March 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2 012/0 6/2 8/us-eurozone-germany-merkelidUSBRE85R0BM20120628; http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/ 06/angela-merkels-mania-austerity-destroying-europe; accessed 10 March 2014. http://harpers.org/archive/2014/02/; accessed 11 February 2014. See George Packer, “The Quiet German: How Angela Merkel Rose to Power,” The New Yorker, 1 December 2014, 63. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/14/green-party-germany-paedophiles80s; accessed 10 March 2014. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/wahlkampf-auf-oeko-pappe-wahlplakate-dergruenen-sind-nicht-wetterfest/8624726.html; accessed 10 March 2014. http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/bundestagswahl/fuenf-parteien-tausende-plakate-keineideen-article1718237.html; accessed 10 March 2014. This was still enough to gain seats because the 3 percent threshold for that election was eliminated shortly before the election. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/ 26/germany-abolish-quota-european-elections; accessed 28 February 2014. http://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/deutschland/vorlaeufiges-endergebnis-scholzverliert-absolute-mehrheit-in-hamburg-a-1018646.html; accessed 17 February 2015. http://www.dw.de/clear-victory-for-merkel-but-uncertain-results/a-17106461; accessed 10 March 2014. http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2013/furcht-vorgrosser-koalition-egon-bahr-sieht-spd-als-volkspartei-bedroht/8929390.html; accessed 10 February 2014. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/muenteferings-aphorismen-stakkato-franze1.147401-3; accessed 10 February 2014. http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/; accessed 23 January 2015. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/rot-rot-gruen-in-thueringen-gefaehrlicheexperimente-13305101.html; accessed 24 January 2015.

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Introduction 28. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundestag-bemuehen-um-transparenzkommt-nur-langsam-voran-a-993469.html; accessed 24 January 2015. 29. http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2014-12/afd-pegida-bernd-lucke; accessed 24 January 2015. 30. Manfred G. Schmidt, “Germany: The Grand Coalition State,” in Political Institutions in Europe, ed. J.M. Colomer, 2nd ed. (London, 2002), 57-93. 31. David P. Conradt, “The Shrinking Elephants: The 2009 Election and the Changing Party System,” German Politics and Society, 29, no. 3 (2010): 25-46. 32. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bouffier-sagt-er-finde-die-gruene-imbesten-sinne-buergerlich-a-936585.html; http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article 120436738/Gruene-wollen-eine-buergerliche-Partei-werden.html; accessed 11 February 2014. 33. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-90334815.html; accessed 11 February 2014. 34. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/nach-dem-ersten-sondierungsgespraech-schwarzgruen-ist-noch-nicht-vom-tisch/8917248.html; accessed 10 March 2014. 35. See David P. Conradt and Eric Langenbacher, The German Polity, 10th ed. (Lanham, 2013), ch. 6. 36. http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/05/29/european-unity-on-the-rocks/; accessed 12 February 2014. 37. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-germany-campaigns-are-justbeginning-for-sept-22-parliamentary-election/2013/08/17/5cd1e93c-05d5-11e3-bfc5406b928603b2_story.html; https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/10/2012-electionspending-will-reach-6.html; accessed 12 February 2014. 38. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-47282143.html; accessed 12 February 2014. 39. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303393804579307722825726640; accessed 12 February 2014. 40. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/world/europe/germany-austeritys-champion-facessome-big-repair-bills.html?_r=0; accessed 10 April 2014. 41. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-to-play-central-but-expensiverole-in-sanctions-against-russia-a-959019.html; http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/ 03/07/us-ukraine-crisis-germany-poll-idUSBREA2616620140307; accessed 10 April 2014. 42. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/straining-to-make-room-for-refugees-as-thewar-in-syria-floods-the-world.html?_r=0; http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe24636868; accessed 24 January 2015. 43. On 12 January 2015, Pegida peaked with 25,000 participants—a counter-demonstration on 10 January had 35,000. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ germany/11341355/Anti-Islam-march-draws-big-crowds-in-Germany.html; accessed 24 January 2015. 44. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/us-germany-islam-idUSKBN0KO17W 20150115; accessed 24 January 2015. 45. I am referring to the “second family” scandal. See http://www.taz.de/!35977/; accessed 12 February 2014. 46. http://www.welt.de/politik/article3713210/Ursula-von-der-Leyen-verhasst-underfolgreich.html; accessed 12 February 2014. 47. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/scholz-oder-gabriel-wer-muss-fuer-die-spdgegen-merkel-ran-a-1018709.html; accessed 16 February 2015. 48. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b753cb42-19b3-11e1-ba5d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3 PmHA5mcM; accessed 24 January 2015.

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Chapter 1 • • •

FOLLOW-UP TO THE GRAND COALITION The German Party System before and after the 2013 Federal Election

Frank Decker

Five, Four or Six-party System? Just as was the case four years ago, the interior architects of the Bundestag had their work cut out for them in the fall of 2013 to accommodate the results of the most recent federal election. The assembly room that used to house the Free Democratic (FDP) faction will now be used by the Left Party, a caucus with about half its size. At the same time, the Christian Democrats (CDU /CSU) will have no one else to the right in the Bundestag’s plenary chamber for the first time since 1949. While five parties had continuously been represented in the Bundestag since 1990,1 that number has now dropped to four. Nevertheless, this total almost increased to six because both the FDP and the recently established Alternative for Germany (AfD) barely missed entering the Bundestag. The failure of both parties to cross the five percent-threshold means that a significant number of votes are not represented in parliament (15.8 percent compared to 6.3 percent after the 2009 federal election). This has created a rift between the parliamentary and electoral party systems with the parties on the left winding up with more than half of the seats in parliament (with 50.7 percent of all seats compared to the CDU /CSU’s 49.3 percent), allowing them to retake the majority that they had lost in 2009 for the first time since 1998. A different trend continued on the electoral stage, though, as parties on the right side of the political spectrum expanded their vote once again. While the combined CDU /CSU and FDP share of the vote stood at 48.4 percent in 2009, the center-right (including the AfD) managed to capture 51 percent this time around. The share of

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the left on the other hand (which includes the Pirate Party2) decreased from 47.6 percent in 2009 to 44.9 percent in 2013. A slightly different picture emerges if we calculate the fragmentation of the party system according to the effective number of parties index.3 Both at the parliamentary (only 3.5 effective parties compared to 4.9 in 2009) and the electoral (4.8 compared to 5.6) level, the concentration has increased. The last result reflects the implosion of support the two catch-all parties sustained four years ago when the CDU /CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) won a combined share of just 56.8 percent of all ballots cast, while the FDP, as the largest of the three minor parties, managed to receive more than half of the vote that the smaller of the two catch-all parties won (14.6 compared to 23.0 percent). For Oskar Niedermayer, this development represented a “model change” from a system of two-party dominance to a pluralist system.4 If we were to use the same typology in evaluating the most recent election, Germany would have reverted back to a system of two-party dominance. Assessing the share of the vote of the two big parties, we can note that the trend towards a more asymmetric relationship that first surfaced at the polls in 2009 has intensified. Thanks to the weakness of the FDP, the CDU /CSU was able to extend its lead over the SPD by a notable margin (from 10.8 to 15.8 percentage points). Back in 2005 and 2002, both parties were still essentially tied, while the SPD was by far the strongest party when it ousted the CDU /CSU-led government in 1998. Some observers felt in the wake of this particular election that the Social Democrats were finally in a position to overcome the structural disadvantages the party had traditionally suffered vis-à-vis their Christian Democratic counterparts for good, a handicap which until 1998 had always relegated the SPD to a second place finish except for the 1972 federal election that was won on the back of Willy Brandt’s personal popularity. But, a mere four years after Gerhard Schröder’s triumph, the party was lucky to escape being sent back to the opposition benches.

Reasons for Merkel’s Victory In order to fully comprehend the reasons behind the CDU /CSU’s sweeping victory and the simultaneous rejection of the SPD and its preferred RedGreen coalition, political factors have to first and foremost be taken into consideration. Without adding any particular emphasis, the following points serve to provide a rough overview. •••

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Overshadowing of Internal Policy Discussions by the Eurozone Crisis The most important policy topic which repeatedly left its mark on German politics throughout the entire legislative period offered opposition parties limited openings to attack the government. On the one hand, both the SPD and Greens backed Angela Merkel’s policies that sought to rescue the Eurozone from the brink of collapse. At the same time, they recognized that any alternative proposals that suggested a dilution or easing of EUimposed austerity measures along the Southern periphery of the Eurozone lacked support in the electorate, ultimately forcing them to drop any plans that could have presented an alternate option to the chancellor’s approach. In the meantime, Merkel made good use of the opportunities offered to her on the European stage, presenting herself as the guardian of Germany’s national interests. “Her strongest asset, a ‘German Europe’, did not even have to be explicitly exploited for political gain by her; it nonetheless remained the underlying theme of these elections from beginning to end.”5 Good State of the Economy Excellent economic data tend to always play into the hands of the government. As a substantial drop in unemployment lowered the fear of job losses among the population over the past few years and rising tax revenues removed needs for further structural reforms to curtail government spending, large parts of the electorate benefited from rising wages and consumer spending. Complaints launched by the opposition parties about distortions on the job market and widening social injustice, therefore, by and large fell on deaf ears. The CDU /CSU was able to magnify that effect by contrasting the country’s success with the negative developments unfolding in other European countries. Positioning of the CDU in the Political Center Merkel’s CDU continued down the path it has been on since 2005 of modernizing itself on sociocultural matters while incorporating leftist positions on policies related to the welfare state. The adoption of the Betreuungsgeld—legislation that provides families who do not send their children to publicly funded childcare institutions with EURO 100 to EURO 150 per child a month, a policy forced upon the CDU by its Bavarian sister party, the CSU—would prove to be the sole setback it suffered in this issue area. At the same time, the Christian Democrats managed to turn the Fukushima nuclear disaster to their domestic advantage by using it as the trigger for an about-face on energy policy which also served to remove a key impediment for future alliances with the Greens. •••

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Separation from the Public Image of the Coalition The rather successful track record of the center-right coalition stands in stark contrast to its image as a government that was in a more or less continuous state of disarray right from the get-go. The public placed the lion’s share of the blame for this on the Free Democrats who suffered a historic collapse at the ballot box and never managed to recover from their initial drop in support throughout the legislative period. While the FDP is largely responsible for its own downfall, Merkel’s ability to shield her own popularity from other embarrassing incidents is rather remarkable. The resignation of two federal presidents (Horst Köhler in 2010 and Christian Wulff in 2012), both of whom had been chosen by the chancellor herself, defense and education ministers who plagiarized their doctoral thesis (Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in 2011 and Annette Schavan in 2013) and the replacement of an environment minister against his own will (Norbert Röttgen in 2012) failed to leave a lasting mark on her favorability ratings. High Popularity Ratings of the Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to become the first head of government to stay atop the list of most popular politicians throughout the entirety of her terms in office. This high degree of popularity is largely owed to her “presidential” style of governing that seeks to incorporate different standpoints— while not being perceived as a poor leadership trait—and her unpretentious personal appearance. The CDU /CSU was therefore well advised to place Merkel at the center of their election campaign just as they had done four years earlier. Mistakes of the Opposition The advantage of the Christian Democrats proved to be the Social Democrats’ Achilles’ heel. While the SPD did not address the wrong issues, it selected a less-than-perfect candidate in Peer Steinbrück. The former finance minister (2005-2009) failed to embody the strong emphasis placed by the party on the country’s socioeconomic shortcomings that some parts of the electorate perceived to be a legacy of the SPD’s time in office (19982009) to begin with. Hastily named as the party’s candidate, Steinbrück’s campaign got off to a disastrous start from which it only began to recover towards the end after the successful television debate. At the same time, the SPD’s leadership was far too dominated by men to successfully compete with the CDU’S female one-two punch of Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen. The Greens failed to contribute to any potential gains either. While they may not have selected the wrong candidates, they •••

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decided to focus on topics such as social justice and taxes (instead of their bread and butter issues of environment policies and climate change) that had already been occupied to a large extent by the SPD and the Left Party. This approach served to also wreck any chances of a CDU /CSU-Green governing coalition. On top of this, the party’s hopes of gaining some momentum in the closing weeks of the campaign were dealt a fatal blow when the Greens were confronted with past sins surrounding their internal pedophilia debate of the 1980s that had never been properly addressed. Although somewhat disputed due to their inaccuracy, a closer look at the movement of voters offers a revealing look.6 The SPD owed its meager gains to the weakness of both the Left Party and Greens, which saw 920,000 of their voters defect to the Social Democrats. This was accompanied by an overall gain of 140,000 votes from the center-right camp thanks to the fact that the Free Democrats lost more voters to the SPD than the Social Democrats did to the CDU /CSU and AfD. The main reason for the SPD’s weak showing can be found in its failure to mobilize nonvoters which is also reflected in the low increase in turnout (from 70.8 to 71.5 percent). Voters who had turned their backs on the SPD in 2009 once again stayed home or moved into the Christian Democratic camp. All in all, the CDU /CSU was able to mobilize three times as many non-voters as the SPD did (1,130,000 compared to 360,000). The subpar ability of the SPD to mobilize voters was not just a reflection of the Social Democrats’ failure to use key themes and the leading candidate to good effect but could also be traced back to the lack of a viable governing prospect. Polls showed that at no point in 2013 did the desired SPD-Green coalition ever come close to a governing majority. As the election neared, the gap between Red-Green and the center-right widened. Both the Social Democrats and the Greens misinterpreted their own successful takeovers in a number of West German state parliaments in which they were able to oust four CDU-FDP governments thanks to a combination of the traditional downturn in popularity in mid-term elections that any federal governing coalition suffers from and the center-left’s ability to keep the Left Party at bay. That such a scenario could not be replicated at the federal level would have been obvious to anyone paying closer attention to how these red-green gains came about.7 By holding onto the unattainable goal of forming a red-green governing coalition, the SPD found itself in the same awkward position that it had already been in four years earlier. Not being able to beat the CDU /CSU, all they could do was to try to position themselves as the strongest possible junior partner in a coalition while hoping the center-right would fail to win an outright majority itself. •••

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Development of the Party System since 2005 The Left Party: A National Political Force or an East German Regional Party? The dim situation in which Red-Green finds itself is a result of the fragmentation of Germany’s political left. A new phase in the development of Germany’s party system was kick-started in 2005 when the Left Party emerged as a viable alternative not only in East Germany, but across the entire country. The transformation of a four-and-a-half into a five party structure was made possible by the secession of left-wing elements from the SPD in West Germany and their subsequent merger with the East German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) into the “Left Party.” The establishment of the western-based Wahlalternative Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG) was rooted in a protest movement opposed to the labor market and welfare state reforms enacted by the red-green federal government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. As such, the party did not actually represent a new cleavage; instead it was founded on the position that their ancestral home had strayed too far from its traditional stance on socioeconomic issues. This was given added emphasis by the decision of Oskar Lafontaine, himself a former chairman of the SPD, to jump ship and join the WASG, a move that proved to be crucial for the party’s success in West Germany. Even after Lafontaine’s departure from national politics, the Left Party did not have to worry about its position as Germany’s fifth party. Its firmly established organizational structure in the east and a newfound salience of questions pertaining to the redistribution of wealth meant it was well-positioned to hold on to its gains from 2009. The simultaneous ability to exploit regional and socioeconomic cleavages promised the party a stable coalition of voters even though its expansion into the west has stripped the party of its purely East German identity. Symptomatic of this change is the fact that the Left Party’s voter composition has shifted towards the underprivileged in the eastern part of the country as well.8 Attempts to establish a party that could be successful at the polls throughout Germany began to hit a number of roadblocks after the 2009 election though.9 While the Left Party was represented in seven of West Germany’s ten state parliaments in 2011, it subsequently failed to make it past the 5 percent threshold in regional elections in Schleswig-Holstein (2012), North Rhine-Westphalia (2012), and Lower Saxony (2013). This run of poor result threatened to push the party back into the role of being a (purely) regional party of the east, a past persona which the Left had tried to cast off after 2005. The causes for this were primarily home-made. Party branches in the west that lacked the necessary professionalism, distrust between new mem•••

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bers from the west and old members from the east, as well as a slew of heated arguments within the party’s leadership cadre provided the public with the picture of a party that was first and foremost concerned with itself.10 All of this was exacerbated by conditions in the political environment that were less than favorable. The significant overlap of the domestic political agenda due to the Eurozone crisis complicated the party’s attempts of offering an alternative position. Notable (and potentially resonating) opposition to the handling of the crisis by the government—that both the SPD and Greens have also largely backed—is primarily emanating from the “right,” sometimes even from within the government camp. This is also reflected in the movement of voters who decided to ditch the postcommunists: while (former) Left Party supporters in the west primarily migrated (back) to the SPD, large numbers of their counterparts in the east defected over to the AfD which scored its best results in the former German Democratic Republic. That losses remained limited can by and large be attributed to the surprisingly good results in West Germany. Along with West Berlin, the states of the “old” federal republic contributed more than half (52.6 percent) of all votes to the Left Party’s total. The downward trend seen in state elections has thus been halted, the reasons for which can be traced back to the weak showing of the SPD and Greens and an improvement in the party’s public image after the leadership pair of Klaus Ernst and Gesine Lötzsch, who both appeared to be incapable of handling the job of leading a national party, were replaced with Bernd Riexinger and Katja Kipping in June 2012. At the same time the Left Party was able to call on two capable political veterans in Gregor Gysi and Sahra Wagenknecht to skillfully defend the party’s positions in the public sphere. The Hessian branch of the party was able to use this national upward trend to its advantage as it managed to re-enter the state parliament in elections that took place on the same day as the federal election. As the largest opposition party in the Bundestag (just ahead of the Greens), the Left Party may be quite well positioned to maintain and build on its recent improvements if the Social Democrats are once again assigned the lion’s share of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with the Grand Coalition. The Pirate Party: The Short-lived Spring of a Protest Party The Pirate Party proved to be the most unexpected shooting star of the recent legislative period—at least for a short while.11 Starting with the Berlin state elections in September of 2011, this movement, which did not appear on Germany’s political stage until 2006, managed to enter state •••

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parliaments in four successive elections. After showings in the 2009 federal election and subsequent state elections in which the party failed to exceed its core support levels of around two percent, most observers were initially inclined to dismiss their remarkable Berlin results as a mere outlier attributable to a favorable environment. Ensuing electoral achievements in the Saarland, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein, however, ultimately forced experts to reconsider their assessment. As electoral analyses showed, the “Pirates” did not just appeal to a selected group of internet and computer aficionados, who considered the positions of the established parties on these matters to be horribly antiquated, but also attracted disenchanted citizens and protest voters who had grown weary of their regular elected representatives. Their rise through the polls which culminated in double-digit figures after their success in state elections in early 2012 was to be short-lived though. As a protest party, the Pirates had apparently profited from the electorate’s increasing uncertainty that had taken a hold thanks to the Eurozone crisis. While the lack of expectations on the part of voters to receive any sort of answers from the party on matters unrelated to internet policies initially served as an advantage, the Pirates’ paucity of concrete proposals quickly turned into an albatross around its neck. Inexperienced activists that had joined forces to fight for the abstract concepts of increased political participation and transparency struggled to develop a common political platform. On top of that, they tripped up over contradictory positions. Activists had to learn that political leadership within a party and parliamentary caucus could simply not work without areas that were shielded from undue transparency. The goal of complete transparency was undermined by the anonymization and pseudonymization inherent to the internet. Moreover, the willingness of Pirate Party supporters to take an active role in politics did not exceed that of other parties’ activists. While most parts of the media had initially been unabashedly supportive of the new movement, the amateurish behavior of the party’s leadership not only exacerbated internal conflicts but also caused many journalists to adopt a much more critical position. Nowhere did the Pirate Party’s failure become more apparent than in their inability to exploit the NSA spying scandal for political gain. The scandal that turned German politics upside-down after former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 the extent to which American intelligence services had spied on foreign countries should have provided the newcomers with the perfect tool to galvanize voters and supporters a mere six months ahead of the federal election. In the end—just as •••

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was the case with other data protection and internet related policy matters—the scandal played at best a secondary role in the campaign. Putting an End to the Weakness of Right-wing Populism in the Party System? The Alternative for Germany Why right-wing populist or far-right extremist parties have failed to grab a foothold across the country remains somewhat of a mystery.12 Fragmentation tendencies in the conservative and rightist camp culminated in a “third wave” of right-wing extremism in the 1980s, which carried the Republikaner (founded by a group of CSU defectors) into three state parliaments, the German People’s Union (DVU; founded in 1987 by the publisher Gerhard Frey who died in 2013) in nine, and the National Democratic Party (NPD) on four separate occasions. The latter was founded in 1964, but failed to make any significant inroads after initial successes at the ballot box in the 1960s up until it entered the Saxon state parliament in 2004, a consequence of having spent years of grooming Saxony into a regional stronghold. Today’s decidedly more radicalized NPD has in the meantime taken on the role of leaders in the far-right camp at the expense of the once promising Republikaner who have lost any relevance even within the small extremist movement. Extremists on the far-right are nonetheless still waiting for a breakthrough at the national level which has shown no signs of materializing—the NPD’s 2013 federal election results actually decreased by 0.2 percentage points compared to four years earlier, coming in at a mere 1.3 percent.13 A specific reason for this weakness can be found in the aforementioned extremism of the NPD, which many voters find off-putting and prevents the party from developing a populist strategy that appeals to a wider segment of the electorate. Other organizations that have attempted to take a more moderate line have nonetheless been just as unsuccessful throughout the history of the Federal Republic. Success has evaded the far-right both when attempts were made to nudge an existing party in a more right-wing populist direction, an accusation levied against the late FDP-politician Jürgen W. Möllemann, or when newly established right-wing populist outfits attempted to emulate initial regional gains at the ballot box on a national scale, as was the case with Hamburg’s Statt Party, the Association of Free Citizens (Bund Freier Bürger) or the Schill Party (also in Hamburg).14 In 2013, a new movement emerged in an attempt to finally put an end to right-wing populism’s poor electoral track record in the Federal Republic: the Alternative for Germany. The party, founded in April 2013 and led by Hamburg University economics professor Bernd Lucke, barely missed •••

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entering the Bundestag by winning 4.7 percent of the vote. In the state elections in Hesse, it managed to receive a respectable 4 percent as well. Whether the party can build on these showings and take root in Germany’s party system depends largely on two factors: the resonance of its central issue of the EURO among the public and its ability to contend with an environment that has in the past made it difficult for right-wing populist parties to emerge and sustain initial gains in Germany’s political system. The AfD has been classified as a “single issue” party for good reasons. Along with the dissolution of the monetary union it does voice a number of other demands that can be expanded upon to create a more comprehensive platform and are in line with the political programs used to great success by right-wing populist parties in other European countries. The introduction of elements of direct democracy and changes in immigration laws are a part of this. Nevertheless, such positions are merely mentioned as overarching goals without disclosing specific means and ways of accomplishing them. What these positions lack in detail is more than made up for when the party turns to its primary goal of an “orderly dissolution” of the Eurozone. The EURO is supposed to be replaced by the continent’s former national currencies or broken up into a number of smaller monetary unions (a northern and southern EURO). In order to achieve this, the party suggests the initial introduction of parallel currencies alongside the EURO in southern European countries whose mandatory share of non-cash transactions is to be set at 50 percent, rising gradually thereafter. As their line of argument goes, a return to national currencies would bring an end to the imbalances in competitiveness that have made it impossible for the monetary union to work properly. Such a move would also prevent the wider European Union from falling apart under the strains placed on it by the common currency. That these proposals have taken hold and possess a degree of support among relevant segments of the wider public can be gauged by studying the letters to the editor sections in a number of broadsheet newspapers. A comparison with the Sarrazin debate three years ago, which—on the surface—appeared to represent a similar phenomenon offers some revealing insights. Contrary to today’s debate surrounding the EURO and its future, Thilo Sarrazin’s reckoning with Germany’s immigration policies and criticisms of various groups with migration backgrounds15 evaporated in a peculiarly quick manner and failed to leave a lasting mark on party politics. Why was this the case? A possible answer may be found in the different ideological foundations on which these debates were based. Criticism of multiculturalism, even though it was in this case articulated by a former •••

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politician, is mainly to be found in conservative and right-wing circles. The fact that some voters on the left agree with such sentiments is not a contradiction—instead it goes hand-in-hand with the cultural traditionalism of the working class that American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset already diagnosed fifty years ago. Support for dissolution of the monetary union on the other hand, is not necessarily limited to the conservative or far-right fringes. Both Social Democratic thinkers 16 and, thanks to comments by Oskar Lafontaine, some within the Left Party, share an affinity for such positions. It is quite remarkable, then, that virtually all members of the AfD’s leadership subscribe to liberal-conservative economic principles. A look at the party’s rank and file, however, reveals a broader, more encompassing base, transcending all parties and classes. This was reflected by the AfD’s ability to capture almost as many votes from the left camp (SPD and Left Party) as they did from the center-right camp (CDU /CSU and FDP; 520,000 compared to 720,000) in the federal election. Only the Greens, with a mere 90,000 defectors, appeared to be immune to the Eurosceptic mood. Some doubts about the ability to exploit the EURO for political gain do remain. The common currency is, after all (if sometimes tacitly) appreciated among the wider public. The same goes for companies that are able to draw up more reliable long-term plans due to the absence of currency rate fluctuations. Concerns are primarily rooted in fears relating to the stability of the currency and the specter of Germany eventually having to take on the debts of other Eurozone member states. High levels of public support for the handling of the crisis by the government in general and Angela Merkel in particular indicate that voters nonetheless feel adequately represented by the political class. Of course, the government is loath to openly admit that Germany already is a de facto member of a liability union thanks to the European Central Bank’s decision to purchase peripheral Eurozone government bonds. Fearing that it was going to be perceived as striving to take additional steps towards the mutualization of government debt (for example through the introduction of Eurobonds), the red-green opposition chose to remain largely quiet on the subject as well. What remains to be seen is whether the AfD will be able to take advantage of the openings presented to it. As other right-wing populist parties have had to find out the hard way before, the biggest obstacle the party will face is the stigmatization placed upon political movements in Germany that are deemed to be too far to the right, a factor that also impedes the AfD’s chances of presenting its positions to a wider audience through mainstream media outlets that shape public opinion. Indeed, as SPD

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soon as it appeared on the political stage, the party was subjected to accusations of championing right-wing populist sentiments despite of its predominantly liberal-conservative profile. While it has not yet been able to attract any prominent defectors from the CDU or FDP, some within the Christian Democratic camp worry that the Alternative may represent an appealing new home for conservative voters who are less than satisfied with Merkel’s make-over of the CDU that has pushed the party in a more modern direction on a variety of topics—ranging from educational reforms, to the decision to scrap nuclear reactors, and the introduction of same-sex marriage, as well as female quotas in the workplace. Even though these matters play at best a secondary role in the AfD’s current political platform, they may be in the backs of voters’ minds. Instead, threats primarily originate from within. Dealing with the key question of how to address unwanted support from the far-right has in the past sunk the hopes and prospects of other right-wing populist and conservative forces in their attempts to establish themselves on the political stage. Moderate movements on the right are frequently used by such far-right activists and supporters as a springboard into politics that allows them to evade the stigmatizing label of right-wing extremism or populism. Efforts to open the AfD’s platform to more populist ideas are already surfacing in certain state branches, a development that has forced some within the party to distance themselves from such trends. Party leaders have attempted to stop these drifts to the right in their tracks through a centralized style of governing the party, an effort made difficult, however, due to the stringent limits German party laws place on the power wielded by party bosses and the backlash such actions generate among the activist base. It is, therefore, hardly a given that the AfD will manage to establish party structures in an organized manner without its public image and the necessary projection of internal unity to the wider public suffering in the process. Nevertheless, the risk of endangering the party’s showing at the federal polls and the accompanying Hessian state elections through a poor result in the Bavarian elections (that took a place a week earlier) was avoided by the party’s decision to abstain from running in Bavaria after long and heated internal discussions. The electoral calendar also indicates that political competitors will have to get accustomed to further strong displays at the ballot box by the AfD. Its entry into the European Parliament in May of 2014 appeared a virtual certainty. For starters, it will not have to contend with any electoral threshold, while European elections at the same time also offer the perfect stage for voicing anti-EU sentiments. In •••

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the following autumn, the AfD also profited from the higher propensity of East Germans (compared to their West German counterparts) for using elections as protest votes with state elections set to take place in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia. The Liberals’ Downfall It is a supreme irony that both the Christian and Free Democrats would have gained a comfortable majority had both parties not lost their nerve in the final week of campaigning. The disastrous liberal showing at the Bavarian polls shocked the FDP into hastily cobbling together a “loan vote” campaign that provoked a similarly tenacious response from the Christian Democrats. The CDU /CSU was determined not to repeat its mistake of agreeing to a similar campaign ahead of the 2013 state elections in Lower Saxony in which the FDP’s ability to siphon second votes off the CDU left the latter in an unnecessarily weak position after the election. Merkel’s assumption that the Free Democrats possessed the strength to re-enter parliament in their own right proved to be a costly error of judgment. The drama that unfolded during the last week of campaigning epitomized the way in which the Free Democrats had been treated by their larger Christian Democratic coalition partners throughout the legislative period. Tax cuts that had been front and center of the FDP’s 2009 manifesto and could have been passed before a regional CDU-FDP coalition was ousted in state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia were already shelved at the behest of the CDU /CSU during coalition negotiations,17 paving the way for a steady liberal decline. From a strategic point of view, this decision was anything but wise unless the Christian Democrats intended to switch coalition partners early on, with no actual evidence pointing in that direction though. This makes the CDU /CSU’s lack of interest in the fate of their junior coalition partner all the more remarkable. The underlying reasons for the FDP’s demise reach much further back than 2009 when the party—with 14.6 percent of the vote—achieved a historic high in federal elections. Attempts to characterize Guido Westerwelle, the party leader at that time, as a good opposition, yet poor government politician fell short of accurately grasping the situation even back then. Such a distinction fails to recognize that the party’s excessive focus on free-market liberalism and its decision to form a coalition only with the CDU /CSU were to a large extent driven by its then-leader. Under the auspices of Westerwelle, the FDP headed straight into the populism trap by stubbornly repeating its mantra of a “simpler, more just and lower tax system.” The decision to claim the more prestigious Foreign Office in •••

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place of the Finance Ministry proved to be a crucial mistake as well. Westerwelle, born to deal with domestic matters, failed to meet the lofty standards set by his famous FDP-predecessors in the job, Walter Scheel (1969-1974) and Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1974-1992). In the meantime, the CDU was able to boost its reputation among voters by shaping the monetary union’s debt crisis management through the Finance Ministry. Any input by the Free Democrats on judicial or sociocultural policy matters was nowhere to be found either. Its exodus from parliament will present the party and its new chairman Christian Lindner with a momentous challenge. As a party without (federal) parliamentary representation it will have to contend with a downturn in media presence. To what extent it is going to be able to compensate for this through its work at the state (where it is still represented in nine parliaments and a member of one governing coalition) and sub-state levels remains to be seen. Threats also emanate from an altered political environment, which has given rise to new actors and competitors. The AfD’s arrival on the political stage means the FDP has now lost its position as the sole party of the middle class next to the CDU /CSU. Scavenging among the FDP’s traditional electorate by emphasizing its own free-market positions will be contemplated by the AfD. In combination with nationalist, social conservative, and Eurosceptic18 positions it would then be able to emulate the “formula for success” that has become a trademark of many newly established right-wing populist parties across Europe. Eurosceptic positions can be considered widespread among the FDP’s rank and file as well, a conclusion supported by the results of an internal referendum staged in December 2011 among party members in which 44 percent defied the their own leadership by rejecting the establishment of a permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

The Expected Sequel to the Grand Coalition A follow-up to the Grand Coalition that governed the country between 2005 and 2009 appeared more likely at the onset of the campaign than it did towards its end. That the center-right coalition would once again come close to reaching a majority of their own appeared rather improbable throughout most of the year.19 For a short while on the night of the election, even an outright Christian Democratic majority appeared within reach, a less than pleasant prospect for the chancellor if the majority had rested on one or two seats. The eventual outcome proved to be a “pyrrhic •••

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victory” all the same. The Christian Democratic gained by far the most votes, yet a return to government rested on forming a coalition with a partner from the opposite camp. Due to a lukewarm response from the SPD and Greens, the prospect of a minority government or even fresh elections was floated—more so by outside actors than members of the political class though. Both parties knew that the formation of a stable majority government was going to be the only viable solution; one of them therefore had to be ready to enter a coalition with Merkel’s CDU/CSU. Underlying factors that had presented a “black-red” coalition (instead of a black-green one) as the likelier one of the two alternatives before the election were to be validated after the polls as well. During exploratory talks, some parts of the CDU and the conservative media voiced sympathies for a CDU /CSU-Green coalition. Such sentiments were in all likelihood primarily driven by the hope and interest of the Christian Democrats in receiving a more lightweight coalition partner in the Greens who had been badly bruised by their poor results. Most commentators rightfully placed the blame for the failure of the CDU /CSU’s talks with the Greens on the latter, which lacked the courage to take the plunge at the right moment and try out a coalition with the Christian Democrats. From a Green point of view there were, admittedly, good reasons for this course of action. Putting their entire election manifesto up for debate in possible coalition negotiations, even if its markedly left lean bore some of the responsibility for the party’s poor results, was simply not a feasible option. This also applied to its leadership personnel. Whether a stronger Green showing at the polls would have made a “black-green” coalition more likely is pure conjecture. It most certainly would have made it easier for the party’s leadership to sell the idea to its activist base. On the other hand, the Christian Democrats would have found it harder to make the case. It would have had to make more concessions to a stronger, more emboldened Green party, while also consenting to Jürgen Trittin receiving a ministerial post. The prospect of a Grand Coalition received a more favorable response from the SPD’s leadership than it did among many of the party’s lower ranking officials and its activist base. There are three reasons for this. First, the perks of being in government tend to be limited to the personnel at the top. Second, a possible black-green coalition elicited the fear of potentially losing the Greens as a strategic partner over the mid and long term among the upper echelons of the party; a fear that outweighed any hopes of short-term electoral success as an opposition party. Third, Social Democratic leaders recognized better than the party members that the SPD’s •••

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drubbing at the ballot box in 2009 was not caused by its role within the Grand Coalition but rather by its state outside the government.20 Empirical analyses of previous grand coalitions at both the state and federal levels show that they do not just work in favor of the senior coalition partner. Just as the SPD was able to move up from its role as junior coalition partner in the first federal grand coalition into the senior position in a small (minimum-winning) two-party coalition with the Free Democrats in 1969, it managed to replicate similar gains at the state level in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (1998) and Berlin (2001), knocking the CDU off its position as the leading party in government—on both occasions thanks to assistance from the PDS. Only electoral environments in which the SPD trailed the CDU by substantial margins to begin with—as was the case in Baden-Württemberg (1996), Thuringia (1999), or Saxony (2009)— led to it having to take a seat on the opposition benches after the elections. As surveys showed, the SPD’s rank-and-file was not necessarily opposed to another grand coalition with support for it standing at around twothirds, similar to levels seen among CDU /CSU voters. Such findings stood in contrast to the picture painted by some SPD politicians of a base largely opposed to another such coalitional agreement. They were confirmed by the fact that 76 percent of the SPD members approved the coalition treaty in a party referendum (with a surprisingly high participation rate of 78 percent). That reservations tended to emanate from SPD state branches that are in government (either as senior or junior partners) did not just stem from a fear of losing future municipal or state elections. Instead, it reflected a rift between the state and federal sections in what both sides considered to be in their own best interest. A federal government without the SPD would have been the more comfortable option for regional Social Democrats. In such a scenario SPD-led states—that constitute a majority in Germany’s second chamber—could have formed a united front in the Bundesrat against a CDU-led federal government, allowing them to put pressure on the administration to improve the financial conditions of the states. With the SPD being a part of the government, regional leaders led by North Rhine-Westphalian state premier Hannelore Kraft have to come to an agreement with the federal party and its ministers whose jobs by their very definition forces them to place a greater emphasis on the interests of the federal administration. Shifting the focus away from a party perspective to the question of what is in the best interest of the nation makes the case for another grand coalition appear more solid especially if the country’s federal composition is kept in mind. The introduction of the debt brake, the end of the solidarity •••

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pact in 2019, and on-going efforts by the affluent states of the south to revise equalization payments among the states necessitate basic changes in how financial relations between the different levels of government are handled. While the coalition fails currently to possess a majority of its own in the Bundesrat, it would be reached if two additional states formed grand coalitions of their own. (By comparison, a CDU/CSU-Green coalition could only have counted on a mere eleven votes from CSU-governed Bavaria and the new black-green government in Hesse.) German policy on Europe would most likely also profit from a formalization of the hitherto informal cooperation between the two big parties in this policy arena, taken the various challenges that continue to lurk on the European horizon. The damage sustained by democracy at the hands of a grand coalition is nonetheless clearly evident. The combined Christian and Social Democratic camps control four-fifths of all seats in parliament. Thanks to its meager size, the two remaining opposition parties lack the tools to hold the government accountable through inquiry commissions or calls for judicial review. Parliamentary impotence in scrutinizing the constitutionality of laws in particular may force the federal president to take on a more active role within the governmental framework similar to the augmentation of his position during the previous Grand Coalition.21 Such a development is far from desirable though. A utilization of minority rights that is solely dependent on the goodwill of the majority is not feasible either. The Grand Coalition should therefore be willing to adjust the quorums through formally amending the constitution.22

2017 and Beyond: Forecasting the Future Party and Coalition Landscape From a normative perspective, grand coalitions are not desirable. They may make sense in certain political circumstances but should primarily remain the exception to the rule in a parliamentary democracy and serve as a short-term solution until the regular order of a governing coalition faced with a sizable and robust opposition (that represents a viable alternative) is restored once again. The fact that another Grand Coalition is poised to retake the reins of power after a mere four year interlude of a (small) Christian Democratic-Free Democratic coalition highlights that the conditions for such a return to the natural political order are not yet in place. A majority of commentators and scholars already arrived at the conclusion in 2005 that the dualist era between the center-right and center-left catch-all •••

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parties—which had provided the underlying foundations for the classic twoparty coalition model in German politics—had come to its definitive end. Two possible future paths—one negative and one positive—were subsequently outlined. Germany would either follow the Austrian path and see a perpetuation of a grand coalition or the Scandinavian model of three-party coalitions that transcended traditional political divisions would emerge. Both scenarios, however, have failed to materialize. The outcome of the 2009 federal election demonstrated that small two-party coalitions were still capable of obtaining a majority, albeit this ability was limited to the center-right. At the state level, the coalition landscape has remained fragmented along the dividing lines between western and eastern Germany, the primary reason for which can be found in the varying degrees of influence the Left Party wields in both parts of the country. Its strength in the former German Demcratic Republic has a twofold effect. First, it makes it far more difficult for a small two-party coalition to gain a majority of its own. What is more, the circumstances only allow for a red-red coalition to be formed if the SPD is able to attain the position of senior partner and with it occupy the post of state premier. This has failed to be the case both in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, a reason why these states (along with Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin) are today governed by blackred23 coalitions. In the “old” federal republic the Left Party lacks the strength to prevent the formation of two-party center-right or center-left coalitions on a permanent basis. This has removed the necessity to establish grand coalitions or other two- or three-party coalitions that cross traditional party cleavages. Wherever those unusual alliances did materialize—a “traffic light coalition” between the SPD, Greens, and FDP in Brandenburg in 1990 and Bremen in 1991, the CDU-Green government in Hamburg in 2008 and a coalition between the CDU, Greens, and Free Democrats in the Saarland in 2009—they always fell apart before the end of the legislative term. Electoral outcomes similar to what we have seen at the federal level in which a red-green coalition lacks the necessary seats to govern without the support of the Left Party, have thus far only transpired in Hesse (2008 and 2013) and North Rhine-Westphalia (2010). After the debacle in Hesse, the SPD made the decision to revise its electoral strategy in 2008, announcing that it was from now on ready to use this option as a path to power in the states.24 At the federal level, Social Democrats nonetheless once again categorically ruled out any sort of cooperation with the Left Party in 2013. More than anything else, the most recent federal election signaled an end to the dual segmentation of Germany’s coalition landscape (a phe•••

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nomenon commonly referred to as Ausschließeritis25) that had served as a defining feature of the national five-party system that emerged after the 2005 federal election. On the one hand, leading SPD politicians were quick to point out on the night of the 2013 election that from now on, future campaigns were to be conducted without formally ruling out a coalition with the Left Party. This shift has raised the pressure on the postcommunists to alter some of their policy positions (in particular on foreign and European matters) to clear the path for a possible future alliance. The removal of any stumbling blocks to a leftist coalition would signal the return of Germany’s party system to a state of bipolarity. Two clearly distinct camps, divided along clear coalition lines and almost equal in strength, could once again face-off in a fight for parliamentary majorities. Such an arrangement would be reminiscent of the political landscape of the 1980s with the exception of the left camp being made up of three instead of two members.26 At the same time though, the chances for a centrist CDU-Green coalition that transcends traditional party cleavages have also increased after both parties established closer ties during exploratory negotiations that were conducted at the federal level while talks in Hesse led to the formation of the nation’s very first “black-green” state government in a German non-city state. A thaw in CDU-Green relations is a particularly frightening prospect for the Social Democrats. If the SPD wishes to once again send its candidate to the chancellery and become the senior partner in a governing coalition it will need the Greens within its coalition fold. The Greens on the other hand are well-advised to reject being shackled to the left camp. Remaining open to the possibility of forming a future coalition with the Christian Democrats could provide the party with the role of kingmaker that the Free Democrats enjoyed in the past. Why should it relinquish such an advantage? Keeping all options on the table has usually never hurt the party at the ballot box. Even the Greens’ more left leaning activists and rank and file supporters can be prodded into giving their stamp of approval to a more middle-class oriented agenda provided a well-prepared and convincing case is drawn up by the party’s leadership. The frosty reaction the Greens’ 2013 manifesto generated among their own electorate could also serve as an impetus to position the party’s programmatic platform closer to the ideological center. As to what sort of future coalition arrangements and preferences the Free Democrats will pursue remains an open question. The less than amicable partnership with their Christian Democratic counterparts during their most recent stint in government which culminated in the CDU /CSU’s counter•••

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offensive against the FDP’s open attempts to siphon off second votes from their center-right partner during the last week of campaigning ahead of the election ought to provide the liberals with plenty of reasons to drop their one-sided coalition predilections and become more open to an alliance with the SPD and Greens. Whether the FDP, as a badly bruised party with no seats in the Bundestag, has the wherewithal to carry out a substantial ideological and programmatic course correction (away from its penchant for pure economic liberalism) remains doubtful. If anything, the Grand Coalition will in all likelihood present the liberals with ample opportunities to sharpen their profile by espousing principled liberal economic positions (particularly with the AfD as a new competitor to their right). Most indicators therefore seem to suggest that the Free Democrats may very well move even further away from the SPD. On their part, the Social Democrats would thus be ill-advised to base their plans of retaking the chancellery solely on an alliance with the liberals instead of the Left Party.27 Assuming that the five-party system is here to stay and that the Free Democrats will be better placed than the AfD to position and (re-)assert themselves as the center-right’s second power, we can conclude that, looking ahead to the 2017 election, a reboot of the CDU-FDP coalition is not out of the question as one of the alternatives to the Grand Coalition, a coalition of the left, and a black-green alliance. It is of course almost impossible to accurately predict which option is the most likely one, considering that Germany has just been to the polls. One electoral forecast can be made with a fair degree of certainty though: contrary to Austria, the Grand Coalition will remain an exception to the rule, especially in light of the new coalition options that have emerged on the political horizon. FRANK DECKER is professor in the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in Germany. His main research interests focus on problems of institutional reforms in Western democracies, party systems and right-wing populism. Recent publications include Wenn die Populisten kommen (Wiesbaden, 2013); Demokratie ohne Wähler?, co-written with Marcel Lewandowsky and Marcel Solar (Bonn, 2013); Handbuch der deutschen Parteien, 2nd ed., co-edited with Viola Neu (Wiesbaden, 2013); and Die deutsche Koalitionsdemokratie vor der Bundestagswahl 2013, co-edited with Eckhard Jesse (Baden-Baden, 2013).

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Notes 1. I would like to thank Philipp Adorf for his assistance. CDU and CSU are considered to be a single party in this tally. The PDS was represented by just two MPs between 2002 and 2005 after it failed to clear the 5 percent threshold and gain the minimum number of direct district seats (three) required to enter parliament as a group in the 2002 federal election. 2. Both in 2009 (2.0 percent) as well as 2013 (2.2 percent), the Pirate Party managed to reach the necessary shares to be considered a “relevant” party. Its votes are therefore included in the total pool. 3. Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, “’Effective Number’ of Parties. A Measure with Application to West Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 12, no. 1 (1979): 3-27. The index is calculated by squaring the percentage of the vote of all relevant parties, adding up the totals and then inverting the result. 4. Oskar Niedermayer, “Die Entwicklung des bundesdeutschen Parteiensystems,” in Handbuch der deutschen Parteien, 2nd ed., ed. Frank Decker and Viola Neu (Wiesbaden, 2013), 111-132. 5. Thomas Meyer, “SPD—eine neue Strategie tut not,”Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte 60, no. 10 (2013): 11. 6. This discussion is based on numbers from Infratest dimap. 7. A number of favorable factors (Fukushima, the “Stuttgart 21” construction project, and an unpopular CDU state premier) all coincided in Baden-Württemberg in 2011. In North Rhine-Westphalia (2012), the success came about after a hung parliament tolerated a red-green minority government for two years. In Schleswig-Holstein (2012), the centerleft coalition required the inclusion of the regional Südschleswigscher Wählerverband while in Lower Saxony (2013) Red-Green only won by a few hundred votes. 8. See Oskar Niedermayer, “Die Wählerschaft der Linkspartei.PDS 2005: Sozialstruktureller Wandel bei gleichbleibender politischer Positionierung,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 37, no. 3 (2006): 523-538. 9. See Frank Decker, “Das Verhältnis der SPD gegenüber der LINKEN—Die offene Zukunft,” in Extremismus in Deutschland, ed. Gerhard Hirscher and Eckhard Jesse (Baden-Baden, 2013), 549-563. 10. See Viola Neu, “Der gestoppte Aufstieg? Perspektiven der Linken,” in “Superwahljahr” 2011 und die Folgen, ed. Eckhard Jesse and Roland Sturm (Baden-Baden, 2012), 133-151. 11. See Christoph Bieber and Claus Leggewie, eds., Unter Piraten. Erkundungen in einer neuen politischen Arena (Bielefeld, 2012); Alexander Hensel, Stephan Klecha, and Franz Walter, Meuterei auf der Deutschland. Ziele und Chancen der Piratenpartei (Berlin, 2012); and Oskar Niedermayer, ed., Die Piratenpartei (Wiesbaden, 2013). 12. See Frank Decker, “The Failure of Right-Wing Populism in Germany,” in The Changing Faces of Populism. Systemic Challengers in Europe and the U.S., ed. Hedwig Giusto, David Kitching, and Stefano Rizzo (Brussels/Rome, 2013), 87-106. 13. See Marc Brandstetter, Die NPD unter Udo Voigt. Organisation-Ideologie-Strategie (BadenBaden, 2013). 14. See Frank Decker, Der neue Rechtspopulismus, 2nd ed. (Opladen, 2004), 147-160. 15. See Thilo Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab. Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (Berlin, 2010). 16. See Fritz W. Scharpf, “Rettet Europa vor dem Euro,” Berliner Republik 14, no. 2 (2012): 52-61; Wolfgang Streeck, Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus (Berlin, 2013). 17. See Frank Decker, Wenn die Populisten kommen. Beiträge zum Zustand der Demokratie und des Parteiensystems (Wiesbaden, 2013), 105-120. 18. Regarding Euroscepticism see Florian Hartleb, “A Thorn in the Side of European Elites: The New Euroscepticism,” Centre for European Studies (Brussels, 2011).

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Follow-up to the Grand Coalition 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

See Frank Decker and Eckhard Jesse, “Koalitionslandschaft im Wandel? Eine Einführung,” in Die deutsche Koalitionsdemokratie vor der Bundestagswahl 2013, ed. Frank Decker and Eckhard Jesse, (Baden-Baden, 2013), 22-26. Forecasts included in the text were made about half a year ahead of the election. Between 2005 and 2009 alone, the SPD went through four (!) chairmen. The Ypsilantitrain wreck after the Hessian state elections in January of 2008 stayed in the headlines for almost a year, eventually costing the then-chairman Kurt Beck his job. He left his leadership post in front of the television cameras in September of 2008 after Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Franz Müntefering sidelined him during the process of choosing the party’s candidate for the chancellery. See Frank Decker, Regieren im “Parteienbundesstaat”. Zur Architektur der deutschen Politik (Wiesbaden, 2011), 334-335. The most obvious solution would be to lower the quorum to 20 percent. It could be left at 25 percent as well, but amended to accept calls for judicial review and parliamentary inquiries if at least two parties support them. Taking into account possible governmental constellations in a multiparty system, the latter proposal appears to be more expedient one. Using the “grand coalition” moniker to refer to these partnerships would be wrong, seeing as the two parties in government are not identical to the two largest parties. Such a path had already been cleared in East Germany in 1994 when a red-green minority government took over in Saxony-Anhalt under the “Magdeburg Model,” in which the then PDS tolerated the red-green minority cabinet. This was subsequently followed up by the first formal red-red coalition in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in 1998. In the western part of the country, the Social Democrats initially rejected categorically any sort of cooperation with the Left Party. Contrary to their pre-election promises, the SPD state branch in Hesse came to an agreement with the Left Party after the 2008 state elections that would have opened the door for a red-green minority government tolerated by the Left Party, an alliance that failed to materialize though thanks to a mutiny among some Social Democratic state MPs who refused to go along with the agreement. Ever since, coalitions or arrangements to ensure the support of minority governments are no longer out of the question in western Germany either. The SPD first made use of this newly established option in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2010. Even though the redgreen minority government that was tolerated by the Left Party failed to make it past its two-year anniversary, it served to set the stage for a red-green parliamentary majority in the state. Negotiations between the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party after the 2013 state elections in Hesse ultimately failed, however, due to diverging views on financial and economic policy matters that could simply not be bridged. This can roughly be translated as “rule-out-itis” with the suffix –itis evoking the connotation of an illness that has spread throughout the German political system. The term was coined by Tarek Al-Wazir, chairman of the Hessian Greens, who is now himself trying to overcome this phenomenon with a recently established CDU-Green coalition in his home state. See Tim Spier, “Realisierbare Koalitionsoption im Zeithorizont 2013/2017? Perspektiven von Rot-Rot-Grün,” in Decker and Jesse (see note 19), 369-388. With regards to the risks campaigning as a unified left camp poses, see: Ralf Tils, “Vor der maximalen strategischen Herausforderung,” Berliner Republik 14, no. 5 (2013): 29-31. For a more detailed assessment regarding this question see: Frank Decker and Eckhard Jesse, “’Koalitionspolitik’ vor und nach der Bundestagswahl 2013,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 63, no. 48-49 (2013): 52-54.

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Chapter 2 • • •

CHANCELLOR HEGEMONY Party Politics and the Bundestag Party System after the 2013 Federal Election

Charles Lees

Introduction The triumph of the right-of-center Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister-party the Christian Social Union (CSU) in the eighteenth Bundestag election of 22 September 2013 and the subsequent return for a third term in office of CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel was to all intents and purposes a foregone conclusion long before polling day.1 Germany’s impressive economic performance in the years leading up to the election, as well as the political acumen of Merkel and the singular incompetence of her main opponents, the left-of-center Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), had led to a series of impressive opinion poll leads for Merkel and her party. There were no game changing gaffes or scandals during the campaign and the sense of inevitability around a Merkel victory led many observers to complain about the so-called “strategic demobilization” of the CDU campaign and the apparent disengagement and apathy it had created. At the same time, however, off-the-record briefings by the major polling organizations in the week before the election pointed to an underlying potential for upsets on election night. The first and most striking possibility was that the newly formed and explicitly Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) might enter the Bundestag. The AfD had been polling consistently around the 4.5 to 4.7 percent level and it was suspected by pollsters that these numbers were actually underestimates due to the reluctance of respondents to admit support for such a party in traditionally pro-EU Germany. As a result, it was felt that the scenario of the AfD scaling Germany’s

Chancellor Hegemony

five percent electoral hurdle was a very real one. The other possibility was that Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), might fail to scale the 5 percent hurdle and, in the absence of any directly elected seats, be excluded from the Bundestag for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic. This possibility was considered less likely than an AfD breakthrough but was intriguing, given the way that in the final days of the campaign Merkel appeared to campaign aggressively for both first and second votes under Germany’s mixed member proportional electoral system and, thus, reduce the incentive for CDU /CSU voters to “loan” their second vote to the FDP. The eventual results of the 2013 federal election and changes in vote share from the previous election in 2009 are set out in Figure 2.1. Figure 2.1. The Eighteenth Bundestag Election of 22 September 2013: Percent Vote Share and Percent Change since 2009

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen

The figure shows that the CDU /CSU was the clear winner, polling 41.5 percent of the vote (up 7.7. percent on 2009) and narrowly missing out on an absolute majority in parliament. The SPD did less well, up 2.7 percent on 2009 to 25.7 percent. The smaller parties also did relatively badly, with the FDP down 9.8 percent to 4.8 percent, the Left Party) down 3.3 percent on 8.6 percent, and Alliance 90/the Greens down 2.3 percent on 8.4 percent. The AfD narrowly failed to enter parliament with 4.7 percent, whilst other parties (including the troubled Pirates with 2.2 percent) polled 6.3 percent. The turnout rate was 71.5 percent was a little higher than 2009’s all-time low of 70.8 percent. Table 2.1 shows the subsequent distribution of seats in the Bundestag. With 311 seats, the CDU /CSU fell five seats short of an overall majority of 316 (50 percent plus one in the 631 seat parliament) but still gained an extra sixty•••

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Table 2.1. The Eighteenth Bundestag Election of 22 September 2013: Distribution of Seats in the Bundestag and Change from 2009 CDU/CSU SPD FDP Left Party Greens Total:

2013 311 193 0 64 63 631

2009 249 146 93 76 68 622

Change 62 47 -93 -12 -5 8

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen

two seats on the 2009 total. The SPD won 193 seats, up forty-six on 2009. The FDP failed to enter the Bundestag, while the Left Party won sixty-four seats (down twelve) and the Greens sixty-three (down five). Thus, the 2013 Bundestag elections had generated two major changes to the Bundestag party system. First, and most obviously, the FDP’s failure to enter the Bundestag for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic had an impact on coalition negotiations, albeit less as a “liberal corrective” to and “majority creator” for the CDU /CSU and SPD and more because it would have been a potential coalition partner for the CDU /CSU. Second, a much less remarked-upon but still significant development was that for the first time since the 1960s, both catch-all parties, the CDU /CSU and the SPD, improved their vote share and subsequent number of seats in the Bundestag. This represents a significant concentration of the German party system in the Bundestag and, although quite likely to be a temporary development, as argued below, it represents a halt in the process of deconcentration that has taken place over the last half a century.

Historical Development of the Party System in Germany Patterns of competition and cooperation within the German party system(s) have changed a great deal over time. From 1949 until the late 1970s, Germany underwent a thirty-year period of party system concentration, in which the two big catch-all parties dominated the party system, with the FDP playing a balancing or “corrective” role between them. Two systemic junctures then took place that broke down this dominance. The first of these junctures took place in 1983, with the entry of the Greens into the Bundestag, and the second took place in 1990, following German Unification, with the entry of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), now the Left Party.2 •••

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The main cleavages within the German party system had traditionally been those of class (in particular, when meditated through trade union membership) and religion (displaying the artefacts of both a centuries-old Protestant/Catholic cleavage and also a more recent divide between voters close to the Churches and non-believers), although the influence of these two major cleavages have faded considerably since the late 1960s. German Unification in 1990 resulted in the emergence of a distinct territorial cleavage within the party system, which was most apparent when comparing state-level party systems in the former West Germany and those in the new federal states in the east of the country. This cleavage has blurred a little in recent years, not least as the Left Party has made (very limited) inroads into state-level party systems in the west. But we can still discern two very distinct types of party system at the state level of politics: with a four-party system, made up of the Greens, SPD, CDU /CSU, and FDP, in the states of the old West Germany and a three-party system made up of the Left Party, SPD, and CDU, in the new states in the east.3 Figure 2.2 maps out the development of the party system in the Bundestag over the period 1949 to 2013. The figure demonstrates that in the early years of the Federal Republic, the party system underwent dual processes of ideological moderation (in terms of the ideological range of the parties represented) and of consolidation (in terms of the number of parties represented and, to a lesser extent, the relative volatility in the numbers of seats won by them). Figure 2.2. The Development of the Bundestag Party System, 1949 to 2013*

* Parties in Bundestag in pale gray; number of seats in cells (excluding Berlin deputies); parties in government in darker gray. ** For taxonomical reasons, the particularist parties such as the BP and SSW and independents have been placed on the right of the left-right spectrum.

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So we can see how smaller right wing and/or particularist parties such as the German Law/Imperial Party (Deutsche Rechtspartei/Reichspartei, DRP), Economic Reconstruction Coalition (Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung, WAV), the Bavaria Party (BP), the South Schleswig Voters Confederation (Südschleswigscher Wählerverband/Sydslesvigsk Vælgerforening, SSW), and the German Center Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei, DZ) were initially represented in the Bundestag but within a relatively short period of time had either disbanded, been absorbed by the CDU /CSU, or lost popularity to the extent that they were no longer able to scale the Federal Republic’s election threshold (5 percent of the vote or three directly elected seats). The conservative German Party (Deutsche Partei, DP) was more resilient and remained in the Bundestag for over a decade and even participated in government on more than one occasion but it too was eventually squeezed out. And on the left the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) also dropped out permanently from the Bundestag party system after just one parliamentary term. There was then almost twenty years of the so-called Pappi model4 before the two historical junctures described earlier, which brought first the Greens and then the PDS (later the Left Party) into the Bundestag. The result of the two junctures, especially the second juncture of German Unification, is a Bundestag that is larger (currently 631 seats compared with 402 in 1949), with an ideological center of gravity that has moved somewhat to the left, and—up until September 2013—six parties in five party groupings (CDU /CSU, SPD, FDP, Greens, Left Party) instead of four parties in three groupings. The shocking failure of the FDP to scale the electoral threshold has reduced that to five parties in four groupings in the current Bundestag although, as already noted, if the FDP and the AfD had gained just 0.6 percent more of the vote between them we would now be looking at a seven party system in the Bundestag.

Winning Coalitions and Voting Power in the Bundestag Party System The changing composition of the Bundestag party system is reflected in the number of coalition options available to the parties and the amount of voting power they enjoy. To demonstrate this, Figure 2.3 sets out the number of minimal winning coalitions and coalitions with swing in the Bundestag party system, 1949 to 2013. The results of the first Bundestag election in 1949 yielded twenty-six minimal winning coalitions and 197 coalitions with swing but this •••

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broad sweep of coalition options had been narrowed to three minimal winning coalitions and three coalitions with swing by 1961, heralding the onset of the twenty years of three-party competition associated with the Pappi model. The first critical juncture, in which the Greens entered the Bundestag in 1983, increased the number of minimal winning coalitions to four and the number of coalitions with swing to seven. German unification, and the emergence of the PDS, added to the increased fragmentation of the party system and the 1990 Bundestag election produced a substantially enlarged legislature containing four minimal winning coalitions and fourteen coalitions with swing. The 1994 and 1998 elections produced the same number of each type of coalition and subsequent elections have seen a pattern of trendless fluctuation. The 2002 election yielded a reduction in the number of minimal winners to three and the number of coalitions with swing to twelve, the 2005 election saw an increase of minimal winners to seven—although the number of coalitions with swing remained the same—and the 2009 election produced a Bundestag with only four minimal winners and fourteen coalitions with swing. The eighteenth Bundestag election of September 2013 yielded a legislature with four minimal winners and only seven coalitions with swing. Figure 2.3 demonstrates that, despite the emergence and consolidation of two new political parties over the last thirty years, contemporary Germany’s fluid party system5—characterized by the erosion of partisan identification, greater electoral instability, and a decline in the vote share enjoyed Figure 2.3. Number of Minimal Winning Coalitions and Coalitions with Swing in the Bundestag Party System, 1949 to 2013

Source: data from the Bundeswahlleiter; coalitions calculated using the Voting Power and Power Index Website, Antti Pajala, University of Turku, http://powerslave.val.utu.fi/.

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by the catch-all parties—has not generated the kind of fragmentation seen in the Bundestag in the early years of the Federal Republic. Although there have been instances, such as in 2009, when the number of coalitions with swing has been more than four times greater than it was during the years of the Pappi model, in the current Bundestag, it is only just over twice as high, whilst the number of potential minimal winning outcomes has only been slightly higher throughout the period. Table 2.2. Voting I-power in the German Bundestag: Normalized Banzhaf Scores, 1949-2013 Election

CDU/CSU

SPD

FDP

Greens

PDS/Left Party

1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1972 1976 1980 1983 1987 1990 1994 1998 2002 2005 2009 2013

0.3082 0.75 0.1 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.1667 0.3333 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.2594 0.05 0.1 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.1667 0.1667 0.1667 0.1667 0.5 0.3333 0.5 0.1667 0.1667

0.2373 0.05 0.1 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0.1667 0.1667 0.1667 0.1667 0.1667 0 0.25 0.1667 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.1667 0.1667 0 0.1667 0.1667 0.3333 0.25 0 0.1667

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.1667 0 0 0 0.25 0.1667 0.1667

Source: data from the Bundeswahlleiter; coalitions calculated using the Voting Power and Power Index Website, Antti Pajala, University of Turku, http://powerslave.val.utu.fi/

The changing number of minimal winning coalitions and coalitions with swing has had an impact on the distribution of power between the parties in the Bundestag. Table 2.2 presents normalized Banzhaf indices of “voting I-power,” defined as the degree to which a given voter—in this instance, a political party—can influence the outcome of any vote in a given voting body6 for the main German parties in the German Bundestag over the history of the Federal Republic from 1949 until the 2013 Federal election. The table demonstrates a long-term process of concentration of I-power around the two main catch-all parties, in particular the CDU /CSU. Thus, in the initial period of party system concentration from 1940 until 1961, the distribution of I-power was in flux, with no clear discernible pattern from election to election. From 1961 until 1980, during the period of the Pappi model, we can see a period of stability in which I-power was evenly distributed •••

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between the two big catch-all parties and the FDP. The emergence in Germany of today’s more fluid party system, however, has actually led to a greater concentration of I-power around the catch-all parties, with one of the two catch-all parties enjoying a score of 0.5 (50 percent of voting power: effectively a veto-playing position) in all but one of the nine elections that have taken place since 1982. This means that none of the smaller parties (the FDP, Greens, and Left Party) have been able to assume the “kingmaker” function played by the FDP in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, following the 2013 Bundestag election, and with the FDP out of the Bundestag for the first time, the CDU /CSU’s score was 0.5, reflecting its narrow failure to secure an absolute majority in the chamber.

The Increased Personalization of German Party Politics The changes in the distribution of power in the Bundestag described have favored the largest party as formateur within any subsequent coalition game, as the smaller parties are not able to exert the kind of credible threat of defection that the FDP had been able to deploy under the Pappi model. The increased importance of the potential formateuer parties over the last three decades has gone hand-in-hand with another phenomenon: a greater focus on the individual leading candidates, particularly the so-called “chancellor candidates” and the increased salience of so-called chancellor effects in the determination of vote choice.7 There is no doubt that perceptions of competence and candidate preferences have played an important role in German electoral politics for some time. Oscar Gabriel’s8 study of multiple Bundestag elections examined the changing relationship between partisan identification, policy issues, and perceptions of candidates and demonstrated that when partisans registered positive feelings of identification for “their” party, combined with positive perceptions of party competence and party candidates, the estimated likelihood of these individuals voting for their party was over 90 percent and in some instances was as high as 99 percent. Positive perceptions of candidate competence when mediated by issue preferences were strongly and positively related to vote choice, raising the likelihood of voting for a particular party rising by anything up to 40 percent (for the SPD in 1983), whilst negative perceptions depressed the estimated likelihood of voting by anything up to 21 percent (the CDU /CSU in 1983). Most strikingly, candidate preferences alone increased the likelihood of voting for a particular party by up to 25 percent (the CDU, again in 1983). •••

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Gabriel also compared candidate effects in the “old” and “new” federal states after 1990 and concluded that the importance of voters’ perceptions of candidates was even greater in the new states, where settled patterns of partisanship are much weaker than in the “old” Federal Republic. Moreover, the author found that the impact of perceptions of competence and candidate preferences had an asymmetric impact on support for the two parties in the new states, with a strong candidate preference loading disproportionately on to the CDU/CSU vote (75 percent) compared with that for the SPD (62 percent)9. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mainstream parties have adapted to the increasing personalization of party competition. Thus, in the 1994 Bundestag election the CDU /CSU devoted almost 10 percent of its election budget to Helmut Kohl’s speech-delivering campaign.10 Parties increasingly commissioned television and radio spots on private broadcasters such as SAT1 and RTL+, stations, which are far more likely than the state-owned ARD and ZDF to emphasize personalities over issues.11 As already noted, over the period when Joschka Fischer dominated the Greens, they too developed a heavily personalized campaign message, for instance fighting the 2002 Bundestag election under the slogan “the second vote is a Joschka vote” (Zweitstimme ist Joschkastimme).12 In the same election, SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder exploited his own popularity by portraying the election as a straight fight between him and the CDU/CSU’s chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber. Thus, although the SPD in 2002 was unpopular compared with the 1998 election, Schröder enjoyed a clear lead over Stoiber in terms of general candidate preferences and most specific evaluations of competence.13 Similar dynamics can be seen in subsequent federal elections,14 although Schröder’s attempt to reprise the “straight fight” narrative against the CDU /CSU’s chancellor candidate Angela Merkel did not prevent a narrow defeat in the 2005 Bundestag election. Merkel’s own nonideological style of politics stressed her calm personality and perceived competence and downgraded the importance of both the CDU /CSU as a party and the distinctiveness of its party program. The personalization of the CDU /CSU’s campaigning in the subsequent 2009 and 2013 Bundestag elections proved a challenge to the SPD, which fielded the highly respected but uninspiring Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2009 and the more colorful Peer Steinbrück in 2013. Neither candidate was able to counter the cult of personality that has emerged around Merkel. Thus, analysis of the eighteenth Bundestag election demonstrates that, on a scale between plus 5 and minus 5, Merkel enjoyed a net approval rating of plus 2.1 amongst all voters and 3.9 amongst her own supporters. By contrast Steinbrück only managed to achieve borderline net approval (0.7) in the •••

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electorate as a whole and lukewarm support (2.6) amongst his own supporters. If we examine preferences for the two candidates by party affiliation, we find that double the number of voters (60 percent to 31 percent) preferred Merkel. This included 97 percent of CDU/CSU voters, 90 percent of FDP voters, and 60 percent of voters for the AfD. Even Left Party voters were evenly split with 43 percent preferring either candidate. The only good news for Steinbrück was that 78 percent of SPD voters and 52 percent of Greens voters preferred him to Merkel, which in itself is not a ringing endorsement of his candidacy. In terms of the personal attributes of the candidates, Merkel trumped Steinbrück on sympathetic character (52 percent to 18 percent), trustworthiness (40 percent to 13 percent), ability to deal with the Euro crisis (42 percent to 12 percent), decisiveness (54 percent to 17 percent), technical competence (40 percent to 13 percent), ability to create jobs (41 percent to 11 percent), and to tackle future problems (38 percent to 16 percent). These numbers for the leading candidates of the two catch-all parties were far more skewed than the data comparing the parties themselves. The CDU /CSU was considered more competent on employment policy (40 percent to 22 percent), the Eurocrisis (38 percent to 20 percent), and the economy in general (47 percent to 17 percent), but the parties were much closer on issues such as pensions (29 percent to 25 percent), families (30 percent to 29 percent), and tax (32 percent to 27 percent). Moreover, as would be expected, the SPD was ahead of the CDU /CSU on social justice (35 percent to 26 percent).15 At the time of writing, there is not yet any reliable published research that assesses the relative impact of partisan identification, policy issues, and perceptions of candidates on vote choice in the 2013 Bundestag election and compares this with earlier elections in the Federal Republic. Until there is we must be cautious in our conclusions. Nevertheless, what we can say is that perceptions of candidates have impacted upon vote choice in the Federal Republic for many decades. Moreover, although there does appear to be a link between this phenomenon and a decline in or absence of partisan identification, these candidate effects appear to be stronger amongst CDU /CSU identifiers than it is amongst SPD identifiers. All of the mainstream parties have reoriented their campaigns to emphasize the personal qualities and attributes of their candidates, particularly the chancellor candidates of the two catch-all parties. Where this has been particularly successful, such as with Helmut Kohl in the 1990 and 1994 elections, Gerhard Schröder in 2002, or Angela Merkel in 2009 and 2013, it is perhaps also because it was consistent with what voters perceived to be these chancellors’ true natures, as it were. Thus, although party campaign strategies have become more •••

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sophisticated in recent years, their impact is mediated through the personal qualities of the leading candidates.

Conclusions The actual outcome of the 2013 parliamentary elections has brought important changes to the Bundestag party system, some of which are contingent but others of which are more systemic and profound. In terms of contingency, the failure of the FDP to scale the electoral threshold has had an impact on coalition negotiations, but less as the traditional “liberal corrective” to and “majority creator” for the CDU/CSU and SPD and more as a lost coalition option for the CDU/CSU. Moreover, as already argued, if the FDP and the AfD had gained just 0.6 percent more of the vote between them we have a seven party/six grouping system in the Bundestag. Another development that might well be contingent but is nevertheless of great importance is the improvement in the overall vote share for the CDU/CSU and the SPD, for the first time since the 1960s. This represents a significant, if probably only temporary, concentration of the German party system in the Bundestag. More systemic, in that it has been a feature of the Bundestag party system since the 1980s, is the ongoing redistribution of voting power in favor of the catch-all parties as formateurs, as the smaller parties are unable to deploy credible threats of defection. This development has been described in the past as “paradoxical,”16 as it goes hand-in-hand with what had been a steady decline in the catch-all party vote but, as we have seen, the relative deconcentration of Bundestag party system has not generated the large number of minimal winning coalitions and coalitions with swing that existed in the early years of the Bundestag. The article also noted that the increased importance of the potential formateuer parties coincided with a greater focus on the individual leading candidates, although the effectiveness of this personalization of campaigning remains dependent on the political qualities of the leading candidates. To conclude, all of these developments represent a reaffirmation of the two catch-all parties within the Bundestag party system and is particularly good news for the CDU /CSU, given the political qualities of Merkel and the failure of the SPD to find and support a leading candidate that can match her for political acumen. Some years ago, Karl-Rudolf Korte described politics in the Federal Republic as being traditionally “a parliamentary governmental system with chancellor hegemony.”17 With the exception of the Adenauer period and perhaps also of Kohl in his heyday as the “unity chan•••

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cellor,” it is hard to recall a period of postwar German politics when these hegemonic qualities have been more apparent than they are today. CHARLES LEES is Chair of Politics and Head of the Department of Politics, Languages, and International Studies at the University of Bath, UK. He was previously at the University of Sheffield and the University of Sussex. He is Chair of the International Association for the Study of German Politics, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham, and a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of Sussex. He has previously held visiting fellowships at the University of California San Diego, the Australian National University, and the University of Sydney. He has published widely in the fields of comparative politics, environmental politics and policy, and methodology, and provides media commentary, research and advice for organisations such as the BBC, Sky News, Australian Labor Party, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Scottish Executive.

Notes 1. This article uses data partly sourced as part of an election observation delegation arranged by the International Association for the Study of German Politics (http://www. iasgp.org) and very kindly funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, the DAAD. 2. Charles Lees, Party Politics in Germany –a Comparative Politics Approach (Basingstoke, 2005). 3. Charles Lees, “The paradoxical effects of decline: assessing party system change and the role of the Catch-all parties in Germany following the 2009 Federal election,” Party Politics 18, no. 4 (2012): 545-562. 4. Franz Urban Pappi, “The West German Party System,” West European Politics 7 (1984): 7-26. 5. Oskar Niedermayer, “Das Parteiensystem Deutschlands” in Die Parteiensysteme Westeuropas, ed. Richard Stöss, Melanie Hass, and Oskar Niedermayer (Wiesbaden, 2006), 109-134. 6. Dan S. Felsenthal and Moshé Machover, The Measurement of Voting Power: Theory and Practice, Problems and Paradoxes (Cheltenham, 1998). 7. Thorsten Faas and Jürgen Maier, “Chancellor-candidates in the 2002 televised debates” in Bundestagswahl 2002: the Battle of the Candidates, ed. Thomas Saalfeld and Charles Lees (London, 2004), 300-316. 8. Oscar Gabriel, “Parteiidentifikation, Kandidaten und politische Sachfragen als Bestimmungsfaktoren des Parteienwettbewerbs” in Parteiendemokratie in Deutschland, ed. Oscar Gabriel et al. (Opladen, 1997). 9. Ibid., 247-249. 10. Bernhard Boll, “Media communication and personality marketing: the 1994 German national election campaign” in Superwahljahr: the German Elections in 1994, ed. Geoffrey Roberts (London, 1995), 138.

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12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Holli Semetko and Klaus Schoenbach, “Parties, leaders, and issues in the news” in Bundestagswahl ’98: End of an Era?, ed. Stephen Padgett and Thomas Saalfeld (London, 1999), 86. See Lees (see note 2). Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2002. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2005, 2009, 2013. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2013. See Lees (see note 3). Karl-Rudolf Korte, “Solutions for the decision dilemma: political styles of Germany’s chancellors,” German Politics 9, no. 1 (2005): 5.

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Chapter 3 • • •

PAST IMPERFECT, FUTURE TENSE The SPD before and after the 2013 Federal Election

Jonathan Olsen

Introduction In the 2009 federal election, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) achieved its worst result in its history, netting just 23 percent of the vote, a defeat that prompted much soul-searching within the party. Vowing to reverse this disastrous result, the SPD worked to improve its public image and fine-tune its policies and electoral message, hoping that state elections in the ensuring period might give some momentum to the party going into the next national election. Yet, in 2013 the Social Democrats improved their electoral result only modestly, with Angela Merkel and the Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU /CSU) gaining a decisive victory. This notwithstanding, the SPD has entered a second “Grand Coalition” with the Union parties, albeit as a junior coalition partner, eclipsed by the CDU and the dominant Merkel. Consequently, the SPD faces a number of questions going forward, above all, what it can do to significantly improve its future electoral fortunes and capture the chancellorship. This article explores the reasons behind the SPD’s failure to radically improve its electoral showing and what the immediate future holds for the party. It suggests that the failure of the SPD in 2013 can be explained by a combination of the impact of the past—namely, the legacy of its economic reforms during the Schröder era and the SPD’s disadvantages coming out of the previous Grand Coalition—and the weakness of its 2013 chancellor candidate, Peer Steinbrück vis-à-vis Chancellor Merkel. It also suggests that the immediate future does not look particularly bright for the Social Democrats: in the era of Merkel, any chances of improving its electoral fortunes lie largely out of its hands.

Jonathan Olsen

The Impact of the Past: The SPD since the 2009 Election Among the many uncertainties going into the 2013 federal election, one thing looked clear: the prospects for the Social Democrats capturing the chancellorship were not especially good. Since the labor market reforms of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder—among them, the infamous “Hartz IV” reforms that merged unemployment benefits and welfare benefits, cut their net amounts, and reduced the period of eligibility for unemployment (“ALG I”) from thirty-six to twelve months—the SPD had been in an electoral freefall, seeing its share of the vote decline from 40.9 percent in 1998 to 34.3 percent in 2005 and then to 23 percent in 2009. Some left-leaning SPD voters, viewing Schröder’s reforms as a betrayal of the SPD’s identity as a party of social justice, had cast their lot with the new Left Party (Die Linke), while more centrist voters who have historically swung between it and the CDU/ CSU moved decisively towards the latter from 2005 to 2009; this despite the fact that many in Germany credited, at least partly, the country’s good financial fortunes after 2005 to Schröder’s reforms. Voters from both the center-left and the farther left had, in short, deserted the SPD in droves. Besides the impact of the Schröder reforms on core SPD voters, the previous “Grand Coalition” of SPD and CDU/CSU from 2005-2009 also damaged the SPD. Although that Grand Coalition appeared to function fairly smoothly, the two parties did have their share of conflict.1 More importantly, however, any successes of the Grand Coalition seemed only to accrue to the advantage of the Union. For example, although the public generally gave high marks to the Grand Coalition for successfully navigating the initial stages of the world financial crisis and onset of problems in the Eurozone, public opinion suggested that the Christian Democrats were seen as the more competent crisis managers compared to their Social Democratic rivals.2 Public perceptions were of course shaped by the CDU and Merkel herself, who found ways to dominate the narrative such that the conservatives, rather than the SPD, looked like the real achievers within the Grand Coalition. “Merkevellianism”—the pattern by which Merkel poached issues from her political rivals (such as nuclear energy policy from the Greens), moved her party on some issues to the center-left, and managed to take credit for all of her coalition governments’ policy achievements—made the SPD’s task in the 2009 campaign extremely difficult.3 It was a challenge that the SPD did not handle particularly well, opting largely for a personalized campaign strategy focused on its chancellor candidate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier, who media commentators found “too pale, too unemotional, too stiff, and too boring,” also failed to distinguish himself significantly from •••

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Merkel in terms of his policy prescriptions.4 Meanwhile, despite the fact that Merkel is also not a particularly charismatic figure, she had managed to gradually endear herself to voters as Germans’ political “Mutti,” a soft-spoken, modest, firm, and dependable leader in whose hands the nation was well served. In contrast, Steinmeier turned out to be the least popular chancellor candidate since Germany unified in 1990.5 In addition to the weakness of its chancellor candidate, the SPD also suffered—or at least did not benefit—from a campaign that emphasized more traditional left-wing SPD themes, which appeared significantly at odds with the party’s actual performance and policy stances while in the Grand Coalition. A further problem for the SPD in 2009 was its relationship with the Linke. The SPD’s basic strategic dilemma then and afterwards (a dilemma that continues to the present day) was that it faced competition for voters on its rightcenter flank from the CDU and on its center-left flank from the Left Party, and had to try and appeal to both simultaneously. Although it had cooperated in coalition governments at the state level for many years with the Left Party, the SPD was still riven by interparty disputes on how it should engage with its left-wing political rival. Indeed, despite the precedent of “red-red” coalitions at the state level, these continued to be controversial, especially in western Germany where the Left Party had significantly lower levels of public support and, at the same time, a less experienced and pragmatic local leadership than was the case in eastern Germany. Meanwhile, at the national level, it was nearly impossible to countenance a coalition with Die Linke, as the latter’s foreign and economic policy positions were anathema to many SPD members.6 Not surprisingly, “red-red” coalitions were by far the least favored coalition option by voters, and therefore were not seriously considered a viable option by the Social Democrats. Yet, although the party had failed miserably in the 2009 campaign, not all developments since that time had been unambiguously negative. To be sure, the SPD’s poll numbers had stayed fairly consistent between 2009 and 2013, with the only period in which it exceeded 30 percent in the “Sunday question” of party preference by the public occurring in the first half of 2012 (see Figure 3.1). Moreover, state elections during this time period had also seen a few disappointing results for the SPD, with a significant vote share loss in elections in Rhineland-Palatinate under Minister President Kurt Beck (who managed nevertheless to retain power), Baden-Württemberg, and Berlin, and stagnation in Saxony-Anhalt (where it continued as junior partner in a grand coalition with the CDU). On the other hand, the SPD had rebounded in Hamburg’s state election, where it came to power with an absolute majority; and in •••

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Figure 3.1. Public Support for Parties, 2010-2013 (in %)

Source: Der Spiegel, “Sonntagsfrage” Bremen, where the election allowed it to continue to govern with the Greens.7 The SPD, on average, gained some 2.5 percent in these elections compared to preceding elections at the state level (see Figure 3.2). Still, it was difficult to discern a pattern, to see these elections as any kind of bellwether for the party’s electoral chances in 2013 and instead seemed to reflect local/regional conditions and distinctive political personalities in the states. Figure 3.2. State Election Results for the SPD 2010-2013, Gains and Losses

Source: Author’s calculations •••

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The Campaign: Issues Less Important than Personalities Coming into the campaign in the summer of 2013 then, the SPD had few reasons to be very optimistic. Yet, it hoped that it could dent the appeal of Angela Merkel and the CDU through a vigorous articulation of issues where the conservative coalition could be seen as underperforming and Merkel as too passive and indecisive. More specifically, the SPD would appeal to its traditional base with a campaign based on “social justice” while at the same time winning centrist, women, and undecided voters by emphasizing relatively pragmatic and popular policies which had not been taken up by the previous center-right coalition of CDU /CSU and the Free Democrats (FDP). To the former, it offered a program built around higher taxes for higher wage earners (raising the top income rate from 42 to 49 percent), the reinstitution of a “wealth tax” (Vermögenssteuer), a federal minimum wage of EURO 8.50, a “solidarity pension” of EURO 850, and the possibility of full pension after forty-five years of paying into the state pension system. To the latter, it vowed to abolish the Betreuungsgeld (payments intended for stay-athome mothers, a policy intended to reinforce the traditional family), to accelerate the development of state-subsidized daycare facilities (Kitas), to institute a new law on citizenship and eliminate restrictions on dual citizenship, and to put new rules on the financial markets.8 Many of these ideas were of course criticized by the CDU/CSU as “unaffordable” or a sign of the Social Democrat’s misguided emphasis on “big government”/the welfare state on the one hand (such as tax increases), or an unacceptable intrusion into the lives of individuals and families (e.g., the abolishment of Betreuungsgeld in favor of daycare centers), on the other. Yet, the differences between the CDU and SPD were not, in reality, all that great. Merkel and the CDU were not in principle opposed to the expansion of Kitas (even if the CSU continued to insist on Betreuungsgeld), did not seem particularly troubled by a new citizenship law, and showed some flexibility on the issue of a national minimum wage. Indeed, at times, the Social Democrats seemed just as much internally divided on some of their campaign themes (with Party Chairman Sigmar Gabriel saying that the SPD should rethink its position on higher taxes on high income earners and a “wealth tax”) than they were from the CDU and Merkel.9 Because of the relatively small policy differences of the two major parties, observers tended to describe the 2013 campaign as fairly boring (as they did in 2009).10 Yet, the more lively aspects of the campaign were decidedly not to the SPD’s and Steinbrück’s advantage, namely, a number of gaffes on the campaign trail. Always known to be very blunt and direct (for example, his 2009 •••

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criticism of Swiss tax havens where he compared Switzerland to Burkina Faso), Steinbrück made a number of controversial statements that helped weaken his public image. In late December 2012, Steinbrück suggested that Angela Merkel was popular because she was a woman and “got a bonus” from women voters.11 In the same interview, he also argued that the German Chancellor was an underpaid position, stating that even small bank Presidents earned more than the Chancellor.12 Given that Steinbrück already had a reputation as something of a Salonkommunist (“limousine liberal”), having earned over a million dollars in speaker fees in 2012, his comments here weakened the “social justice” message of the Social Democrats and reinforced the perception that the candidate and his party were at odds over not only the campaign platform, but also basic political and policy principles.13 Following on this embarrassing public statement, in late February Steinbrück referred to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and rising Italian political star Beppe Grillo as “two clowns” who had won the Italian elections—a statement that, while probably in tune with German public opinion, nevertheless looked petty and unstatesmanlike. The most significant public gaffe by Steinbrück was undoubtedly his decision to pose on the front cover of the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, one of Germany’s leading dailies, giving the finger (Stinkefinger). One of the newspaper’s weekly publications asks public figures to respond to questions with gestures, not words, and Steinbrück showed his displeasure about being asked about his unflattering nicknames, including “Peerlusconi.”14 Not surprisingly, other political parties seized on this to argue that Steinbrück had crossed a line, with the leader of the Free Democrats, Philipp Rössler, arguing that the gesture was “unbefitting a candidate for the chancellorship.”15 The final act of the 2013 campaign was the televised debate between the two chancellor candidates. Given the overall tenor of the campaign, it was perhaps not surprising that the debate itself failed to provide much liveliness—apart from one of the debate’s moderators, Stefan Raab, a comedian and talk-show host whose pointed comments and sarcastic humor stood in contrast to the drab and vague comments of the two protagonists. As expected, Merkel attempted to paint the SPD and Steinbrück as vaguely “dangerous” in their economic policy prescriptions, while the challenger for his part tried to paint the CDU and Merkel as deaf to “fairness” and growing economic inequality in Germany. Once again, the similarities between the two parties’ positions were more noticeable than their differences with very little to distinguish them on, for example, the solutions to the Eurocrisis or how to handle the civil war in Syria.16 Although public opinion after the debate tilted slightly towards Steinbrück, it was not the overwhelmingly decisive victory he would have needed in order to become chancellor. •••

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Results of the Election: Merkel Triumphs and Another “Grand Coalition” for the SPD Pre-election opinion polls had consistently shown that the CDU/CSU would be able to form the next government with Angela Merkel as chancellor (see Figure 3.1). Still, the SPD was sobered by its result. As discussed above, the party saw its share of the vote go up some 2.7 percent. Indeed, it managed to lure away voters from the FDP, Linke, Greens, and other parties (but not the CDU/CSU).17 Nevertheless, the CDU/CSU increased its share of the vote by 7.8 percent to 41.5 percent, its best performance in two decades. The only consolation for the SPD was that the disastrous showing by the FDP—at 4.8 percent falling below the 5 percent hurdle needed to guarantee parliamentary representation—meant that the CDU/CSU would not be able to continue its previous coalition. While the SPD won forty-seven more seats than in 2009, the CDU/CSU won seventy-two more, and its total of 311 seats put them just short of an absolute majority. Figure 3.3. Comparing Perceptions of Parties’ Issue Competence in the 2013 Federal Elections

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen So, what were the specific causes of the SPD’s failure to perform well in the 2013 federal election beyond the heavy burden of its recent history? First of all, it was quite clear that voters were generally pleased with the government (or at least the CDU/CSU’s performance), with almost 50 percent of those polled just before the election saying that they were “satisfied” •••

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or “very satisfied” with the work of the previous coalition government, a figure that had climbed continuously over the previous six months.18 In short, voters were in no mood to change government (again, with the very important exception of the FDP as coalition partners). In addition, voters gave much higher marks on issue competence to the CDU/CSU than the SPD (see Figure 3.3). The only issue on which the SPD scored higher than the CDU / CSU for competence was that of “social justice,” with the Social Democrats far behind their rivals on some very important issues such as the economy (47 percent to 17 percent), jobs (40 percent to 22 percent), and the “future” (39 percent to 20 percent).19 Second, as Merkel continued to be very popular with most voters (even SPD, Green, and Linke voters), the SPD could gain no traction from Steinbrück’s candidacy. Pre-election polls showed that voters clearly believed that Merkel was doing a very good job, with a remarkable 79 percent in one poll saying that Merkel was doing her job well or very well.20 Although Steinbrück was not an unpopular candidate and while his “straight talk” campaign clearly resonated for some groups, voters overall far preferred Angela Merkel as chancellor, consistently favoring Merkel over Steinbrück in a hypothetical head-to-head election from the time of the latter’s selection as chancellor candidate. Significantly, among women voters Merkel held a decisive advantage: in the last pre-election poll from Infratest Dimap, 58 percent of women polled had decided to vote for Merkel and only 28 percent of women voters had decided to vote for Steinbrück.21 Moreover, while Steinbrück’s gaffes during the campaign may not have been held against him, his personal style was not nearly attractive enough to voters to convince them to unseat the incumbent chancellor. Indeed, voters found Merkel more trustworthy (40 percent to 13 percent), more sympathetic (52 percent to 18 percent), more knowledgeable about the issues (40 percent to 13 percent), more assertive and capable of achieving results (54 percent to 17 percent), and more capable of successfully handling the crisis in the Eurozone (42 percent to 12 percent).22 Finally, the SPD could find no issue that would allow it to make any headway against Merkel and the CDU/CSU. Steinbrück was selected by the SPD as its chancellor candidate at least partly because of his economic competence and because of his early handling of the crisis in the Eurozone.23 But, the public was largely satisfied with the way in which Merkel and the CDU had handled the Eurozone crisis, while at the same time the SPD’s policy differences with the chancellor on this were seen as small and insignificant. Added to this, the Eurozone crisis as a campaign issue never really caught fire: at 19 percent, it trailed far behind unemployment (at 27 percent) as a •••

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campaign issue.24 Indeed, Steinbrück’s attempt to attack Merkel on this front—such as his suggestion that Merkel lacked enthusiasm for the European project because she had lived much of her life in East Germany, and therefore outside the European Union—if anything did him more harm than good.25 Overall, it could be said that voters cast their votes for the CDU/CSU more because of Merkel than because of a particular issue, with some 38 percent of CDU/CSU voters saying that the candidate was the most important reason for their vote (versus only 21 percent of SPD voters saying this).26 The inability of the CDU/CSU to achieve an absolute majority, combined with the failure of the FDP to clear the 5 percent hurdle, made it necessary for the CDU/CSU and SPD to begin serious negotiations on another grand coalition. The SPD, however, was wary, given its experience from 20052009, and coalition negotiations were long—at almost three months, longer than most coalition talks in the history of the Federal Republic. As a result of the agreement, the SPD was able to secure six of fifteen ministries, with a combined Economics and Energy Ministry under Vice Chancellor Gabriel, the Foreign Office under Steinmeier, and the Ministries of the Environment, Labor, Family Affairs, and Justice. Meanwhile, the CDU retained the most important post—the Finance Ministry under veteran Wolfgang Schäuble—and interior, health, and education, while the CSU was put in charge of transportation, agriculture, and development. One of the most notable appointments was Usula von der Leyen as defense minister—the first woman ever to hold that position. Meanwhile, in terms of the most divisive issues among the coalition partners was the campaign promise by the SPD to immediately institute a national minimum wage, while the CDU/CSU had argued for a voluntary minimum wage negotiated by business and labor unions. 27 The compromise reached largely ceded this to the SPD but included a delay in full implementation until 2017 as well as some exceptions for seasonal workers, apprentices, pensioners, and voluntary/honorary work.28 The Union parties also conceded to the SPD demand that workers could retire with full pension at age sixty-three (rather than sixtyseven), so long as they had paid into the state pension system for forty-five years.29 The SPD was also successful in getting the conservatives to drop their opposition to dual citizenship for children born in Germany to immigrant parents, although the Union refused to expand this right to dual citizenship for other groups. Meanwhile the CDU/CSU refused to budge on increasing taxes and the tax rate and tabled any further action on legalizing same-sex marriage. Both parties compromised on the issue of state-supported child care, preserving Betreuungsgeld, but calling for an increase in the number of Kitas. •••

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Where Does the SPD Go from Here? The SPD can plausibly claim to have achieved quite a bit in coalition negotiations—pushing through a national minimum wage, a readjustment of the pension system, and dual citizenship for Germany’s Turkish minority—despite its very poor electoral showing. But what does the immediate future hold for the Social Democrats? Will it come out of this second Grand Coalition with Merkel’s CDU in a similar position to 2009, further hurting its electoral chances in the next federal election? Going into 2017, there seem to be only three ways in which the party could conceivably win the next election, all of these being essentially out of the SPD’s hands. First, Merkel could decide not to run again for Chancellor. This seems unlikely, but not out of the question. Given that the Union has largely depended upon the force of Merkel’s personal popularity to secure its recent electoral victories, the CDU/CSU would be vulnerable—provided, of course, that the SPD can also find a charismatic and popular chancellor candidate in the mold of Schröder. Second, Merkel’s popularity could decline, provoked by contingent events or a crisis, combined with the public’s exhaustion with her chancellorship. An SPD victory under this scenario, of course, would also depend upon the Social Democrats themselves not being tainted by such contingencies as well as what achievements it could claim from the Grand Coalition. Such a scenario seems also unlikely. Third, the SPD and Greens could establish a much closer relationship to the Linke, making a red-red-green coalition (which has been a mathematical possibility over the last few election cycles) a more viable option to challenge the Union’s hegemony. Yet, this scenario is also almost totally out of the SPD’s hands, depending as it does on reformers gaining a decisive victory within the Left Party and moving away from the party’s most controversial positions—such as withdrawing from NATO—that scare away potential voters. Given the Left Party’s history of inner-party conflict, this scenario seems the least probable in the short run. All things considered then, the prospects for the SPD gaining an electoral majority with its preferred coalition of red-green seems as distant now as ever. The age of Merkel and the CDU lives on. JONATHAN OLSEN is Professor in the Department of History and Government at Texas Woman's University. He is the author or co-author of four books, including (with Dan Hough and Micahel Koß) The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics (London, 2007) and a recent textbook on the European Union (with John McCormick) The European Union: Politics and Policies (Boulder, 2014), as well as numerous articles in such journals as German Politics, German Politics and Society, and Problems of Post-Communism. •••

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Notes 1. See Eckart Lohse and Markus Wehner, Rosenkrieg. Die Große Koalition, 2005-2009 (Cologne, 2009). 2. Reimut Zohlnhöfer, “The 2009 Federal Election and the Economic Crisis,” German Politics 23, no. 3 (2011): 12-27. 3. On Merkelvellianism, see “Briefing Angela Merkel: A Safe Pair of Hands,” The Economist, 14 September 2013, 27-29. 4. Monika Krewel, Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, and Ansgar Wolsing, “The Campaign and its Dynamics at the 2009 German General Election,” German Politics 23, no. 3 (2011): 32. 5. Harald Schoen, “Merely a Referendum on Chancellor Merkel? Parties, Issues, and Candidates in the 2009 German Federal Election,” German Politics 23, no. 3 (2011): 92-106. 6. On red-red coalitions, see Jonathan Olsen and Dan Hough, “Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright: SPD-Left Party/PDS Coalitions in the Eastern German Länder,” German Politics and Society 25, no. 3 (2007): 1-24; Dan Hough, Michael Koß, and Jonathan Olsen, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics (London, 2007). 7. On state elections between 2009 and 2013 see Jonathan Olsen, “The Spring 2011 Landtag Elections: Regional Specificities or National Electoral Dynamics?” German Politics 21, no. 1 (2012): 116-127; and Joanna McKay, “The Berlin Land Election 2011,” German Politics 21, no. 2 (2012): 228-238. 8. SPD, Das Wir Entscheidet. Das Regierungsprogramm 2013-2017 (Berlin, 2013). 9. “Party Season,” The Economist, 24 August 2013, 48-49; on Sigmar Gabriel, see “Der Lostreter,” Der Spiegel 38 (2013), 37-39. 10. “Terminally, Terminally Boring,” Open Democracy; available at www.opendemocracy.net/ can-europe-make-it/juliane-mendelsohn/germanys-election-campaign-terminally-terminallyboring, accessed 3 March 2014. 11. “Angela Merkel has advantage ‘because she is a woman’, says rival,” The Telegraph, 30 December 2012; available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ germany/9771843/Angela-Merkel-has-advantage-because-she-is-a-woman-says-rival.html, accessed 3 March 2014. 12. “Merkel Challenger under Fire for Saying Chancellor Underpaid,” Chicago Tribune, 30 December 2012; available at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-12-30/news/sns-rtus-germany-politics-steinbrueckbre8bt01z-20121230_1_peer-steinbrueck-merkel-challenger-spd, accessed 3 March 2014. 13. “SPD Chancellor Candidate Discloses Pay: Steinbrück Fends Off Criticism of His Extra Income,” Spiegel Online, 30 October 2012; available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/ germany/spd-candidate-peer-steinbrueck-reveals-income-to-end-controversy-a-864263. html, accessed 10 January 2013. 14. “CDU-Wahlplakate erheblich obszöner,” Der Spiegel, 14 September 2013; available at http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/steinbruecks-stinkefinger-reaktionen-vonthierse-und-schloemer-a-922214.html, accessed 10 January 2014. 15. “SPD verteidigt Steinbrück’s Stinkefinger-Pose,” Der Spiegel, 12 September 2013; available at http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/magazin-titelbild-spd-verteidigt-peer-steinbruecks-stinkefinger-a-921971.html, accessed 10 January 2014. 16. “Descent into banality,” The Economist, 7 September 2013, 53-54. 17. Viola Neu, “Bundestagswahl in Deutschland am 22. September 2013 Wahlanalyse,” Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Berlin, 2013); “Informationen zur Bundestagswahl am 22. September 2013,” Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, (Berlin, 2013). 18. Neu (see note 17); Bundestagswahl, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 22 September 2013. 19. Ibid. 20. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 22 September 2013. 21. Infratest Dimap, 22 September 2013. 22. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (see note 20).

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Jonathan Olsen 23. “Ex-finance Minister to Challenge Merkel in 2013,” Associated Press, 28 September 2012; available at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ex-finance-minister-challenge-merkel-2013, accessed 10 January 2014. 24. Neu (see note 17). 25. See “A Safe Pair of Hands (see note 3). 26. Naumann Stiftung (see note 17). 27. “Auf die Regierung wartet jede Menge Sprengstoff,” Die Welt, 6 January 2014; available at http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article123606084/Auf-die-Regierung-wartet-jedeMenge-Sprengstoff.html, accessed 4 March 2014. 28. See the Coalition Agreement at www.cdu.de/sites/default/files/media/dokumente/ koalitionsvertrag.pdf; accessed 13 March 2014. 29. Ibid.

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Chapter 4 • • •

SMALL PARTIES AND THE 2013 BUNDESTAG ELECTION End of the Upward Trend?

David F. Patton

What a difference four years makes! In the 2009 German federal election, the small parties together tallied 43.2 percent of the vote—their highest share since the Federal Republic was founded. Among them, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Left Party, and Greens each finished in double digits and each achieved its best result ever. Four years later, the large catch-all parties—the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU /CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD)—rebounded, raising their combined vote share from 56.8 percent to 67.2 percent. This time, none of the smaller parties finished above 8.6 percent and only two entered the Bundestag. The analysis now shifted from resurgent small parties, the consolidation of a five party system, and the crisis of the Volksparteien (catch-all parties) to signs of renaissance for the Volksparteien and party system concentration.1 Yet, as this article shows, any talk of catch-all party revival and party system concentration needs qualification. While it is true that the CDU /CSU won 41.5 percent, celebrated its best result in decades and narrowly missed securing a majority of seats in parliament, the SPD managed to garner only 25.7 percent of the vote, its second worst showing in the Federal Republic. In 2013, the small parties together amassed 32.8 percent of the vote—down somewhat but still the second highest share in six decades. Likewise, although among the small parties only the Left Party and the Greens passed the crucial 5 percent mark, the FDP and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) both came tantalizingly close at 4.8 and 4.7 percent of the vote, respectively. In fact, had the FDP received about 100,000 more second ballot votes and the AfD about 130,000 more (out of a total of around forty-four million

David F. Patton

cast nationwide), then four small parties would be sitting in the Bundestag for the first time in over half a century. Those that fell short of 5 percent, the so-called “others” (Sonstige), together grew their vote share from 6 percent in 2009 to 10.9 percent in 2013. When FDP support is included, then the share rises to a record 15.7 percent for the Sonstige—the largest proportion in the history of the Federal Republic, reflecting the nearly seven million votes cast for political parties without parliamentary representation. This spike in “wasted votes” has increased the disproportionality of vote share to seat share and is likely to fan concerns that the composition of the Bundestag does not adequately mirror voter will. This article first briefly reviews how political scientists have counted small parties and weighed their impact. It presents the tripartite classification system, commonplace in the German party system literature, a lifecycle approach, and a model of three ideal types of smaller parties within a party system containing two large parties. The article then examines small party performance in the 2013 Bundestag election. An analysis follows of environmental factors as well as the circumstances facing the individual small parties, their campaigns, their results and their prospects. The article concludes with a look at the strategic choices facing the small parties and a reappraisal of the tripartite classification system in light of this article’s findings. Although the concept of a small party has a clear quantitative component, whether measured by vote share, legislature seats or membership, it is not at all obvious as to where the line should be drawn. In a study of small parties in postwar Western Europe from 1947 to 1987, Peter Mair counted those that had won between 1 and 15 percent of the vote in at least three elections without exceeding 15 percent in three elections.2 Mogens Pedersen advanced another approach, classifying parties according to four party lifespans: 1) at the “threshold of declaration,” new parties declare their intention to contest elections; 2) a “threshold of authorization” ensues when a party meets the requirements to participate in campaigns and elections; 3) at the “threshold of representation,” parties achieve a legislative presence; 4) a “threshold of relevance” represents the fourth and final stage and draws upon Giovani Sartori’s two criteria for relevance: coalition potential and blackmail potential.3 Political scientists have commonly distinguished between the large German parties (Volksparteien or catch-all parties), the established smaller ones (etablierte kleinere Parteien) that achieve legislative representation, and the minor, non-established parties.4 In the middle group, the FDP, Greens, and Left Party (die Linke)—a party formed from the 2007 merger of the mostly •••

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eastern Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the mostly western Electoral Alternative: Jobs and Social Justice (WASG)—all have had sizable memberships and electorates. They crossed the threshold of representation by entering the Bundestag and the threshold of relevancy by factoring into coalitional calculations in the case of the FDP and Greens or by altering interparty competition as in the case of the Left Party. The third group features parties, often short on voters, members and money, which have not progressed beyond the threshold of authorization. Dirk van den Boom has defined these parties in terms of what they cannot do: namely, significantly influence decisionmaking and the selection of leading administrative personnel.5 Establishing a cut-off for “smallness,” whether it is numerical or lifespanbased, risks overlooking the political context in which small parties exert influence. As Gordon Smith notes: “Smallness” is, in fact, above all a systemic quality. In other words, the definition of a small party must not be divorced from considering the situation of one party in respect of all others in a particular party system. Smallness is a relative concept and therefore one that is specific to a party system.6

How a small party operates, and what impact it has, often has more to do with its placement rather than its size. This article draws upon the insights of Hans-Jörg Dietsche who posits that when a party system features two large parties that no longer integrate as wide a spectrum of interests, then smaller parties in parliament are in a position to fill representation gaps that arise. He anticipates three ideal types of smaller parties: 1) those on the left or right wings of the party system (Flügelparteien); 2) hinge parties (Scharnierparteien) that occupy political terrain between the large parties; and 3) regional parties that represents a broad array of interests in a culturally or economically distinct region.7 This essay examines the positioning, whether as a Flügelpartei, hinge party or regional party, of the small Germany parties. In 2013, support for the small parties dipped from 2009 levels, but nonetheless remained high (see Table 4.1). Table 4.1. Small Parties’ Second Ballot Vote Share in Recent Bundestag Elections Small Parties FDP PDS/Left Greens Other

2002

2005

2009

2013

23% 7.4% 4.0% 8.6% 3.0%

30.6% 9.8% 8.7% 8.1% 3.9%

43.2% 14.6% 11.9% 10.7% 6.0%

32.7% 4.8% 8.6% 8.4% 11.9%

Source: www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/bundestagswahlen/

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Environmental Factors Although 2013 may well turn out to be the start of a wave back to the catchall parties, there are good reasons to doubt that this will happen. The small parties still performed well—in fact, they received the third highest vote share ever and the second highest since the 5 percent hurdle was applied nationally. Moreover, the 2009 Bundestag election had occurred under circumstances advantageous to the small parties. For only the second time in the Federal Republic’s history, the CDU /CSU and SPD had formed in 2005 a “grand coalition” at the national level. The two large parties converged in the center on issues such as a higher value-added tax and a retirement age of sixty-seven, thereby freeing space on the right for the FDP , which promised tax cuts, and space on the left for the Left Party. By late 2008, the Federal Republic was entering into a severe recession in the wake of the global financial crisis. A difficult economic climate fanned discontent with the parties in power and favored the small opposition parties. By 2013, a strong German economy was benefiting Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Union parties. Heading into the election year, the CDU /CSU Bundestag caucus chair forecast that “an old slogan in a new form will persuade voters: ‘Auf die Kanzlerin kommt es an’ (it comes down to the chancellor).”8 Volker Kauder proved prescient, at the cost of the opposition, among them the small Bundestag parties. Taking advantage of the chancellor’s foreign policy prerogatives during the Eurozone crisis and the opportunities of presidentialization,9 Merkel carried the Christian Democrats to an electoral triumph in September. The FDP shed 2,110,000 voters to the CDU /CSU, the most of any party, and the Greens relinquished 420,000 voters to the Christian Democrats—twice that what the SPD had given up.10 No longer locked in the cabinet as a junior coalition partner, the SPD had repositioned itself leftward after 2009 in an effort to recoup ground lost to the Left Party. An estimated 320,000 voters left the Left Party for the SPD in 2013; approximately 550,000 from the Greens cast votes for the “old auntie” SPD (die alte Tante).11 In short, those circumstances conducive to small party success in 2009— namely, a grand coalition in government at a time of economic contraction— no longer applied in 2013, when voters were generally satisfied with the economy, the chancellor was popular, and the chief opposition party had tacked leftward in the hope of winning back disillusioned former supporters. Yet, the individual small parties did not face the identical headwinds, nor did they run the same quality of campaign nor garner the same results.

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The Free Democratic Party Following eleven years in opposition, the longest dry spell in the party’s history, the FDP tallied nearly 15 percent of the second ballot vote in 2009 after promising hefty tax cuts, a tax code overhaul and health care reform. The party governed again with the Christian Democrats, a familiar postwar constellation, but this time with a twist. In decades past, as a hinge party, the FDP had held a central position between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Now, the Free Democrats more closely approximated a wing party (Flügelpartei) and stood to the right of the CDU /CSU on issues such as tax cuts and neoliberal structural reform.12 Support for the FDP quickly eroded once it failed to fulfill its campaign promises, while appearing to favor health care lobbyists (i.e., doctors, pharmacists and drug companies) over the patient.13 By summer 2010, its support had fallen to around 5 percent; by early 2012, it had dipped as low as 2 or 3 percent according to several polls.14 The FDP suffered repeated setbacks in state elections and exited five Landtage in 2011-2012. The old wisecrack, “What does the FDP stand for? Fast drei prozent (almost three percent)” now rang more true than ever. In the Lower Saxony election of January 2013, the FDP achieved its best result ever in the state (9.9 percent), thanks to last minute strategic voting by those who actually preferred the CDU. Accounting for an estimated 80 percent of all FDP voters,15 they presumably had hoped to keep the CDU in office by hoisting its coalition partner the FDP over the 5 percent mark. Instead, the SPD and Greens eked out a narrow victory, and the CDU entered the new Landtag with a much smaller caucus. Once burned, the CDU would prove twice shy during the September federal election when it came to “loaning” votes to the FDP. In January 2013, a journalist from the newsmagazine Stern accused Rainer Brüderle, the FDP’s Bundestag caucus chair who was set to lead the party in the upcoming federal election campaign, of having made an offensive remark of a sexual nature. The FDP stood by the beleaguered Brüderle; they had few attractive alternatives. Philipp Rösler, who had replaced Guido Westerwelle as party chair and vice chancellor in spring 2011, consistently ranked as one of the least popular politicians in the country. Unlike Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Guido Westerwelle, who had taken a backseat to Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) during the Eurozone crisis, had not been able to translate his performance as foreign minister into support for the FDP. In its campaign, the FDP sought to convey two messages: 1) its opposition to higher taxes and more statism—one poster declared: “Relief to the Mid•••

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dle Classes. Only with us” and 2) its indispensable role in a center-right (bürgerlich) camp that would keep Germany strong and the SPD, Greens, and Left Party at bay—another poster promised: “A Strong Germany instead of Red-Red-Green. Only with us.”16 The party presented itself as a guarantor of stable money and less public debt and as a foe of tax hikes. It stood to the right of the Merkel-led CDU on minimum wages, quotas for women on company boards, and rent control. The FDP openly courted votes among CDU supporters by playing to middle class loyalty to the bourgeois camp and warning of a left bloc. Whereas the CDU and SPD campaigns each tried to foster a sense of togetherness (“Together successful”— CDU; “The We Decides”— SPD), the FDP stressed “only with us” in an effort to persuade skeptical voters that it was in fact still needed. Among all leading candidates, the FDP’s Brüderle was the least popular.17 The FDP chased votes in western Germany, and appeared to write off the east, by proposing to eliminate the longstanding “solidarity tax contribution” for the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Although by August its polls numbers had ticked up into 5 to 6 percent territory, the FDP still faced a perilous environment. Voters preferred a Merkel-led grand coalition to another CDU/CSU-FDP government; they did not regard the FDP as competent to solve policy problems; and they viewed the party’s leadership in a negative light. The full extent of the party’s woes became apparent in the Bavarian state election, held a week prior to the federal election, in which the FDP won only 3.3 percent. In the wake of this debacle, the party renewed its urgent appeal, with tin can figuratively in hand, for support from CDU/CSU backers. The Christian Democrats, however, would have none of it. To the CDU’s general secretary, Hermann Gröhe, “the second ballot is the Merkel ballot and we want to capture it for the Union.”18 Memories of the Lower Saxony state election remained fresh. Moreover, the Federal Constitutional Court had diminished the incentive for strategic split-ticket voting by ensuring greater proportionality on the basis of the second-ballot tally: overhang mandates (Überhangsmandate) would now be offset with equalization mandates (Ausgleichmandate) going to the other parties. Election night proved a trying time for the FDP as it became clear that the party would be out of the Bundestag for the first time and that many hundreds of its members would be losing their jobs. The party received 4.8 percent of the vote—less than a third of its 2009 share—and sustained heavy losses across the board. Younger voters turned their backs on the party in droves. As in the past, the party performed disproportionately well among the self-employed, the affluent, and those with more formal education.19 Although federal elections are generally won in vote-rich western Germany, •••

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they can still be lost in eastern Germany. The FDP received less than 2.7 percent in the former GDR; four years earlier it had captured 10.6 percent. Had the party averaged about 3.9 percent in the east (or about 100,000 additional votes), it would have reached 5 percent nationally, rejoined the Bundestag and likely remained in government. The reasons for the FDP’s collapse were manifold: its unpopular leaders, its narrow focus on taxes, its diminished reputation for policy-making competence, and its dependence on votes from CDU /CSU backers. While most former FDP voters switched to the CDU /CSU, 430,000 defected to the upstart, anti-Euro Alternative for Germany (AfD), more than from any other party.20 To some analysts, the FDP had paid a heavy price for supporting the Euro rescue packages: Contrary to treaty terms [i.e., the Maastricht Treaty], the assistance to over-indebted Euro-countries violated principles that were held high: the rule of law, contract fulfillment, personal responsibility, and accountability. … Thus the FDP could also not prevent the Alternative for Germany from forming. Hardly six months later, it now got 4.7 percent. It is the Liberals’ own flesh and blood, led by a professor with a market-based approach.21

The FDP now faces an uncertain future. Deprived of a presence on the biggest stage, the party may find it difficult to remain in the public eye. It also has to come to terms with the legacy of the last years: restoring its credibility after a largely unsuccessful tenure in office; broadening its “brand” beyond tax cuts and less state; and developing and retaining political talent at a time when the party has less to offer would-be career politicians. Unlike the West German Greens’ setback in 1990, the FDP’s defeat followed a lengthy process of decay that had manifested itself in bad polling, poor regional election results, a shrinking membership, and leadership crises. The party neither can rely on a large cadre of enthusiastic supporters to stage its comeback, nor on a regional bastion, as the PDS had in the east after its 2002 defeat. The party will have to manage on far less federal money. Based on its Bundestag result, it can expect to receive about EURO 1.77 million yearly; prior to the election, it was approximately EURO 5 million a year. Complicating matters, donors may be less willing to give to the Liberals now that they have limited influence on public policy.22 Strategically, the FDP will have to decide whether to continue on a dual track: namely, as a party on the right (Flügelpartei) that attracts votes with a populist anti-tax message, yet also as a party that is there to ensure a majority for a center-right coalition. These two roles, however, are in tension as the rocky start of the last CDU /CSU-FDP government indicated. Another option would be for the party to position itself between the two large par•••

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ties, something that the FDP last accomplished during the Grand Coalition of 1966-1969.23 The center, however, has become crowded of late with the CDU, SPD and Greens laying claim to this party system space. The situation is not all bad for the FDP. For starters, leaving federal parliament no longer appears to be the death sentence that it once was. In contrast to the 1950s, the Volksparteien show a reduced capacity to absorb the smaller parties. The FDP can also take encouragement in the fact that both the Greens in 1990 and the PDS in 2002 rebounded after being all but absent from the Bundestag. As of early 2014, the FDP sat in nine state parliaments and governed in Saxony, but faced a steep climb in upcoming state elections in Saxony, Thüringia, and Brandenburg given the party’s weakness in eastern Germany. After the federal election, most of its leadership resigned. Christian Lindner, the new chair, enjoys broad name recognition, the backing of the party’s powerful North Rhine-Westphalia chapter, and a reputation for envisioning a big-tent FDP that would attract constituencies on the basis of both economic and social liberalism. Although the FDP is much derided as a Funktionspartei, it provided a service that many Christian Democrats valued: that is, enabling a bourgeois (bürgerlich) government to form. The political scientists Frank Decker and Eckhard Jesse went so far as to describe the CDU /CSU showing in 2013 as a “pyrrhic victory” since the Union, bereft of its traditional partner, had no choice but to reach out to a party on the left.24 In 2017, center-right voters who have grown weary of the Christian Democrats in grand coalition, opposed to a CDU /CSU experiment with the Greens, and nervous about Red-Red-Green will probably take a second look at the FDP. Finally, party mortality correlates with party age, with new parties more prone to succumb to “infant mortality” than seasoned parties are to experience mortality.25 As a very old party, the FDP has certain advantages, such as name recognition, access to the media, and civil society connections—especially to German industry—that a struggling new party would generally not have.

The Left Party The Left Party did not savor its strong 2009 showing for long. Shortly after the election, a power struggle between federal co-chair Oskar Lafontaine and federal party manager Dietmar Bartsch stoked tensions between the Lafontaine supporters and party hardliners in the western chapters and eastern reformers with ties to the former PDS. With its cultural and political dimensions, the East-West conflict reinforced ideological divisions in the •••

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party, hindered efforts to develop a unified party message, damaged personal relations among party leaders, and prevented the formulation of a coherent strategy toward the SPD. After federal co-chairs Lafontaine and Lothar Bisky left their posts in spring 2010, the new co-leaders—Gesine Lötzsch from the east and Klaus Ernst from the west—not only failed to unify the torn party, but made matters worse through a series of high profile missteps.26 By spring 2012, the Left Party had fallen to 5 percent nationally according to polling institutes,27 exited state parliaments in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine Westphalia (Lower Saxony would follow in January 2013), and lost members. The infighting got so bad that Gregor Gysi, as Bundestag caucus chair, described at a June 2012 party congress in Göttingen a parliamentary caucus that was wracked by “hatred” and suggested, if the party were not able to agree on a leadership team, it might be better to separate rather than continue the destructive and mean-spirited battle of the camps.28 Gysi’s speech came as a much needed wake up call. At Göttingen, the western trade unionist Bernd Riexinger, formerly from the WASG, and Katja Kipping, formerly from the PDS, became the party leaders and succeeded in avoiding the kind of blunders that Ernst and Lötzsch had committed. In so doing, they helped set the stage for a viable Bundestag campaign. In early 2013, the Left Party selected an eight-person leadership team for the upcoming election. In truth, however, the charismatic Gregor Gysi spearheaded the campaign. As a gifted speaker with widespread name recognition, Gysi was a great asset on the stump, and perhaps more importantly, on the nightly talk shows that are such a prominent feature of German television. Under the motto “Caring 100 percent” (100% sozial), the party staked out leftwing positions on taxes (e.g., raising the income tax rate to 53 percent for incomes above EURO 65,000 a year and 75 percent for those earning EURO 1 million yearly; imposing a financial transaction tax), on a minimum wage (an hourly minimum wage of EURO 10 that would increase to EURO 12 by 2017), and on pensions. It did not reject the Euro, but rather that average citizens—not the banks and speculators—had had to pay for the rescue of the single currency. Although it championed economic redistribution (one poster read: “Sharing is Fun: Tax on Millionaires”), the party also called for an immediate end to German military operations in Afghanistan and for a much smaller Bundeswehr. As successor to the PDS, the Left Party claimed a home field advantage in the former GDR. One of its posters declared: “The East Votes Red. Obviously!” With the SPD having ruled out any post-election pact with the Left Party, the latter had a free hand to attack the Social Democrats and Greens as part of a prevailing neoliberal consensus, whether in regard to Euro rescue packages, •••

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pensions or benefits for the long-term unemployed. It portrayed itself as the only opposition to a supposed “consensus gravy” (Konsenssöße), to use Gysi’s colorful phrase, that was being lapped up by the other parties. In this vein, it claimed that were it not returned to the Bundestag, no one in parliament would be there to challenge the neoliberal Zeitgeist. In addition to a lonevoice-in-the-wilderness function, the Left Party, as a Flügelpartei, promised a corrective function: the greater its election returns, the more pressure it would be able to exert on the CDU, SPD, and Greens to adopt progressive positions. The Left Party celebrated its election showing of 8.6 percent as a success, even though it had sustained the second biggest drop (-3.3 percentage points). On the positive side, it had roughly returned to its 2005 Bundestag election levels, at the time considered a great success, and won 5.6 percent in the former West Germany. For the first time, it finished third among Bundestag parties. That said, in 2009 the party had won sixteen direct mandates; now it settled for just four, none of which were won outside of Berlin. Its share of the eastern vote fell from 28.5 to 22.7 percent—the lowest since the PDS’s 2002 result. Although the Left Party lost support to every major party but the FDP, it sustained especially heavy losses to the rightwing AfD, which drew from it a net 340,000 voters.29 This is less surprising than one might think since both parties relied upon political protest. Moreover, polling data showed that as income level increased, so did support for the Euro.30 In 2009, the Left Party had done especially well among less well-off voters. As the largest Bundestag opposition party, the Left Party has an opportunity, albeit limited by the overwhelming parliamentary majority of the grand coalition parties, to draw attention to its policy alternatives. In the coming months, the party faces a hotly contested strategic choice. Following the example of eastern state chapters, the national party may choose to moderate its tone and policy demands, downplay its criticism of the SPD, and prepare for a possible federal coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens. After the federal election, the SPD made overtures to the Left Party by indicating that it would not as a matter of course rule out Red-RedGreen or Left Party-led coalitions with the SPD in the eastern states. The latter seemed in theory to open the door to Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) heading a coalition with the SPD and Greens in Thuringia after state elections in September. The Left Party may instead choose to continue to aim its fire at the SPD, now something of a sitting duck in grand coalition, in an attempt to win over disillusioned Social Democrats and those seeking radical change. This is a widely held preference among westerners in the party, many of whom defected from the SPD while Gerhard Schröder was chancellor (1998-2005). This confrontational approach promises electoral success •••

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in the short term, but complicates the long-term goal of holding federal office. Gregor Gysi is nearing the end of his political career. Sahra Wagenknecht, who favors a harder line, would like his post as caucus leader. The specter of renewed internecine struggle hovers over the Left Party. How the party handles the post-Gysi era, when it comes, will have a large bearing on its electoral prospects.

Greens Although the Greens had won a record 10.7 percent in the 2009 Bundestag election, they had placed fifth and remained in the opposition. Subsequently the party surged in the polls, climbing to 15 percent by summer 2010. Speculation abounded that the Greens were on their way to becoming the next Volkspartei. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, national support for the Greens swelled to 23 percent. (The polling institute Forsa had them as high as 28 percent.) 31 In May 2011, they received a stellar 24.2 percent of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, placing the minister president in a Green-Red government. Kicking off the federal election year in grand fashion, they captured 13.7 percent in Lower Saxony and formed a coalition with the SPD. Green party members elected Jürgen Trittin, a former federal minister from the party’s left wing, and Katrin Göring-Eckhart, an easterner associated with centrist positions, to be the lead candidates in the Bundestag election campaign. Of the two, Trittin would play the more prominent role.32 The Greens had planned to focus on the energy transformation (Energiewende) from fossil fuels toward renewable sources; on more social justice and economic opportunity with expanded pre-school offerings and a national minimum wage of EURO 8.50; and on societal reforms such as equal pay for women in the workforce and providing life partners with the same rights as spouses. 33 Although the Greens and their supporters were among the strongest champions of the Euro,34 the party did not highlight Europe in its campaign. The party made it clear that it favored a Red-Green coalition rather than a CDU/CSU-Green or Red-Red-Green constellation. The Greens would struggle to stay on message amidst a number of controversies.35 Critics accused them of wanting to raid the middle class and stressed that the Greens’ voters, among the most affluent of any party, would be adversely affected by their own party’s tax plans. The press focused on the Greens’ proposal that public cafeterias provide vegetarian-only fare once a week—a “Veggie Day.” This minor matter played into the notion that the •••

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Greens were intent on imposing their own vision of the virtuous life. Perhaps most damaging, a controversy arose over pedophilia and the Green party of the 1980s. Voters learned that party chapters had called for relaxing the criminal code to allow for sexual relations between adults and minors in some cases and that Jürgen Trittin had signed off on a 1981 local election platform in Göttingen that had incorporated the demands of a pro-pedophilia group. In short, the Greens had trouble focusing attention on the Energiewende—an issue that played to their reputation in environmental matters—but rather they had to talk about tax hikes, a Veggie Day, and their past association with the pedophilia movement. Tellingly, although 35 percent of those polled trusted the Greens to implement energy policy (far more than for any other party), the issue ranked only eighth among the most important problems to voters.36 An election year that began so promising in Lower Saxony ended in disappointment. The Greens shed nearly a million votes from their 2009 total and finished with a respectable, but nonetheless underwhelming, 8.4 percent. It was their third highest share, yet a far cry from the double digit showing anticipated just a few months earlier. As in the past, the Greens performed better in the west (9.2 percent) than in the former GDR (5.1 percent), did better among women than men, had more success among white collar workers, appealed to voters with more formal education, and fared substantially better among those younger than sixty.37 A poll revealed that two-thirds thought that the Greens’ tax proposals had scared off voters; a majority thought that the Greens had strayed from representing their voters’ interests.38 On the positive side, the Greens had held on to most of their electoral support, despite having run a flawed campaign, and reached the double-digit mark among every age cohort under sixty. In the coming years, the Greens too face a difficult strategic choice. They can position themselves as a party that favors coalitions with the Social Democrats and the Left Party or pursue an opening to the Christian Democrats that, if successful, would allow the Greens to pivot between the two catch-all parties. After the election, the Greens have taken steps in this direction, reemphasizing environmental concerns, meeting with the CDU/CSU for post-election exploratory talks and at the state level crafting a CDU-Green coalition in Hesse—the third attempt after Hamburg and the Saarland.39

Alternative for Germany (AfD) In spring 2013, a new party burst on to the political scene amidst a great deal of media attention. New small parties regularly come and go in Ger•••

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man politics, but this time perhaps things would be different. Led by the economics professor Bernd Lücke, and supported by other establishment figures in business and academia, the AfD possessed the gravitas to be taken seriously by the media and voters. Moreover, it chose an issue—leaving the Eurozone—that resonated and set it apart from the established parties. An April 2013 poll, for instance, indicated that 27 percent of Germans favored a return to the Deutschmark.40 In its four-page Bundestag election platform (the Greens’ had 327 pages!), the AfD opposed German financial support to heavily indebted Eurozone countries and demanded an orderly break-up of the Euro area. During the campaign, the AfD proclaimed in its posters: “Courage to Tell the Truth: the Euro is Dividing Europe;” “Referendum on the Euro Bailouts;” and “the Euro is Ruining Europe. Also Germany.” It also hung a controversial poster that recalled far-right welfare chauvinism—“Immigration, yes. But not into our social welfare system.” It was the troubled single currency though that had the potential to mobilize those at odds with the pro-Euro consensus in the Bundestag. According to an April 2013 poll, three quarters of Germans feared that the worst of the Euro crisis lay ahead.41 The AfD, however, struggled. By June and July, polling institutes were tracking the party in the 2 to 3 percent range. Overshadowed by the minimum wage and tax debates, the Euro did not feature prominently in the campaign. This changed somewhat on 20 August, when Finance Minister Schäuble (CDU) conceded at an election rally that Greece would probably require more financial help. Schäuble’s remarks, which received broad media attention, coincided with a rise in AfD support.42 As 22 September neared, several polls showed the AfD finishing strongly. But would it reach 5 percent? On election day, the AfD won a sensational 4.7 percent of the vote—the highest share for a new party since 1953. It had poached voters from competitors on the right and left, with the largest number coming from the FDP, followed by the Left Party and the CDU /CSU.43 More than half of those voting for the AfD indicated that they had done so out of disappointment with the other parties. The party performed best among men under forty-five and among blue-collar workers.44 The AfD won 5.9 percent in the former GDR (with a record 6.8 percent in Saxony) and 4.5 percent in the territory of the old West Germany. Not surprisingly, it did best among those who cared the most about the Eurozone.45 In 2014, the newcomers faced a generally favorable slate of elections: first European Parliament elections, then three state elections in the east, among them Saxony. However, for the AfD to build on its impressive fed•••

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eral election result, it has to carry out a few essential tasks in the coming years. It will need to establish professional state chapters that keep far-right elements at arm’s length. So far this has presented a problem. It will also have to develop a party program that can attract voters with different priorities and concerns. The AfD could attempt to be the “better FDP” by focusing on opposition to Eurozone bailouts, on market liberalism and on appealing to industry, small business and the self-employed. Both Bernd Lücke and Hans-Olaf Henkel, former president of the Federation of German Industry, past supporter of the FDP, and number two on the AfD’s 2014 European Parliament election list, can appeal to traditional FDP constituencies. The AfD may also cast itself as a socially conservative party in an effort to fill party system space vacated by a CDU that has tacked to the center under Angela Merkel. In this case, there may be an opportunity as the “better CSU.” Since the election, the AfD has moved along this path, deemphasizing its call for a Eurozone breakup, while adopting socially conservative positions on issues such as immigration, national identity, and family.46 A third, far less promising strategic option would be for the AfD to be a rightwing populist party that opposes immigration and stands for hard Euroskepticism. With the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) in disarray and the less extreme Republikaner also in decline—together these two parties slumped to a combined 1.5 percent of the vote in 2013, the AfD has a chance at galvanizing rightists and protest voters. Given the stigma facing far-right parties in Germany, however, any attempt to become the “better Republikaner” would probably be a fool’s errand.

Pirate Party Had the Bundestag election been held in spring 2012, then the German Pirate Party could well be sitting in the Bundestag today. The Pirates, who had achieved their political breakthrough in the September 2011 Berlin state election, cleared 5 percent in Saarland in March 2012. The following month, several polling institutes were indicating double-digit support for the party, with Forsa projecting 13 percent nationally.47 A leading authority on the party predicted at the time that if the Pirates were to perform strongly in the upcoming May state elections, then “they can hardly be stopped in the 2013 Bundestag election.” 48 The Pirates stayed on a roll, receiving 8.2 in Schleswig-Holstein and 7.8 percent in North Rhine-Westphalia, a state with nearly 18 million people that is sometimes dubbed the “little Federal Republic.” With its call for internet freedom, the party performed best among •••

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young, male, internet-savvy voters. In addition, it attracted protest voters who were dissatisfied with the established parties and attracted by the more transparent political culture that the party promised.49 Yet, as quickly as the Pirate Party had surged, it faded. Focused on internet policy, the Pirates struggled to offer convincing answers to other policy problems. Intense infighting hindered effective leadership and severely damaged the Pirates’ public image. A downward spiral ensued. In January 2013, the Pirates managed to win only 2.1 percent of the vote in Lower Saxony. After Edward Snowden began leaking classified NSA documents, the subject of privacy rights—a core Pirate issue—gained political salience. Nevertheless, the party could not capitalize on the controversy and finished at 2.2 percent in the Bundestag election, about the same result it had received four years earlier. When the Pirates were rising in 2011-2012, they were sometimes described as the next Greens: a party that mobilized youth and urban voters around emerging policy concerns overlooked by the established parties. Like the Greens, they too aspired to grassroots democracy and rejected internal hierarchies. But whereas the Greens survived the tumult of their early years, the Pirates may have paid too heavy a price for their infighting and missteps. Nonetheless, they do sit in four state parliaments that together represent about 30 percent of the German population and they benefitted from the Federal Constitutional Court’s rejection of a threshold in European Parliament elections. In short, there were no obvious election winners among the small parties in 2013. The AfD impressed, but still came away empty-handed. The Left Party cheered (at least in public) an outcome that was substantially less than the previous one; the Greens made no pretense of viewing their loss as anything other than a disappointment. After a four-year roller coaster ride, the Pirates ended up about where they had begun, but now with little reason for optimism. The FDP was unquestionably the biggest loser of them all. Although the small parties as a group waned, they still performed at a high level. Will the new Grand Coalition give a boost to the small parties? During Germany’s first grand coalition in the 1960s, the NPD surged and almost made it into the Bundestag in 1969. The FDP, however, lost electoral support, but did transform itself into a credible hinge party. Following the CDU /CSU-SPD government (2005-2009) all three smaller Bundestag parties recorded top results. One finds a similar trend in neighboring Austria. After thirteen years of grand coalition, the far-right Freedom Party’s vote share almost tripled from 9.7 percent in 1986 to 26.9 percent in 1999. During the more recent iteration of grand coalition government, the two large parties— •••

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SPÖ and ÖVP—have seen their combined vote share slip from just under 60 percent in 2006 to a little over 50 percent in 2013, while the number of parties in parliament increased to six. In short, the new Grand Coalition in Berlin will likely produce a hospitable environment for the small parties. Yet, even if this is the case, it hardly means that all or any have fat years ahead. How these parties organize and position themselves matters greatly.

Conclusion Whether as hinge parties, Flügelparteien, or regional parties, the small German parties are in the process of repositioning themselves vis-à-vis the Volksparteien and each other. Long a hinge party, the FDP shifted to the right after the Greens’ emergence. Will Christian Lindner, the party’s new leader, return it to a more central position? The Greens again ran in 2013 on the left, but now entertain the option of becoming a party that can form federal coalitions with competitors on the left and the right. And at some point the Left Party will choose between a strategy of targeting those disappointed with the SPD or attempting to lay the groundwork for a possible Red-RedGreen at the national level. If it were to follow the latter course, its strong base in the east, a legacy of the PDS’s position as a de facto regional party, would facilitate such an opening. Finally, the AfD will probably have to figure out what kind of a rightwing party it will be: a neoliberal one; a socially conservative one; or a populist anti-immigrant one. Although the tripartite classification system fit well with the political realities of the old West Germany in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, this article concludes that it has become less useful. The culprits are heightened electoral volatility and increased electoral compression. After German unification, the big parties have on average lost vote share; the smaller Bundestag parties on the whole have increased theirs; and the Sonstige have gained as well. In regard to the two types of small parties, the 2013 election outcome blurred the lines separating the established Bundestag parties from the extra-parliamentary ones, with the latter narrowing the distance between themselves and those in parliament. For instance, the newcomer AfD at 4.7 percent received more than half the votes of the third place Left Party. As a point of reference, the extra-parliamentary parties had combined for less than 1 percent of the vote in 1976 and in 1983. Complicating matters further, Bundestag parties are both dropping out and returning to the Bundestag with greater frequency. The West German Greens left the Bundestag in 1990, but returned as part of a merged party in 1994. Save for two •••

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deputies, the PDS exited in 2002, only to return with a new name and new partners in 2005. Most recently, the FDP has vacated its Bundestag offices. Whether it will return is an open question. An underlying assumption inherent in the classification of the small German parties into two distinct groups is that the established Bundestag parties matter, while the extra-parliamentary ones do not or at least not very much. This has become less true, as the impact of the Alternative for Germany shows. Because the AfD tapped heavily into former FDP reserves, it held the Liberals under 5 percent, which in turn prevented another CDU /CSU-FDP coalition from forming. Moreover, as the AfD has emerged as a serious competitor, the CSU has voiced populist positions on immigration (e.g., “whoever deceives gets the boot”—“wer betrügt, der fliegt”) and on the European Union. This seems to be an attempt to take the wind out of the sails of the AfD and heed former party chair Franz-Josef Strauß’ famous warning: “there must not be a legitimate, democratic party to the right of the CSU.” This rightwing posturing may, in turn, test Chancellor Merkel and the Grand Coalition. Even though it has not yet reached the threshold of representation, the AfD has already had a considerable impact on German party politics. DAVID F. PATTON teaches political science at Connecticut College in New London. He has published books and articles on the domestic politics of German foreign policy, German unification, the Party of Democratic Socialism, and the Left Party.

Notes 1. I would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the International Association for the Study of German Politics for arranging a Bundestag election trip. See Matthias Jung, Yvonne Schroth and Andrea Wolf, “Angela Merkels Sieg in der Mitte,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63, nos. 48-49 (2013), 19. See also, Frank Decker and Eckhard Jesse, “’Koalitionspolitik’ vor und nach der Bundestagswahl 2013,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63, nos. 48-49 (2013), 48-49. 2. Peter Mair, “The Electoral Universe of Small Parties in Postwar Western Europe,” in Small Parties in Western Europe: Comparative and National Perspectives, ed. Ferdinand MüllerRommel and Geoffrey Pridham (London, 1991), 41-70. 3. Mogens N. Pedersen, “Towards a New Typology of Party Lifespans and Minor Parties,” Scandinavian Political Studies 5, no. 1 (1982): 1-16, here 6-9; Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, 1976), 122-123. 4. For examples of this approach, see Stephen L. Fisher, The Minor Parties of the Federal Republic of Germany: Toward a Comparative Theory of Minor Parties (The Hague, 1974); Man-

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5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

fred Rowold and Stefan Immerfall, “Im Schatten der Macht. Nicht etablierte Kleinparteien,” in Parteien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd edn., ed. Alf Mintel and Heinrich Oberreuter (Opladen, 1992; Kleine Parteien im Aufwind: Zur Veränderung der deutschen Parteienlandschaft, ed. Uwe Jun, Henry Kreikenborn, Viola Neu (Frankfurt/Main, 2006). Dirk van den Boom, Politik diesseits der Macht?: Zu Einfluß, Funktion und Stellung von Kleinparteien im politischen System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Opladen, 1999), 21. Gordon Smith, “In Search of Small Parties: Problems of Definition, Classification and Significance,” in Müller-Rommel and Pridham (see note 2), 25. Hans-Jörg Dietsche, Die kleineren Parteien im Zweikräftefeld des deutschen Volksparteiensystems: eine funktionalistische Typologie unter Vergleich mit dem Vereinigten Königreich (Frankfurt/Main, 2004), 95-124. See also Hans-Jörg Dietsche, “Eine ‘Renaissance’ der kleinen Parteien?: Zu den Entwicklungsmöglichkeitein kleineren Parteien im deutschen Volksparteiensystem,” in Jun et al. (see note 4), 58-73. Nico Fried and Robert Roßmann, “CDU-Politiker Volker Kauder: ‘Grüne verströmen oft kleinbürgerlichen Mief,’” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1 December 2012; available at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/cdu-politiker-volker-kauder-eine-stolze-volksparteilaeuft-den-gruenen-nicht-hinterher-1.1538941; accessed 19 March 2014. David F. Patton, Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany (New York, 1999); Thomas Poguntke, “The Federal Republic of Germany,” in The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, ed. Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (Oxford, 2005), 75-79. Data from infratest dimap; available at http://wahl.tagesschau.de/wahlen/2013-09-22-BTDE/analyse-wanderung.shtml, accessed 19 March 2014. Ibid. Dietsche (see note 7), 71. See Alexander Neubacher, “FDP-Gesundheitspolitik: Triumph der Lobbykratie,” SpiegelOnline, 23 January 2010; available at http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/fdpgesundheitspolitik-triumph-der-lobbykratie-a-673543.html, accessed 19 March 2014. See values for Forsa, Emnid and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen at: http://www.wahlrecht.de/ umfragen/index.htm; accessed 19 March 2014. “Kurzanalyse: Landtagswahl in Niedersachsen. 20 January 2013,” Forschungsgruppe Wahlen; available at http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Wahlen/Wahlanalysen/Newsl_ Nied_2013.pdf, accessed 19 March 2014. Ralf Tils and Joachim Raschke, “Strategie zählt. Die Bundestagswahl 2013,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 48-49 (2013), 25. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Bundestagswahl. Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2013, no. 154 (Mannheim, 2013), 27. “Reaktion auf Bayernwahl: Union will keien Leihstimmen für die FDP,” Zeit Online, 15 September 2013; available at http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-09/wahl-bayern-reaktionen, accessed 19 March 2014. See data in Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (see note 17). Data from infratest dimap (see note 10). Heike Göbel and Manfred Schäfers, “Liberale: Die große Leere nach dem Absturz der FDP,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 September 2013; available at http://www.faz.net/ aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/liberale-die-grosse-leere-nach-dem-absturz-der-fdp12594436.html, accessed 19 March 2014. Martin Dowidelt, “Liberale in der Krise. Sanierungsfall FDP,” Handelsblatt, 24 September 2013. Decker and Jesse (see note 1), 53. Ibid., 50. Pedersen (see note 3), 1-2. Fodder for the media, these included Gesine Lötszch’s address on “paths to communism,” her unsuccessful attempt to put the construction of the Berlin Wall in historical context, the tandem’s birthday greetings to Fidel Castro, and Klaus Ernst’s penchant for driving a Porsche.

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

See May 2012 values for infratest dimap, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, and Allensbach, available at http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm. Gregor Gysis, “Die LINKE ist wichtig für die Menschen in Deutschland,” Göttingen party congress, 2 June 2012; available at http://www.die-linke.de/index.php?id=9950, accessed 19 March 2014. Data from Infratest dimap (see note 10). “Exclusivumfrage: Deutsche finden den Euro gut,” Handelsblatt, 9 April 2013. See polling data at http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm. Tils and Raschke (see note 16), 25. “Niederlage in der Mediendemokratie—Das grüne Bundestagswahlergebnis 2013,” Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 28 October 2013, 3-4; See also, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, “Grüner Mitgliederentscheid 2013: Unsere neun Regierungsprioritäten,” 11 June 11 2013; available at http://www.gruene.de/partei/gruener-mitgliederentscheid-2013-unsere-neun-regierungsprioritaeten.html, accessed 19 March 2014. In April 2012, a poll indicated that 88 percent of the Green supporters favored the Euro. “Exclusivumfrage” (see note 30). “Niederlage in der Mediendemokratie” (see note 33); See also Wolfgang Rüdig, “The Greens in the German federal elections of 2013,” Environmental Politics 23, no. 1 (2014): 159-165. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (see note 17), 31, 34. Ibid., 43-44. David Rose, “Wahlergebnis in der Analyse: Wer wählte was warum?,” Tagesschau.de, 22 September 2009, 3; available at http://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/wahlanalyse124.html, accessed 19 March 2014. See Oskar Niedermayer, “Die Parteien am Scheideweg: Wohin und mit wem?,” Neue Gessellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte 12 (2013): 12-13. “Exclusivumfrage” (see note 30). ARD-DeutchlandTREND, April 2013; available at http://www.infratest-dimap.de/umfragenanalysen/bundesweit/ard-deutschlandtrend/2013/april/, accessed 19 March 2014. Martin Greive, “Schäuble verwirrt mit neuem Athenpaket,” Die Welt, 20 August 2013; available at http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article119202086/Schaeuble-verwirrt-mitneuem-Athenpaket.html, accessed 19 March 2014. The polling institute Emnid projected the AfD to receive 1 percent of the vote on 18 August and 3 percent of the vote on 25 August . See http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/emnid.htm. Data from infratest dimap (see note 10). Rose (see note 38), 3-4. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (see note 17), 32. Melanie Amann, “AfD-Parteitag: Kurswechsel der Euro-Skeptiker,” Spiegel-Online, 25 January 2014; available at http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-parteitag-kurswechsel-der-euro-skeptiker-a-945544.html, accessed 19 March 2014. See http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/forsa.htm. “Parteienforscher Niedermayer: Piraten auf gutem Weg in den Bundestag,” Die Welt, 3 May 2012; available at http://www.welt.de/newsticker/news3/article106255450/Parteienforscher-Niedermayer-Piraten-auf-gutem-Weg-in-den-Bundestag.html, accessed 19 March 2014. Oskar Niedermayer, “Die Wähler der Piratenpartei: wo kommen sie her, wer sind sie und was bewegt sie zur Piratenpartei,” in Die Piratenpartei (Wiesbaden, 2013), 65-73.

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Chapter 5 • • •

MANY NEW FACES, BUT NOTHING NEW? The Sociodemographic and Career Profiles of German Bundestag Members in the Eighteenth Legislative Period

Melanie Kintz

The German Bundestag election 2013 was marked by the highest member turnover since German unification.1 Overall, 217 members (34.3 percent) who will serve in the Federal Assembly in the eighteenth legislative period (2013-2017) have not served the Bundestag before. Additionally, fifteen members who had served the Bundestag before but were not part of the German parliament in the seventeenth legislative period (2009-2013) reentered the Bundestag. The failure of the FDP, which held ninety-three seats in the previous legislative period, accounts for a part of that high turnover. Further, more than 100 members that served the seventeenth Bundestag had announced to not run for a mandate again prior to the election. Among them are such prominent figures as Ilse Aigner (CSU) who retired from the Bundestag to serve in the Bavarian state government or Wolfgang Thierse (SPD) who retired from national politics completely after having served in the Bundestag since German unification. This article analyses if and how the record turnover impacts the sociodemographic and career profiles of the members of the German Bundestag. Understanding the sociodemographic profiles of parliamentarians helps us comprehend which social groups are more likely to be represented in the German parliament, while analyzing the career paths to the national parliament provides an understanding to the professionalization of German politics and the development of a political class in Germany. In order to achieve such insights, I first provide a brief overview of the recent literature on German political careers. Then, I provide data on the sociodemographic profiles of German MPs, focusing on age, gender, East/West background, educational

Many New Faces, but Nothing New?

and professional profiles. Finally, the article delves into the paths parliamentarians follow to the German Bundestag, highlighting years of party membership, average time needed from party entry to Bundestag entry, position held before entering the national parliament, and tenure in the Bundestag.

Literature Review Much of the research on German parliamentarians has focused on sociodemographic profiles. Adalbert Hess developed an analytical framework to study the occupational profiles of German parliamentarians.2 His work found that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a large proportion of German parliamentarians came from the group of civil servants, followed by those employed in freelance professions or working in political organizations (unions, employees of parties, or parliamentary party groups). His work has been followed up by Franziska Deutsch and Susanne Schuettemeyer and Melanie Kintz.3 These works have found that the share of civil servants declined,4 while the group of employees of political organizations became more pronounced.5 Further, though on a much smaller scale, the share of those entering the national parliament without any other work experience has increased from 1.7 percent in 19916 to 4.4 percent in 2009.7 This group, which is largely comprised of students joining the Bundestag straight out of university, is on the one hand a reflection of the of the increasing “academization” of German politicians, as well as another sign of political professionalization, on the other. In addition to the data on occupational profiles, authors have analyzed other demographic factors. Beate Hoecker for instance studied the sociodemographic background and career patterns of female Bundestag members from 1949 to 1994 and found that women had been older than their male peers until the Greens entered the Bundestag in the 1980s.8 Furthermore, she showed that the share of members with a college degree had been rising to the lower 80 percent range until 1994 with women lagging slightly in their overall educational levels. In my previous research, I updated these data and found that by 2006 the educational level of the German Bundestag members had remained steadily above the 80 percent mark. Aside from sociodemographic indicators that are used to study professionalization, other career path data have been studied. As Thomas Saalfeld shows, data on the length of tenure in the Bundestag, the presence of certain age cohorts, as well as staff sizes can be used as indicators professionalization.9 On the other hand, he argues that membership in a Landtag (state parliament) is usually a part of a parallel career.10 Kintz, on the other hand, showed that •••

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after unification members from the Landtage often moved up to the Bundestag later on, so that the share of members with experience at the state level has been rising to 18.9 percent by 2006, with women and East Germans more likely coming to the national political stage with this type of background.11 Professionalization of politics in Germany is nothing new, yet it seemed in the last years that politics has become the only career for German Bundestag members, leading to development of a veritable political caste that increasingly loses its connection to the German electorate. If such a trend exists, we should see more members being recruited from occupations closely associated with politics—full-time mandates at the local level, employees of parties or members of parliaments—or members entering the Bundestag without any prior occupational background. Moreover, we would expect to see members accumulating a string of mandates (state level, supranational level), so it is interesting to see what the newly elected members did right before they entered the Bundestag. This article uses biographical data of Bundestag members for its underlying analysis. The majority of the data comes from the website of the German Bundestag and the members’ personal websites, the Peoples’ Handbooks of the German Bundestag (for the thirteenth to the sixteenth legislative period) and the Data Handbook of the History of the German Bundestag, 1994-1999.12

The New MPs—Professional Politicians? With the surprising exit of the FDP from parliament and a rather large retiring cohort of members who served in the previous Bundestag, the new, four-party-parliament looks quite different. The small party Fraktionen (parliamentary group) of the Greens and Left Party shrank, the first by five and the latter by twelve seats. On the other hand, the SPD increased the size of its delegation from 146 seats to 193 seats, while the CDU /CSU / Fraktion increased its size even from 239 seats to 311. That being said, all Fraktionen have new members because even in the smaller parties some members retired or were not re-elected. Thus, the Green Party’s parliamentary group has fifteen new members (23.8 percent), while the Left party has only eleven new members (17.2 percent of the Fraktion). While the CDU /CSU welcomed 106 newcomers to the Bundestag (34 percent of the Fraktion), the SPD had the largest membership turnover at 44 percent, as eighty-five new members joined the group in parliament. This high turnover is accompanied by a record level of women now serving in the Bundestag. The share of women is now at 36.3 percent,13 up from •••

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the previous high of 33.1 percent in the prior legislative period. Even though most parliamentary groups have a record level of women, the Greens, originally responsible for the introduction of quotas for the Bundestag, have their own lowest share (54.0 percent) of women within their parliamentary group. While still above the 50 percent mark, they are now the Fraktion with the second highest share of women, following the Left Party whose share of female parliamentarians is at 56.3 percent. The number of women serving in the CDU /CSU Fraktion rose from forty-eight to seventy-eight and thus experienced the biggest increase (from 20.1 to 25.1 percent), while the SPD increased its number of women by twenty-four (from 39.0 to 42.0 percent). Also among those who newly entered the Bundestag, women make up a substantial share: 41.9 percent of the new members are women, the highest level since 1994. While the women’s share has been increasing over the years, the share of East Germans14 in the Bundestag has been declining. While in 1994 East Germans still made up 18.2 percent of all members, the number has been declining almost steadily since,15 and has now stabilized at 14.6 percent. When looking at differences among the parliamentary groups, however, unsurprisingly the Left Party has the highest share of East Germans in its Fraktion (45.3 percent), while the SPD has its lowest share of East German members in its parliamentary party group since unification (only 8.3 percent). Even though the CDU/CSU Fraktion had great electoral results in the East, East Germans only represent 13.2 percent of its group. Also, among the newcomers to the Bundestag, East Germans comprise only 12.0 percent, and while 54.5 percent of all newcomers in the Left Party Fraktion are East Germans, they make up 6.7 percent of the newcomers to the Green’s group, 8.2 percent of the newcomers to the SPD and 11.3 percent of the CDU/CSU’s newcomers. Of course, one needs to know that turnover in the eastern states was not as high as in other parts of Germany. Only 14.3 percent of all newcomers were elected in the five new Länder, which is one of the lowest rates since unification.16 Further, the number of non-East Germans being elected through the lists and districts of the five new Länder is fairly high: twentytwo MPs born and socialized in the former Federal Republic and two members born abroad were elected to the Bundestag in the eastern states, and of these two subgroups nine of them are new. On the other hand, six East Germans were elected to the Bundestag through the lists and districts of the western states, three of them new. These three new members were all members of Fraktionen other than the Left Party, while the other three are Left Party members from the East who had already been elected to the Bundestag through West German lists in the previous legislative period. •••

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The average age of Bundestag members has remained fairly stable over time between forty-nine and fifty years of age. In this legislative period, the members of the Green Fraktion are on average the youngest (46.5 years), while the members of the Left Party are on average the oldest (50.9 years) even though just slightly. As Saalfeld argues, the political career of German MPs starts with a political apprenticeship at the local level.17 Hence, he observes that the majority of the members of the German Bundestag belongs the age cohort of forty to fifty-nine years old. This has not changed in the last years, though the share of the age group in the Bundestag has been going down from 77.8 percent he reports from the early 1990s to the 64.3 percent in the eighteenth Bundestag, the lowest value ever. Nevertheless, in order to argue that previous career paths have shifted with politics becoming the only path, we should observe a larger share of younger members over time. Indeed, the share of members under the age of forty has increased by 4 percentage points since the time of Saalfeld’s writing and is currently at 17.6 percent. So, while we see a slight increase in younger cohorts, the increase in the age group eighteen to thirty-nine does not compensate completely for the declining share of the forty to fifty-nine age cohort. The largest share of members under the age of forty, namely 30.2 percent can be found in the Green Fraktion, while this age cohort only represents 12.5 percent in the Linke group, 13.5 percent of the SPD and 18.6 percent in the CDU /CSU Fraktion. Among those who entered the Bundestag anew about 30 percent of the members came from the age cohort of under forty years of age since 1998 and this has remained the case for this legislative period as well. The share of the age cohort forty to fifty-nine, however, has declined slightly since 1998, even though it is still the dominant age cohort at 62.2 percent. Overall, these numbers do not conclusively show an increasing tendency towards political professionalization. A stronger trend is the continued “academization” of Bundestag members. In the current parliament, 86.2 percent of the MPs have a college degree, which is slightly down from the previous legislative period, but still the second highest level in the Bundestag since its creation in 1949. Interestingly enough though, among the newcomers this year, there is a slightly stronger diversity in educational background and “only” 82.5 percent hold a college degree. On the other hand, the share of newcomers to the Bundestag holding a doctorate is at 20.4 percent—the highest since unification. The largest share of members with university degrees are found in the smaller parties: in the Left Party, 90.6 percent of the members hold a college degree, among the Greens 87.3 percent, among SPD members 86.5 percent and in •••

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the CDU/CSU 84.9 percent. This pattern can also be observed when looking at those that newly entered the Bundestag. Among those joining the smaller parliamentary groups, 90.9 percent (Left Party) and 86.7 percent in the Greens hold a college degree, while in the two large Fraktionen “only” 82.4 percent (SPD) and 81.3 percent (CDU/CSU) hold a college degree. The larger share of MPs with college degrees also impacts the occupational structures of the Bundestag with fewer and fewer coming from the lower ranks of the state administration or from working class backgrounds.18 On the other hand, for instance, the number of members with no other occupational experience (i.e., right after finishing university) has increased from five in 1994 to thirty in 2013. Among the newly elected parliamentarians in this legislative period, six came directly from as students. Admittedly, the numbers are small—after all thirty members only make up 4.7 percent of the entire body. Yet, it signals a trend where politics becomes the first professional experience for German parliamentarians. Further, members come increasingly from professions that are closely related to politics. For example, there has been rising number of former mayors or full-time local councilors. While in the sixteenth Bundestag (2005-2009) twenty-six former mayors and local councilors were MPs, there are now thirty-eight MPs with this occupational background. Also indicative is that among the newly elected, sixteen members come from professionalized local politics.19 Similarly, the number of those being recruited with professional background in political organizations has been increasing in the past three electoral periods. This group includes the employees of political parties, their MPs or parliamentary groups at the state or national level, as well as union workers and employees of political foundations and charity organizations. The number of employees recruited from this professional group has increased from eighty-six in 2005 to 121 in 2013 and is now at 19.4 percent, comprising the second strongest occupational group in the Bundestag.20 Within this group, those with a professional background as employees of political parties, their parliamentary groups and MPs increased the most from thirty-nine in 2005 to seventy-one in this current legislative group. The number of members with professional backgrounds in the other two subgroups (union functionaries and employees of charity organizations or other political organizations) has remained rather stable in the same timeframe. Further evidence for the increasing recruitment from this group is that twenty-two of the newly elected members were previously employees of political parties, their parliamentary groups, and MPs. While the share of these employees is strongest in the two small Fraktionen, among the newly elected MPs who formerly worked for political parties, many are now mem•••

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bers of the SPD Fraktion. Overall, the described changes in the occupational structure are a further indicator of deepening professionalization of politics in Germany. Political parties and the service of MPs to these parties are still key to political careers. On average, the parliamentarians that serve the eighteenth Bundestag have, on average, been members of their respective parties for twenty-five years, though less in the smaller and younger parties, Greens (19.3 years) and Left Party (18.0 years, counting previous membership in the postcommunist PDS), and more in the two catch-all parties: 26.0 years for the CDU /CSU and 27.2 years in the SPD. Also, those who are newly elected to the Bundestag have on average served their parties for twenty years, which is the longest average of party membership among the newcomers since unification.21 This also indicates that the career path to the Bundestag is still an “oxtour” which takes quite some time and that the career path is rather institutionalized and shows little openness to the “Seiteneinsteiger” (lateral entrants).22 On average it took the current members 17.9 years from joining the parties to entering the Bundestag, which is also the highest average since unification. Of course, the average value is lower in the newer parties again23 as compared to the larger parties.24 One factor that potentially lengthens the career path to the Bundestag is serving in other parliaments. Yet, when we look at the current legislative period, we find that the strong majority of parliamentarians (87.2 percent) have worked in their professions immediately before entering the Bundestag for the first time. Only sixty-two members (9.9 percent) served in state parliaments, four switched from serving in state government before entering, seven were in the national government, and six served in the European parliament. Among those entering the Bundestag anew in this legislative period, more than 91.8 percent came from their professional background, while only sixteen (7.4 percent) came directly from the state parliaments and two (0.9 percent) from the European Parliament. Thus, serving in other parliaments is still a parallel career not a pre-stage to serving in the Bundestag and most members come from their original occupational backgrounds. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the professional structure appears to be changing to include more students with no prior work experience, professional local politicians, and employees of political parties and organizations. The last indicator is service in the Bundestag itself. As Saalfeld has argued, politicians trying to make politics their profession will try to get renominated and re-elected for as long as possible.25 Of course, measuring the average time of service in the Bundestag for the currently serving members is based on the tenure they have at the beginning of the legislative period—a •••

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value that is, by nature, lower than at the end of the legislative period when some members may consider retirement.26 Currently, the average tenure in parliament is 6.5 years, a slight bit lower than the same value at the beginning of the legislative periods since 1998. However, if one excludes the newcomers, which skew the data a bit in periods with extremely high turnover rates, we find that average tenure is 9.9 years, the second highest value since unification.27 Once again, we find differences in the parties. The members in the two larger Fraktionen have had longer tenures (10.8 on average in the SPD, 10.3 on average in the CDU /CSU), while the members of the two smaller and newer parliamentary groups have a tenure of on average 7.6 years (Greens) and 7.4 years (Left Party).28 The number of those serving in the Bundestag for ten years or longer has not changed dramatically since 1994 in the larger parties and has only gone up in the newer Fraktionen where professional political careers seem to adapt to the political careers of the larger, established parties. Thus, these data do not suggest that there is a trend to further extension of the political career in the Bundestag.

New Patterns of Political Professionalization in the German Bundestag? The high turnover in the German Bundestag leads one to wonder whether the new members bring in a new type of professionalized politician to the parliament. As the analysis above has shown, however, not much has changed. Neither have age cohorts dramatically changed, nor their tenure in parliament. The path to parliament is still an ox tour, taking many years of dedicated party service. The Bundestag mandate is for most parliamentarians still the first electoral mandate in their political career—only a handful have served in other local, state, or supranational parliaments. The only real change that could be observed is the change in the professional backgrounds of Bundestag members. Indeed, the professionalization of politics at the local level increasingly allows parliamentarians to live off politics prior to entering the Bundestag. Furthermore, parties seem to recruit increasingly among their own employees at different levels, as this group has been gaining strength in parliament since unification. Overall, the 2013 elections may have brought in a lot of new members to parliament, but in their career paths, they do not differ that much from their re-elected peers. M ELANIE KINTZ is a research associate at the Section for British and American Cultural and Social Studies of the English Department at the Chemnitz •••

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University of Technology. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Western Michigan University. Her research is focusing on intraparliamentary careers of German Bundestag members, specifically looking at women and East Germans. Her dissertation project is titled “Recruitment to Leadership Positions in the German Bundestag, 1994-2006.” Recent publications have appeared in the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen and in German Politics. She is also interested in American politics and is currently working together with Klaus Stolz on a research project on post-cabinet careers in the U.S. and the UK.

Notes 1. Previously, the thirteenth legislative period had the highest turnover since unification, when 200 new members entered the Bundestag, resulting in a turnover rate of 29.8 percent. All calculations are based on my own dataset. 2. Adalbert Hess, “Daten und Aspekte zur Sozialstruktur des 12. Deutschen Bundestages,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 23, no. 2 (1992): 201-216; Adalbert Hess, “Sozialstruktur des 13. Deutschen Bundestages: Berufliche und fachliche Entwicklungslinien,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 26, no. 4 (1995): 567-585. 3. Franziska Deutsch and Suzanne Schüttemeyer, “Die Berufsstruktur des Deutschen Bundestages—14. und 15. Wahlperiode,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 34, no. 1 (2003): 21-32; Melanie Kintz, “Daten zur Berufsstruktur des 16. Bundestages,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 37, no. 3 (2006): 461-470; Melanie Kintz, “Die Berufsstruktur der Abgeordneten des 17. Deutschen Bundestages,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 41, no. 3 (2010): 491-503. 4. They made up 29.6 percent of the MPs in the seventeenth Bundestag. Kintz 2010 (see note 3), 493. 5. This group comprised 16.6 percent in the seventeenth Bundestag. Ibid. 6. Hess 1992 (see note 2), 205. 7. Kintz 2010 (see note 3), 494. 8. Beate Hoecker, “Parliamentarierinnen im Deutschen Bundestag 1949 bis 1990. Ein Postskriptum zur Abgeordnetensoziologie,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 25, no. 4 (1994): 556-581. 9. Thomas Saalfeld, “Professionalization of Parliamentary Roles in Germany: An Aggregate Lvel Analysis, 1949-94,” Journal of Legislative Studies 3, no. 1 (1997): 32-54. 10. Ibid., 36. 11. Melanie Kintz, “Recruitment to Leadership Positions in the German Bundestag, 19942006” (PhD diss., Western Michigan University, 2011), 118. 12. Deutscher Bundestag, ed. Kürschner’s Volkshandbuch Deutscher Bundestag, 13. und 16. Wahlperiode (Berlin, various years); Peter Schindler, ed., (1999). Datenhandbuch Deutscher Bundestag 1949-1999, 3 vols., published by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag (Berlin, 1999); Michael F. Feldkamp and Birgit Ströbel, ed., Datenhandbuch Deutscher Bundestag 1994-2003 (Baden-Baden, 2005). 13. As of 1 February 2014. 14. This is defined as members who have been born in the German Democratic Republic and held its citizenship by 1989.

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16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

The share of East Germans in the German Bundestag reached its lowest level in the postunification period in the fifteenth legislative period (2002-2005) when the PDS/Left Party was not present as a full Fraktion. Only in the fifteenth legislative period was the turnover rate in the five new Länder lower than that at 10.7 percent. Saalfeld (see note 9), 36. See previous studies by Deutsch and Schüttemeyer (see note 3) and Kintz 2006 and 2010 (see note 3). Compared to six in the sixteenth legislative period and ten in the seventeenth legislative period. For a more in-depth analysis of the occupational structure of the Bundestag members in the eighteenth legislative period see Melanie Kintz, "Die Berufsstruktur des Deutschen Bundestages—18. Wahlperiode," Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen (forthcoming). Its share has more than doubled since 1994, when only 8.3 percent came from this political background. Here too, the average years of party membership are slightly lower in the smaller parties: Greens 15.9, Left Party 17.5 years. CDU /CSU newcomers have on average served their parties 18.5 years while SPD newcomers served already 23.2 years. Andreas Gruber, “‘Ox tour’ or ‘spring board’? Parties and Elite Access in German Democracy,” paper presented at the “Democratic Elitism Reconsidered” conference, Dornburg, 2007. Greens 12.9 years, Left Party 11.8 years. CDU /CSU 18.7 years and SPD even 20.4 years. Saalfeld (see note 9), 34. Thus, these data need to be considered with caution. Only in the seventeenth legislative period was this value slightly higher at 10.0 years. The value of the Left Party, as well as for other parties is a sum of all years served, even though they may not have been served continuously. The Left Party did not have a formal parliamentary group from 2002 to 2005 because it did not make it over the 5 percent threshold. It did, however, have two deputies who won direct mandates.

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Chapter 6 • • •

CLOSING THE GAP Gender and Constituency Candidate Nomination in the 2013 Bundestag Election

Louise K. Davidson-Schmich

Germany’s two-tier electoral system is often used to document the advantage women enjoy in proportional representation (PR), as opposed to firstpast-the-post, electoral systems.1 In 2013, as in past years, women fared far better in Germany’s “second vote” than in the “first vote.” The percentage of female candidates running on PR lists was almost ten percent higher than the percentage of women found among nominees for constituency seats; almost twice as many women were elected to the Bundestag through the second (PR) vote than through the first (plurality) vote. Many reasons have been given as to why women fare better in proportional representation electoral systems than under plurality rules. When the district magnitude is greater than one, as it is in Germany’s PR tier, parties can “balance the ticket” by placing both male and female candidates on the ballot;2 in contrast, when only one candidate can be chosen party leaders often have “an incentive … to stand lowest common-denominator candidates [… and] these rarely turn out to be women.”3 Potential female nominees are often overlooked by party leaders who are more likely to identify men as “rising stars” within the party;4 seemingly objective candidate selection criteria are often highly gendered, rendering women less likely than men to be considered qualified for a seat;5 and women have more difficulties than men in credibly committing to a long-term career as district representative given the frequency with which they are called upon to care for family members.6 Additionally, one of the main reasons proportional representation often results in the nomination, and election, of higher percentages of women

Closing the Gap

than plurality does is that PR is more compatible with the use of candidate gender quotas.7 As Germany’s major political parties adopted such quotas for their party lists, the percentage of women in the Bundestag began increasing. Today, the Left Party, Greens and Social Democratic Party (SPD) promise that (at least) 50 percent of their Bundestag list candidates will be women and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has adopted a 33 percent quorum for the PR tier. In contrast, none of the German parties has made any such numeric pledge for constituency candidates. As a result, considerable scholarly evidence documents both the rise of women in the Bundestag as gender quotas for party lists were phased in, and a continuing gap between the percentage of women elected through the PR and plurality tiers of Germany’s electoral system.8 Although women still win fewer seats through plurality than PR, and although they remain less likely than men to be nominated to run for constituency seats, women have made consistent strides in gaining the nomination for directly elected Bundestag mandates over time. Moreover, the percentage of women winning constituency seats this century is almost twice that of figure from the mid 1990s. Recent research by Jessica FortinRittberger and Christina Eder concludes: the bulk of women’s candidatures are made at the PR-list tier: over time about 70 percent of all women’s candidatures emanate from party lists, and the remaining 30 percent from the nominal tier. This pattern seems to be more balanced for men, as on average 55 percent of all male candidatures are made at the PR-list tier, and the remaining 45 percent in SMD contests. … While these trends are obvious, the gender gap in nominations appears to be narrowing over time, meaning that women’s nomination patterns across tiers are approaching those of men ….9

Indeed, in 2013, the number of women nominated to run for constituency seats increased when compared with the 2009 Bundestag election. The above findings are surprising, as many of the gendered hurdles to women’s nomination for constituency seats remain unchanged. Women are still primarily responsible for childbearing and childrearing, making it difficult for them to credibly commit to an uninterrupted stint as constituency (Wahlkreis) representative and the district magnitude of one remains unchanged. Women are also still unlikely to be “lowest common denominator” candidates, as Germany’s “pipeline” of professional women who could become members of the Bundestag (MdB) remains limited because the country continues to have one of the lowest full-time labor force participation rates of women among OECD members.10 Moreover, media bias against female candidates, for example stressing female candidates’ appearance more than men’s, persists, making women seem weaker candidates than •••

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men.11 Finally, no parties have introduced quotas for this tier of the electoral system, nor have the electoral rules or nomination procedures changed. Why then have the numbers of female candidates for these 299 Bundestag constituencies been increasing? What accounts for women’s improved performance in this tier in 2013 compared to 2009? This article explores five potential mechanisms which may be driving the observed rise in women nominated as candidates for Germany’s “first vote.” I argue that the main reasons for these increases lie in the advantages female incumbents incur, the openings presented when male incumbents retire, and the diffusion of female candidates across parties and neighboring Wahlkreise after one woman manages to win a direct mandate. I develop these conclusions by comparing candidate nominations and direct mandate winners in the 2009 and 2013 Bundestag elections. This analysis is based both on candidate data and election results publically available from the Federal Elections Supervisor (Bundeswahlleiter) and on statistics about members of the Bundestag published by that body following elections.12 I begin by documenting the rising percentages of women nominated for Germany’s “first vote.” Then, I investigate five mechanisms that the existing literature on gender and electoral systems suggests might explain women’s improving performance in Germany’s plurality tier. I conclude by assessing the ramifications of my findings for both scholars and advocates of women’s descriptive representation.

Women as Constituency Candidates in 2009 and 2013 In 2009, 31.9 percent of all major party candidates for the Bundestag were women, and in 2013 this figure rose to 33.8 percent.13 These averages mask considerable variance between the plurality and PR tiers of the electoral system, however. In 2009, 27.3 percent of the major parties’ direct mandate candidates were women compared with 36.2 percent of their PR list candidates. Although this gap continued in 2013 it narrowed by almost 1 percent—29.7 percent of the major parties’ nominees for constituency seats were women while 37.8 percent of the candidates on party lists were women. All parties employing quotas, including the CDU, SPD, Left Party, and Greens, included higher percentages of women on their party lists in 2013 than they did in 2009. Parties not utilizing candidate gender quotas saw slight declines in the percentage of women on their party lists, however. In contrast, all parties experienced an increase in the percentage of women among their nominees for direct mandates between 2009 and 2013 •••

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(see Figure 6.1). The Greens, the party which pioneered the use of candidate gender quotas for the PR tier, nominated the highest share of women for constituency seats in both 2009 (35.8 percent) and in 2013 (40.5 percent). They were closely followed by the Social Democratic Party, which increased its percentage of female direct mandate nominees from 35.8 percent in 2009 to 36.8 percent in the most recent election. The Left Party’s figures climbed from 28.3 percent to 31.9 percent and the CDU’s from 21.6 percent to 23.2 percent. Even parties not employing gender quotas in the PR tier raised the numbers of women nominated for direct seats between 2009 and 2013; the Bavarian CSU moved from 13.3 percent female nominees to 17.7 percent and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) from 16.4 percent to 17.1 percent. Figure 6.1. Percentage of Women among Wahlkreis Nominees

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the increased percentage of female candidates in 2013 also led to growth in the numbers of women elected to the federal parliament. The eighteenth Bundestag selected in 2013 contained a record high share of women; 36.5 percent of MdB were female—compared to the 32.8 percent in the seventeenth Bundestag. Of the MdB elected via party lists, 49.5 percent were women in contrast to 43.4 percent in 2009.14 In part, this increase in the PR tier stems from the failure of the Free Democratic Party to reach the 5 percent of the second vote necessary to win Bundestag mandates. The FDP has no quota for women and sent lower numbers of women to the federal parliament than all other parties in 2009; the Free Democrats’ exit from the Bundestag resulted in parties employing quotas for their lists •••

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gaining more seats. In addition, both the SPD and Left Party upped the percentages of female list MdBs over 2009. Most parties also sent a greater share of women to the Bundestag through the plurality tier in 2013 than they did in 2009 (see Figure 6.2). The CDU, CSU, and Left party saw higher percentages of their constituency seats going to female candidates than in the previous election, although the proportion for the SPD dipped almost 5 percent, from 29 percent to 24 percent. The Left Party raised its percentage of female-held direct mandates from 44 to 50 percent. The Christian Democratic parties also sent more women to the Bundestag through the first vote; the CDU’s figure rose from 17 percent in 2009 to 20.4 percent in 2013 and the CDU’s from 13 to 17.8 percent. As in 2009, the FDP won no directly elected seats and the Greens only obtained one—held by Hans-Christian Ströbele in Berlin. Overall in 2013, 21.1 percent of the 299 directly elected MdB were women, slightly lower than the 22.4 percent in 2009. Then sixty-five women held direct mandates; in 2013 the number fluctuated to sixty-three. Figure 6.2. Percentage of Women among Wahlkreis Winners

Having documented the across-the-board rise in female direct mandate candidates and most parties’ increasing percentage of female direct mandate winners in 2013, I now investigate five possible explanations for why

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more women were nominated for this tier of the electoral system in 2013 than they did in 2009.

Hypothesis 1: Growing Numbers of Women are Benefitting from an Incumbency Advantage Women are hypothesized to do poorly in first-past-the-post systems because (historically male) incumbents have been found to enjoy election advantages over new entrants, making it difficult for female newcomers to break in.15 Incumbents benefit from name recognition and a record of delivering resources to their electoral districts; they also gain seniority and become better able to represent local interests than a newcomer to the federal parliament. Thus, one reason why women may be increasing their numbers among direct mandate candidates is that, once women do manage to win Wahlkreise, they are likely to be renominated and re-elected. If the number of female incumbents rises from one election to the next, then, so too should the number of female candidates in the subsequent election.16 This mechanism clearly helps explain some of the growth in female constituency candidates. Of the women winning direct mandates in 2009, 88.7 percent were renominated to their district in 2013; there were no instances in which an incumbent woman failed to retain her status as direct mandate candidate for her district. The handful of women who did not contest their Wahlkreis again voluntarily left the Bundestag. Three decided to end their political careers; for example, Beatrix Philipp retired after almost twenty years in the national parliament. Four others left federal-level politics in favor of higher-ranking Land-level positions. In one such case, Ilse Aigner from the CSU abandoned her Bundestag seat to become Bavaria’s Deputy Minister President and Minister of Economic Affairs. While incumbency advantage helps explain why women who have won a Wahlkreis are likely to be re-nominated for their constituency, women do not appear to enjoy as strong of an incumbency advantage as men when it comes to being re-elected. While it is true that the vast majority of all incumbents (91.4 percent) were returned to the Bundestag in the past federal election, women were disproportionately represented among those rare incumbents who did not regain their seats. Although women represented only 22.5 percent of all incumbents, they made up 57 percent of those who were unable to retain their Wahlkreis in 2013. The direct seats women hold are often less secure than those possessed by their male counterparts. In 2013, the average male incumbent had won •••

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his seat in 2009 by a margin of 14.2 percent whereas the average female incumbent previously secured her mandate by a margin of only 9.8 percent.17 Generally, a 10 percent margin or greater qualifies a seat as a safe one, meaning male incumbents were at less of a risk of losing their seat than were female incumbents. These differences held both within the CDU and SPD. Among Christian Democratic incumbents, the average man had won his electoral district by a 13.9 percent margin in 2009 compared to only 9.7 percent for women. Among Social Democratic Wahlkreis holders, men achieved a 6.7 percent margin of victory in the previous election compared to only 4.4 percent for SPD women.18 Women holding Left Party direct mandates won by an average of 15.4 percent in 2009 compared to only 12 percent for male office holders. This apparent female advantage was not statistically significant, however, perhaps due to the low numbers of direct seats won by the Linke. Male and female CSU direct mandate holders all enjoyed extremely safe seats won by margins of over 25 percent in 2009. Not only were women more prone than men to holding unsafe seats, they were also more likely than men to have won their direct mandates in eastern Germany. While 18.6 percent of constituencies in the old federal states featured female incumbents, this percentage jumped to 35.7 percent in the new Länder.19 Holding an eastern seat is a more risky proposition in terms of reelection than is occupying a western Wahlkreis due to the far higher electoral volatility in the former part of Germany.20 In 2013, only 3.4 percent of western incumbents were not re-elected compared with 26.8 percent of eastern German direct mandate holders.21 Here again, then, females seem to enjoy less of an advantage than their male counterparts. Even controlling for the safety of an incumbent’s seat and its location in Germany, however, female constituency seat holders remained handicapped compared to males in 2013 (see Table 6.1). Logistic regression analysis using a categorical dependent variable measuring whether an incumbent lost the 2013 election or not finds that women were at a significant disadvantage in this election, as were both SPD and Left Party Wahlkreis holders. Unsurprisingly, the larger an office holder’s margin of victory in 2009, the less likely she was to be defeated in 2013. Occupying an eastern seat did not make a difference in whether an incumbent won or lost once the other variables were taken into account. Substantively, however, an incumbent’s sex had only a limited impact on the outcome of the 2013 election. All other independent variables held at their means, female incumbents were only 0.4 percent more likely to lose than males; in contrast, for every 1 percent reduction in a candidate’s margin of victory in 2009, he or she became 1.5 percent less likely to win in •••

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Table 6.1. Determinants of an Incumbent Wahlkreis Holder Losing in the 2013 Election: Logistic Regression Results Variable

Coefficient (Standard Error)

Incumbent Sex (Female = 1)

1.9672 ** (0.8111)

SPD Incumbent

3.206 *** (1.1760)

Eastern District (Eastern = 1)

0.9769 (0.9655)

N

244

2009 Margin of Victory

-0.3096 *** (0.1148)

Pseudo R2

0.6644

Left Party Incumbent

6.5310 *** (1.6592)

Prob > chi2

0.0000

Variable

Coefficient (Standard Error)

Source: Author’s calculations based on Bundeswahlleiter 2013. Dependent variable is categorical; incumbents who lost their seat in 2013 are coded 1. ***p < 0.01 ** p < 0.05 * p< 0.10

2013.22 Nonetheless, we can conclude from this evidence that while women enjoy incumbency advantages that help them get renominated for their seat, these incumbency advantages are not as strong as men’s in terms of winning their constituency again.

Hypothesis 2: Interaction Between the PR-Tier and SMD-Tier Increases Women’s Wahlkreis Candidacies Even though there are no formal quotas for women in the plurality tier of Germany’s electoral system, there may be an interaction effect between this part and the PR component. Interactions across tiers occur “whenever nomination in one selection process is dependent on the anticipated nomination of the other.”23 There is a well-established norm in Germany of giving direct mandate holders safe spots on the party list as a back-up should they fail to be elected in their constituency. Double-candidacies, driven by such considerations, are common. Between 1961 and the present almost 40 percent of all Bundestag candidates ran in both tiers and in 2013, 46.1 percent of all the women nominated by major parties were nominated in both tiers. Of interest, here, however, are double-candidacies driven by the reverse logic. That is, women who initially enjoy (possibly quota-driven) electoral success via a party list may subsequently be awarded a direct mandate nomination in light of their achievements in the PR tier; this spillover effect occurred after quotas were adopted for the PR tier of South Korea's mixed electoral system.24 This possibility would appear logical as a woman already serving in the Bundestag—perhaps on an important committee or in a visible •••

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leadership position—would be well-poised to cater to the needs of an electoral district should she go on to win a direct mandate. When a Wahlkreis comes open, it would appear that a female resident of the district previously elected via a party list would have an advantage when it came to candidate selection, as party members hope to ensure the continued presence of powerful MdB from their constituency should she not be reelected via party list. This hypothesis is quite difficult to test empirically, however, as it would involve being able to identify whether female Wahlkreis candidates in 2013 had served in the Bundestag, elected via a party list, prior to receiving their direct mandate nomination. While Germany’s election law requires that candidates identify their occupation on the ballot, the law does not specify what counts as one’s occupation. Some candidates holding a Bundestag seat identify themselves as MdB, whereas others declare the profession for which they were trained. For example, the SPD’s former chancellor candidate and incumbent in electoral district sixty, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, identified himself as a “lawyer” on the 2013 Bundestag ballot, not as an MdB. As a result, using Bundeswahlleiter data, it is difficult to accurately ascertain whether nonincumbent candidates for a direct seat previously were elected to the Bundestag via a list or not. Moreover, for the hundreds of incumbents already holding a direct seat, biographical research would need to be conducted to trace their careers prior to winning their Wahlkreis. As a result of these data limitations, it is not possible to fully investigate this hypothesis here. Results of a more limited test, however, indicate that this mechanism may not be at work. An examination of all the women nominated in 2013 for open constituency seats previously won by their parties, i.e., those constituencies where the party was likely to win again but did not have an incumbent running, finds that none had previously been elected to the federal parliament via a party list. Parties appear to look elsewhere when selecting new direct mandate candidates. Thus, while more evidence is needed to ultimately rule out interaction from the “second vote” to the “first vote” as a cause of increasing female nominations for single member districts, it does not appear to be a promising explanation—at least for major parties’ nominees.

Hypothesis 3: Departing Incumbents Open Windows of Opportunity for New Female Constituency Candidates A third mechanism that may be driving the rise in women earning direct mandate nominations is the converse of the incumbent effect. While parties •••

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are likely to renominate male incumbents over and over again, they may also be more likely to nominate a woman than a man for a constituency seat when their male incumbent retires. There are several reasons to expect that this may occur. First, students of gender and politics have observed a “contagion” or “diffusion” effect when women begin to enter politics or when gender quotas are adopted.25 When one party, representative body, or public sphere experiences an increase of female participants, women tend to subsequently gain descriptive representation in other parties, bodies, or policy domains. Concerns about women’s ability to perform in certain roles are mitigated after women have shown elsewhere they are capable, male dominance comes into question when another, similar sphere becomes more feminized, and women’s ambitions to enter a given area increase when female role models emerge. The diffusion of PR list quotas for women can clearly be seen in Germany. The Greens’ adoption of quotas for female candidates in the mid 1980s was followed by the Social Democrats’ introduction of a quota in the late 1980s, the CDU’s decision to implement a gender “quorum” in the 1990s, and the CSU’s beginning a quota for inner-party offices in the 2000s. Even though the FDP and CSU have not adopted candidate quotas, their percentages of female list winners have also increased somewhat over time.26 Similarly, after quotas raised women’s presence in the Bundestag, women’s share of cabinet seats increased, and ultimately Angela Merkel ascended to the Chancellery. More recently, Germans have begun to debate gender quotas for corporate boards in addition to party lists. Such diffusion seems likely to occur when candidates for open seats are selected as well. Given that all parties (with the exception of the FDP) have some sort of affirmative action rules for either list candidates or inner-party offices, it appears probable that increasing gender diversity would be at least one consideration of party gatekeepers when selecting candidates for open seats.27 Moreover, this imbalance in women's electoral fortunes also likely increases the bargaining power of actors within parties who favor improving women’s descriptive representation in the plurality tier. In addition to these diffusion effects, today women are also more likely to be serious contenders for open seat nominations than they were in the past when current incumbents were selected. One of the primary qualifications for elective office in Germany is previous office holding, both in terms of inner-party leadership posts and elected office.28 The diffusion of gender quotas across the political spectrum has required parties to appoint women to party leadership posts and to the electoral lists used for positions at the local, county, district, state, and European levels. As a result, there are today more female party members qualified to hold a Bundestag nomina•••

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tion than there were in the past when women were often excluded from such opportunities.29 Indeed, of the women studied above—female candidates for open direct mandates a party was likely to win—93 percent had held an inner-party leadership post and 80 percent had previously been elected to a body other than the Bundestag. Moreover, of those from the CDU/CSU, many had been very active in the Christian Democratic women’s auxiliary organization, the Frauen Union (FU), attesting to the group’s current leverage in candidate selection. The FU has been one of the main drivers of CDU women’s gains in descriptive representation.30 Thus, both diffusion effects from quotas in the PR tier and the presence of more qualified women in the pipeline are hypothesized to make it more likely that a nominee for an open constituency seat will be female. Examining the candidates nominated for newly vacated direct mandates finds support for this hypothesis (see Figure 6.3). This figure compares the percentage of female candidates each party ran in 2013 among their incumbents who were endeavoring to regain the Wahlkreis they won in 2009 (grey bars) to the percentage of female candidates a given party ran in seats where there was no incumbent candidate (black bars). Because the FDP had no incumbent constituency candidates and the Greens had only one, a man, they are excluded from this analysis. Three of the four parties examined ran considerably higher percentages of women in open seat races than they did among their incumbents; the SPD’s figure was roughly 30 percent in both cases. The Left Party’s candidates for open direct mandates in the new states were 57.1 percent female compared to only 36.7 percent of the Figure 6.3. Nominations for Open Wahlkreise vs. Incumbent Nominations

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Linke’s incumbent candidates.31 The CDU nominated 38.1 percent women for seats where no incumbent sought to regain the seat, in sharp contrast to the only 18.5 percent of their incumbent candidates. Finally, the CSU offered 23.1 percent of its open-seat nominations to women—a virtual guarantee of election given political conditions in Bavaria—while only 15.6 percent of the CSU’s incumbents seeking reelection were female. This evidence clearly indicates that departing (primarily male) incumbents provide a window of opportunity for women to gain ground as candidates in the plurality component of Germany’s electoral system. The 2013 election results also suggest that this mechanism helps increase the percentages of women winning Bundestag seats. In the Wahlkreise where incumbent candidates stood for reelection, only 18.9 percent of the 2013 winners were women. In contrast, 27.3 percent of the open seats in 2013 were won by women.32

Hypothesis 4: Female Incumbents Inspire Female Challengers The above-mentioned diffusion effect, leading one party in the political spectrum after the next to adopt gender quotas, may also operate across parties in a given constituency when it comes to candidate nomination. Concerns that a woman may not be able to win in a particular electoral district are often used as an excuse not to nominate female candidates.33 Nevertheless, if a woman does manage to win a certain constituency, this argument against female nominees is invalidated, likely making it easier for women to gain subsequent ballot nominations. This “demonstration” mechanism shows that a woman can win in the district and paves the way for future female candidacies. Evidence from the United States finds that when there is a female incumbent in Congress, she is more likely to face a female challenger than a male incumbent is.34 Moreover, when a female incumbent departs, she is likely to have an influence over who is presented to local party members as her preferred successor. Research conducted in other contexts indicates that when women serve as such “gatekeepers” in candidate selection, there is a greater probability that female candidates will be chosen.35 As the number of women who win direct Bundestag mandates increases, then, so too should the number of female candidates in subsequent elections. This hypothesis can be tested by comparing the numbers of female candidates running in Wahlkreise with a female incumbent (or a 2009 female winner who did not stand for reelection) compared to the numbers of female candidates running in districts with a male incumbent (or a male winner in 2009). The average constituency in 2013 had 1.5 female candidates running •••

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from the five major parties; the numbers were significantly different depending on whether or not a woman had won the Wahlkreis in 2009, however. Where a female incumbent was running for reelection, there were an average of 2.3 female candidates in 2013 compared to only 1.2 in districts where a male incumbent was present.36 Similarly, where a female had won in 2009 but did not stand for reelection in 2013, the five major parties ran an average of 2 female candidates compared to 1.4 candidates.37 This latter difference is particularly striking as the woman who won in 2009 is not included in the 2013 figure. Thus, once one woman manages to break through the glass ceiling and win a constituency seat, the numbers of other women running in that district increase. This mechanism can help explain why the numbers of female candidates in Germany’s plurality tier have increased over time.

Hypothesis 5: Female Incumbents Break Down Barriers to Female Candidacies in Nearby Constituencies The last hypothesis tested here expects that the demonstration mechanism described above is likely to operate not only within a given Wahlkreis but also across borders into nearby constituencies. When political party leaders observe the success of a female candidate in a neighboring electoral district, concerns about female candidates’ electability in the region should be mitigated. Moreover, observing a female MdB from one’s area for four years (or more) is likely to alter selectors’ perceptions of what a district representative might look like and broaden the scope of those individuals viewed as potential candidates. Finally, when neighboring constituencies elect women, it raises the question of why one’s own district has not done so. As a result of such mechanisms, gender quotas and women’s increased descriptive representation have diffused from country to country throughout the globe.38 For example, gender quotas began as a Northern European phenomenon in the 1970s, spread to Germany in the 1980s, and into southern European countries such as Spain by the turn of this century. Similarly, female heads of government have come to power across neighboring countries (e.g., Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan) where one would, given the culture or economic development, not otherwise expect women to lead a nation.39 More recently, the idea of quotas for women on corporate boards spread from Norway, to elsewhere in Western Europe (Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain), to a topic debated in the European Union as a whole.40 Given these examples, it appears likely that the rise of female candidates for Germany’s “first vote” may occur in a geographically similar fashion. •••

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To test this hypothesis, data about Figure 6.4a. Where Women Won Wahlkreise in 2009 the sex of the winning 2009 candidate and those running in each district in 2013 was color coded and mapped onto a map of Germany’s 299 electoral districts provided by the Bundeswahlleiter (see Figures 6.4a and 6.4b). Figure 6.4a depicts the Wahlkreise women won in the 2009 election in black. Although women gained very few direct mandates (approximately one of every five seats available), the shaded constituencies do not appear randomly scattered across the map. Instead, they are clustered together in areas to the north/north-east of Germany and Black = Wahlkreis won by a woman in 2009; White = Wahlkreis won by a man in 2009 extending north-eastward from the Saarland; in contrast, large areas of central and southern Germany saw no female incumbents for many Wahlkreise in a row. There were significantly higher percentages of victorious women in the new Länder and eastern Berlin (35.7 percent) than in the old Figure 6.4b. The Two Largest Parties’ states and western Berlin (18.6 perFemale Nominees in 2013 cent). Yet, various series of adjacent Wahlkreise won by women can be observed across the country. For example, in 2009 Anette Hübinger from the CDU won district 296 on the border to France; next door in district 298 (St. Wendel) Nadine Müller, also from the CDU, gained a seat. Adjacent to Müller’s constituency, in district 202 (Kreuznach in Rheinland-Pfalz), CDU candidate Julia Klöckner won a directly elected seat. A similar pattern can be observed along the North Sea coast. CDU nominee Gitta Connemann won district twenty-six (Unterems), SPD candidate Karin Evers-Meyer from the S P D Black = Two women; Grey = One emerged victorious in adjacent district woman; White = No Women •••

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twenty-seven (Friesland), and CDU member Astrid Grotelüschen captured district twenty-nine (Delmenhorst) immediately to the east. Notably, these examples feature Christian Democratic women from relatively rural areas, rather than chains of women from the leftist parties (which have more progressive gender ideologies and higher percentages of female candidates overall) or from more urban areas (where parties are more prone to filling PR list quotas).41 The geographic impact of female direct mandate winners can be seen in Figure 6.4b. This figure depicts the sex of the 2013 constituency candidates nominated by the two largest vote-getting parties in 2009 (the CDU / CSU and SPD in western states and the CDU and SPD or Left Party candidates in eastern Germany).42 The Wahlkreise colored black feature two female candidates and account for only 7 percent of all districts in 2013. They almost always correspond to the locations shown in Figure 6.4a where a woman won the constituency in the previous federal election. The districts colored grey had one female candidate among the two run by the largest parties; these represent 35 percent of all 2013 races. Finally, the Wahlkreise colored white are the locations of contests between two male representatives of the largest parties; these make up 58 percent of the match-ups in the most recent election. Given that over half of the districts are colored white, a random distribution of these races would lead to a map where every other constituency is colored white. Figure 6.4b does not resemble such a checkerboard, however. Instead, just as with the pattern of incumbents, the map features strings of electoral districts colored grey or black—such as those along the borders to the Netherlands and Poland—and those colored white—such as those along the border to the Czech Republic.43 These geographical patterns indicate that where one woman wins a direct mandate, women in neighboring electoral districts enjoy an advantage when it comes to subsequent candidate selection and election. As the number of women nominated increases, this pattern of spatial diffusion can be expected to continue, further elevating the number of female nominees for direct seats.

Summary and Implications The above discussion and evidence suggest that there are several mechanisms through which the number of women campaigning for direct Bundestag seats increased between 2009 and 2013. First, women who won direct mandates in the previous election enjoyed an incumbency advantage •••

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and were renominated to run again if they chose to do so. Second, where no incumbents were present, parties were more likely to nominate female candidates. Third, in districts where a woman managed to win in 2009, parties were more likely to nominate female candidates in 2013. Finally, women tended to be nominated and win in geographical clusters, indicating spatial diffusion of women’s candidacies. No support was found for the hypothesis that a woman’s prior success as a list candidate made her a more attractive candidate for an open direct seat, at least as a major party candidate. The available evidence also suggests that women may not enjoy quite as much of an incumbency advantage as men when it comes to recapturing their Wahlkreis in the general election. These findings indicate that women’s progress in obtaining direct mandate nominations is likely to continue in the future, albeit such openings are rare. The gains women make are driven by mechanisms that only work gradually. Women can only be nominated for open seats when an incumbent decides to retire. Given that the average tenure in the Bundestag is almost three legislative periods, such openings only slowly become available.44 In 2013, 80 percent of male Wahlkreis candidates chose to run again. Similarly, it takes (at least) one electoral period with a woman as an incumbent to inspire other parties or electoral districts to in turn nominate other women as constituency candidates. As a result, increases in women’s political participation in this sphere are likely to be steady, but slow. Several policy recommendations come from the observations presented here. First, the adoption of term limits would likely increase women’s participation as Wahlkreis representatives. Second, if advocates for women’s descriptive representation—such as women’s auxiliary organizations, women’s policy agencies, or feminist NGO s—want to have the greatest impact on this tier of the electoral system, they should concentrate on trying to promote women candidates and constituency winners in the white areas of Figure 6.4b. If one woman gains a foothold in these areas, the number of female candidates in these male-dominated regions should rise in subsequent elections. Finally, more research is needed to determine which policies will help female incumbents go beyond being renominated for their constituency at rates equal to men’s and lead them to actually retain their seats as frequently as men do. LOUISE K. DAVIDSON-SCHMICH is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She is the author of Becoming Party Politicians: Eastern German State Legislators in the Decade following Democratization (Notre Dame, 2006) as well as various articles about •••

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gender quotas and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has recently completed a book tentatively entitled A Glass Half Full: Gender Quotas and Political Recruitment and is beginning a research project on minority women and public policy in Germany.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

Many thanks to my colleague Dr. Santiago Olivella for help mapping data and to Dr. Melanie Kintz for her insights into Bundestag careers. See Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth, Women, Work, and Politics: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality (New Haven, 2010); Annika Hennl and Andre Kaiser, “Repräsentationschancen in interaktiven Nominierungsverfahren. Ein Vergleich der Aufstellung von Parteilisten bei deutschen Landtagswahlen,” Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 18, no. 3 (2008): 325-352. R. Darcy, Susan Welch, and Janet Clark. Women, Elections, and Representation (New York, 1987); Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (Cambridge, 2004); Rob Salmond, “Proportional Representation and Female Parliamentarians,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 31 (2006): 175-204. Andrew Reynolds, “Women in the Legislatures and Executives of the World: Knocking at the Highest Glass Ceiling,” World Politics 51, no.4 (1999): 547-572; 555. Empirically, however, it is not correct that female candidates are less likely to win than male candidates in Germany. See Jessica Fortin-Rittberger and Christina Eder, “Towards a Gender-Equal Bundestag? The Impact of Electoral Rules on Women’s Representation,” West European Politics 36, no. 5 (2013): 969-985; Philip Manow and Peter Flemming, “Der Kandidat, die Kandidatin: Der gar nicht so unbekannte Wesen” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 4 (2012): 766-784. David Niven, “Party Elites and Women Candidates: The Shape of Bias,” Women & Politics 19, no. 2 (1998): 57-80; Kira Sanbonmatsu, Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (Ann Arbor, 2006). Rainbow Murray, Parties, Gender Quotas, and Candidate Selection in France (Basingstoke, 2010). Iversen and Rosenbluth (see note 1). Fortin-Rittberger and Eder (see note 3); Julie Ballington and Azza Karam, eds., Women in Parliament: Beyond the Numbers, IDEA International (Stockholm, 2012). Louise K. Davidson-Schmich and Isabelle Kuerschner, “Stößt die Frauenquote an ihre Grenzen? Eine Untersuchung der Bundestagswahl 2009,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 1 (2011); Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, “Gender Quota Compliance and Contagion in the 2009 Bundestag Election” in Between Left and Right: The 2009 Bundestag Elections and the Transformation of the German Party System, ed. Eric Langenbacher (New York, 2010), 151172; Fortin-Rittberger and Eder (see note 3); Miki Caul Kittilson, Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments (Columbus, 2006); Joanna McKay, “Women in German Politics: Still Jobs for the Boys?” German Politics 13, no. 1 (2004): 56-80; Eva Kolinsky, “Party Change and Women’s Representation in Unified Germany” in Gender and Party Politics, ed. Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris (London, 1993): 113-146. Fortin-Rittberger and Eder (see note 3), 976-977. European Commission, Europe 2020: Labor Market Participation of Women (Brussels, 2013); available at http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/pdf/themes/23_labour_market_participation_

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11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

of_women.pdf; accessed April 2013. Sarah E. Wiliarty, “How the Iron Curtain Helped Break Through the Glass Ceiling: Angela Merkel’s Campaigns for Executive Office” in Cracking the Highest Glass Ceiling: A Global Comparison of Women’s Campaigns for Executive Office, ed. Rainbow Murray (New York, 2010), 137-157. Sources for data in this article are Der Bundeswahlleiter, Sonderheft: Die Wahlbewerber für die Wahl zum 17. Deutschen Bundestag 2009; available at http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/ de/bundestagswahlen/BTW_BUND_09/veroeffentlichungen/heftsonderheft.pdf; Der Bundeswahlleiter, Sonderheft: Die Wahlbewerber für die Wahl zum 18. Deutschen Bundestag 2013, available at http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/bundestagswahlen/BTW_ BUND_13/wahlbewerber/; Deutscher Bundestag, Abgeordnete in Zahlen (18. Bundestag), available at http://bundestag.de/bundestag/abgeordnete18/mdb_zahlen/index.html; and Deutscher Bundestag, Abgeordnete in Zahlen (17. Bundestag), available at http://bundestag. de/bundestag/abgeordnete17/mdb_zahlen/index.html. Author’s calculations based on Bundeswahlleiter (2013), 341 and Bundeswahlleiter (2009), 17. “Major parties” refers to the parties having held Bundestag seats including the CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, Left Party, and FDP. 2009 figures from Davidson-Schmich (see note 8). Darcy et al. (see note 2); Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer “The Incumbency Disadvantage and Women’s Election to Legislative Office,” Electoral Studies 24, no. 2 (2005): 227-244. This assumes that female incumbents decide to run for office again, or at least do so at a rate comparable to men’s. This assumption appears warranted: in 2013, 20.2 percent of the men who won a direct mandate in 2009 did not recontest their seat, whereas the figure for women was only 11.3 percent. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 95 percent confidence level. For more on what qualifies as a “safe” seat see Davidson-Schmich (see note 8). The female incumbents who lost in 2013 enjoyed, on average, only a 3 percent margin of victory in 2009. The difference of means for both the SPD and CDU are statistically significant at conventional 95 percent confidence levels. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 95 percent confidence level. Lars Rensmann, “Volatile Counter-Cosmopolitans: Explaining the Electoral Performance of Radical Right Parties in Poland and Eastern Germany,” German Politics and Society 30, no. 3 (2012): 64-102. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 95 percent confidence level. These results were obtained using the Stata command “prchange.” Hennl and Kaiser (see note 1), 323. The 40% figure regarding double-candidacies comes from Fortin-Rittberger and Eder (see note 3). This possibility is raised by Fortin-Rittberger and Eder (see note 3), 977. Ki-Young Shin, "Women's Sustainable Representation and the Spillover Effect of Electoral Gender Quotas in South Korea," International Political Science Review, 35, No. 1 (2014): 80-92. Richard E. Matland and Donley T. Studlar, “The Contagion of Women Candidates in Single-Member District and Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Canada and Norway,” The Journal of Politics 58 (1996): 707-733; Frank C. Thames and Margaret S. Williams, Contagious Representation: Women’s Political Representation in Democracies around the World (New York, 2013). Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, A Glass Half Full: Gender Quotas and Political Recruitment, forthcoming. There are obviously limits to this diffusion—see Davidson-Schmich (see note 8)—and there is no reason to expect that norms of gender equality are strong enough to trump all the other hurdles depicted above. Hence the lingering, but closing, gap between the two tiers. Melanie Kintz, Recruitment to Leadership Positions in the German Bundestag: 1994-2006. PhD diss Western Michigan University, 2011; Werner J. Patzelt, Abgeordnete und ihr Beruf (Berlin, 1995).

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119 • • •

Louise K. Davidson-Schmich 29. For evidence of such exclusion see Beate Hoecker, “Frauen in der Politik: Gängige Hypothesen zum Präsenzdefizit auf dem empirischen Prüfstand in Bremen,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 1 (1986): 65-82. 30. Sarah E. Wiliarty, The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party (New York, 2010). 31. This analysis excludes the Left Party’s nominations in the old Länder because, like the FDP and the Greens, the party has no incumbents there. The Left has significantly fewer female members in western Germany than in eastern Germany and has had difficulties filling even quotas for PR lists or inner-party office in this region. Die Linke,“Konzept zur Herstellung von Geschlechtergerechtigkeit in der Linken.” Beschluss des Parteitages der Linken from 22. October 2011. 32. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 95 percent confidence level. 33. Tatiana Kostadinova, “Ethnic and Women’s Representation under Mixed Election Systems,” Electoral Studies 26, no. 2 (2007): 418-431. 34. Barbara Palmer and Dennis M. Simon, “When Women Run Against Women: The Hidden Influence of Female Incumbents in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives: 1956-2002,” Politics & Gender 1 (2005): 39-63. 35. Christine Cheng and Margit Tavits, “Informal Influences in Selecting Female Candidates,” Political Research Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2011): 460-471; Sheri Kunovich and Pamela Paxton, “Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political Representation,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 2 (2008): 505-552. 36. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 95 percent confidence level. A similar, and significant, pattern can be observed with the total number of all female candidates (including from minor parties such as the Pirates, NPD, and AfD) are factored in. 37. This difference of means is significant at a conventional 90 percent confidence level and also offers support for the above hypothesis about the advantage women enjoy in open seat races. A similar, and significant, pattern can be observed with the total number of all female candidates (including from minor parties) are factored in. 38. Thames and Williams (see note 25); Mari Teigen, “Gender Quotas on Corporate Boards: On the Diffusion of a Distinct National Policy Reform,” Comparative Social Research 29 (2012): 115-146. 39. Farida Jalalzai, Shattered, Cracked, or Firmly Intact? Women and the Executive Glass Ceiling Worldwide (Oxford, 2013). 40. Teigen (see note 38). 41. Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, “The Implementation of Political Party Gender Quotas: Evidence from the German Länder 1990-2000,” Party Politics 12, no. 2 (2006): 211-232. 42. The one exception here is Berlin-Kreuzberg (district eighty-three) in which the two largest parties were the Greens and the Left Party. 43. This pattern also holds when the five major parties’ candidates are included in the analysis (map not shown). 44. Kintz (see note 28), 150; see also Michael Edinger, “Freud und Leid in der Landespolitik,” Das Parlament 3-4 (2004).

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Chapter 7 • • •

IMMIGRATION INTO POLITICS Immigrant-origin Candidates and Their Success in the 2013 Bundestag Election

Andreas M. Wüst

Introduction For decades, Germany denied being an immigration country.1 Labor migration, the resettlement of ethnic Germans, and the acceptance of asylum-seekers, however, led to permanent immigration by the 1960s at the latest.2 As predicted by just a few political scientists in the late 1970s,3 immigrants and their descendants have not only become citizens, but also political actors.4 Nevertheless, it did take some time until politicians of immigrant origin5 entered parliaments on Germany’s local, state, and national levels. In the 2013 election to the Bundestag, a record number of thirty-seven politicians of immigrant origin were elected.6 This is a share of 5.9 percent of all 631 representatives. Compared to the sitting number of immigrantorigin members of parliament (MPs) on election day (twenty-four), the voting resulted in the largest increase (+ thirteen) of such MPs in Germany’s national parliament ever. Given the fact that also ten immigrant-origin MPs lost their mandates in 2013, the rise is even more remarkable. This article deals with these candidates and representatives of immigrant origin. It moves beyond primarily descriptive accounts of their parliamentary representation7 by utilizing a quantitative though partially explorative analysis of the patterns of candidacy, representation, and career. This article thereby adds to the small, but growing body of causal analyses on the parliamentary representation of immigrant-origin politicians in Germany.8

Andreas M. Wüst

Candidates Overall, 4,451 candidates ran for the Bundestag in the 2013 general election. It is quite a challenge to screen every candidate on whether he or she is of immigrant origin or not. In spring 2013, however, Mediendienst Integration, a media service of Germany’s academic Rat für Migration (Council on Migration) started such a screening process. They contacted all ninetysix state press offices of the parties considered relevant in the election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Left Party (Linke), Greens, Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Social Union (CSU) and Pirates, for information on the background of their altogether 2,420 candidates.9 Sixty-six offices provided the requested information.10 For state parties that refused to provide information, candidates were screened individually by the Mediendienst staff. This screening was primarily done by name recognition, by a check of biographies (if available on the internet), and by information on sitting MPs of immigrant-origin provided by the author. It is possible that the overall number of immigrant-origin candidates is slightly underestimated, as the Mediendienst points out.11 The data source is nevertheless the best approximation on immigrant-origin candidates in the 2013 Bundestag election available so far, and there are no hints for a systematic underestimation of the candidates of certain parties. The main result of this research is that the seven parties nominated 113 candidates of immigrant origin.12 The highest number was found among the candidates of the Greens (twenty-six), Linke (twenty-four), and SPD (twentythree). There were much fewer immigrant-origin candidates running for the Pirates (seventeen), the CDU (twelve), the FDP (ten), and just one was running for the Bavarian CSU. Of the 113 immigrant-origin candidates, ninety-eight were running on a regional party list and eighty-seven in a constituency. Table 7.1. Modes of Candidacy (in %) Immigrant-origin candidates Total* CDU SPD Constituency and List Constituency only List only

64 13 23

50 8 42

83 9 9

All candidates Total CDU SPD 38 23 39

46 11 43

67 3 30

* Only candidates of the screened parties: CDU, SPD, Linke, Greens, FDP, CSU, and Pirates.

A closer and contrasting look at the modes of candidacy (see Table 7.1) reveals that patterns differ slightly by origin. Almost two-thirds of the immigrant-origin candidates ran both in a constituency and on a regional party •••

122 • • •

Immigration into Politics

list (N=72). This was only the case for a little more than one third of all candidates. Especially the share of pure list candidates was lower among the candidates of immigrant-origin (N=26), but also the share of candidates running solely in a constituency (N=15). The high share of dual or hybrid candidates indicates that the share of promising candidates among those of immigrant origin is presumably higher. This assumption is based on the fact that hybrid candidates have two chances in getting elected: in a constituency and by list. This does especially hold true for the CDU and for the SPD candidates of which 191 (75 percent) and fifty-eight (30 percent) respectively have been elected in constituencies.13 While there are hardly differences in the mode of candidacy among the CDU candidates with varying origin, there are differences among the SPD candidates. In fact, 83 percent of the SPD candidates of immigrant origin were hybrid candidates. Another indicator for the electoral prospects of candidates is the position on the regional (state) list. There is anecdotal evidence that particularly immigrant-origin women are promoted by parties,14 since they do not only help the party to present more diversity to the voters, but also more women (doppelte Quote). As a comparison of list places by party and gender among immigrant candidates shows (see Table 7.2), this dual quota effect can only be observed for the SPD, Linke, and Pirates. The differences by mode of candidacy are bigger and more consistent. Candidates running both on a list and in a constituency are ranked higher than exclusive list candidates, except for those of the Pirates. Many list candidates have no chance of getting elected while many constituency candidates are additionally given high list places to make their election more likely.15 It is in line with the general patterns of candidacy for small parties16 that immigrant-origin candidates of these parties are ranked higher compared to the list candidates of the catch-all (Volksparteien) CDU and SPD. This holds true for all smaller parties except the Pirates. In contrast to earlier findings for state elections,17 immigrant-origin candidates for the CDU are—on average—ranked more favorably than the respective SPD candidates. This supposedly has to do with the intertwined mixed-member system in which a strong CDU gets significantly fewer list seats than a considerably weaker SPD, because the CDU is able to win more constituency seats. Consequently, the chance to getting elected as a list candidate of the CDU is comparatively small. To succeed as a pure list candidate of the CDU, a candidate needs to be ranked much higher than a pure list candidate of the SPD. Finally, if we combine gender and mode, we find that the female candidates running both in a constituency and on a list are ranked highest in the CDU, SPD, Linke, Greens, and FDP. •••

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Table 7.2. Average List Place of Immigrant-origin Candidates by Party, Gender, and Mode CDU

SPD

Linke

Greens

FDP

CSU

Pirates

Total*

20 17 13 24 15

11 23 18 37 11

6 8 7 8 5

14 10 9 17 8

19 10 8 21 19

—————-

6 10 11 5 7

11 13 11 16 9

Female candidates Male candidates Dual-mode candidates List candidates only Female and dual-mode

* Only candidates of the screened parties: CDU, SPD, Linke, Greens, FDP, CSU, and Pirates.

Table 7.3. Immigrant-origin Candidates by Party, Candidates Projected to Win, and Elected Candidates CDU

SPD

Linke

N

N

N

%

Candidates 12 of which: women 4 Projected to win* of which: women Elected of which: women

3

25

%

%

Greens N

%

FDP

CSU

Pirates

Total**

N

N

N

N

%

%

%

23

24

26

10

1

17

113

9

9

9

1

0

4

36

12 52

9 38

7

27

5 50

1 100

0

0

%

37 32

2

50

5 56

3 33

3

33

0

0

0

0

0

0

13 36

8

67

13 57

8 33

7

27

0

0

1 100

0

0

37 32

3

75

5 56

4 44

3

33

0

0

0

0

0

0

15 41

57 193 45

64 19

63

17

0

0

56

65

0

0

631 26

Contrast: All candidates elected 255

* Based on whether a candidate of the party was elected in the candidate’s constituency or the list place was sufficient in 2009. ** Only candidates of the seven parties listed in this table.

Based on data collected for the constituencies by the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) candidate study team,18 a somewhat deeper analysis of candidates nominated for the 2013 Bundestag election is possible. Considering both constituencies and lists reveals that thirty-seven immigrantorigin candidates (32 percent) would have been elected to the Bundestag in 2013 if the results had been the same as in 2009 (see Table 7.3).19 There is variation by party and gender. The CSU candidate of immigrant origin was running in a favorable constituency, 52 percent of the SPD candidates had good chances to being elected, and half of the FDP candidates were ranked quite securely (if the party was elected). While still over a third of the Left candidates of immigrant origin had good chances to get elected, only about a quarter of both the Green and the CDU candidates of immigrant origin •••

124 • • •

Immigration into Politics

had good chances to win a seat, if 2013 resembled the 2009 results. Since the Pirates were not running in the 2009 election, none of their candidates were projected to win a mandate. All in all, the prospects for electoral success were slightly better among female than among male candidates. Projections based on previous election results have shortcomings. In the 2013 Bundestag election, this especially pertains to the FDP, which failed to pass the nationwide electoral threshold of 5 percent. It also concerns the CDU, which has performed significantly better than in the preceding election, partly due to the FDP’s failure.20 The overall projection of thirty-seven seats for immigrant-origin candidates is exactly the number elected. Moreover, if we combine the projected seats for CDU, CSU, and FDP, on the one hand, and for SPD, Linke, and the Greens on the other, the projection by political camp equals the final seat distribution. The result underlines the pivotal role of the party (the selectorate) compared to the voters (the electorate) for the success of candidates to the Bundestag.21 As the last row of Table 7.3 documents, the selectorates of all seven parties analyzed were rather supportive of the candidates of immigrant origin. A higher share of such candidates was elected compared to the respective share for all candidates. Since eighty-seven immigrant-origin candidates ran in a constituency, it may further be instructive to take a closer look at the respective electoral contexts. Both from a demographic and from a strategic perspective, immigrant-origin candidates should rather run in constituencies with a high share of immigrant-origin inhabitants than in constituencies with a low share.22 From a demographic point of view, a higher share of immigrants and their descendants increases the pool of potential candidates of immigrant origin. If there is a nexus of the immigrant-origin population and a pro-immigrant candidate vote,23 party strategy should rather be placing immigrant-origin candidates in constituencies with a high share of immigrant-origin voters. Unfortunately, constituency-specific data on the population or citizens of immigrant-origin are not available. As a functional equivalent for the share of the immigrant-origin population, the foreign population in constituencies is used.24 If we contrast the share of foreign citizens in constituencies where immigrant-origin candidates ran with constituencies in which native citizens ran, there is a significant difference (see Table 7.4): The mean share of the foreign population differs by 4.2 percentage points. Pertaining to the parties, a foreign population gap can be observed for all parties except the CDU and CSU. Their candidates of immigrant origin do not on average run more often in constituencies with a high share of foreign population. These results confirm earlier findings on the constituencies of immigrant-origin •••

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Andreas M. Wüst

in the UK, France, and Germany.25 It remains an open question, however, whether these patterns are reflections of demography or of party strategy. It is also not clear why the CDU and CSU differ from the observed pattern. It may be that candidate nominations in these parties follow (unwritten) rules that are different from those of other parties, but it could also be that party nominations in general are not independent of the nominations of other parties. MPs

Table 7.4. Share of Foreign Citizens in Constituencies with Different Types of Candidates SPD

CDU

Linke

Greens

FDP

CSU

Pirates

Constituencies

.087 (278)

.088 (247)

.087 (281)

.086 (280)

.088 (291)

.097 (44)

.087 (286)

.078 (220)

Candidates of immigrant origin **.122 (N) (21)

.093 (7)

**.125 (18)

***.137 (19)

.123 (8)

.097 (1)

**.133 (13)

***.120 (79)

Native Candidates (N)

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .000; F Test (Anova).

Elected Representatives All in all, thirty-seven representatives of immigrant origin were elected on 22 September 2013.26 As Table 7.5 indicates, the number of immigrant-origin MPs is highest among the Social Democrats (thirteen). The CDU and Linke have the same number of immigrant-origin MPs (eight), the Greens one less (seven), and the CSU just one MP of immigrant origin. Based on the sizes of the respective parliamentary groups, the Linke’s share is highest (12.5 percent), followed by the Greens (11.1 percent). The SPD’s share (6.7 percent) is significantly higher than the share of the CDU/CSU (2.9 percent) with the CDU subgroup’s share (3.1 percent) beating the CSU subgroup’s share (1.8 percent). These patterns of a left-right divide and strongest representation in numbers by the SPD resemble earlier findings for the national, state, and local levels.27 In line with earlier findings is the fact that in Germany’s mixed-member electoral system immigrant-origin MPs are more frequently elected via list (party vote) than by constituency (candidate vote), but also that there is a trend towards more constituency MPs.28 Based on regional support for the parties, the Linke and Greens have very few constituency MPs in general. Consequently, the fact that all their MPs of immigrant origin have been elected via list should not be interpreted further. Ten out of twenty-two •••

126 • • •

Immigration into Politics

Table 7.5. Parliamentarians of Immigrant Origin Elected to the Bundestag in 2013

Name

Party

Mode of Election

Kees de Vries Gitta Connemann Michaela Noll Kai Whittaker Martin Pätzold Heinrich Zertik Charles M. Huber Cemile Giosouf Niels Annen Sebastian Edathy Metin Hakverdi Mahmut Özdemir Aydan Özoğuz Karamba Diaby Josip Juratovic Gülistan Yüksel Katarina Barley Lars Castelucci Daniela De Ridder Swen Schulz Cansel Kiziltepe Azize Tank Richard Pitterle Andrej Hunko Susanna Karawanskij Sahra Wagenknecht Sevim Dağdelen Niema Movassat Alexander Neu Agnes Brugger Ekin Deligöz Özcan Mutlu Omid Nouripour Dieter Janecek Irene Mihalic Cem Özdemir Alexander Radwan

CDU CDU CDU CDU CDU CDU CDU CDU SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD SPD Linke Linke Linke Linke Linke Linke Linke Linke Green Green Green Green Green Green Green CSU

C* C C C L* L L L C C C C C L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L C

Generation, Immigrant Parents** 1 2 2, 1 2, 1 1, 1 1 2, 1 2, 2 2 2, 1 2, 1 2, 2 2, 2 1 1 1 2 2, 1 2 2 2, 2 1 1 3 2 2, 1 2, 2 2, 2 2 1 1 1 1 2, 2 2 2, 2 2, 1

Origin**

Gender

Netherlands

male female female male male male male female male male male male female male male female female male female male female female male male female female female male male female female male male male female male male

Iran UK Former USSR Former USSR Senegal Greece India Turkey Turkey Turkey Senegal Former Yugoslavia Turkey Italy

Turkey Turkey Former Czechoslovakia

Iran Turkey Iran Poland Turkey Turkey Iran Austria Turkey Egypt

* C=constituency; L=list ** Information only given if publicly available (Wikipedia, personal website).

immigrant-origin MPs of the SPD (five), CDU (four), and CSU (one) have, however, been elected in constituencies. It is remarkable that half of the Christian Democratic MPs of immigrant origin have won a relative majority in their constituencies. Two of these CDU constituency MPs, Gitta Connemann and Michaela Noll, were incumbents. This was also the case for the two constituency MPs of the SPD, Sebastian Edathy and Aydan Özog˘uz. Another •••

127 • • •

Andreas M. Wüst

constituency MP, Niels Annen, had already been a representative from 2005 until 2009, elected in the same constituency.29 A closer look at the elected MPs of immigrant origin reveals that 41 percent of them are women. This share is just 4 percentage points higher than the share among all members of the Bundestag elected in 2013. There now is a dominance of the second generation, a result that differs from earlier findings:30 Twenty-five belong to the second or third generation—ten with two immigrant parents and fourteen with just one.31 Moreover, there is significant variation in countries of origin. A relative majority is of Turkish origin (ten), but there are also some MPs from Iran (four), from the area of the former Soviet Union (four), or from the former Yugoslavia (three). Given the three criteria of gender, generation, and origin, differences by party are small. The only exception is that among the MPs of the CDU and CSU, there still is no representative of Turkish origin.32 There also is an underrepresentation of CDU and CSU MPs originating from typical “guestworker” countries. In all leftist parties, several MPs are of Turkish or former Yugoslavian origin. Nevertheless, the election of Heinrich Zertik for the CDU also marks the election of the first ethnic German of Russian origin to the Bundestag.33 SPD

Medium-term Perspectives While the number and share of immigrant-origin MPs is still on the rise, a record number of them also had to leave the Bundestag in 2013. Of the twenty-four immigrant-origin MPs, fourteen got reelected, nine failed, and one decided to not run again. This is a return rate of 58 percent, which is slightly lower than the general return rates for the Bundestag.34 As the compilation in Table 7.6 shows, all FDP candidates failed because the FDP was not able to catch enough party votes for reelection. Yet, compared to 2009, all immigrant-origin candidates of the FDP had been able to move up on their respective state party lists or stayed on top of it (Oliver Luksic). Of the remaining cases, candidates failed because of their own decisions not to run again (Willi Zylajew), to not run again for a party (Wolfgang Neškovi´ c35) or by the party selectorates. Of the latter group, Jerzy Montag and Josef P. Winkler of the Greens may be considered quite usual cases since both had already served three terms and the average number of terms served in parliaments is two to three.36 Their list places were not good enough for reelection, even though Winkler might still have been successful if the Greens had gained moderately, which they did not. Yet, the failures of Memet Kılıç and Raju Sharma after just one term may be considered •••

128 • • •

Immigration into Politics

Table 7.6. Termination of Bundestag Presence in 2013 Gen., immigr. parents*

Origin *

Land **

List Place 2013

List Place 2009

Reason for Failure

7 18 6 7 1 ——-

13 10 8 13 1 2 4

16 4 —-

6 2 23

party nomination party party party nomination left party in 2012 nomination nomination resigned

Name

Party

MP since

Bijan Djir-Sarai Memet Kılıç Serkan Tören Pascal Kober Oliver Luksic Raju Sharma Wolfgang Neškovic´

FDP Green FDP FDP FDP Linke (Linke)

2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2005

1 1 1 2 2 2, 1 2, 1

Iran Turkey Turkey

India Yugoslavia

NRW BW NI BW SL SH BB

Jerzy Montag Josef P. Winkler Willi Zylajew

Green Green CDU

2002 2002 2002

1 2, 1 3

Poland India Eastern Eur.***

BY RP NRW

Note: All of these MP were male; All except Zylajew were elected by list. * Information only given if publicly available (Wikipedia, personal website). ** NRW=North Rhine-Westphalia; BW=Baden-Württemberg; SL=Saarland; BY=Bavaria; BB=Brandenburg; SH=Schleswig-Holstein; NI=Lower Saxony; RP=Rhineland-Palatinate *** Foreign background of grandparents confirmed, but countries could not be specified.

unusual. Sharma luckily made it into the Bundestag in 2009, ranked second behind Cornelia Möhring on the Schleswig-Holstein state list of Die Linke. Fearing that the second list place would not be sufficient for reelection (which was the case), Sharma challenged Möhring in the nomination meeting of the party and lost. Consequently, Sharma’s failure is the result of political challenge that is also quite common in politics, but, in this case, it confirmed the position of the defending list leader. The reason for the failure of Kılıç is less clear-cut. Kılıç was left with list place eighteen of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg. As the parliamentary group’s spokesmen for migration and integration, he did however take a prominent position in the public circumcision debate of 2012.37 In the end, he and fifteen other Green MPs voted against the party group’s majority (thirty-four). The debate and vote could have damaged his reputation. Yet, Kılıç also had to face the return of the Green party co-leader Cem Özdemir on the state party’s list in Baden-Württemberg. Since Özdemir was placed second, it might have been difficult for any other male candidate of Turkish origin to get a good place on the Green’s regional list. Switching from failure in the 2013 election to medium-term success, we find nineteen immigrant-origin MPs that can be labeled career politicians (see Table 7.7). All of them have either been elected to the Bundestag twice or were able to change from other parliaments (state, European Union) to the national legislature. Two are already in their fifth Bundestag term; four in their forth. There are four more who have already served as MPs for at least three terms, even if not (only) in the Bundestag. For immigrant-origin •••

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Andreas M. Wüst

Table 7.7. The “Career MPs” of Immigrant Origin in the Bundestag

Name

Number of BT* terms

MP since (←other parliament)

List place change (year of change)** up 20 → 15 (2009); down → 17 (2013) up 5 → 3 (2013) up 12→ 8 (2013)

Sebastian Edathy

5

1998

Ekin Deligöz Gitta Connemann

5 4

1998 2002

Michaela Noll

4

2002

Swen Schulz

4

2002

Josip Juratovic Sevim Dağdelen Omid Nouripour Cem Özdemir

3 3 3 3

Aydan Özoğuz

2

Andrej Hunko Niema Movassat Agnes Brugger Richard Pitterle Sahra Wagenknecht Niels Annen

2 2 2 2 2 2

Metin Hakverdi

1

Özcan Mutlu

1

Alexander Radwan

1

2005 2005 2005 New (←EP***, BT) 2009 (←Hamburg) 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 New (←BT) new (←Hamburg) new (←Berlin) new (←EP, Bavaria)

up 21 → 18 (2005); → 12 (2013) up 11 → 5 (2005); → 3 (2009); → 2 (2013) up 15 → 11 (2013) up 7 → 5 (2013) up 6 → 2 (2009) up 6 → 2 (2013) up 2 → 1 up 6 → 4 up 8 → 6 up 11 → 5 up 6 → 4 up 5 → 1 up 8 → 4

Additional Information constituency MP since 1998 const. MP since 2002 const. MP since 2005 2 term const. MP 2002-2009

1 term as list MP in EP 2 term list MP in Hamburg

2 term as const. MP in Hamburg 4 term MP in Berlin 2 term list MP in EP; 1 term const. MP in Bavaria

* BT=Bundestag ** if not obvious *** EP=European Parliament

politicians, there seem to be career paths from other legislatures into the Bundestag, which are not common more generally.38 Furthermore, it is interesting to see that with the notable exception of Edathy, all of the reelected MPs have moved up on their state party’s list, some even repeatedly. This result indicates that these politicians of immigrant origin have a good standing in their regional parties. Perhaps needless to add is that they seem to be relevant for their parties beyond symbolic representation.

Discussion The main result of these analyses on the candidacies and the election of immigrant-origin politicians to the Bundestag in 2013 is that these politi•••

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cians are of relevance in the electoral and probably also in the parliamentary process. Their modes of candidacy reflect a considerable interest of all parties in immigrant-origin candidates’ electoral success with female candidates being only slightly advantaged. The success rate of immigrant-origin candidates is higher than the one of native candidates, despite possible voter discrimination.39 Nevertheless, it is the success rate of candidates selected by the parties’ nomination bodies. Thus, the screening process of the parties might have resulted in candidates with specific origins. Future pre-nomination analyses could tell us whether there are such targeted selection processes. One possible explanation for the success of immigrant-origin candidates could be changes on the supply side. Due to integration and generational change, more and more immigrant-origin candidates are talented and ambitious enough to get nominated in constituencies or listed high on party lists. An alternative explanation is that parties increasingly want to attract immigrant-origin voters. The fact that except for the CDU and CSU, immigrantorigin candidates do more frequently run in constituencies with a high share of immigrants, may however be supportive for both explanations. Further analyses could therefore disentangle the parties’ nomination procedures for constituencies. The “group” of thirty-seven parliamentarians of immigrant origin makes up 5.9 percent of all Bundestag MPs. Based on the data from the census, citizens of immigrant origin constitute 11.3 percent of the population. Thus, there still is a gap in (descriptive) immigrant representation, and the trend of increasing numbers of immigrant-origin MPs may well linger. Almost all Länder except Berlin, Hamburg, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt have fewer Bundestag MPs of immigrant origin compared to the share of immigrant-origin citizens in the respective populations. Both the study of immigrant-origin MPs whose career ended in 2013, and those who have been successful over time reveals that the parties count on these politicians. If the nomination was disadvantageous for one or the other sitting MP, there were hardly hints that this had to do with their immigration background. Over time, the bulk of immigrant-origin MPs were successful in moving up on party lists or in leaving other parliaments to start a Bundestag career. Still, our understanding of the relationship between parties and the immigrant-origin population is incomplete. Especially a perceived distance between the so-called guestworker immigrants and their descendants, on the one hand, and the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union on the other hand deserves more attention.40 At the beginning of a new age of immigration into Germany, some reluctance of the conservative parties •••

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towards immigration and multiculturalism may be altered.41 It is particularly interesting whether politicians of immigrant origin are going to play a part in this potential process of change. ANDREAS M. WÜST, Dr. phil., M.A., is senior research fellow of the VolkswagenStiftung at the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim. He is a political scientist whose primary area of research is political sociology. He has widely published on voting behavior, political representation, and parties. Recent publications include The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies, ed. with Karen Bird and Thomas Saalfeld (London, 2011); “Dauerhaft oder temporär? Zur Bedeutung des Migrationshintergrunds für Wahlbeteiligung und Parteiwahl bei der Bundestagswahl 2009,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift, special issue 45 (2011): 157-178; with Hajo G. Boomgaarden “Religion and Party Positions towards Turkish EU Accession),” Comparative European Politics 10, no. 2 (2012): 180-197; “A lasting impact? On the legislative activities of immigrant-origin parliamentarians in Germany,” The Journal of Legislative Studies 20, no. 4 (2014).

Notes 1. A fellowship from the VolkswagenStiftung made working on this topic and this article possible. This is gratefully acknowledged. 2. Peter J. Katzenstein, Politics and Policies in West Germany: The Growth of a Semi-sovereign State (Philadelphia, 1987). 3. Mark. J. Miller, Foreign Workers in Western Europe. An Emerging Political Force (New York, 1981). 4. Karen Bird, Thomas Saalfeld, and Andreas M. Wüst, eds., The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies (London, 2011). 5. Immigrant origin (Migrationshintergrund) is a term developed by Germany’s national statistical office, introduced in official statistics in 2005. In this article, the term primarily catches the first and second generation of foreign citizens that have immigrated into Germany. 6. This is the result of applied research carried out by Maik Baumgärtner for the Mediendienst Integration, published online on 15 October 2013 (revised edition); available at http://mediendienst-integration.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Abgeordnete_Bundestag_Ergebnisse.pdf), accessed 20 March 2014. All immigrant origins could have been validated by the author. 7. Konferenz der für Integration zuständigen Ministerinnen und Minister/Senatorinnen und Senatoren der Länder, ed., Zweiter Integrationsmonitoringbericht der Länder 2011, volume 2:

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Immigration into Politics Datenband (Dresden, 2013), 310; Andreas M. Wüst, “Wahlverhalten und politische Repräsentation von Migranten,” Der Bürger im Staat 56, no. 4 (2006): 228-234; Karen Schönwälder, “Cautious Steps: Minority Representation in Germany,” in Immigrant Politics: Race and Representation in Western Europe, ed. Terri E. Givens and Rahsaan Maxwell (Boulder, 2012), 67-85. 8. Andreas M. Wüst and Thomas Saalfeld, “Abgeordnete mit Migrationshintergrund im Vereinigten Königreich, Frankreich, Deutschland und Schweden: Opportunitäten und Politikschwerpunkte,” in Politische Vierteljahresschrift, special issue 44: Politik als Beruf, ed. Michael Edinger and Werner J. Patzelt (2010): 312-333; Sara Claro da Fonseca, “New Citizens—New Candidates? Candidate Selection and the Mobilization of Immigrant Voters in German Elections,” in Bird et al. (see note 4), 109-127; Andreas M. Wüst, “Politische Repräsentation von Migranten im Vergleich: Die Rolle von Parteien,” in Wer gehört dazu? Zugehörigkeit als Voraussetzung von Integration, ed., Bertelsmann Stiftung (Gütersloh, 2011), 117-135; Constanze Schmitz and Andreas M. Wüst, “Was bewegt Politiker mit Migrationshintergrund? Befunde aus deutschen Großstädten,” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 42, no. 4 (2011): 850-862; Karen Schönwälder, “Immigrant Representation in Germany’s Regional States: The Puzzle of Uneven Dynamics,” West European Politics 36, no. 3 (2013): 634-651; Barbara Donovan, “Intersectionality and the Substantive Representation of Migrant Interests in Germany,” German Politics and Society 30, no. 4: (2012) 23-44; Andreas M. Wüst, “A lasting impact? On the legislative activities of immigrant-origin parliamentarians in Germany,” The Journal of Legislative Studies 20, no. 4 (forthcoming); Alex Street, “Representation Despite Discrimination: Minority Candidates in Germany,” Political Research Quarterly (forthcoming). 9. Candidates of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) were not screened; compared to the Piratenpartei, the AfD did not poll well until April 2013. 10. Mediendienst Integration, Bundestagskandidaten mit Migrationshintergrund (Berlin 2013); available at https://mediendienst-integration.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Bundestagskandidaten_ MDI.pdf, accessed 20 March 2014. 11. Ibid., 2. 12. Ibid., 3. 13. This is to a larger extent also the case for forty-five of the CSU candidates elected (80 percent), but contrasting the only (constituency) candidate of immigrant origin to all other native candidates does not make much sense. Very few constituencies allowed candidates of Die Linke (4 or 6 percent of the Linke seats) and of the Greens (1 or 2 percent) to getting elected as well, but it would be daring to state that hybrid candidates of these parties do generally have higher chances in getting elected. 14. This anecdotal evidence is also nurtured by the fact that the majority of ministers of immigrant-origin have so far been women (Aygül Özkan, Bilkay Öney, Aydan Özog˘uz). 15. Andreas M. Wüst, Hermann Schmitt, Thomas Gschwend, and Thomas Zittel, “Candidates in the 2005 Bundestag Election: Mode of Candidacy, Campaigning and Issues,” German Politics 15, no. 4 (2006): 420-438. 16. Ibid., 424. 17. Julia Junker, “Die Repräsentation von ethnischen Minderheiten und Migranten in Parlamenten,” BA thesis (Mannheim 2008). 18. I want to thank Heiko Giebler (WZB, Berlin) for providing these data. 19. Constituency results (winner) and successive list places per party and state were the base for this calculation. 20. Infratest dimap, Wahlreport Deutschland Bundestagswahl 2013 (Berlin, 2013). 21. Hans-Herbert von Arnim, “Wahl ohne Auswahl. Die Parteien und nicht die Bürger bestimmen die Abgeordneten,” in Politbarometer, ed., Andreas M. Wüst (Opladen, 2003), 125-142; Philip Manow, “Electoral rules and legislative turnover: Evidence from Germany’s mixed electoral system,” West European Politics 30, no. 1 (2007): 195-207.

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Andreas M. Wüst 22. Miki C. Kittilson and Katherine Tate, “Political Parties, Minorities and Elected Office: Comparing Opportunities for Inclusion in the U.S. and Britain,” CSD Working Paper (Irvine, 2004); Wüst and Saalfeld (see note 8). 23. Johannes Bergh and Tor Bjørklund, “Minority Representation in Norway: success at the local level; failure at the national level,” in Bird et al. (see note 4), 128-144; Florian W. Herbolsheimer and Andreas M. Wüst, “Migrationshintergrund: Fluch oder Segen bei der Ratswahl?,” Stadtforschung und Statistik 2 (2012): 8-12. 24. Based on 2011 census data, the share of the foreign population correlates with the share of the population of immigrant background in the 412 administrative districts (Landkreise, Stadtkreise, kreisfreie Städte) at Pearson’s r=.92. The respective correlation of the share of the foreign population and German citizens of immigrant origin is r=.78. 25. Wüst and Saalfeld (see note 8), 319. 26. Mediendienst Integration, Abgeordnete mit Migrationshintergrund im 18. Deutschen Bundestag; available at http://mediendienst-integration.de/fileadmin/Dateien/Abgeordnete_Bundestag_Ergebnisse.pdf, accessed 20 March 2014. 27. Andreas M. Wüst, “Migrants as parliamentary actors in Germany,” in Bird et al. (see note 4), 250-265, here 255; Karen Schönwälder, Cihan Sinanoglu, and Daniel Volkert, Vielfalt sucht Rat. Ratsmitglieder mit Migrationshintergrund in deutschen Großstädten, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Demokratie series, vol. 27 (Berlin, 2011), 34; Schönwälder (seenote 8), 639. 28. Andreas M. Wüst and Constanze Schmitz, “Zwischen migrationsspezifischer Prägung und politischer Opportunitätsstruktur: Abgeordnete in deutschen Parlamenten seit 1987,” in Bürgerrolle heute: Migrationshintergrund und politisches Lernen, ed. Georg Weisseno (Opladen, 2010), 127-143, here 135-136. 29. Annen failed to get nominated in 2009, but the nominated candidate did not succeed, so Annen was nominated again in 2013. 30. Andreas M. Wüst and Dominic Heinz, “Die politische Repräsentation von Migranten in Deutschland,” in Die politische Repräsentation von Fremden und Armen, ed. Markus Linden and Winfried Thaa (Baden-Baden, 2009), 201-218. Four immigrant-origin MPs are missing in this first assessment: Annen, Connemann, Neškovi´ c and Schulz, all of whom are second generation. Yet, even considering these four MPs, the second generation has never dominated like in 2013. 31. Except for one MP, the author knows about the background of the MPs’ parents. Yet, since country of origin and background is not known to the public, it is not documented in Table 7.5 and in Table 7.6. 32. Cemile Giosouf’s parents belong to the Turkish minority in Greece, so she can be considered to be of Turkish ethnicity, but Greek origin. 33. Heinrich Fink (MP of the PDS, 1998-2001) was of Bessarabian origin. 34. Based on information of the Bundestag press service, 402 of all MPs elected in 2013 were incumbents (return rate: 65 percent). For Bundestag elections up to 2005, see Manow (see note 21), 197. 35. Neškovi´ c left the Left party in 2012 and ran as an independent constituency candidate in 2013. 36. Heinrich Best, Stefan Jahr, and Lars Vogel, “Karrieremuster und Karrierekalküle deutscher Parlamentarier,” in Edinger and Patzelt (see note 8), 168-191, 171. 37. Memet Kılıç, “Freiheit ist wichtiger als Tradition,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 November 2012; available at http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/gastbeitrag-zurbeschneidung-freiheit-ist-wichtiger-als-tradition-11967472.html, accessed 20 March 2014. 38. Klaus Detterbeck, “Parteikarrieren im föderalen Mehrebenensystem. Zur Verknüpfung von öffentlichen Mandaten und innerparteilichen Führungspositionen,” in Edinger and Patzelt (see note 8), 145-167, here 150. 39. Wüst 2011 (see note 8); Street (see note 8); Ina E. Bieber, “Benachteiligung von Minderheiten: Eine experimentelle Untersuchung der Wirkung des Kandidatengeschlechts und der -herkunft auf das Wählerverhalten,” in Koalitionen, Kandidaten, Kommunikation, ed.

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Immigration into Politics Thorsten Faas, Kai Arzheimer, Sigrid Roßteutscher, and Bernhard Weßels (Wiesbaden, 2013), 105-128. 40. This not only pertains to politicians, but also to eligible voters, see Andreas M. Wüst, “Dauerhaft oder temporär? Zur Bedeutung des Migrationshintergrunds für Wahlbeteiligung und Parteiwahl bei der Bundestagswahl 2009,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift, special issue 45 (2011): 157-178. 41. Andreas M. Wüst, “Bundestagskandidaten und Einwanderungspolitik: Eine Analyse zentraler Policy-Aspekte,” Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 19, no. 1 (2009): 77-105.

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Chapter 8 • • •

THE RELUCTANT COSMOPOLITANIZATION OF EUROPEAN PARTY POLITICS The Case of Germany

Lars Rensmann

Between National Ethnos and Cosmopolitan Demos: Revisiting the Politics of Immigrant Inclusion and Exclusion In the aftermath of the 2013 Bundestag election and shortly after entering the newly formed grand coalition government, Horst Seehofer, chairman of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), presented a working paper, emblazoned with the catchy slogan: “Wer betrügt, der fliegt” (“Those who cheat will be kicked out”).1 The paper calls for a catalogue of actions against immigrants and immigration from poor European Union ( EU ) member states such as Bulgaria and Romania.2 Initiating an unusual kind of populist postelection campaign by a government party, Seehofer suggested reducing “migration incentives,” for instance by “generally eliminating welfare benefits during the first three months of residency” and by “expelling” all those EU citizens residing in Germany who illegitimately receive benefits, as well as preventing them from reentering German territory.3 Two months later, the general secretary of the CSU, Andreas Scheuer, reinforced the rhetoric of resentment against new immigrants from Eastern Europe as lazy freeloaders exploiting German welfare, adding in the vernacular of the German Stammtisch that “if you freeload [schmarotzt] you should not even try to come.”4 As the sister party of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the hegemonic center-right party in Bavaria, the CSU is an influential mainstream force in German politics and a significant player in the national government. Yet, the CSU chairman did not mention that his initiative—which,

The Reluctant Cosmopolitanization of European Party Politics

to be sure, replicates previous proposals by British Prime Minister David Cameron—stands in sharp contrast to the pro-immigration provisions of the new coalition agreement, which Seehofer and the CSU had signed only a month earlier. The proposal is also in conflict with European law. While the Federal Labor Agency’s data officially dispute the party’s presuppositions about the European poor migrating to Germany, the CSU nonetheless seems to appeal to anti-immigrant constituencies and, thus, follows its old doctrine to allow no space for parties to its right side. The CSU’s public campaign may therefore appear as yet another manifestation of ethnocultural exclusivism in a long history of conservative appeals to still significant resentments toward immigration and cultural diversity in German society, epitomized in former Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s resilient dictum that “Germany is not a country of immigration.”5 Nevertheless, it would be oversimplified and one-sided to take this case simply as proof of continuity of the “politics of exclusion” in Germany.6 Decades ago Jürgen Habermas pleaded to induce a “painful change in the way we conceive ourselves as a nation” and thus to replace the ethnic nationalist conceptions of Volk (people) and culture, anchored in the 1913 citizenship laws based on ius sanguinis, by a full-fledged identification with an inclusive “constitutional patriotism” based on Germany’s Basic Law. Habermas hereby diagnosed that the “shortcomings … in the way Germany is dealing … with immigration” had to be understood against “the historical background of German collective self-understandings as a nation of Volksgenossen or ethnic comrades.”7 Such transformation from ethnos to demos—redefining the boundaries of the national political community from an ethnic exclusivism to a cosmopolitan immigrant nation—remains a long and winding road, which continues to witness counter-cosmopolitan backlashes.8 Yet, as Andreas Wüst points out, even though to a considerable extent “immigrants have continued to remain ‘objects (of policy) rather than subjects (of politics),’ it is misguided to think of Germany’s immigrant and ethnic minority population today solely as a ‘group of politically excluded people.’”9 Indeed, there are some remarkable changes over the last decade indicating that German politics and society have lately been catching up with the multicultural demographic realities of its residents and with neighboring Western countries. This entails an increasingly inclusive societal and political view on immigration and cultural diversity, which relevant parts of the electorate and the political elite have begun to endorse, even if reluctantly. Despite persistent problems of institutionalized discrimination as well as comparatively restrictive institutional politics granting ethnic minorities and •••

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immigrants limited access to the societal elite or to public office, the legal status, political role, and social perception of immigrants and minorities as citizens who belong to German society has significantly changed since the Kohl era, when they were largely relegated to the status of Gastarbeiter (guest workers) or at best, ausländische Mitbürger (foreign fellow citizens).10 Nothing epitomizes the altered political and sociocultural landscape more vividly than the German national football team. Especially for Europeans, the national football team is a focal point of society’s collective self-representation. In Germany, one of the country’s initially most restrictive institutions, the German Football Federation (DFB), for a long time rigorously restricted access to the team to players with German ethnic origin—in tune with dominant societal self-perceptions. Now the team’s stars are players with migration background like Sami Khedira, Mesut Özil, and Jérôme Boateng, displaying and heralding a multiethnic, multicultural Germany.11 This process, which can be coined cosmopolitanization, has not just affected German politics and society. It has also been driven by immigration policy changes—in particular by the belated liberalization of the German citizenship regime realized by the red-green government in 1999 that opened up citizenship to all children of legal residents born on German soil.12 A significant yet still largely unanswered question is how and how far this process has had an impact on or transformed German party politics, both in terms of its scope and causes. The causes, effects, and role of mainstream political parties deserve more attention but so far have been underscrutinized and undertheorized, and data are still scarce.13 In particular, the complex “electoral relationship between political parties and immigrants remains largely unexplored.”14 Responding to this gap, this article looks at the presumed cosmopolitanization of German party politics in three dimensions: (1) the historical evolution of political discourse and programmatic positions on immigration, identity, and ethnocultural diversity, with a special focus on the unlikely cosmopolitans of the center right, and the causes for shifts thereof; (2) mainstream parties’ governmental policies towards citizenship, immigration and inclusion before and after the 2013 election; and (3) the development of immigrant and ethnic minority mobilization through the fielding of political candidates from visible minorities, as well as their capacity to mobilize voters and enter the Bundestag in the 2013 election. Arguing from a comparative European perspective, it is suggested that the belated cosmopolitanization of German party politics is primarily caused by the overdue recognition of demographic, economic, and political reality, as well as value change shaping electoral demands. In this process, •••

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mainstream political parties, including the Christian Democratic center right, have been reluctant but ultimately rational agents responding to electoral demand and interested in maximizing voter mobilization.15 In turn, it took changes of party leadership and strategic decisions at critical junctures of national party competition to actively pursue new policies, significantly alter the zone of acquiescence on immigration and minorities by limiting or abandoning xenophobic campaigns that can alienate centrist voters, and help transform party politics in a key area of German national identity. While still taking powerful cultural norms and the threat of losing core constituencies into account and thus developing strategies to partly “cushion” the political cosmopolitanization effects vis-à-vis the general electorate, mainstream parties have therefore also begun—even if reluctantly and belatedly—to recruit visible minority candidates for political representation who may better reflect the increasingly postmaterialist, diversified and cosmopolitanized constituencies.

From “Children instead of Indians” to “Germany is Colorful”? The Cosmopolitanization of Mainstream Political Party Discourse on Immigration, Diversity, and National Identity To understand the scope and causes of programmatic cosmopolitanizations among mainstream political parties in Germany—i.e., transformations indicating changes from an ethnically exclusive to a postconventional, multiethnic, and culturally inclusive national self-understanding—it is important to look at the evolution of platforms and symbolic politics in historical context. This section reconstructs the conditions, stages and dynamics of programmatic changes in German party politics, taking into account both a longitudinal perspective, as well as critical junctures of programmatic reform. Special attention will be paid to the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU /CSU) because for them the stakes to change course in this sensitive area affecting social values and identity politics are very high. It tends to be particularly risky especially for mainstream conservative parties to transform cultural identities and reach out to immigrants and ethnic minorities. While it is unclear if there is anything to gain from immigrant voters at the ballot-box, these parties risk alienating their core constituencies and face possible challenges of radical right parties and other nativist competitors.16 This may be the key reason why for many decades the German center right, despite its democratic and constitutionalist postwar credentials, was more than reluctant to depart from ethnic national identity con•••

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ceptions and the ius soli principle. Indeed, even after Kohl government was voted out of office in the 1998 election, opposition parties and media accused the CDU of the politics of “playing the race card” in public campaigns.17 The Mobilization of Ethnic Closure After 1945, German society was predominantly an ethnically homogeneous society with little to no nonethnic immigration and citizenship—although there were millions of expellees from central and eastern Europe who made their home in the Federal Republic. Until 1999, citizenship laws remained in principle based on ethnic descent (ius sanguinis). They were in place since 1913, and initially acquisition of citizenship for nonethnic foreigners was possible exclusively through marriage or political asylum.18 In stark contrast to more ethnically diverse countries such as Great Britain and France, there has been no postcolonial immigration and impact on society. A wave of worker immigration started in the 1960s, with Turkish immigrants being the largest visible minority in Germany of the so-called Gastarbeiter recruitment. The very label has remained a hallmark of exclusion ever since: “guest workers” were only classified as “guests” of the Federal Republic, insinuating that they do not belong and they are not here to stay.19 For the most part, the growing number of foreigners residing in West Germany had no voting rights, and thus represented an irrelevant constituency. Mainstream political parties from the center left, center right, and liberal center fully absorbed and reinforced the “guest worker” perception and status. They either avoided or welcomed the institutionalized social and political exclusion of migrant workers, ethnic minorities, asylum seekers, and resident aliens, even though the composition of society had become increasingly diversified on the ground.20 All mainstream German parties long had a limited record of outreach towards ethnic minorities and immigrants. Until the end of the twentieth century, the CDU /CSU’s programmatic conceptions of nationhood and citizenship remained consistently and explicitly ethnic.21 Edmund Stoiber (CSU), later to become the center right’s candidate for chancellor in 2002, proclaimed as late as 1988 that Germany must not become a “multinational society, mixed with different races.”22 It is important to note that there were no political sanctions for Stoiber within the CDU /CSU at the time, although there was a considerable public outcry about this statement.23 In fact, the CDU /CSU-led coalition government under Chancellor Kohl (1982-1998) upheld and reinforced a programmatic political strategy and policy of “no immigration,” no road to citizenship, and “no recognition” of visible minorities. While the Kohl government was slow to change •••

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its course on social welfare or pro-market reforms that were signature policies of other neoconservative European governments, it turned distinctively to the right on cultural issues —including national identity—and promoted a restrictive position towards cultural diversity and immigration. Consequently, minority mobilization was not an issue in the party. 24 Indeed, until the end of his tenure as chancellor, Kohl kept insisting that Germany is “no country of immigration,” even in light of the de facto changes to German society and the rising number of visible minorities in the country.25 Nevertheless, his government established extensive naturalization programs for ethnic German Aussiedler. Until the mid 1990s, the CDU’s mainstream catch-all party competitor, the moderate center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), did not decisively depart from the ethnic model of national identity, citizenship and immigration, either. Much of its leadership endorsed the ethnic conception, while the SPD hardly made nonethnic immigration and visible minorities a topic. The party remained mostly silent on the subject of citizenship, though it did induce programmatic reform in its platform. However, with the exception of the proportionally increasingly less important ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, who are traditionally mostly conservative in their political orientation and benefitted particularly from support by the CDU/CSU, immigrants and ethnic minorities are almost uniformly staunch partisans of parties of the left. This “natural alliance” reflects a broad European phenomenon and is especially pronounced among the fastest-growing Turkish immigrant group.26 As a left-wing party catering to blue-collar core constituencies—and especially since the late 1960s, also representing more liberal social values—the vast majority of naturalized ethnic minority voters tended to quasi automatically support the SPD at the ballot-box across generational cohorts and displayed a high level of party loyalty in so doing. The party’s generally more “internationalist” and more inclusive outlook also constituted a noticeable programmatic difference to recurring xenophobic statements and openly declared programmatic support for an ethnic nationalist selfunderstanding in the leadership and platform of the CDU/CSU. Special outreach efforts seemed therefore unnecessary, especially as the CDU further alienated these potential voters by its reinforced programmatic ethnic exclusivism. For decades, moreover, only a small minority among the visible minorities in Germany had citizenship and thus voting rights. Critical Junctures and Immigration Conflict in a Changing Electoral Market Yet the 1998 Bundestag election—the first postwar election in which German citizens voted an incumbent chancellor out of office—was a watershed event •••

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in German politics. It highlighted the transformed underlying societal conditions of the political market. Most importantly, the general election and subsequent developments represented a game-changing critical juncture for the programmatic competition among mainstream parties in the area of citizenship and immigration. In spite of the CDU /CSU’s dramatic success in managing unification and subsequent elections, its winning formula, including its ethnic-exclusivist model, finally seemed politically exhausted and, after years of reform stagnation, outdated. In sharp contrast to Kohl’s policy, both the fiction of national homogeneity and the interrelated insistence that Germany is no country of immigration came under increased pressure by business and with the advent of a new center-left government.27 The SPD had recognized that the tide was turning and made citizenship and immigration reform an electoral campaign issue. Against the backdrop of a successful campaign culminating in a landslide victory, the new SPD/Green government made immigration reform, despite massive reservations among social democratic leaders and voters, a high priority. Both governing parties immediately sought to establish new laws for immigration, integration, and citizenship that undermined the concept of Volk tied together by ius sanguinis.28 Immigration and citizenship reform were not just highly salient but, to be sure, also highly controversial and contested issues at the time (and the former failed). Yet, the SPD’s change in policy and its leading role as a mainstream catch-all party in a new coalition government that firmly demonstrated its willingness to challenge the status quo by implementing new policies both reflected and reinforced the cosmopolitan transformation of German society.29 As recent scholarship argues, the more inclusive conception and mode of acquiring citizenship also expresses a changing calculus among these parties in the face of changing demographics, business and new centrist voter demands, and intergenerational preference shifts. They point to reconfigurations of cleavage structures that are partly reshaped by changed identities and values under conditions of globalization.30 The new citizenship and immigration debate, initiated by the reform proposals, can be conceived as a key political conflict reflecting the impact of globalization on the content of political competition and on voter mobilization. While the SPD’s industrial working class core electorate has been eroding, both the SPD and the Greens started to reach out to centrist, postindustrial middle-class voters and younger generational cohorts shaped by postethnic, postmaterialist selfexpression value change and an increasingly cosmopolitan outlook.31 In addition, at this point the center left parties could reasonably expect to gain •••

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millions of nonethnic, likely left-leaning voters in future elections by means of naturalization based on citizenship reform. Naturalized citizens have since become an ever expanding group of voters, and, in the 2002 election for the first time, nonethnic (as opposed to ethnic) Germans among naturalized citizens have been such a big group that the CDU /CSU could not benefit from the group total of naturalized citizens. Until then, the center right parties tended to benefit electorally from the sum of naturalized citizens because the clear majority of ethnic German Aussiedler votes conservative.32 Even though CDU and CSU could not expect to receive many votes from nonethnic Germans but risked alienating voters by departing from ethnic exclusivism, the massive loss of postmaterialist, young, centrist and middle-class voters and the corresponding new electoral calculus ultimately also affected electoral calculations in the CDU /CSU. Add to this increasing pressure from business and economic interests—the “natural allies” of the center right to a considerable extent moved to the center-left reform alternative in 1998. They called for opening the country to non-EU migration, and changing its identity as an inclusive place open to global business operating in a globalized world.33 Still operating in Kohl’s shadow, leading CDU politicians and regional chairmen initially politicized the issues of citizenship and immigration. They accused the newly elected red-green government of jeopardizing German cultural identity—emphasizing German Leitkultur (defining culture) while aggressively launching campaigns against both double citizenship and any attempt to ease restriction on labor migration, i.e., green cards for technology experts.34 These anti- or counter-cosmopolitan campaigns were partially electoral mobilization successes. The CDU celebrated election victories in six out of seven state elections in 1999. Most prominently, they succeeded in the state election of Hesse, carrying CDU politician Roland Koch into the state government in 1999. He had targeted double citizenship as the major focus of his campaign. As late as spring 2000, Jürgen Rüttgers campaigned for governor in North-Rhine Westphalia by mobilizing with the controversial slogans “more education instead of more immigration” in stark opposition to any immigration reform and even the introduction of green cards for highly skilled and needed non-European experts, stating that “instead of Indians in front of computers, our children must be in front of computers.”35 Despite the high salience of the (anti-) immigrant issue, this did not resonate with voters, and Rüttgers lost his quest for office—a defeat that arguably marked a turning point for the CDU /CSU with regards to ethnic conceptions of national identity, because it put those on the defensive who thought overt anti-immigrant rhetoric and •••

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legislation could be a new long-term strategy to win elections.36 To be sure, this lost populist electoral campaign was deeply shaped by a contingent factor: a fundamental crisis of the CDU caused by a massive party funding scandal in 2000 involving illicit donations received by Chancellor Kohl. This brought the party close to collapsing, reminiscent of the Christian Democrats (DC) in Italy seven years before. It affected all state elections that year because party financing became the dominant theme.37 Most important in this context is that the crisis induced a major change in party leadership to save the CDU’s very existence. Despite reservations among the conservative rank and file, Angela Merkel, who had publicly distanced herself from Kohl, took office as a new party leader in April 2000, and she did so with a powerful mandate that was also a mandate for political reform. This allowed Merkel, no longer Kohl’s Mädchen (Kohl’s girl), to significantly modernize the party’s programmatic outlook and to also change course in key areas affecting the party’s identity such as citizenship and immigration. As the following section argues, the conservative party leadership from then on took a pragmatic, modestly inclusive, and more cosmopolitan approach to these issues attempting to reach out to the “new center” of the German electorate. The Programmatic Cosmopolitanization of the Center Right The argument is that the main causal mechanism is demand-side changes in the electoral market, to which parties primarily react as rational actors seeking to maximize votes.38 These changes have provided incentives for mainstream parties—including the center right—to launch programmatic shifts on citizenship, identity, and cultural diversity. Yet, previous studies have not sufficiently paid attention to contingent external and internal supply side factors that are relevant for the breakthrough, scope, and strategic interaction of party competition in relation to conflict issues. This applies especially to such a highly sensitive and controversial programmatic area affecting a party’s core identity, as is the case with issues relating to postethnic national identity conceptions in the CDU /CSU. On the external supply side, the red-green government ultimately put pressure on the CDU/CSU to initiate already belated programmatic shifts. The SPD functioned as a modernizing “game changer” in a transformed electoral environment and marketplace to which the CDU had to respond. On the internal supply side of the CDU, the demise of the Kohl system in the face of the party funding scandal represented a critical juncture. The strong mandate for Merkel who emerged as a surprisingly resolute leader endorsing reforms, allowed for a repositioning of the center right to actually take shape. In her •••

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five years as opposition leader before taking power in 2005, Merkel prevented new xenophobic electoral campaigns, although the issues of double citizenship and immigration remained highly contentious. Under Merkel’s leadership, the party elite transformed—even if cautiously, modestly, and gradually—national citizenship and immigration from a highly polarized, contentious issue to one that can be addressed pragmatically. Of course, this transition has not been without electoral risks. Yet, afraid of falling behind the tide and losing the long-term capacity to win elections, the new CDU party leadership has actively developed new strategies. Recognizing the demographic development of German society, it started to cope with what appeared to become a losing formula in light of a globalized environment. The party began to catch up with societal conditions, including social value change among centrist voters and young generational cohorts in a postethnic society, as well as domestic business demands for increased immigration. Thus, in the programmatic realm, the CDU’s self-understanding with regard to citizenship and immigration has been transformed, while the party’s frequency and intensity of outreach to ethnic minorities and immigrants has increased significantly over the last decade—even though it is still rather limited in absolute terms and comparative perspective. In a clear-cut departure from the Kohl era, the CDU’s party platform adopted in Hannover in 2007, the CDU now perceives Germany as a “country of integration” (and thus implicitly of immigration) and opts for “controlled immigration.” Addressing the majority of nonethnic immigrants who are Muslim, the first version of the platform also claimed the compatibility of the rule of law, democracy, and Muslim belief, but in the end proclaimed: We support a peaceful co-existence between Western democracies and states shaped by Islam. We respect and appreciate the rich cultural tradition of the Islamic world. It is in our best interest to support the moderate forces in Islamic societies on their way to the rule of law and democracy.39

Moreover, a broad analysis of newspaper articles indicates that inclusive programmatic measures and announcements are clearly more salient and frequent than in the past. Inclusive programmatic policies which are beneficial to visible minorities have become part of the CDU’s platform, and the leadership now sends inclusive programmatic signals to ethnic minorities on a regular basis. It also does not shy away from stating that “Islam is part of our country.”40 In the prelude to the 2013 general election, Merkel publicly promoted the dialogue of cultures and religions in a multiethnic immigrant society, supporting special programs assisting immigrants’ education and supporting •••

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the acquisition of language skills. She advocates—in stark contrast to the Kohl legacy—a new German “welcoming culture” towards new citizens and immigrants.41 In spite of several qualifications, the recognition that “Germany is colorful,” as initially declared on antiracist banners, has by now also reached the headquarters of the CDU /CSU; at least no one in the party leadership is likely to oppose this description of German society today. This process complements the reluctant programmatic cosmopolitanization among mainstream parties introduced by the SPD and Greens. It is now unlikely that (anti-) immigration and ethnic nationalist mobilizations will become the subject of major electoral campaigns and competition among mainstream parties. Counter-cosmopolitan Residues and Selective National Populism Such programmatic cosmopolitanization, however, has not just been belated and modest, but is also far from being unqualified. Mainstream parties—especially conservative ones, for whom this tends to be particularly risky in face of radical right competitors42—are likely to employ a two-fold strategy: they will probably use a mix of more inclusive and restrictive symbolic politics and divisions of labor within the party, with some agents catering to ethnocentric constituencies by the selective use of national populism.43 Although xenophobic or anti-immigrant views have been largely contained under Merkel, since 2000 there have also been several counterprogrammatic and counter-symbolic moves that cushion significant programmatic changes by allowing some space for counter-cosmopolitan agency and the politics of exclusion.44 The cultural undercurrents of the debate on German Leitkultur in the fall of 2000 point to this element of ambivalence. The strategy of a division of labor and the (limited) use of ethnocentric national populism are exemplified in the CSU’s recent initiative mentioned above. Especially the CSU—the traditionally more conservative Christian Social Union which caters to Bavarian voters—continues occasionally to mobilize exclusivist resentments. Stoiber, for instance, insisted that there are “hundreds of years of defining culture in Germany” and that “cathedrals need to be bigger than mosques.”45 Furthermore, more inclusive statements and policy changes are often linked to more restrictive policies and “law of order” rhetoric, in part creating divides between perceived “law-abiding” citizens and “new” immigrants from Eastern Europe and non-European countries. The mainstream Social Democratic competitor, to be sure, is also not entirely free from employing a programmatic double strategy accompanying cosmopolitan inclusion with selective national populism. The SPD, for example, is more likely to resort at times to national•••

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populist anti-Americanism, as it did in supporting a union campaign against “American locusts” in 2005.46 None of these counter-cosmopolitan invectives that surface occasionally in party competition, however, seriously threaten the modernizing programmatic shift from ethnic-nationalist to more postconventional, cosmopolitan sociopolitical norms and conceptions of citizenship in German politics, and the ideological depolarization on the subject going along with that.

Mainstream Parties and Changing Policy Regimes: Party Cooperation on Immigration Reform, Integration Policy, and Dual Citizenship The programmatic changes on national identity, the institution of citizenship, and immigration have also induced transformed interactions among mainstream parties in the policy-making process in this initially highly contested area. Even though here, too, the process of cosmopolitanization and postethnic inclusion continues to face significant challenges—especially in the field of immigration law and policy—in a longitudinal perspective there have been some remarkable changes in the way mainstream parties tackle related policy issues and cooperate on the matter. The initial silent “ethnic consensus” among mainstream competitors that had been reinforced by an assertive CDU /CSU “no immigration” policy even against the backdrop of significant demographic changes faced massive ideological polarization in the 1990s and partly beyond, induced by policy reform pressure emanating from a changing electoral market and the 1998-2005 red-green government.47 Yet, despite ongoing policy differences between the two main parties, this polarization has been increasingly replaced by depolarized, pragmatic policy coordination and policy-making moving towards a new policy regime, especially in the areas of citizenship reform and integration policy.48 The programmatic ethnic conception of nationhood underlying the CDU’s immigration policy under Kohl became manifest in 1982, when he announced making access to the country even more restrictive than it already had been. He aimed to reduce the existing number of “guest workers” by promoting their return to their “home countries;” restricting family reunification; and preventing further immigration.49 Although the governing CDU failed to implement those restrictive policies, which partly conflicted with EU law, the Kohl government was a major player in the construction of the restrictive provisions for non-Europeans in the treaties of Schengen, Maastricht, and Amsterdam.50 Meanwhile, the party did not develop integration •••

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policies for those immigrants already living in Germany. In 1993, moreover, the CDU /CSU curtailed Germany’s liberal asylum law and amended the respective article (Art.16) of the Basic Law. In so doing, the center right sought to respond to both a wave of postunification anti-immigrant violence and the high salience of the issue at the time (with a popular majority of German supporting more restrictive policies), as well as to the electoral rise of extreme right parties in regional elections. Especially the CDU and CSU, alongside parts of mainstream public discourse, dubiously attributed the latter to the allegedly “unresolved asylum question.”51 To be sure, the so-called “asylum compromise” received the needed two-third majority in the Bundestag only with the broad support of the SPD. The Social Democrats at the time, far from being a pro-immigration party, were obviously worried that they would become a marginalized player losing core constituencies to an already strengthened postunification CDU. Promoting rights of asylum-seekers would attract few voters. Still, some parliamentarians opposed the constitutional amendment as curtailing human rights.52 Preceded by programmatic revisions, after being elected into national government the SPD and Greens managed to implement revisions of the citizenship law reflecting demographic changes in German society—even if the proposals were very modest and rather belated compared to neighboring European countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. As a result, since 2000 the vast majority of regularly naturalized people are foreign citizens without German ethnicity.53 The group of former Turkish citizens is the second largest naturalized nationality group, and their share—alongside increased immigration from Eastern Europe—is constantly rising.54 Over time, Germany has become de facto one of Europe’s most prominent immigrant-accepting societies.55 Even under the old policy regime of ethnic exclusion, between 1950 and 1993 the net migration balance for West Germany has been 12.6 million, “accounting for 80 per cent of the country’s population growth.”56 Today, official government agency data and surveys assume that 19 percent (and possibly up to 25 percent) of all Germans today have some foreign or immigrant background, while there are also more foreign residents in the country than ever before—7.6 million by the official count.57 Against the backdrop of these initially contested policy changes, we can observe the gradual formation of a broad new policy regime on citizenship and immigration in which both mainstream parties show a relatively high level of pragmatic cooperation and even policy convergence—some persistent differences notwithstanding. This is reflected in subsequent policy changes after the CDU’s electoral successes in 2005 and 2013, which also required cooperation with the SPD in grand coalitions. The major policy con•••

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troversy that divided the main political parties on the issue of immigration reform—partisan disagreements initially led to a defunct immigration law that was adopted by parliament and promulgated in spring 2002 but then struck down by the Federal Constitutional Court—has largely been replaced by a more rational and depolarized discussion of immigration reform.58 The 2005 Immigration Act, ultimately accepted by all mainstream parties, officially acknowledged Germany’s status of “immigration country” for the first time. Immigration policy changes were de facto minor, but immigration opportunities for (highly) skilled professionals and workers or foreigners able to document a public interest in employment were added to inner-European immigration under the Treaty on European Union (Article 39), as well as immigration rights for immediate relatives.59 Most importantly, the Immigration Act turned the structural inclusion of immigrants into a key element of migration policy for the first time. Measures include publicly financed language and integration courses that provide for opportunities while also insisting that migrants aspiring to citizenship have to take tests and comply with several duties.60 Although in its policy-making activities the CDU trailed behind its programmatic changes that had been launched since Merkel became party leader, by the mid 2000s—and back leading a grand coalition government—the CDU had shifted course. It now took part in—rather than obstructing—more inclusive immigration and citizenship legislation in cooperation with the SPD. Wolfgang Schäuble, then the Minister of the Interior and long the CDU’s dominant politician on domestic security and immigration, endorsed “more flexibility” towards immigrants living in Germany. Even illegal immigrants, Schäuble argued in sharp contrast to Kohl’s repatriation policies he once supported, should get the opportunity to return. The CDU, however, continued to oppose any expansion of dual citizenship, rejecting any further citizenship reform because “dual loyalties are not useful.”61 In fact, it was the CDU that introduced “integration summits” and “German Islam conferences” hosted by the Ministry of the Interior—a major symbolic initiative reaching out to Muslim minorities, and institutionalized on an annual basis since 2006. The “Islam conferences” were established with the goal to “put the relationship between the German state and the Muslims living in Germany on a functioning basis and to integrate Muslims better into society.”62 Part of symbolic measures of inclusion towards immigrants and immigrant associations, the policy output of these conferences may be dubious. But, they have initiated important public discussions.63 The process of gradual convergence among the major German party competitors towards a policy of more cosmopolitan inclusiveness is nowhere bet•••

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ter expressed than in the new 2013 Grand Coalition agreement. It entails another major policy shift by the CDU in which it now accepts dual citizenship and has agreed to implement reforms to allow dual citizenship on a permanent basis. Children no longer have to decide which citizenship they want to obtain once they turn eighteen: “For children of foreign parents born and raised in Germany, the need to choose a single citizenship (Optionszwang) will be dropped in the future, and dual citizenship will be accepted.”64 The 2013 coalition agreement also supports new “qualified immigration” and intends to create a “welcoming culture,” a “culture of recognition,” indeed a place for immigrant workers “to stay” (Willkommens- und Bleibekultur).65 Conceiving Germany as a “cosmopolitan country (weltoffen),” the agreement generally establishes an inclusive policy outlook in relation to immigration and immigrants that is indebted to “the concept of diversity:” We understand immigration as a chance without overlooking the challenges going along with it … Migrants have an important share in creating wealth and cultural diversity in our country. The guiding principle of integration policy remains indebted to both support and challenge.66

In terms of specific policies, the joint “national action plan for integration” intends to cover multiple areas of immigrant inclusion, including education. While one might partly see this as an ideological smoke-screen, the overtly restrictive German Ausländerbehörden (foreigner offices) are supposed to be transformed from being a restrictive enforcer of law to a “service sector institution serving migrants.”67 Moreover, both parties declare their intent to seek ways to generate an “intercultural opening of government and society in all areas of life.”68 This entails measures to increase the percentage of immigrants as public servants. The new policy regime, to be sure, is not just more inclusive; there are also many restrictive aspects. Among other things, immigration is largely subsumed under the objectifying lens of economic benefits. Referring to mounting social problems in metropolitan areas, the government consequently seeks to reduce “incentives for migration into [German] social security systems.”69 Also, the new grand coalition still mostly shies away from calling immigration (Einwanderung) by its name—the parties resort to calling immigrants “migrants,” or to the neologism Zuwanderung. Notwithstanding the limits of cosmopolitan inclusiveness that immigrants continue to face—from an often precarious legal status to political exclusion, social discrimination and especially precarious inclusion in the labor market—there is a noticeable change in the immigration, integration, and citizenship policy regime that signifies a departure nonetheless. Supported by both major German parties it reflects, even if reluctantly, the belated recognition now among both mainstream electoral competitors that Germany is •••

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a multicultural democracy and postethnic immigrant society. In fact, internal and external pressures have not just led to policy convergence among German center parties in this formerly highly contentious area, even though some differences persist. In areas of civic integration and antidiscrimination the new German policy regime also exhibits some level of policy convergence with European neighbors like the Netherlands and France, which traditionally have been more inclusive.70

Reluctant Cosmopolitans: New Immigrant Voter Mobilization and Political Representation among Mainstream Parties Largely excluded from public and political life in postwar Germany, ethnic minorities and immigrants, however, have hardly been represented in public office—very few exceptions to the rule notwithstanding. In sharp contrast to France or the UK, where immigrants have been fielded broadly as political candidates in recent years even and especially among center right parties,71 German political parties still have a very limited recruitment record of immigrants and visible minorities to both party membership and the party elite level. Political representation arguably remains one of the biggest challenges. Yet, while still vastly underrepresented and lagging behind political representation in several other European democracies, more ethnic minorities and immigrants have entered the German Bundestag after the 2013 election than ever before. Leftist parties consistently field more immigrant or visible minority candidates. Overall, in Western European comparison their representation has been relatively low among candidates from German catch-all parties.72 When looking at fielded candidates, data from the 2002 and 2005 elections in all electoral districts indicate a particularly low level of ethnic minority representation in the CDU.73 In the 2002 Bundestag election, the CDU ran only five candidates in the total of 299 districts, and in 2005, the number even went down to three.74 The number is also very low in comparison to the major catch-all party competitor SPD. Its number of fielded visible minority candidates is marginal as well, but it doubled from four to eight from 2002 to 2005. Smaller leftist and left-leaning parties fare better: The Left Party for instance, ran seventeen visible minority candidates in 2005. That year, there were eight Turkish-German candidates—the biggest and most significant naturalized ethnic minority group—that were fielded by the Left Party, four fielded by the Greens, and three fielded by the SPD, yet only one candidate fielded by the CDU /CSU, and no one from the Free Democ•••

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rats (FDP). Very often, these candidates were fielded in districts where they did not have a chance to win the direct mandate.75 When it comes to public office in national parliament and government, there was one representative from an ethnic minority among the 224 CDU /CSU members of the Bundestag in the sixteenth legislative period from 2005 to 2009, or 0.4 percent of all their members of parliament; three ethnic minority members of the Bundestag from the SPD (1.4 percent); the Greens had also three (7.8 percent), as did the Left Party (5.7 percent), and no politician from a visible minority represented the FDP. The number totals ten out of 614 members of parliament (1.6 percent). There was no ethnic minority representative in the 2005-2009 grand coalition government. Yet, some change is affecting this area of German party politics as well. For instance, the young politician Philipp Rösler, who has Vietnamese ethnic background, first rose to a prominent position in the FDP party elite and then seized the party leadership in 2010. He also served as a Minister of Economics and Technology and as Vice-Chancellor in the CDU/FDP coalition. His tenure, to be sure, was rather unsuccessful, as the party got voted out of parliament in 2013. During this term, moreover, he repeatedly faced racialized hostilities from parts of the general public and within his own party. Be that as it may, in the seventeenth Bundestag legislative period from 2009 to 2013, the number of representatives with ethnic minority background increased to 3.4 percent, more than doubling the head-count to twenty-one of 622 members of parliament—five of whom had Turkish and four Iranian background. Finally, the 2013 Bundestag election led to another increase to thirty-five (of 630) visible minority members of parliament, from 3.4 percent to 5.6 percent of all Bundestag members. Considering that at least 19 percent of the population has migratory background, there remains a vast discrepancy between the population and political representation. Yet, this gap is even wider if we consider other demographic criteria, such as class. The gap between highly educated upper or upper middle-class and lower class representatives has widened, and working-class members of parliament have virtually disappeared.76 Now the seven (of sixty-three) Green members have migratory or ethnic minority background (11.1 percent), and seven (of sixty-four), or 10.9 percent, of the Left Party. In absolute terms, the Social Democrats take the lead with twelve parliamentarians (of 192), or 6.3 percent of their total. The CDU (eight of 225) and CSU (one of 65) representatives with migratory or ethnic minority background have significantly increased, too, but are still far behind their left-wing competitors (CDU: 3.1 percent; CSU 1.8 percent). Eleven members of parliament (3.7 percent) have •••

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Turkish background, including Cemile Giousouf, the first Muslim representing the CDU . 77 There are also two Afro-German politicians, including Karamba Diaby, who was born in Senegal, and Charles M. Huber, the CDU’s first black representative.78 This confirms two observations about political representation of ethnic minorities and immigrants in Germany. First, there is a significant increase of minority representation in the national parliament among all parties. This increase has only led to a comparatively modest level of ethnic minority representation that still clearly falls short of proportional representation of minorities in the general population. Second, left-wing parties field more candidates and have a higher level of immigrant and visible minority representation in the Bundestag, reflective of the fact that immigrants by and large tend to vote left. From the rational strategic perspective of electoral competition, however, it remains somewhat puzzling that relevant parties do not recruit and field more immigrant and minority candidates. In view of a changing electorate and cleavages, it may also be surprising that the German center right has not yet recruited and fielded more minority candidates, similar to shifts in ethnic minority outreach among other European center right parties. Such a move, announced by CDU and CSU party officials years ago, may be less costly vis-à-vis conservative core constituencies than changing platforms and abandoning restrictive policies while it may improve electoral mobilization among increasingly important constituencies of centrist postmaterialist voters and conservative immigrants. Calls by party officials such as David McAllister, then CDU chairman in the state of Lower-Saxony, to change recruitment and mobilization of immigrants—the party should “court people with immigration background to become voters and also members”—may only slowly lead to effective changes.79 The cause of this slow adaptation could be once again found in internal supply side factors. Active recruitment into the party elite may prove difficult given conservative parties’ track record, and reservations among the rank and file.

The Cosmopolitanization of German Party Politics: Scope and Causes in European Perspective The underlying cosmopolitan transformations of German society have belatedly affected German party politics and policy cooperation among parties. In the process, parties have on their own become key agents that have helped to depolarize the initially highly contentious political issues of •••

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citizenship and national identity as well as immigration and integration policy. This evolution among mainstream electoral competitors signals Germany’s politico-cultural departure from hegemonic ethnic self-understandings towards self-conceptions as a “country of immigration” that no longer relegates immigrants and non-ethnic Germans exclusively to the status of outsider, Gastarbeiter, or ausländischer Mitbürger. To be sure, the salience and scope of cosmopolitanized political norms that programmatically recognize Germany as a multicultural democracy and the relevance of policy regime changes remain debatable. For instance, in comparison to its neighbors Germany’s naturalization rate (37 percent) has so far only been ahead of Switzerland (35 percent) but lags behind the Netherlands (78 percent), Belgium (59 percent), Austria (52 percent), Denmark (57 percent), and France (47 percent). Even Spain, not known for being particularly open to immigration and naturalization, has a higher rate (44 percent).80 This, however, is likely to change with the next German citizenship reform—supported by both mainstream center parties in the new grand coalition government—that is going to abandon the massive restrictions on dual citizenship, making it an option for everyone who qualifies. A more complex picture emerges with regard to the scope, causes and dynamics of the cosmopolitanization of party politics in Germany. Still facing limits and restrictions, it is reluctantly progressing. In addition, five analytical claims shed light on the German case. They might also help engender a model for theorizing the cosmopolitanization of party politics in Europe at large. First, facing demographic and cultural change in a postethnic society, mainstream center parties in countries with dominant ethnic-nationalist legacies tend to act as rational agents in response to transformed electoral market conditions. Thus, they are likely to gradually modernize their political platforms and programs in order to mobilize postmaterialist centrist voters, pro-business constituencies, and ultimately the growing number of immigrants in a multicultural democracy and globalized world. Second, the scope and character of this cosmopolitanization depends on external and internal supply side conditions at critical junctures of electoral competition. In the German case, the red-green government and its reform initiatives put external pressure on the mainstream center-right competitors to change course. The CDU and CSU, however, initially responded by polarizing highly contentious issues of immigration and citizenship reform and successfully mobilizing voters against reform. A massive internal party crisis, lost elections, and a subsequent change of party leadership allowed the new CDU party leader, Merkel, to recognize demographic realities, gradu•••

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ally abandon the “no immigration” stance of her predecessor, and programmatically modernize the party by depolarizing key issues of national identity, immigration, citizenship and cultural diversity. In so doing, both mainstream competitors now appeal to the “new center” that temporarily was mobilized successfully by the SPD and the Greens. Third, mainstream parties—especially conservative ones, for which such change is particularly risky in face of radical right competitors, but also center-left parties mobilizing blue collar workers—are likely to employ a two-fold strategy. They will likely use a mix of more inclusive and restrictive symbolic politics and “divisions of labor” within the party in order to cushion cosmopolitanization effects, with some agents continuing to cater to core constituencies that fear immigration, globalization, and cosmopolitanization by the selective use of national populism—as could be seen in CSU ’s rhetoric against new Eastern European immigrants after the 2013 election. Fourth, the German case indicates that significant changes of policy regimes on issues of immigration, citizenship and civic inclusion of immigrants and ethnic minorities are possible and even likely—changes that seemed impossible or unlikely less than two decades ago—once there is a programmatic shift and depolarization among mainstream parties in response to demographic transformations of the electoral market. A process of gradual policy convergence among mainstream German parties, which now more often than not cooperate pragmatically on reforms, thereby reflects a general European policy convergence on immigration and civic integration. After the 2013 election, the center right CDU/CSU now even fully accepts dual citizenship. Although policy differences among mainstream competitors remain that reflect their different positions on the economic and social value conflict dimensions where they have a strategic advantage, mainstream parties now tend to agree on the direction of immigration policy—even though this is not entirely the case among the different constituencies they cater to.81 Rather than using these contested issues for national electoral mobilization, however, mainstream parties now try to balance reforms with a gradual, step-by-step approach and restrictive immigration regulations to cushion still widespread fears of Überfremdung (foreignization) among their constituencies, and, thus, to alleviate the costs of such policy changes. Fifth, in a cosmopolitanized, postethnic society, mainstream parties are increasingly likely to recruit immigrants and ethnic minorities to run for party and public office. Fielding minority candidates is a low-cost way to appeal to new immigrant and ethnic minority voters, as it does not require far-reaching substantive policy changes. Yet, the increase in political repre•••

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sentation of visible minorities is likely to face multiple institutional and internal supply side challenges, as it requires transforming settled patterns of political elite recruitment. Political representation among established mainstream party competitors thus tends initially to remain very low. As the German case shows, even publicly announced new recruitment and outreach strategies toward immigrants may only lead to gradual effects and modest increases of immigrant and ethnic minority representation in the Bundestag. While the 2013 Bundestag is more ethnically diverse than any previous legislature, immigrants and visible minorities remain vastly underrepresented. The 2013 Bundestag election thus demonstrates a belated, still reluctant but nevertheless significant cosmopolitanization process that has partly reshaped German party politics, and is likely to continue doing so. The study of the German case may be particularly useful to theorize the causes and effects of changes in the patterns of party politics in European societies that are in the process of transforming from dominant ethnic self-understandings to immigrant countries based on civic, European and constitutional identities.82 In comparative European perspective, the cosmopolitanization of German party politics is trailing several neighbor countries like the Netherlands, but has advanced further than new “countries of immigration” like Spain and Italy.83 Either way, all relevant German parties have now recognized that Germany is a postethnic immigrant society, and this will irreversibly shape party competition in the future. LARS R ENSMANN is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Prior to joining JCU, he was the DAAD Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Political Theory and is a Permanent Fellow at the Moses Mendelssohn Center, University of Potsdam. His work has appeared, among others, in the European Journal of Political Theory, Politics, Religion & Ideology, German Politics & Society, Patterns of Prejudice, Political Science, and Perspectives on Politics. Recent book publications: Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture (Princeton, 2010; with Andrei S. Markovits), Politics and Resentment: Antisemitism and Counter-Cosmopolitanism in the European Union (Leiden, 2011; ed. with Julius H. Schoeps); Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (Redwood City, 2012; ed. with Samir Gandesha).

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Notes 1. Some data of this article were originally collected in the context of a collaborative research project on ethnic minority outreach among European center-right parties, conducted with Jennifer Miller-Gonzalez at the University of Michigan. Revised and updated, some arguments about the German case were initially presented in the paper “Ethnic Minority Outreach Among Conservative Parties in European Democracies: Comparing Germany, Great Britain, and France,” American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, 28-31 August 2008 (with Jennifer Miller-Gonzalez). 2. From 1 January 2014, the European freedom of movement fully includes citizens of Bulgaria and Romania. 3. Cited in Robert Roßmann, “CSU plant Offensive gegen Armutsmigranten,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 December 2014; available at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wegenbulgarien-und-rumaenien-csu-plant-offensive-gegen-armutsmigranten-1.1852159, accessed 21 March 2014. 4. “Wer schmarotzt braucht gar nicht erst zu kommen.” Cited in Gregor Mayntz, “Willkommen bei den Siegern,” Rheinische Post, 5 March 2014; available at http://www.rp-online.de/ politik/deutschland/willkommen-bei-den-siegern-aid-1.4084537, accessed 21 March 2014. 5. For an extensive account of the Kohl government’s immigration policy see Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State: The United States, Germany and Great Britain (Oxford, 1999). Initially, Kohl apparently considered ideas to “repatriate” German “guest workers” shortly after taking office. According to a protocol recently published by the news magazine Der Spiegel, Kohl said in a meeting with Margaret Thatcher in October 1982 that “it would be necessary over the next four years to reduce the number of Turks by 50 percent … It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the current number of Turks.” “Kohl sought to repatriate Turks 30 years ago,” Reuters, 1 August 2013; available at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/01/uk-germany-britain-kohl-turks-idUKBRE 97016G20130801, accessed 21 March 2014. 6. Simon Green, The Politics of Exclusion: Institutions and Immigration Policy in Contemporary Germany (Manchester, 2004). 7. Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge, 2001), 234; see also Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism (Cambridge, 1994); Jürgen Habermas, The Past as Future (Cambridge, 1991), 132. 8. Marianne Takle, German Policy on Immigration: From Ethnos to Demos? (New York, 2007). On counter-cosmopolitanism see Lars Rensmann, “Volatile Counter-Cosmopolitans: Understanding the Electoral Performance of Radical Right Parties in Eastern Germany and Poland,” German Politics and Society 30, no. 2 (2012): 64-102. 9. Andreas M. Wüst, “Migrants as Parliamentary Actors in Germany,” in The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies, ed. Karen Bird, Thomas Saalfeld and Andreas M.Wüst (New York, 2010), 250-265, here 250. 10. Duncan Cooper, Immigration and German Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1945-2006 (Münster, 2012). 11. See Andrei S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann, Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture (Princeton, 2010); Lars Rensmann, “The Cosmopolitan Turn: How Soccer’s ‘Glocalization’ is Reshaping Political Norms, Citizenship, and Transnational Allegiances in Germany and Europe,” paper presented at the German Studies Association Annual Meeting, 7-10 October 2010. 12. Wüst (see note 9), 251ff. 13. Apart from the work by Wüst, recent studies by Christina Boswell, Dan Hough, Joyce Marie Mushaben and Sara Claro de Fonseca are noteworthy exceptions providing important initial groundwork on the subject. See Christina Boswell and Dan Hough, “Politicizing Migration: Opportunity or Liability for the Centre-Right in Germany?,” Journal of European Public Policy 15, no. 3 (2008): 331-348; Joyce Marie Mushaben, The Changing Faces of Citizenship: Social Integration and Political Mobilization Among Ethnic Minorities in Germany (Oxford,

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14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

2008); Sara Claro de Fonseca, “New citizens—new candidates? Candidate selection and the mobilization of immigrant voters in German elections,” in Bird et al. (see note 9), 109-127. Claro de Fonseca (see note 13), 109. Ibid., 110. Sally Marthaler, “Nicolas Sarkozy and the Politics of French Immigration Policy,” Journal of European Public Policy 15, no. 3 (2008): 382-397; Hans-Georg Betz, “The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe.” Comparative Politics 25, no. 4 (1993): 413-427; Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties (Cambridge, 2007). Roemer, John E., Woojin Lee, and Karine Van der Straeten, Racism, Xenophobia, and Distribution: Multi-Issue Politics in Advanced Democracies (Cambridge, 2007). Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, 1992); Rogers Brubaker, “Comments on ‘Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States,’” International Migration Review 29, no. 4 (1995): 903-908; Wolfgang Wippermann, “Das Blutrecht der Blutsnation: Zur Ideologie- und Politikgeschichte des ius sanguinis in Deutschland,” in Blut oder Boden: Doppel-Pass, Staatsbürgerrecht und Nationsverständnis, ed. Jochen Baumann, Andreas Dietl, and Wolfgang Wippermann (Berlin, 1999), 10-48; Joppke (see note 5), 62-99. Cooper (see note 10). Of course, this exclusion was even starker in the German Democratic Republic, where a small ethnic minority of so-called Vetragsarbeiter from Communist “brother states” lived and worked largely segregated from the rest of the population. See Ruud Koopmans and Hanspeter Kriesi, Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisation of the Extreme Right: A Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland (Berlin, 1997); Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, “Ethnic and Civic Conceptions of Nationhood and the Differential Success of the Extreme Right in Germany and Italy,” in How Social Movements Matter, ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly (Minneapolis, 1999), 225–251. Cited in Fabian Löhe, “Die verbale Radau-Clique,” Focus Online, 16 November 2007; available at www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/tid-8010/thierse-zitat_aid_139423.html, accessed 21 March 2014. See Karen Schönwälder, “Migration, Refugees and Ethnic Plurality as Issues of Public and Political Debates in (West) Germany,” in Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, ed. Mary Fulbrook and David Cesarani (London, 1996), 159-178. Boswell and Hough (see note 13), 337. Mushaben (see note 13). Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments in Eastern Europe, European Union, and OECD, 1990-2003 (Oxford, 2006); see also Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). Until the immigration reform of 1998, however, the Aussiedler from Eastern Europe were the clear majority of all immigrants, and they tended to vote for the CDU /CSU. Hartwig Pautz, “The Politics of Identity in Germany: The Leitkultur Debate,” Race & Class 46, no. 4 (2005): 39-52. Imke Kruse, Henry E. Orren, and Steffen Angenendt, “The Failure of Immigration Reform in Germany,” German Politics 12, no. 3 (2003): 129-145. Imke Kruse, “Immigration reform in Germany: The domestic debate under the red-green government,” in Of states, rights, and social closure: Governing migration and citizenship, ed. Oliver Schmidtke and Saime Ozcurumez (New York, 2008), 157-178. Martin Dolezal, “Germany: The Dog that Didn’t Bark,” in West European Politics in the Age of Globalization, ed. Hanspeter Kriesi et al. (Cambridge, 2009), 208-234; see also Hanspeter Kriesi, Edgar Grande, Martin Dolezal, et al., Political Conflict in Western Europe (Cambridge, 2012). On postmaterialist self-expression value change in postindustrial democracies see Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge, 2005).

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The Reluctant Cosmopolitanization of European Party Politics 32. Andreas Wüst, “Naturalised Citizens as Voters: Behaviour and Impact,” German Politics 13, no. 2 (2004): 341-359. On the electoral behavior of immigrants in Germany see also other groundbreaking studies by Wüst: Andreas M. Wüst, “Wahlverhalten und politische Repräsentation von Migranten,” Der Bürger im Staat 56, no. 4 (2006): 228-234; Andreas M. Wüst, “Wahlverhalten und politische Repräsentation von Migranten,” in Die offene Gesellschaft. Zuwanderung und Integration, ed. Siegfried Frech and Karl-Heinz Meier-Braun (Schwalbach, 2007), 145-173. Despite the CDU /CSU’s electoral success and return to power, in the 2005 and 2009 elections, the pendulum of minority voters has moved away from the CDU /CSU due to the increasing political significance of nonethnic naturalized citizens. For instance, in the 2006 election, Turkish-language newspapers reported that 77 percent of Turkish voters planned to vote for the Social Democrats, followed by 9.2 percent for the Greens and 7.8 percent for the Left Alliance. Only 4.8 percent they would support the CDU /CSU and even fewer, 1.2 percent, the Free Democratic Party. Ferda Ataman and Daniela Gerson, “The Growing Electoral Power of Turks in Germany: ‘Will Germany’s Turks Pick the Next Chancellor?,” Der Spiegel, 15 September 2005. Data and research on minority partisanship and voting preferences, however, are still scarce in Germany, though data collection and demand for such data is recently growing. 33. “Germans debate technology v immigration,” BBC News, 6 April 2000; available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/704539.stm, accessed 21 March 2014. 34. See Kruse (see note 29); Kruse, Orren and Angenendt (see note 28); Pautz (see note 27). 35. Cited in Volker Kronenberg, Jürgen Rüttgers: Eine politische Biografie (Munich, 2009), 149. The radical right party Republikaner adopted Rüttgers’ nativist statement in their own “Kinder statt Inder” campaign. 36. The CDU lost more than 10 percent of the vote compared to 2005. To be sure, even though Rüttgers backtracked after his lost electoral campaign, nine years later as governor—after winning the next state election with a campaign that did not focus on immigration—he said in reference to Romanians, “They come and go as they wish, and they don’t know what they’re doing,” a statement for which he later apologized. “CDU Governor Jürgen Rüttgers, “We cannot have massive cuts,” Spiegel Online International, 12 October 2009; available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cdu-governor-juergenruettgers-we-cannot-have-massive-cuts-a-654604.html, accessed 21 March 2014. 37. Susan E. Scarrow, “Party Finance Scandals and their Consequences in the 2002 Election: Paying for Mistakes?” German Politics and Society 21, no. 1 (2003): 119-137. 38. Claro de Fonseca (see note 13), 109. 39. “Grundsätze für Deutschland: Entwurf des neuen Grundsatzprogramms,“ www.cdu.de, 75; “Das neue Grundsatzprogramm der CDU,“ Die Welt, 3 December 2007. To be sure, the platform also addresses the party’s “Christian view of mankind” and demands that immigrants show a commitment to Germany’s Leitkultur. 40. See Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). Serving as minister of the interior in the CDU-led grand coalition government, the former CDU hardliner Wolfgang Schäuble called for Germany’s “cautious opening” towards immigrants, especially towards highly qualified immigrants. In specific reference to Muslim minorities, in 2008 Schäuble also claimed that “Islam has become a part of our country,” at the time a groundbreaking statement for a leading Christian Democratic politician. See “Integrationsdebatte: Schäuble sieht Islam als ‘Teil unseres Landes’,” Die Welt, 1 March 2008. 41. Peter von Becker, “Wandel in der bunten Republik Deutschland,” Der Tagesspiegel, 28 May 2013; available at http://www.tagesspiegel.de/meinung/20-jahre-nach-dem-anschlag-vonsolingen-wandel-in-der-bunten-republik-deutschland/8262830.html, accessed 21 March 2014. 42. Boswell and Hough (see note 13); Hans-Georg Betz, “The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe.” Comparative Politics 25, no. 4 (1993): 413-427; Mudde (see note 16). 43. See Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1).

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Lars Rensmann 44. At times, Merkel imitated her predecessor Kohl as government and party leader by slowing down political, organizational, and programmatic reform and avoiding to take a clear stance, for instance between 2005 and 2009. See Udo Zolleis, “Inderteminacy in the Political Center Ground: Perspectives for the Christian Democratic Party in 2009,” German Politics and Society 27, no. 2 (2009): 28-44. 45. “Stoiber: Kathedralen müssen größer sein als Moscheen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21 September 2007. In 2002, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Günter Beckstein (CSU), maintained that “everyone needs to accept our civilization, shaped by Christianity, enlightenment, and humanism, otherwise he has no place in Germany.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1 July 2002. 46. Tobias Jaecker, Hass, Neid, Wahn: Antiamerikanismus in den deutschen Medien (Frankfurt/ Main, 2014). 47. Werner Reutter, “A ‘New Start’ and ‘Renewal’ for Germany? Policies and Politics of the Red-Green Government, 1.98-2002,” German Politics and Society 21, no. 1 (2003): 138-160. 48. The focus here is not on the specifics of the policy output on citizenship and immigration—and its success and failure—but the rather the impact of policy reform on party politics and competition. 49. See Ulrich Herbert, Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland: Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter, Flüchtlinge (Munich, 2001); Piero Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe (Oxford, 2003). 50. To the CDU’s credit, the party itself has been a staunch supporter of European integration, and the Kohl government supported freedom of movement within the EU (though only as part of a Schengen agreement that simultaneously restricted immigration from outside the EU). 51. For a critical reconstruction of these debates and the interaction between mainstream public discourse and radical right xenophobic mobilizations see Hajo Funke, Brandstifter: Deutschland zwischen Demokratie und völkischem Nationalismus (Göttingen, 1993); Hajo Funke, Paranoia und Politik: Rechtsextremismus in der Berliner Republik (Berlin, 2002); Roger Karapin, “Far-Right Parties and the Construction of Immigration Issues in Germany,” in Shadows over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe, ed. Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (New York, 2002), 187-219. 52. Herbert (see note 49). 53. Wüst, “Naturalised Citizens” (see note 32), 343. 54. Ibid., 343ff; Wüst, “Wahlverhalten” (see note 32). 55. Irena Kogan, “Last Hired, First Fired? The Unemployment Dynamics of Male Immigrants in Germany,” European Sociological Review 20, no. 5 (2004): 445-461. 56. Joppke (see note 5), 62. 57. “7,6 Millionen Ausländer in Deutschland—so viel wie nie,“ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 March 2014; available at http://www.derwesten.de/politik/7-6-millionen-auslaender-indeutschland-so-viele-wie-nie-aimp-id9093958.html, accessed 21 March 2014. 58. See the detailed account by Kruse (see note 29). 59. Auswärtiges Amt, Immigration Act; available athttp://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/ EinreiseUndAufenthalt/Zuwanderungsrecht_node.html, accessed 21 March 2014. 60. Wüst (see note 9), 250ff. 61. “Schäuble will behutsame Öffnung für Migranten,” Die Welt, 12 July 2008. 62. “Schäuble opens Islam Conference,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 September 2006. 63. Andreas Blätte, “Zugang, Normen und Tausch. Einwandererverbände und politische Entscheidungs- und Planungsprozesse 1998-2006,” PhD diss. (Erfurt, 2007). 64. Deutschlands Zukunft Gestalten: Koalitionsvertrag zwischen CDU, CSU und SPD. 18. Legislaturperiode (Berlin, 2013), 74. 65. Ibid., 28, 74. 66. Ibid., 74. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 75.

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The Reluctant Cosmopolitanization of European Party Politics 69. Ibid., 76. 70. Christian Joppke, “Transformation of Immigrant Integration: Civic Integration and Antidiscrimination in the Netherlands, France, and Germany,” World Politics 59, no. 2 (2007): 243-273. 71. This reflects a likely strategic choice for immigrant voter mobilization, also by centerright and even radical-right parties like France’s Front National. Minority candidates allow parties to reach out to immigrants and minorities while being able to cater to conservative core constituencies by sustaining restrictive “law and order” and access policies towards new immigrants. See Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). 72. In the German Candidates Study (2005), of the total of 1,031 candidates interviewed, thirty-five (3,4 percent) indicate that they have an ethnic minority background, while sixty-eight (6,6 percent) reject to answer the question. For 19 percent of the ethnic minority candidates, representation of their (ethnic) group is the major political representation focus, in contrast to 6 percent of ethnic majority candidates. See www.mzes.unimannheim.de/projekte/gcs, accessed 19 March 2014. 73. Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). In the CDU, the segment of nonethnic Germans among party members is also still comparatively very low, both in absolute terms and in relative terms with regard to the SPD (as well as in cross-national perspective). 74. Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). The number of foreign-born candidates is much higher; yet these are mostly ethnic Germans or Aussiedler. There were eighteen foreign-born candidates fielded by the CDU /CSU in 2005: nine from former German territories, three Aussiedler, two born in Gastarbeiter countries (here Turkey and Italy), and four born in other countries. Yet, only three are ethnic minority candidates. See Wüst, “Wahlverhalten” (see note 32). 75. Wüst, “Wahlverhalten” (see note 32), 232; Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann (see note 1). 76. Affirming Putnam’s Law of disproporitonality in elite recruitment—the more significant a social position the more we find social selectivity and the exclusion of lower classes— Armin Schäfer shows that the class gap has widened in the Bundestag while the minority gap has been reduced. See Armin Schäfer, “Die Akademikerrepublik. Kein Platz für Arbeiter und Geringgebildete im Deutschen Bundestag?” Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Newsletter 2 (2013). 77. “Der neue Bundestag: Fünf Prozent Abgeordnete mit Migrationshintergrund,” MiGazin, 24 September 2013; available at http://www.migazin.de/2013/09/24/bundestag-abgeordnetemit-migrationshintergrund, accessed 21 March 2014. See also Elisa Deiss-Helbig, “Im ‘secret garden of politics’: Visible Minority-Aspiranten zur Bundestagswahl 2013,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Deutsches und Europäisches Parteienrecht und Parteienforschung 20 (2014). 78. http://www.mz-web.de/grosse-koalition/medienecho-zur-bundestagswahl-2013-karambadiaby-macht-international-schlagzeilen,23956208,24415216.html, accessed 21 March 2014. The first black Bundestag representative is Josef Winkler (Greens), who served in three legislatures from 2002 to 2013. 79. David McAllister, “CDU muss sich für Einwanderer öffnen,” Cdu.de, 24 July 2008; available at cdu.de/archiv/2370_23848.htm. 80. The numbers indicate the percentage of immigrants aged fifteen to sixty-four who have become naturalized citizens in the respective country. Data are from 2007. See Roland Czada, “The Governance of Immigrant Integration in Europe,” paper presented at the Shaken International Symposium “Governance of Contemporary Japan,” 1 December 2010, University of Tokyo, 3. 81. Pontus Odmalm, “Party Competition and Positions on Immigration: Strategic Advantages and Spatial Locations,” Comparative European Politics 10, no.1 (2012): 1-22. 82. On the irreversibly changed meaning of citizenship as a marker of collective identity see Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge, 2010). 83. On the Italian case, see the excellent study by Maurizio Ambrosini, “Immigration in Italy: Between Economic Acceptance and Political Rejection,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 14, no.1 (2013): 175-194.

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Chapter 9 • • •

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND PARTY COMPETITION IN GERMAN FEDERAL ELECTIONS Steven Weldon and

Hermann Schmitt

As the dust settles on the 2013 German federal election, there are several important takeaways: Angela Merkel just missing an absolute majority for the Christian Democrats (CDU); the failure of the Free Democrats (FDP) to get over the 5 percent electoral threshold and secure seats in the Bundestag for the first time in postwar Germany; the Social Democrats’ (SPD) continued weakness at the polls; and, yet still, the SPD’s ability to secure significant power and policy concessions from the CDU in reprising its role as the junior partner in a grand coalition. But, perhaps the most important development from the election was the emergence and surprise showing of the Euroskeptic Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). In the wake of the ongoing global financial and debt crises, the AfD saw its support increase throughout the campaign, surging in the final two weeks. Although the party fell just short of the 5 percent hurdle needed to gain representation, it had a strong showing at 4.7 percent of the vote. Moreover, it was poised to increase its profile even further with the May 2014 elections to the European Parliament. Looking to the future, a key question is whether the 2013 election will be a short-lived success for the AfD or whether it constitutes a more fundamental transformation in German politics. On the one hand, unlike in many other European countries, Euroskeptic parties have previously had limited success in Germany, and at least at the elite level, there has been an overwhelming pro-European consensus. Indeed, in the nearly 60-year history of the European Union (EU), this is the first time there has been signifi-

European Integration and Party Competition in German Federal Elections

cant contestation over European integration among the political parties in Germany, let alone a Euroskeptic party that has gained any notable support in an election. This suggests voter support for the AfD may quickly dissipate in the coming years once Germany and the rest of Europe emerge from this once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis. On the other, it is possible that the financial crisis becomes the catalyst and the 2013 election a turning point for European integration to play a more prominent role on the long-term in German elections and party competition. We know, for example, that those who are skeptical about the single currency, the Euro, and the financial debt crisis also tend to be skeptical about European integration more generally, suggesting that the AfD may be tapping into more basic voter preferences and ideological concerns. Moreover, growing disenchantment toward mainstream political parties over the last two decades has contributed to the fragmentation of party systems and the electoral appeal of antisystem parties like the AfD.1 All the while, European integration has become an increasingly polarizing issue in elections across the other EU member states, and Euroskeptic parties have been able to gain a foothold in several national parliaments.2 In this article, we seek to develop a better understanding of how European integration has affected party competition in German federal elections and how this has evolved since the EU’s founding. We begin with an overview of the literature on the changing role that European integration has played in first-order national elections. Drawing on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we then examine the salience of European integration for German political parties and how the parties have sought to differentiate themselves on this issue. We track how the pledges of the political parties have changed over time since the early 1950s and compare Germany with other EU member states. This “supply-side” analysis helps us better understand the development of party contestation and polarization over European integration and the extent to which party leaders perceive Europe as being salient to voters.

The “Sleeping Giant” and its Awakening The prevailing wisdom has long been that European integration had little influence on national politics and vote choice through at least the late 1990s.3 In the early years of the European Union, the issue was of low salience for most voters in most places and political preferences were still dominated by the traditional left-right ideological divide.4 Now, the Euro•••

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pean dimension is independent (orthogonal) from the left-right divide and these two dimensions jointly structure the European political space.5 As a consequence of the lack of salience, elections to the European Parliament were seen as second-order national elections in that they were primarily fought over national political issues rather than European integration or any specific EU level issues.6 In some national political contexts, however, voters did differentiate themselves in terms of their support for integration and European Union expansion.7 More generally, there was a notable gap between the commonly more pro-Europe beliefs of party elites and the somewhat more skeptical views of their voters, the latter of which cut across the dominant left-right ideological dimension in most countries.8 Moreover, Liesbet Hooghe found that these differences extended beyond a few issue positions: elites and their constituents had fundamentally different understandings about the proper role of the EU. While elites viewed it as a means for governing the European economic market, citizens tended to see its primary role as protecting them against the pains of the market economy.9 Into the late 1990s and early 2000s, political parties across EU member states largely failed to represent these Euroskeptical views, particularly in a consistent way. According to Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen,10 mainstream parties had little incentive to raise the EU issue; instead, they preferred to structure competition along the more familiar and traditional left-right dimension. Still, whenever Europe was made salient in national elections with the main political parties taking divergent positions, it tended to have important implications for voting and electoral outcomes.11 For example, in a study of the 1997 UK parliamentary elections, Geoffrey Evans shows that support for EU membership increased the likelihood of voting for the Labour Party independent of left-right ideology and other traditional determinants of vote choice.12 Similarly, Harald Schoen finds that voters who supported Turkey’s bid for European Union membership were more likely to vote for the SPD or Greens and less likely to vote for the CDU/CSU or FDP in the 2005 German federal election.13 Given that he first demonstrates that support for Turkey’s membership was independent of existing group memberships and political predispositions, he takes this as evidence for EU issue voting in that election. These one-off cases pointed to the potential importance of European integration in influencing national electoral outcomes and the transformative implications for national politics more broadly. As Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin termed it, the elite-mass divide on the future of Europe and the failure of mainstream parties to represent citizens on this issue con•••

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stituted a “sleeping giant.” At minimum, it created an opportunity for minor parties and other political entrepreneurs to represent and mobilize the growing public opposition towards integration.14 In the mid 2000s, European publics began to push back more aggressively on the elite-led integration process in what Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks refer to as a general shift from a “permissive consensus to a constraining dissensus.”15 The failure of the French and Dutch referenda on the European Constitution in the spring of 2005 was perhaps the watershed moment for the EU opposition movement.16 Since then, the EU has seen a steady increase in support for Euroskeptic parties, both on the extreme right and the extreme left.17 The success of Euroskeptic parties in several countries also appears to have affected mainstream political parties in those countries. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver, for example, show that European integration became increasingly salient for parties and party competition in the early 2000s.18 Evidence suggests that mainstream parties have adjusted their ideological and policy positions by shifting toward the successful Euroskeptic parties, especially following an electoral defeat.19 Catherine De Vries and Sara Hobolt argue that losing mainstream parties have a strategic incentive to adopt issue entrepreneurial strategies not only to win back votes from Euroskeptic parties, but also to shift the basis of political competition in a multiparty competition.20 This general trend of increased public mobilization against European integration, however, hides several important cross-national differences. Indeed, comparative studies suggest that the political context mediates the role Europe plays in national elections. For example, Hanspeter Kriesi finds that mobilization against European integration has been more prominent in the UK and Switzerland than in Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands.21 In the former two countries, mainstream political parties have adopted Euroskeptical positions, leading to a restructuring of their respective party systems; however, in the latter four, Euroskepticism has stayed confined to far-right niche parties. Similarly, in a detailed study of the Danish party system, Christoffer Green-Pedersen shows that mainstream political parties on both the left and right have not adjusted their policy positions in response to successful Eurosceptic parties.22 He also argues that Denmark is a crucial case for testing the idea that Euroskepticism inevitably alters party competition in European democracies more broadly. Danes tend to be among the more Euroskeptic populations. Euroskeptic parties, especially the Danish People’s Party, have been very successful in recent years; and, there have been sev•••

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eral referenda on European integration over the past twenty-five years, which provide voters the opportunity to voice opposition to integration independently and are thought to increase the salience of Europe. Despite these favorable conditions, the mainstream Danish parties have remained steadfastly pro-Europe in their platforms. In a study particularly relevant to our purposes here, De Vries analyzes voting behavior for elections in the 1990s and early 2000s; she finds that attitudes toward European integration affected vote choice in Denmark and the United Kingdom but not in Germany or the Netherlands. Building on Van der Eijk and Franklin’s “sleeping giant” hypothesis (2004), she argues “EU issue voting is conditional upon the salience of the issue for voters and the extent of partisan conflict.”23 That is, it requires both demand (high voter salience) and supply (partisan conflict or perceived partisan conflict). In Denmark and the UK, she finds that EU issue salience was relatively high and there were political entrepreneurs eager to represent the Euroskeptical viewpoint, specifically the Danish People’s Party and right-wing factions within the Conservative Party. In contrast, EU issue salience was relatively low in Germany and the Netherlands where no notable parties sought to represent the Euroskeptical viewpoint. While Euroskepticism has come to play a more prominent role in Dutch politics with the emergence of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the 2006 parliamentary elections, Germany had avoided this seemingly European wide trend until the most recent election. Even now, one could argue that AfD’s success is only a moderate breakthrough given that the party failed to get over the 5 percent electoral threshold and gain seats in the Bundestag. Moreover, we do not have a very good understanding of the extent that Euroskepticism has affected the German party system as a whole or will in the future. But, roughly seventy years after the end of World War II and a quarter of a century after reunification, new generations of Germans seem to have overcome the earlier impulse to adopt “Europe” as a substitute fatherland that had to stand in—as an object of pride and self-projection—for the German nation which was so deeply damaged during the Third Reich and the Holocaust organized by it.24

Data and Methodology In examining the role of European integration and Euroskepticism in German politics and party competition, we focus in this contribution on parties’ campaign pledges as put forward in their manifestos. For the party campaign pledges, we want to know two things: (a) how important or salient •••

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European integration is for political parties in their national campaigns and (b) the degree of party competition or polarization over European integration, especially the representation of more Euroskeptical views. We base our empirical analyses of political parties on the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). This data collection project focuses on systematically coding the content of parties’ policy proposals as detailed in their election programs.25 The data set goes back to 1945 and now incorporates over 900 political parties in fifty-five democracies around the globe, including all EU member-states. The coding procedure entails classifying quasi-sentences in a party’s election program into fifty-six different pre-established policy categories and counting the number of positive and negative statements for each category. By calculating the share of quasi-sentences in a party program for each policy category (positive and negative statements together), we can determine the salience of that issue area for each party and how that changes over time. We can also measure party positions by calculating the ratio of positive to negative statements for each category. This allows one to map the entire party system. Most commonly this has been done using the CMP’s “rile” scale as a general measure of left-right ideology; however, it is also possible to do it for any individual policy category that is included in the coding rubric. European integration is one of the coded categories, making it particularly useful for our purposes.

The Salience of European Integration We focus first on the salience of European integration. At minimum, party level salience serves as an indicator of how much party leaders think voters care about European integration. Several studies, however, suggest that political parties do not simply reflect public opinion; they also can play a critical role in shaping public opinion generally26 and on European integration specifically.27 In this sense, the emergence of a Eurosceptic political party, like Germany’s AfD, may further stimulate public opposition to European integration through a feedback effect. Figure 9.1 charts the salience of European integration over time. The values are a simple average of the percentage of quasi-sentences devoted to European integration for all political parties included in the CMP data set.28 We also include trends for the rest of Western Europe and Eastern Europe for comparison purposes.29 The regional trends are calculated using all elections covered across the relevant countries in preceding five-year intervals. •••

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Figure 9.1. Salience of Europe in National Level Elections

Source: Comparative Manifesto Project database. Note: Western Europe includes all EU member-states before 2004 except Germany. Eastern Europe includes all states that joined the EU in 2004 or after except Malta. The Western and Eastern European trends are calculated using the parties competing in all elections covered across the relevant countries in preceding five-year intervals

As one can see from the figure, the salience of European integration has tended to be notably higher for political parties in Germany than in other European countries. Indeed, further analysis broken down by country reveals that this issue is consistently more salient in Germany than any other European country in the postwar period. For example, in the most recent election German parties devoted on average 4 percent of their election program to Europe-related issues.30 In contrast, political parties in Denmark and the Netherlands, two countries with strong Euroskeptic parties and a recent tradition of contestation over Europe, dedicated less than 3 percent of their election programs to Europe in their respective most recent elections. This is a rather surprising finding in that European issue salience and party contestation in the form of a strong Euroskeptic party appear unrelated to one another. Europe is a relatively important issue for German parties, but consistently emphasizing the issue alone appears not to reflect contestation over the issue, nor does it lead to the emergence of a Euroskeptic party in future elections. German parties have long emphasized Europe in their programs; it is only the 2013 election that saw the emergence of a notably •••

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strong Euroskeptic party. This result, however, is consistent with previous research, which indicates both salience and contestation, often from the ideological extremes, are necessary to observe EU issue voting.31 Figure 9.2. Salience of European Integration for German Parties

Source: Comparative Manifesto Project database.

Before turning to an analysis of party contestation over Europe, a second observation from Figure 9.1 is that the salience of Europe in party programs does correspond to several major events over time. Salience increases in the lead up to the adoption of the Euro at the start of 1999 and remains relatively high through the EU’s major eastward expansion in 2004 and Turkey’s ascendancy as a candidate country in 2005. At the same time, despite the ongoing financial and debt crises, the salience of integration is relatively low for German parties in 2013 compared to previous elections, especially for the mainstream parties. This pattern is evident in Figure 9.2, which presents the salience of European integration for the individual parties over time. The general trend is decreasing salience of Europe for all parties since the election of 1998. For all parties except the AfD, it drops to just about 2.5 percent of the policy area mentions in election programs. The AfD stands out with nearly 15 percent of its platform devoted to European integration and Europe related issues. The other takeaway from Figure 9.2 is that—apart from the AfD in 2013 and the Greens in their early years—the parties tend to move in concert with •••

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one another. This finding contradicts De Vries and Hobolt who argue that mainstream political parties who suffer defeat in one election have a strategic incentive to emphasize European integration in the next election in order to shift the basis of political competition.32 This, however, ignores the earlier insight that parties represent (bottom-up) and mold (top-down) the political orientations of their constituents. To date, it seems that the mainstream German parties have been unwilling to concentrate on the bottomup mechanism and rather adopt a framing top-down strategy, which leaves them to concentrate on the dominant left-right ideological dimension as the basis of party competition.33 In response to the AfD’s success, they may opt to place more emphasis on Europe in future elections (much as the CSU in Bavaria does already now), but there is little evidence that the major German parties are eager to aggressively take up the issue simply in an effort to increase their vote share and win elected office.

Partisan Differentiation and Contestation In this section, we turn to the second component of the conditional European issue voting model, the extent of partisan differentiation over European integration.34 A key tenet of the “sleeping giant” hypothesis is that until the early 2000s, political parties in many countries failed to sufficiently differentiate themselves on European integration.35 In short, the issue was highly salient, but there were no Euroskeptic parties to represent the antiEU position and the mainstream parties refused to compete on the European dimension independently of the left-right divide.36

To measure party positions on European integration, we follow the suggestion of Will Lowe and his colleagues to scale positions based on the empirical logit using the following formula:37 Where R is the number of positive statements made about European integration and L is the number of negative statements. There are several methodological challenges to using CMP data to measure the positions of political parties.38 In short, the reason we follow their lead is because in different electoral campaigns several parties have either only positive or only negative statements in their manifestos about European integration. In addition, often parties only devote a few statements to this issue in their manifesto. This scaling •••

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approach maintains the notion that the ratio of positive to negative statements is the most appropriate way of measuring issue positions;39 yet, it also captures the intuition that we should give further weight to political parties that devote more statements to a specific issue. Figure 9.3 plots the polarization of party positions on European integration using the above scale, comparing Germany with France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The solid line represents the average position among the parties competing in an election, and the dashed lines represent the parties with the most extreme positive and negative positions. A value of zero indicates a neutral position on European integration, either because parties do not devote any part of their electoral program to an issue or the number of positive statements equals the number of negative. Looking at Figure 9.3, perhaps the most striking result is that the 2013 federal election was the first election in the postwar period in which any competitive German party has taken a net negative position on European integration. As indicated by the solid lines, the German party system as a whole also has tended to be the most pro-European among the five countries. In contrast, France, the United Kingdom, and Denmark have long had competitive parties that adopt more Euroskeptical positions and these systems as a whole have tended to be more neutral toward integration. While the Dutch party system followed a similar trajectory to Germany through the mid 2000s, the 2006 parliamentary elections were a turning Figure 9.3. Party Positions on European Integration

Source: Comparative Manifesto Project database. Note: Net positions on European integration are estimated using a log-odds transformed scale, following Lowe et al. 2011. See text for more details. •••

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point with both the Socialist Party (SP) on the left and Party for Freedom (PVV) on the right adopting more explicit Euroskeptical positions.40 Taken in conjunction with the findings from Figure 9.1, it is evident that Germany has long been the quintessential pro-European party system. The issue is highly salient for all parties and until the 2013 election they were unanimous in their support for integration. Figure 9.4: German Party Positions on European Integration

Source: Comparative Manifesto Project database.

Looking at Figure 9.4 further reinforces the idea that the 2013 election signifies a possible turning point for the role of Europe in German politics, much like the 2006 parliamentary elections did in the Netherlands. This figure charts the positions of the German parties individually on integration and there are several noteworthy takeaways. First, the AfD was not the only party to adopt a negative position toward European integration in 2013. Its fellow newcomer, the Pirate Party, as well as the Left Party also adopted net negative positions. Second, the SPD and FDP adopted positions that were among their least pro-European in the last half-century. This moved them closer to the CDU, which since the 2005 election had already been less positively oriented toward Europe. The net result of all the changes, which is evident in the tail end of Figure 9.3, is that the German parties collectively took a sharp Euroskeptical turn in 2013. Of course, this is from a pure supply-side perspective of the party system and does not take into account the electoral strength of the parties advocating more pro-European positions. Nonetheless, keeping that point in mind, overall, there is decidedly more contestation over Europe in •••

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the German party system than there has been at any point since the founding of the European Union: more than in the lead up to the adoption of the Euro, more than before eastward expansion, and more than when Turkey became a candidate country to the European Union.

Future of Europe in German Elections A quarter of a century after reunification and seventy years after World War II, the battle over Europe seems to have arrived to German politics. Unlike in many other EU member states, and in part as a reflection of its history of wars, the German party system had long maintained a pro-European consensus and avoided contesting national elections over this issue. That changed abruptly in the most recent election with the emergence and surprising success of the AfD in the wake of the financial and European debt crises, and just as Germany appeared to be settling into a stable five party system.41 Yet, it is not just the AfD’s success that signals a possible change on Europe. As we show in the above analyses, the other major parties also have lessened their enthusiasm for European integration—they are less supportive of integration and place less emphasis on it in their most recent election programs. The emergence of the AfD raises several interesting questions for German politics going forward. First, will the AfD be able to build on its success and become a permanent fixture in German elections? The experience of other Euroskeptic parties suggests this is likely but with one important caveat. Many Euroskeptic political parties on the ideological right have combined their Euroskepticism with a nationalist, anti-immigrant message. The AfD aggressively eschewed such influences in the 2013 campaign, but it may prove difficult to avoid association with them in the future. In the postwar period, the nationalist, anti-immigrant message is not one that has resonated with German voters. Second, will the AfD’s success motivate the mainstream political parties to also become more Euroskeptic? On the one hand, we have seen that the major parties have gradually become less enthusiastic about integration in their platforms. Also, losing parties may have a strategic incentive to embrace Euroskepticism in order to shift the basis of competition and maximize their chance of winning elections.42 On the other, while certainly there are Euroskeptical and populist factions within the CDU, especially the CSU, and the FDP, these remain small. Moreover, contrary to the vote-maximizing theory, we know from our analyses that even in the recent past the •••

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mainstream German parties have been reluctant to compete on the European dimension. Green-Pedersen finds the same tendency in Denmark.43 Finally, it remains to be seen whether the AfD’s success will ultimately threaten the European integration project more broadly. In recent years, it has become commonplace among scholars and the media alike to speculate about the collapse of the Eurozone and putting a halt to the integration process. We believe that such speculation is premature and indeed the success of Euroskeptical parties generally is more an indictment of the current political regime than it is an expression of opposition to the idea of Europe as an integrated political community. The latter appears to be based more on identity, transnational trust, and cross-border interactions.44 STEVEN WELDON is Associate Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. His research focuses on political representation, participation, and elections in advanced democracies, and has been published in, among others, the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, and Party Politics. H ERMANN SCHMITT holds a Chair in Electoral Politics at the University of Manchester and is Research Fellow of the Mannheimer Zentrum für europäische Sozialforschung (MZES) and Professor at the University of Mannheim. He received his doctorate from the University of Duisburg, and holds a venia legendi from the Free University of Berlin and Mannheim University.

Notes 1. Russell J. Dalton and Steven A. Weldon, “Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?” West European Politics 28, no. 5 (2005): 931-951. 2. Liesbet Hooghe, and Gary Marks, “A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus,” British Journal of Political Science 39, no.1 (2009): 1-23. 3. Cees van der Eijk and Mark N. Franklin, “Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe” in European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks and Marco R. Steenbergen (Cambridge, 2004), 32-50; Hooghe and Marks (see note 2). 4. Peter Mair, “The Limited Impact of Europe on National Party Systems,” West European Politics 23, no. 4 (2000): 27-51. 5. Simon Hix and Christopher Lord, Political Parties in the European Union (Basingstoke, 1997); Simon Hix, Abdul Noury, and Gérard Roland, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament (New York, 2007).

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European Integration and Party Competition in German Federal Elections 6. Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, “Nine Second-Order National Elections—a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results,” European Journal of Political Research 8, no. 1 (1980): 3-44.; Hermann Schmitt, “The European Parliament Elections of June 2004: Still Second-Order?” West European Politics 28, no. 3 (2005): 650679. That is not to say that the results of European elections did not matter for subsequent national level elections. Several political parties had their breakthroughs in these elections. Also, as Michael Marsh and his colleagues have demonstrated, European elections are more important for national politics, the more the two are spaced out temporally. See Michael Marsh, “Testing the Second-Order Election Model after Four European Elections,” British Journal of Political Science 28, no. 4 (1998): 591-607; Simon Hix and Michael Marsh, “Punishment or Protest? Understanding European Parliament Elections,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 2 (2007): 495-510. 7. Geoffrey Evans, “Euroscepticism and Conservative Electoral Support: How an Asset Became a Liability,” British Journal of Political Science 28, no. 4 (1998): 573-590; Matthew Gabel, “European Integration, Voters and National Politics,” West European Politics 23, no. 4 (2000): 52-72. 8. Jacques Thomassen and Hermann Schmitt, “Policy Representation,” European Journal of Political Research 32, no. 2 (1997): 165-184.; Gabel (see note 7); Van der Eijk and Franklin (see note 3). 9. Liesbet Hooghe, “Europe Divided? Elites vs. Public Opinion on European Integration,” European Union Politics 4, no. 3 (2003): 281-304. 10. Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen, “Understanding Political Contestation in the European Union,” Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 8 (2002): 879-892. 11. Evans (see note 7); Tapio Raunio, “Facing the European Challenge: Finnish Parties Adjust to the Integration Process,” West European Politics 22, no. 1 (1999): 138-159; Gabel (see note 7); Ben Clements and John Bartle, “The European Issue and Party Choice at British General Elections, 1974-2005,” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 19, no. 4 (2009): 377-411. 12. Evans (see note 7). 13. Harald Schoen, “Turkey’s Bid for EU Membership, Contrasting Views of Public Opinion, and Vote Choice. Evidence from the 2005 German Federal Election,” Electoral Studies 27, no. 2 (2008): 344-355. 14. Paul Taggart, “A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems.” European Journal of Political Research 33, no. 3 (1998): 363-388.; Bonnie M. Meguid, “Competition between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005): 347. 15. Hooghe and Marks (see note 2). 16. Sara Binzer Hobolt, “Direct Democracy and European Integration,” Journal of European Public Policy 13, no. 1 (2006): 153-166.; Paul Taggart, “Keynote Article: Questions of Europe-The Domestic Politics of the 2005 French and Dutch Referendums and Their Challenge for the Study of European Integration,” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 44, s1 (2006): 7-25. 17. Hix et al. (see note 5); Cas Mudde, “Three Decades of Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe: So What?” European Journal of Political Research 52, no. 1 (2013): 1-19. 18. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies (London, 2006). 19. Tim Bale, “Turning Round the Telescope. Centre-Right Parties and Immigration and Integration Policy in Europe1,” Journal of European Public Policy 15, no. 3 (2008): 315-330; James Adams and Zeynep Somer-Topcu, “Policy Adjustment by Parties in Response to Rival Parties’ Policy Shifts: Spatial Theory and the Dynamics of Party Competition in Twenty-Five Post-War Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 39, no. 4 (2009): 825-846; Catherine E. de Vries and Sara B. Hobolt, “When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs,” European Union Politics 13, no. 2 (2012): 246-268. 20. De Vries and Hobolt (see note 19).

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27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

Hanspeter Kriesi, “The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns,” European Union Politics 8, no. 1 (2007): 83-108. Christoffer Green-Pedersen, “A Giant Fast Asleep? Party Incentives and the Politicisation of European Integration,” Political Studies 60, no. 1 (2012): 115-130. Catherine E. de Vries, “Sleeping Giant: Fact or Fairytale? How European Integration Affects National Elections,” European Union Politics 8, no. 3 (2007): 363-385, 379. See Angelika Scheuer and Hermann Schmitt, “Sources of EU support: The case of Germany,” German Politics 18, no. 4 (2009a): 577-590. Ian Budge et al., Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments, 1945-1998 (Oxford, 2001). Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, “On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution,” The American Political Science Review 80, no. 3 (1986): 901-920; Peter Essaiason and Sören Holmberg, Representation from above: Members of parliament and representative democracy in Sweden (Aldershot, 1996). Hermann Schmitt and Jacques Thomassen, “Dynamic Representation: The Case of European Integration,” European Union Politics 1 (2000): 318-339; Matthew Gabel and Kenneth Scheve, “Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 4 (2000): 1013-1028.; De Vries and Hobolt (see note 19). Specifically, the estimates are based on variables “per108” and “per110” from the CMP data set. All parties that gained at least one seat in parliament are included in the data set as well as a few other parties including for Germany in 2013 the AfD and Pirate parties. See the Manifesto Project website for details on the parties that were coded for each election; available at https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu, accessed 12 March 2014. Countries are included in the estimate regardless of whether or not they were EU member states in the given period. This estimate of system level salience includes the AfD and Pirate parties. De Vries (see note 23). De Vries and Hobolt (see note 19). See also Green-Pedersen (see note 22) on Denmark. De Vries (see note 23). Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004 (see note 3). Mair (see note 4). Will Lowe, Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, and Michael Laver, “Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2011): 123-155. For a more detailed discussion of the challenges in scaling CMP data, see HeeMin Kim and Richard C. Fording, “Government Partisanship in Western Democracies, 19451998,” European Journal of Political Research 41, no. 2 (2002): 187-206; and Lowe et al. (see note 37). See Kim and Fording (see note 38). Since it first entered parliament in 1994, the Socialists (SP) had always adopted a marginally Euroskeptical position. In 2006, they became more skeptical on integration, but that was short lived, because in 2010 they returned to a more neutral stance. Steven Weldon and Andrea Nüsser, “Bundestag Election 2009: Solidifying the Five Party System,” German Politics and Society 28, no. 3 (2010): 47-64. Adams and Somer-Topcu (see note 19); De Vries and Hobolt (see note 19). Green-Pedersen (see note 22). Angelika Scheuer and Hermann Schmitt, “Dynamics in European Political Identity,” European Integration 31, no. 5 (2009b): 551-568; Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Steven Weldon, “A Crisis of Integration? The Development of Transnational Dyadic Trust in the European Union, 1954–2004,” European Journal of Political Research 52, no. 4 (2013): 457-482.

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Chapter 10 • • •

THE POLITICS OF THE EUROZONE CRISIS Two Puzzles behind the German Consensus

Wade Jacoby

Is Germany’s ordoliberal ideology to blame for a boring election campaign in which the major German parties ignored the central question of the reform of the Eurozone? Certainly, it has become commonplace to explain German policy during the European financial crisis with reference to ordoliberal ideology.1 This is true of German, U.S., and UK-based scholars, as well as popular books.2 The basic structure of these works generally stresses some kind of evidence that “Germany is different” when it comes to diagnosing and addressing the crisis and that the explanation for this difference lies at least partially in the ideological heritage of ordoliberalism, which is held to influence large swaths of the political spectrum in Germany. To be sure, none of these authors denies that there is also a Keynesian legacy in German politics. But, this substantial body of scholarship stresses the centrality of ordoliberal beliefs in explaining German policy choices since 2010. At the same time, it is also commonplace to call the 2013 election campaign the most boring in history.3 Within the “campaign is boring” trope, commentators seemed to reserve special frustration for the main parties’ unwillingness to discuss the Eurocrisis in any substantive detail, leaving voters to presume that there were no basic differences among the parties. Indeed, one new party, the “Alternative for Germany” (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), nearly cleared the 5 percent barrier by insisting that the established parties were sweeping the Euro issue under the rug. At first glance, these two generalizations might appear perfectly complementary: the reason the campaign was boring was that the common ordoliberal diagnosis across at least the Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU /CSU), Free Democratic Party (FDP), and important parts

Wade Jacoby

of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens left them little of substance to fight about when it came to the Euro. And yet this formulation cannot explain two puzzling facts. The first puzzle is that notwithstanding a shared ordoliberal diagnosis, elites within what Germans call the “bourgeois camp” (bürgerlicher Lager) actually had and have very important substantive disagreements over the politics of the Euro rescue. Here, the emergence of the AfD is only one of several indications that ordoliberal ideology underdetermines political behavior. Ordoliberals have very important fights over ordoliberal principles that generate almost diametrically opposed positions on the most important issues. Meanwhile, a second puzzling fact is that the dominant ordoliberal position to emerge so far—that Germany should bend or break prior ordoliberal-inspired institutional commitments in order to preserve the Euro in return for structural reforms that go in ordoliberal directions—has found a very broad consensus in Germany, including among many who do not share the ordoliberal diagnosis. Thus, contrary to the picture of a country that has policy agreement because it has ideological agreement, this article argues that ideological agreement has been insufficient to generate policy agreement within the ordoliberal camp, and yet, perhaps paradoxically, it has been able to help generate policy agreement between ordoliberals and Keynesians. The result is that Germany had a boring debate on the Euro during the campaign, and a subsequent coalition agreement among parties representing 67 percent of the electorate has now agreed to continue these policies going forward. Meanwhile, a minority of ordoliberals is hysterically unhappy with this consensus.4 This contribution explains how that situation has come about.

Ordoliberalism: We Cannot Explain Diversity with a Constant Many authors have stressed ordoliberal thinking as a key factor in explaining Germany’s controversial policy choices during the Eurocrisis.5 There is no doubt that ordoliberal thought has had a profound and pervasive influence in Germany. This influence is hardly limited to economists. For example, Schieritz shows that the dominance of ordoliberal thinking extends well beyond economics departments and encompasses also politics and media, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung coming in for particular notice as the enforcer of orthodoxy in the political class. Some of the ordoliberal diagnoses have deeply penetrated mass attitudes as well. Mark Schieritz argues, for example, that German voters cannot distinguish between increases in money supply as a result of central bank activity and effective increases in money in •••

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circulation.6 Though the latter would be required for an increased money supply to cause inflation, many German voters remain quite concerned about inflation. That much of the money created by the European Central Bank (ECB) remains parked in bank accounts with little direct effect on price stability has thus not penetrated the domestic discourse (nor indeed that inflationary effects likely would still require supply constraints to raise prices). In short, there seems little doubt that ordoliberal thought is pervasive and influential in Germany. Yet, ordoliberalism can be pervasive and influential and still make an awkward explanatory factor for many specific outcomes. While ordoliberal ideology is clearly very important in Germany, it cannot adequately explain German responses to the crisis for the simple reason that ordoliberals are on all sides of every important debate over the Euro. Ordoliberalism is an incomplete theory of economic life, the most important insights and axioms of which are used quite inconsistently in German debates. 7 Thus, while invoking ordoliberalism is popular to explain why German responses differ from those of other states, this ideology appears to underdetermine outcomes. Ordoliberal principles—never completely worked into a full theory of the economy—are invoked in all parts of the German debate.8 For example, the June 2013 oral arguments in Karlsruhe often witnessed the government invoking ordoliberal principles of rule-making in defending the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) while its attackers invoke ordo-liberal principles as well.9 The leader of Alternative für Deutschland is a longtime CDU member and professor of economics, and some CDU members of parliament, such as Klaus-Peter Willsch, criticized the CDU-FDP coalition’s Euro policies insisting that the government was breaking with core ordoliberal principles. Constitutional Court debates on the Euro have often pitted opponents and proponents of rescue instruments. Some ordoliberals wish to rescue German banks (or at least not hasten their decline by allowing the ECB to find more problems than it can fix); others would prefer to liquidate the weak ones sooner rather than later. Similar fights have happened inside the German Bundesbank and the European Central Bank, with prominent German ordoliberals resigning from both institutions.10 To pick up just one illustration, take the ferocious debate among ordoliberals around the concept of “stability,” a word invoked obsessively by the chancellor.11 This ritual invocation, however, actually hides considerable differences in meaning. For some ordoliberals, stability requires the original European Monetary Union (EMU) rules be followed to the letter.12 Stable policy—including adherence to the “no bail-out” clause and avoidance of monetary financing of state debt—will bring predictable, positive outcomes. •••

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For others, however positive the old rules were, the current situation is one in which following them will break the Euro and this would not be stable.13 Thus, stability is constantly invoked by different actors, but to back substantially different reform proposals. To oversimplify for the sake of clarity, one camp defines stability as the continuity of core German practices of political economy as extended to the European level through an independent European Central Bank, the Stability and Growth Pact, and the no bail-out clause. Policy “innovations” are to be feared since they threaten the recipe for economic success at both regional and national levels. If this camp defines stability as “saving the institutions,” however, the other camp defines stability as “saving the Euro.” For them, policy innovation is critical since whatever the success of German policies at the national level, other European states have been unable or unwilling to make them work. A stable Euro thus demands change. To be sure, all sides of this sprawling debate within German ordoliberalism stress the need for structural reform in struggling Eurozone states. Yet, even though Angela Merkel talks incessantly about exporting Germany’s “stability culture” along with its rules, we know that such institutional transfer is not a matter of culture. Recall, for example, that Germany could not export pure and unmodified ordoliberal rules even to Eastern Germany, where cultural differences are surely smaller than between Germany and Portugal or Greece. Indeed, a variant of this same fight over institutional integrity happened in eastern Germany after 1990 when the West German practice of binding collective bargains pushed up eastern German wages to a level that helped spark mass layoffs and a wave of bankruptcies among low quality postsocialist firms. The choice was either to keep the rules and destroy virtually the entire economy, or search for a flexible solution that invented new measures, such as “opening clauses” that gave firms and works councils some discretion in applying patterned wage settlements.14 The reunification experience showed, to those with eyes to see, the impossibility of pure ordoliberalism in an economy not already attuned to these practices. Some German ordoliberals conclude that, regretfully, specific institutions and practices may need to be relaxed in order to save as much ordoliberal discipline and principle as possible. Other ordoliberals draw a different conclusion from this same “impossibility premise”: that states not ready for it should not be in the Eurozone. This dilemma of saving the original EMU institutions or saving the actual currency union flows directly into a broader debate about German assistance for other members of the Eurozone. Here, there are three basic posi•••

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tions: First, Germany is economically healthy and some other European states are not, so Germany should help them. This formulation has both a self-interested and an altruistic inflection. The latter version is most familiar as the straw man position in the populist Bild Zeitung—that the Germans’ fault is that they are too soft on the irresponsible South—but the former version is much more common: Germany has a huge investment in the Eurozone and can and should make a substantial contribution to its survival. The second position is that Germany is economically healthy and others are not, so Germany should not help. Here, there is both an economic case— the “why sink the rescue boat?” argument—and a more normative economic Calvinism case in which the culpable must pay the wages of their sin.15 The third position in the debate is that Germany is not economically healthy either and so is in no position to help anyone. For example, Satyajit Das argues Germany will be “the biggest loser” of the Eurocrisis and puts the total German exposure at EURO 211 billion to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and another EURO 600 billion to TARGET2 and suggests Germany’s combined obligations will swamp its economy and damage its creditworthiness.16 So far, the German consensus has been around the first position—“help”—but the subsequent question has been what to do. Thus, while German decision-making may appear from the outside to be either principled or pitiless—but, in any case, largely unified—a closer look reveals persistent divisions. The next section shows that these helped tie the tongues of the major parties during the 2013 campaign.

From Embattled over Theory to Divided in Practice The prior section established that notwithstanding the powerful sway of ordoliberal ideas, German elites remain deeply divided on the proper course in the face of the Eurocrisis. A hallmark of German policy has thus been slow and deliberate measures.17 This pattern of delay has been often noted but seldom explained. This section shows that divisions among ordoliberals map clearly onto three important factors that help explain delay. Those three factors are: 1) differences over the potential for reforms in the Eurozone periphery; 2) the role of private sector involvement; and 3) the proper fate of Germany’s own banks. Stressing ordoliberal divisions (rather than ordoliberal consensus) paints German delay as a product of indecision and confusion rather than pure cynicism.18 This pattern of delay was perhaps most visible from spring to fall 2013 with the run up to the September 2013 German elections.19 During these •••

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months, political leaders all over Europe bemoaned the nearly complete halt in progress on banking union and other matters. But this was merely the most recent in a long series of tentative and half-hearted reform steps that continued on through the wrangling over the Single Resolution Mechanism that preceded the December 2013 European Council Meetings20 and, of course, the January 2014 verdict on Outright Monetary Transactions by the German Constitutional Court. Indeed, Karlsruhe, the seat of the Court, has become the place where German ordoliberals go to sue one another. Because Germany has continuously been able to influence the terms of this protracted debate and because the German economy has broadly prospered during much of the “crisis,” the pace of reform has been politically tolerable.21 The German government has had at least three motives for buying time, such that the slow pace of reform is overdetermined. The aim of this section is less to adjudicate among these three factors—all of which are highly plausible—than to show the reality of ordoliberal divides across all three.22 First, the most commonly invoked rationale for delay is simply that the fundamental reform impulses must come from the states whose financing models are most under threat. That is, the German refusal to permit monetary financing of state deficits by the ECB ramps up—or at least fails to relieve— the reform pressure on governments in the Eurozone periphery. From all the various ordoliberal perspectives, such states have avoided difficult labor market reforms. But German ordoliberals—essentially all of whom accept the broad diagnosis of inadequate structural reforms in the troubled countries—disagree pointedly on the wisdom and possibility of rapid structural reforms to buy relief from the crisis. Many ordoliberals emphasize that such structural reforms require time and democratic legitimation, neither of which is available in the short term. The implication is that such states should pursue their painful and protracted reforms outside the Eurozone. Some prominent ordoliberals essentially characterize German-inspired austerity as a form of national sadism.23 But this view is decidedly the minority. For most ordoliberals, Germany’s own earlier and more aggressive labor market adjustments, known as the Hartz reforms, show the way forward for the Eurozone periphery. That these reforms came during a period in which state spending was expanding rather than contracting—with Germany several times breaking the Maastricht criteria of a maximum of 3 percent of GDP in annual government deficits—is a fact that seems to have escaped the German popular imagination, which often implies some version of “we made the tough choices to promote competitiveness and now so must others.”24 Moreover, the degree of labor market reform required in the Eurozone peripheral states is also •••

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contested.25 Ireland, for example, has very flexible labor markets but a huge debt as a consequence of banking bailouts. Other troubled states had reformed labor market rules and trimmed pension benefits such that the leverage of more labor market reforms for the quick reversal of the ongoing crisis is questionable.26 The point is that the divisions in the scholarly literature are, to an extent, reproduced among German ordoliberals, with dramatically different implications for the promise of structural reforms. A second German rationale for moving slowly has been to increase pressure on private counterparties to accept haircuts in those cases where states and financial institutions have debts beyond their ability to service. Merkel’s insistence that private counterparties accept losses (“adequate participation of private creditors”) in the second restructuring of Greek debt suggest this motive was already operative by the October 2010 Deauville summit at the latest. Though the fallout from this decision was considerable, Merkel fought to keep bail-ins on the table in subsequent discussions.27 Here, German stubbornness and determination has led to a broader acceptance of the need for bail-ins. The most consequential was the Cyprus deal in early 2013, when Germany and other member states pushed bailing-in of EURO 7 billion out of a EURO 17 billion total rescue package.28 The most recent agreement on bank resolution at the EU level calls for a minimum of 8 percent participation from private sources—creditors and owners—before public money can be used. That said, demanding private sector involvement (PSI) has been risky, primarily because it has threatened to spook investors and enhance the risk contagion. As a result, ordoliberals in Germany have been divided over the wisdom of PSI. These tensions were apparent in the Cyprus case, which reflected Berlin’s experiment with a harder “reform or go under” message to troubled states. In the end, however, even Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble—decidedly on the more flexible end of the ordoliberal conversation— worked to prepare the European debate for the possibility that the Eurozone could survive the end of Cypriot participation. The broader point is that while Cyprus—like Greece—is easy to single out for especially bad behavior, Merkel is not steering for the mere survival of the Eurozone, but rather is using the crisis to oblige Germany’s European partners to reform in the face of globalization. This is why so often German policies on structural reform seem so disconnected from the reality of the Eurocrisis: they are often about something else. But here, again, ordoliberals often disagree. Is the Eurocrisis a legitimate lever for obliging the kinds of reforms that previously could not garner majority support in various European democracies? Some prominent ordoliberals insist it is not and argue that instrumentalizing the crisis in this way will generate an anti-German backlash elsewhere in Europe.29 •••

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While Germany has aggressively pushed the costs of adjustment onto other states, a third motive for German policy delay does lie closer to home in the troubled situation of Germany’s own banks. Germany sought to provide a window in which banks could get healthy after heavy exposure to the bonds of Southern European states. Here, too, ordoliberals disagree with one another. The CDU-FDP government put in place structures that allowed German banks to offload bad debt.30 The government also went along with fairly superficial “stress tests” that subjected banks to fairly light scrutiny.31 Meanwhile, other ordoliberals argued for a much stricter and more rapid resolution of troubled German banks consistent with the broad ordoliberal principle that healthy markets drive out unhealthy firms. 32 In this instance—as with their expressions of concern over the effects of austerity in Southern Europe—these ordoliberals made arguments substantively similar to those on the German left who wished to see banks pay for their miscalculations or their misdeeds.33 This section extended the argument about the indeterminacy of ordoliberalism. It did so by showing three ways in which German policies that tended, ceteris paribus, to slow the Eurozone rescue reflected clear political calculations but also tended to reflect unsettled issues that continue to divide ordoliberals. Together, these sections address the article’s first puzzle, namely that ordoliberal dominance in Germany has not really brought policy consensus. The article’s final section turns to a second puzzle, namely that ideological divisions between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have not been sufficient to result in real controversy over German policy towards the Eurozone. While ideological soul mates inside ordoliberalism fight like cats and dogs all the way to the Constitutional Court, ideological competitors now sharing the government appear to have no substantive disagreements.

Was the 2013 Campaign Really Boring? The campaign was, indeed, boring, at least on the issue of the Euro. The 2013 Bundestag election virtually ignored the Eurocrisis, primarily because the two largest parties had little reason to discuss the crisis in any detail, which made it difficult—but not impossible—for smaller parties to highlight the issues. To be sure, the CDU continually put forward a claim of successful German management of the crisis, a narrative tightly focused around Germany’s resolute advice that the cause of the crisis was excess debt and regulation in certain Eurozone member states and that the solution was less debt and more growth-enhancing structural reforms in those states. This argu•••

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ment worked well with most voters, and the main opposition party—the SPD—concluded that the incumbent parties of government were simply not vulnerable to attack on this issue and chose to downplay it at every turn. As I discuss below, the Eurocrisis never achieved anything like a central place in the SPD’s electoral strategy in 2013. Meanwhile, the CDU /CSU was well aware that many of their voters—as well as a number of leading intellectual figures in the party—were unconvinced by the wisdom of bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, as well as preparing a large fund for the potential rescue of other Eurozone members. Many were also unnerved by the ECB’s aggressive stance on monetary policy, including a program for Outright Monetary Transactions announced by the ECB in late summer 2012. Eventually, the CDU /CSU-FDP coalition faced an electoral challenge to its crisis management strategy in the form of the Alternative für Deutschland, which barely missed the 5 percent hurdle for entry into the Bundestag. While this party drew votes from several different parties, its leadership was almost entirely associated with CDU /CSU and FDP officials. This meant that the parties of the ruling coalition generally had few incentives to address the Eurocrisis, since they were all quite vulnerable to a challenge from an ordoliberal direction. Even a brief look at the two electoral programs confirms this picture that the Eurocrisis was largely absent. In the SPD’s 2013 electoral program, the word Eurocrisis (Eurokrise) appears just one time, and there is no separate discussion of the Euro.34 Given that the document is 120 pages long, it is remarkable how little attention is paid the crisis. There are references to the more general “financial and economic crisis,” the party’s preferred formulation, along with scattered references to the “banking crisis” (e.g., 16, 24). There is a reference to the SPD’s own “successful crisis management” at the onset of the global financial crisis—a reference to the earlier grand coalition that held up to 2009. The program also includes an attack on “austerity” (10), a call for financial transaction tax (15, 71), advocacy for larger bank reserves (16), and a plea for bankers to share in losses created through their banks (25). The program calls very briefly for a form of debt mutualizaton (Schuldentilgungsfonds), connected with reforms in recipient states (26).35 The divisive term Eurobond is avoided entirely. Finally, the general section on European affairs charges the government with being both slow and cold towards other states in crisis. This raised the cost of reactions, and it engendered animosity in Europe towards Germany (103 ff). But this section is dominated by a discussion of desirable constitutional changes sought at the EU level (mostly to promote democracy and legitimacy), with little substantive discussion of economic reforms. •••

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The CDU’s much shorter electoral program gave the basket of Eurocrisis issues even shorter shrift.36 The program had several fairly vague formulations about the importance of financial stability and rectitude, the need for growth-stimulating structural reforms in states hard hit by crisis, and for forward-looking investment and innovation in such states (e.g., 4). In general, the CDU emphasized very strongly that the primary adjustment to the Eurocrisis—typically referred to as the “debt crisis” (e.g.,. 3, 8, 9)—had to come from the hardest-hit states—and not from initiatives at the regional level, which could play only a supporting role in reforms. There is a heavy emphasis in the program on uploading German achievements to the European level, whether the dual system of vocational training (4, 23), debt brakes (9), and the social market economy more generally (8). The overall tone of the CDU program is that German-led or Germaninspired reforms have put the crisis-struck states and the Euro more generally onto the right path and that trends are headed in the right direction. The task now is for Germany and Europe to stay this course. Despite the brevity of the SPD’s dalliance with the notion of Eurobonds—and despite the non-partisan German Council of Economic Advisors’ endorsement of a limited form of debt mutualization—the CDU /CSU program endeavored to tie “Red-Green” to the notion of Eurobonds at several turns (e.g. 3, 9). Moving beyond programs to the campaign itself, it was widely remarked how little attention was paid to the Eurocrisis in the campaign. Of course, the AfD tried vigorously to push Euro topics to the center of the discussion and lambasted the major parties for saying so little about the issues. To an extent, the Left Party also stressed the Eurocrisis, both in its official program and in campaign appearances by its leading lights.37 But with the two largest parties resolutely committed to playing down the basket of issues associated with the Eurocrisis, these topics never received much traction in the campaign. Perhaps it is not completely surprising, then, that these issues also played a relatively modest role in the subsequent coalition agreement among CDU /CSU and SPD. Of course, the coalition agreement does contain a major section on Europe, including subsections on the management of the crisis. The document lists European unity as the “most important” German responsibility (Aufgabe, 157) and notes forcefully that the Germany stands by the single currency (158). In general, the document’s tone in this section very much mirrors the language of the CDU /CSU electoral program and campaign discourse, reinforcing at every opportunity the very broad advice that all European states—but especially those in the Eurozone—need sound public finances and thoroughgoing structural reforms. “All forms of debt •••

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mutualization” are ruled out, and the need for democratic legitimation of rescue steps is underscored in several spots, including an assurance that any use of the ESM would require the Bundestag’s approval. To the extent that themes from the SPD program enter this section of the agreement, they are generally banded together with themes underscored by the CDU. Examples include the combination of growth and employment with “sound public finances” and solidarity with national self-reliance (156). There are brief references to “imbalances” and the EU’s Excessive Imbalance Procedure, as well as to youth unemployment and the need for investment. Thus, the surprising conclusion of this analysis is that the key ideological rivals in German politics have downplayed the Eurocrisis until it barely registers. While this may be less surprising in a coalition document that, after all, is obliged to articulate a consensus, we have seen that there was also no real debate in the campaign or even in the party programs. Outside observers can be forgiven for expressing puzzlement that the most important state in the politics of the Eurozone reforms has virtually no visible domestic debate about the wisdom of its policies.

Conclusions This article has made three contributions to this special issue’s analysis of the 2013 German elections. First, it showed that however important ordoliberal thinking in Germany is—and there are many reasons it is quite important—it works awkwardly as an explanatory factor for policy choices around the euro-rescue simply because it underdetermines such choices. That is, different actors clearly influenced by ordoliberal thinking and often stressing different aspects of the broader ordoliberal cannon are arguing for more or less diametrically opposed policy solutions. The bitterest denunciations of German Euro rescue policy have generally come from disappointed ordoliberals who cannot quite believe what fellow ordoliberals have done. German ordoliberals, used to fighting Keynesian infidels, have been preoccupied instead with accusing one another of heresy. The article’s second contribution was to provide evidence that this deep divide inside the ordoliberal policy community has contributed additional incentives to the tentative and inconclusive policy choices of the government. The section developed three broad reasons that the government has felt constrained to move very slowly and cautiously in addressing the Eurocrisis. In all three cases, profound rifts within the ordoliberal camp are one cause of the government’s uncertain policy. •••

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The article’s third contribution was to extend the analysis of this very cautious policymaking into the campaign phase and the subsequent coalition agreement. Throughout, the emphasis was on the desire of the two major German parties to play down the Eurocrisis. On the one hand, the CDU hoped to avoid criticism from a certain ordoliberal perspective that would lead to additional loss of votes to the AfD. On the other hand, the SPD understood that its particular doubts about Merkel’s rescue politics would not be rewarded by German voters because those doubts implied policies— such as Eurobonds or other forms of debt mutualization—that, whatever their contested utility inside the SPD, were decisively rejected by German voters. Thus, if the first puzzle to explain was how it was that ordoliberals were so deeply divided, the second puzzle was why the Grand Coalition—which includes a party with a much thinner attachment to ordoliberalism—has shown little inclination to fight over Germany’s Euro-rescue policies. The answer is that the CDU has done enough to convince German voters that a non-ordoliberal approach is too risky and costly but not enough to neutralize the doubts from within their own ranks. Whether this is a stable balance will, of course, have to be seen in the Grand Coalition’s performance. What is clear already is that the widespread view of German policy as rooted in a elite consensus around ordoliberal ideas is less convincing than an alternate view, argued here, that German elites have often been baffled, tentative, frustrated, and above all, divided on important issues pertaining to the Eurocrisis. Should the OMT have to be deployed or the ESM redeployed, these divisions will become apparent once again for those who look beyond the veneer of unity. WADE JACOBY is Mary Lou Fulton Professor of political science and Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Brigham Young University. His most recent book (with Peter Hall, Sophie Meunier, and Jonah Levy) is The Politics of Representation in the Global Age: Identification, Mobilization, and Adjudication (Cambridge, 2014). Jacoby is the author of Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca, 2000) and The Enlargement of the EU and Nato: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge, 2004). He has published articles in World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, European Security, The Review of International Political Economy, The Review of International Organizations, and The British Journal of Industrial Relations. Jacoby received the DAAD Prize for his scholarship on Germany. He has served as chair of the APSA European Politics section and is past program chair of the European Union Studies Association. He is co-editor of German Politics.

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Notes 1. This article follows conventions and defines ordoliberalism as a body of economic thought that stresses an institutionally defined economic “order” that establishes and regulates markets. Contrary to neoliberalism, with which it is often confused, ordoliberalism denies any kind of natural ontology for markets, insisting that states must instead construct an “economic constitution” in order for the market to work properly. German ordoliberalism has traditionally had strong preferences for flexible labor market structures, anticartel laws that limit firms’ abilities to exploit consumers, and an independent central bank focused on price stability. See David Gerber, “Constitutionalising the Economy: German Neo-liberalism, Competition Law and the ‘New’ Europe,’” American Journal of Comparative Law 42, No. 1 (1994): 25–74. Christian Joerges and Florian Rödl, “’Social Market Economy’ as Europe’s Social Model?” in A European Social Citizenship? Preconditions for Future Policies from a Historical Perspective, ed. Lars Magnusson and Bo Strath (Brussels, 2004): 125-159. Peter Nedergaard, “The Influence of Ordoliberalism in European Integration Processes: A Framework for Ideational Influence with Competition Policy and Monetary Policy as Cases,” unpublished paper, University of Copenhagen (2013). Christopher Allen, “The Road to 2005: The Policy of Economic Modernisation,” German Politics 15, no. 4 (2006): 347-360. 2. Among German scholars, see for example, Sebastian Dullien and Ulrike Guerot, “The Long Shadow of Ordoliberalism: Germany’s Approach to the Euro Crisis,” European Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Brief 49 (2012); and Lothar Funk, “Farewell to Casino-Capitalism: Will German-inspired Economic Thinking Gain the Upper Hand?” IASGP conference paper, London (2013); Wolfgang Streeck, Gekaufte Zeit: Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus (Berlin, 2013). For U.S.-based examples, see Stephen J. Silvia, “Why Do German and U.S. Reactions to the Financial Crisis Differ?” German Politics and Society 29, no. 4 (2011): 68-77; and Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (New York, 2013). For UK-based scholars stressing ordoliberal roots, see for example, Ken Dyson, “In the Shifting Shadows of Crisis: Pivot Points, Crisis Attribution, and Macro-Economic Policies under Grand Coalition,” German Politics 19, nos. 3-4 (2010): 393-415. Popular books stressing ideological factors include Mark Schieritz, Die Inflationslüge: Wie uns die Angst ums Geld ruiniert und wer daran verdient (Munich, 2013); and Ulrich Beck, German Europe (Cambridge, 2012). 3. The “boring” trope was ubiquitous in fall 2013, appearing in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, New York Times, Deutsche Welle and blogs such as Open Democracy and Open Europe. Even Wikipedia got in on the act. In Germany itself, the trope appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Tagesspiegel, among countless others. 4. There is also dissent based on a broadly Keynesian diagnosis articulated most forcefully by the Left Party. There are a number of German economists who also put forward a Keynesian diagnosis. See Oliver Nachtwey, “Market Social Democracy: The Transformation of the SPD up to 2007,” German Politics 22, no. 3 (2013): 235-252. More broadly, see Waltraud Schelkle, “Policymaking in Hard Times: French and German Responses to the Eurozone Crisis” in Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession, ed. Jonas Pontusson and Nancy Bermeo (Ithaca, 2012), 130-161. 5. Silvia (see note 2); Dullien and Guerot (see note 2). 6. Schieritz (see note 2). 7. Some inconsistencies can be traced back to original formulations. See Richard Bronk, “Hayek on the wisdom of prices: a reassessment,” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 6, no. 1 (2013): 82-107. See also Blyth (see note 2) and Joerges and Rödl (see note 1). 8. Beyond the indeterminacy of ordoliberalism when it comes to detailed matters of institutional design, there is the additional point that not all German thinking is ordoliberal. While it is true that Keynesian economics is underrepresented in the German academy, some parts of the German debate—for instance Sebastian Dullien—also share the criticisms of an “austerity only” approach to European reform.

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Wade Jacoby 9. See, for example, the interventions of Berlin Public Finance Professor Markus Kerber. 10. Jürgen Stark resigned from the ECB in 2011; Axel Weber from the Bundesbank, also in 2011. A good summary of these controversies is Expertenrat, “Strategien für den Ausstieg des Bundes aus krisenbedingten Beteiligungen an Banken: Gutachten des von der Bundesregierung eingesezten Expertenrats,” (2011); available at http://www. bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardartikel/Themen/Internationales_ Finanzmarkt/Finanzmarktpolitik/2011-02-15-gutachten-bankenbeteiligung-anlage. pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3, accessed 25 July 2013. 11. German politicians throw around the word “stability” like American ones throw around “freedom,” which also means very different things to different groups. See Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York, 1999). 12. See Hans-Werner Sinn, Verspielt nicht eure Zukunft! (Munich, 2013). 13. This appears to be Mario Draghi’s position. In announcing in July 2012 the possibility of extraordinary steps, he implied it was appropriate to imply that the ECB’s “mandate” demanded that it do “whatever is necessary” to preserve the Euro. If the Euro failed, this would not be in keeping with “stability.” 14. Wade Jacoby, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca, 2000). For more on how the East German experience has shaped German responses to the Eurocrisis, see Abraham Newman, “Germany and the Euro: The Reluctant Leader” in The Future of the Euro, ed. Mark Blyth and Matthias Matthijs (Oxford, 2015). 15. Hans-Werner Sinn, “TARGET losses in case of a euro breakup,” VOX, 22 October 2012; available at http://www.voxeu.org/article/target-losses-case-euro-breakup, accessed 6 August 2013. Merkel herself has spoken of the need to “pay for the sins of omission of the past.” See http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1306/14/qmb.01.html, accessed 14 April 2014 16. Satyajit Das, “The Euro-Zone Debt Crisis—It’s Now ABOUT Germany, NOT UP TO Germany!” Naked Capitalism, 15 June 2012; available at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ 2012/06/satyajit-das-the-euro-zone-debt-crisis-its-now-about-germany-not-up-togermany.html, accessed 6 August 2013. See also http://www.eurointelligence.com/ eurointelligence-news/comment/singleview/article/the-euro-zone-debt-crisis-we-need-totalk-about-germany.html, accessed 14 April 2014. 17. Wade Jacoby, “The New German Problem: The Politics of Timing and the Timing of Politics” in Blyth and Matthijs (see note 14); Beck (see note 2); Erik Jones, “Merkel’s Folly,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 52, no. 3 (2010): 21-38. 18. Beck (see note 2). 19. Erik Jones, “Forgotten Financial Union” in Blyth and Matthijs (see note 14); Randall Henning, “The ECB as a Strategic Actor: The Brave New World of Central Banking in the Eurozone,” paper presented at Council for European Studies, Washington, DC, March 2014. 20. “Brutal Power Politics: Merkel’s Banking Union Policy Under Fire,” Der Spiegel, 16 December 2013. 21. Merkel’s approval ratings fell to around 40 percent in 2010 but recovered over the next three years, such that she went into the election with an approval rating around 70 percent (ARD data). See http://www.infratest-dimap.de/en/umfragen-analysen/bundesweit/ ard-deutschlandtrend/, accessed 16 April 2014. 22. To be clear, the German government would love to solve the Eurocrisis once and for all. But, it judges that no available options are superior to the course it has chosen, and that course, because it requires very extensive structural adjustment in the peripheral states, is understood to be a long-term project. 23. Sinn (see note 15); Markus Kerber, “Der Europaische Stabilitatsmechanismus ist eine Hydra,” Wirtschaftstdienst, 7 July 2013. 24. Alexander Privitera, “Not all European Countries can be Germany,” Financial Times, 29 April 2013; Carlo Bastasin, “Germany: A Global Miracle and a European Challenge,” Brookings Global Economy and Development Working Paper #58 (2013).

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The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis 25. Jonathan Hopkins, “The Euro and the Troubled Mediterranean: Italy and Spain” in Blyth and Matthijs (see note 14). 26. Klaus Armingeon and Lucio Baccaro, “The Sorrows of Young Euro: The Sovereign Debt Crises of Ireland and Southern Europe” in Pontusson and Bermeo (see note 4). 27. Stefan Kornelius, Angela Merkel: Die Kanzlerin und ihre Welt (Hamburg, 2013); Henning (see note 19). 28. The SPD and Greens attacked the Merkel government for a deal that initially exposed small depositors, but they too generally accepted the need for large depositors to take losses. 29. This helps explain why ordoliberals like Kerber (see note 23) and Sinn (see note 15) make many of the same points about legitimacy as neo-Keynesians like Beck (see note 2). These arguments often extend to the CDU’s own internal critics and to the officials of the Alternative for Germany. All have noted the potential for a legitimacy crisis of reforms shoved down the throats of voters in the Eurozone periphery. See also Gregor Peter Schmitz, “Pew Study: Europeans Rapidly Losing Faith in Europe,” Spiegel Online International, 14 May 2013; available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/new-pewstudy-finds-europeans-losing-faith-in-eu-project-a-899588.html, accessed 14 May 2013; Bruce Stokes, “Threat to EU: German Exceptionalism Poses a Challenge,” Spiegel Online International, 14 May 2013; available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/pewresearch-study-shows-europeans-are-divided-about-state-of-europe-a-899460.html, accessed 14 May 2013. 30. Hubert Zimmermann, “No Country for the Market: The Regulation of Finance in Germany after the Crisis,” German Politics 21, no. 4 (2012): 484-501. 31. Nicolas Veron, “Financial Reform after the Crisis: An Early Assessment,” Bruegel Working Paper 2012/01. 32. Sinn (see note 15). 33. The evidence is mixed on the extent to which German banks have been able to exit the periphery. Data from the Bank for International Settlements suggest that German banks had just over EURO 700 billion exposure to Italy, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and Spain by the end of 2009. See http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/bloomberg-viewgermanys-banks-must-assist-in-europes-cleanup, accessed 14 April 2014. Various bailouts have allowed German banks to repatriate some of those claims: German banks “brought home” about EURO 319 billion from other European countries between 2009 and 2011— including from the countries named above, plus France and Belgium. The Bundesbank absorbed most of these liabilities through the TARGET2 system, but in the event of default, Germany would be responsible for 28 percent of the burden—not 100 percent (or whatever portion of German banks’ liabilities it chose to cover). Still, Daniel Gros shows that German banks are still the most exposed to sovereign debt (their own state’s and others’) of any banks in Europe. Daniel Gros, “EZ banking union with a sovereign virus,” VOX, 14 June 2013; available at http://www.voxeu.org/article/ez-banking-union-sovereign-virus, accessed 6 July 2013. The ongoing ECB Asset Quality Reviews (AQR) should resolve this question empirically, though all but the largest of Germany’s saving banks should be directly regulated by national officials rather than the ECB. 34. All page references in this paragraph are from the SPD program available at http://www. spd.de/linkableblob/96686/data/, accessed 14 April 2014. 35. The German Council of Economic Advisors had earlier called for such a fund to be established. 36. See http://www.cdu.de/sites/default/files/media/dokumente/regierungsprogramm-20132017-langfassung-20130911.pdf, accessed 14 April 2014. All page references are from this document. 37. See http://www.die-linke.de/wahlen/archiv/archiv-fruehere-wahlprogramme/wahl programm-2013/wahlprogramm-2013/, accessed 14 April 2014.

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Chapter 11 • • •

MERKEL 3.0 German Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the 2013 Bundestag Election

Jackson Janes

By the evening of 22 September, the results of the 2013 parliamentary elections in Germany were clear.1 The personality and stability of Angela Merkel had trumped every other campaign issue, be it the future of the Euro or concerns about energy prices. Her approval ratings were at record highs. The mantra was simple: more Merkel. Even outside Germany, she was clearly portrayed as the most dominant politician in Europe. For many Europeans, the Bundestag election was seen as the most important one for Europe, despite widespread unhappiness with Merkel’s insistence on budget consolidation and fiscal discipline in Europe’s southern crisis countries. Moreover, she won an election during a period when most of her counterparts were thrown out of office: Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, Gordon Brown, and José Luis Zapatero—to name just a few. Angela Merkel won in what was, for German elections, a landslide—42 percent of the vote. Germans liked what they had seen over her eight years in power: pragmatic, non-ideological, methodical, logical, and somewhat presidential. If Merkel successfully completes this term, she will have twelve years under her belt and be among the longest-serving chancellors of the Federal Republic, behind only Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl. Merkel’s governing coalition, however, was not so straight-forward. The negotiations that resulted in the third grand coalition in the Federal Republic of Germany’s history took a record amount of time, from late September to late December. The grand coalition between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), and Social Democratic Party (SPD) has an enormous coalition agenda to balance over the next four years. In the foreign policy arena, the SPD again took control of the Foreign Office

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and the Economics Ministry, while the CDU held on to the Defense Ministry. The CSU controls the Ministry for Economic Cooperation. Other ministries will have aspects of foreign relations attached to their activities. Despite many engineers, the chancellor remains the architect on foreign policy. How that unfolds will be greatly dependent on Merkel’s unique—and successful—management style. What will Merkel do with her renewed mandate? What should we expect from a Merkel 3.0? Likewise, what is expected of Germany within Europe and on the global stage? Clearly it will be within the European Union where Germany’s partners will encourage and expect the new government to act forcefully. The main task for her is to save the Euro. But, Merkel will likely not change course dramatically. Her course will follow her style: pragmatic, perhaps plodding, but certainly not hasty.

Expectations for Germany Some would suggest that Germany has become the new hegemon of Europe—but it is an uneven designation. The German economy is the strongest and biggest in Europe. On the basis of the country’s economic success, German policymakers have been able to assert significant power over European policymaking, including on the global level, e.g., within the Group of 20. German predominance, however, is asymmetric in some ways. In foreign and security matters Germany still punches below its weight, as demonstrated by the German refusal to intervene in Libya. There has been a gap between Germany’s performance as an economic world power and its security and military restraint and shyness. Certainly, the country, both the elite and general public, does not see itself as a hegemon. Shortly after the new grand coalition took office, President Joachim Gauck called upon his fellow Germans to shoulder more international responsibilities: Germany has long since demonstrated that it acts in an internationally responsible way. But it could—building on its experience in safeguarding human rights and the rule of law—take more resolute steps to preserve and help shape the order based on the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations. At the same time, Germany must also be ready to do more to guarantee the security that others have provided it with for decades. … Germany should make a more substantial contribution, and it should make it earlier and more decisively if it is to be a good partner.2

Gauck left Germans to think about the implications of this challenge. While there is no lack of arenas in which Germany has engaged in multi•••

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ple international frameworks, Gauck still raises questions about the way Germans approach the role of their country in an increasingly interdependent and indeed dangerous world. His message at the 2014 Munich Security Conference was echoed in the speeches of both Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. And yet the question remains—is the German public going to be supportive of a new role for Germany? Gauck’s admonitions also reached across the Atlantic. The U.S. debate on Germany’s international role has also focused on the gap between its economic weight versus its perceived foreign policy capacities. The American view of Germany that has emerged is mixed, one of a country profiting from a global marketplace, but not keen on increasing its own domestic demand; a country accepting the benefits of U.S. intelligence efforts, but accusing that same U.S. of infringing on its privacy; a country profiting from a stable and open international order without contributing its fair share of the burden in upholding it. In a nutshell, it is argued that Germany is a country well aware of its leadership prowess in economic terms, but constrained when it comes to other forms of global responsibilities. The argument that Germans promote themselves as a reticent power is somewhat contradicted by the important role it has played in Afghanistan over the previous decade, and its commitment to the country post 2014, along with the United States. Nevertheless, critics deplored the absence of German contributions to Operation Unified Protector in Libya when the government abstained in the decision of the UN Security Council and refused to contribute troops to the mission.

Germany in the International Framework While discussions about the future of NATO are cantankerous within the alliance, Germany is unconvinced about NATO ’s transformation into a global security tool. Particularly in relation to Russia, the German argument has been that security in Europe can only be guaranteed by involving a cooperative relationship with Russia. Given the current crisis in Ukraine, that argument is being severely tested. The consensus across most of the political spectrum in Berlin has been that Moscow might be a difficult partner, but it is not a threat. Brussels is now determining how widespread that consensus may be. What is surprising about this development is that German political leaders have traditionally played a crucial role in almost any major transforma•••

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tion of the alliance. Over thirty-five years ago, then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt warned of European vulnerability in relation to new Soviet missile deployments. Years later, then-Defense Minister Volker Rühe pushed the debate about NATO enlargement. After unification, Chancellor Kohl played a pivotal role in securing Russia’s acquiescence into NATO’s expansion. Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer successfully urged for a NATO role in Afghanistan. In fact, Germany has shaped its foreign policy around fundamental commitment to multilateral decision-making in international organizations, especially NATO, a belief that Chancellor Merkel affirmed in her speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2006. While the election campaign in 2013 did not reflect it, the domestic debate in Germany about foreign policy is evolving. There are many new efforts aimed at strengthening the focus on foreign policy among nongovernmental organizations. For example, a recent report generated by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the German Marshall Fund argued the case for Germany assuming more foreign policy responsibility along the lines that both Gauck and Steinmeier have laid out.3 Other NGOs are also engaging in this debate, arguing that a country that has benefited so enormously from the international framework it has been a part of should be working to adapt it to today’s challenges. The problem remains to inject these debates into the policy circles in the government. One of the difficulties regarding those efforts was referenced by Gauck in his Munich speech: It’s not a good sign that younger members of the German Bundestag feel that focusing on foreign and security policy is not beneficial to their careers. By the way, the German Bundestag has held some 240 debates on overseas deployments of the Bundeswehr since 1994. These debates have been conducted in an exemplary manner. However, in the same period, parliament has held fewer than ten fundamental debates on German foreign and security policy. But we need such debates—in the Bundestag and everywhere: in the churches and trade unions, in the Bundeswehr, in the political parties and in all kinds of associations.4

Challenges for the German-American Relationship The challenges ahead for Germany, the EU, and the transatlantic alliance will be felt by leaders and their respective publics. In run-up to the 2013 elections and afterward, German-American relations reached their lowest point since the beginning of the Iraq War a decade ago. Europeans have been outraged over the revelations concerning the NSA’s surveillance programs. There has •••

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also been lingering disagreement on a range of issues spanning economic, energy, and security policy. All of this has burdened the relationship. The strategic partnership between the two countries is too vital for there to be sustained tension on so many issues of critical importance. Repairing the German-American dialogue will thus take extra effort during the coming year. This requires an understanding of the domestic debates on foreign and domestic policy in each country. More importantly, it requires identifying those areas in which leadership is missing, inadequate, or simply contested. German and American leaders need to understand the challenges they will face in the coming years, the choices available to them, the potential consequences of those choices, and draw conclusions from thorough analysis. Unfortunately, recent events make clear that neither Germany nor the United States have a clearly articulated road map of the challenges that confront both countries and few ready-made conclusions. As a result, they have been unable to formulate shared policy directions in many cases. One important reason for this is the increased volatility of domestic political debates in Washington and in Berlin, which impact the parameters leaders in both capitals face in their policymaking processes. Second, there is a new generation of political actors on both sides of the Atlantic with often divergent approaches to the challenges. Last, the choices facing the global community are complex and place high demands on leaders’ limited time and energy. Below is a brief review of the challenges and choices confronting leaders when addressing the German-American relationship. Rebuilding Trust The United States remains the only superpower with the stature to impose a global order, but has come to realize its limits in projecting power and marshalling the resources needed for it. The debate over the global role and responsibilities of the U.S. will be heightened during 2014 as the Congressional midterm elections approach in November. Two long wars and continued turmoil in the Middle East and rising tensions in Asia have naturally diverted Washington’s gaze from Europe. It now expects Germany along with other allies to help meet global challenges and help preserve stability. Yet, the interests and perspectives today look much different than in previous years. While Germany has been clearly assuming more influence and responsibility in Europe, there have been serious policy disagreements with Washington over how best to orchestrate the economic recovery of the past few years. The United States has an enormous economic stake in a strong European economy, but has sometimes disagreed with Berlin’s prescription for getting there. •••

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Washington perceives Berlin as lacking the will to articulate its own strategic vision. Disappointment over Germany’s decision regarding intervention in Libya, continuing lag in contributing to NATO defense resources and capabilities, and reticence toward the use of force in global conflicts remains part of the friction between the Atlantic allies. Germany states that it remains a reliable partner in transatlantic relations. Yet it retains a deep reluctance to assert its own priorities and, even then, does so in language that could be considered too passive—at least to an American audience. The recent coalition agreement for the new government in Berlin is only the most recent example of this: Whenever contributions from our country are expected to help resolve crises and conflicts, we stand prepared. In doing so, we place a priority on the tools of diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, and development cooperation. We are dependable and loyal to our alliances. We want to act as a good partner in the shaping of a just world order.5

While the notion of German leadership may have been an uncomfortable concept for many, circumstances have changed rapidly since the Cold War impacted Germany’s policy challenges. Nevertheless, Berlin has yet to articulate a bold vision for the alliance, Europe, and Germany’s role in the world. Is Germany really prepared to meet the expectations of its allies? This question needs to be addressed by the new government in Berlin. From Germany’s perspective, the United States has been a less than trustworthy partner, especially in the wake of the revelations about the NSA’s surveillance programs. This episode is illustrative of long-term tensions between Washington and Berlin. Lingering policy disagreements have led some Germans to claim that their views are not taken seriously in Washington and the sometimes shrill public debate on issues ranging from military actions to climate change has led many in the German public to distrust U.S. motives. The fact that President Barack Obama was so enormously popular following the Bush era helps explain the recent outcry of disappointment following Washington’s response to a range of issues including cyber espionage, closing Guantanamo, and drone strikes. Challenges for a New Generation of Leaders Both countries shared a close bond throughout the Cold War. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both are now at risk of drifting apart. Maintaining this bond will be the principal challenge for a new generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of today’s leaders, however, are less personally invested in or familiar with the relationship. The number of U.S. members of Congress who have served in the military and had experience in Germany has dwindled and •••

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many of the U.S. military bases in Germany that once were the nexus of German-American relations have been downsized or eliminated since the end of the Cold War. In Germany, the coalition government will include new faces with responsibility for transatlantic issues, but with less direct experience in the United States. In Washington, nearly all of the relevant national security positions have changed hands early in Obama’s second term. New leaders see the shifts in power that are reshaping both Europe and the United States and are asking new questions about the relevance of German-American relations. The United States will continue to be a natural partner for Germany. As President George H.W. Bush said before reunification, the countries are “partners in leadership” and thus have a shared responsibility to forge a world of peace and prosperity. President Obama echoed this message last summer in Berlin when he said that “our shared past shows that none of these challenges can be met unless we see ourselves as part of something bigger than our own experience.”6 Yet it is important that we not dwell on our past accomplishments, for we will then lose sight of the challenges and choices that will shape the future of the relationship. And it is also necessary to grasp that “leaders in partnership” are not always of one mind in formulating prescriptions for challenges even if there are shared goals involved.

An Agenda for 2014 and Beyond The hard part now for Germany is to define its interests and the risks it is willing to accept to secure them. While some of those interests will diverge from the United States, most of our values and goals continue to overlap. There is now a need to define our respective agendas, pursue shared goals, and better manage our differences. Doing so will ensure that the U.S.German partnership remains a cornerstone of transatlantic relations. Below is a set of policy priorities that, if resolved, would strengthen trust, help both countries respond to a rapidly changing world, and leave a lasting legacy not only for German-American relations, but more broadly for the United States and Europe. The Euro Crisis and the Future of Europe The future vitality of Europe is essential to German-American relations. A worrying fixation on internal politics in Europe and the U.S. has left the future of the Eurozone in doubt, which can only further undermine attempts at deeper integration. Unfortunately, Washington and Berlin have squared off on a range of difficult questions on regulatory, monetary, and •••

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fiscal policy. This has led to different priorities in responding to the economic crisis in Europe (e.g., the austerity versus stimulus debate). But these challenges should not overshadow the broader GermanAmerican economic partnership and the fact that it is one of the core trading relationships within the world’s largest trading bloc. If completed, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be a signature achievement for both President Obama and Chancellor Merkel, leading to more jobs and investment opportunities in Europe and the United States. For Germany, an agreement has at least three major benefits, ranging from commercial to political: It would expand and deepen the transatlantic marketplace, setting standards that other economic powers could not ignore; it would be a welcome source for growth in an otherwise not too growthfriendly environment; and it would bind the two sides of the Atlantic more closely together. Cyber Security and Privacy The recent revelations concerning the National Security Agency’s programs has led to a loss of trust between Germany and the United States, but should not blind the two countries’ leaders from the broader challenges of the digital age. Consumers need assurance that their privacy will be respected; businesses need help protecting their intellectual property; and governments will continue to bear responsibility for protecting critical infrastructure and the safety of their citizens. Yet, there are no clear international standards or norms on how to deal with the exponential increase of online data and the pace of technological change. Both Germany and the United States have a shared interest in establishing new rules of the road and maintaining an open and secure internet. The Energy Transformation and Climate Change The U.S. and German energy markets have undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. The U.S. strategy of developing North American energy resources such as shale gas has already put the country on a path toward self-sufficiency. Germany has shown leadership in addressing the problem of climate change and adopted a plan toward greater energy selfsufficiency, but may be forced to revise its plan to phase out all nuclear power production by 2022 due to rising energy costs. Both countries must deal with the challenges of climate change and reliable access to energy. The strategic importance of energy supplies will rise in importance as tensions with Russia flare. Germany’s strong linkages with Russian gas and oil supply chains will be of central importance in plotting that strategy. •••

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The West has struggled to adopt a consistent approach to international crises. Washington’s leaders sometimes feel as if they are the sole defenders of the West’s global interests and expect Germany to accept more risk and devote more resources to the common defense. For its part, Germany sees itself as an active member of NATO and has spent a decade fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan. It will continue to contribute its armed forces and development expertise to preserve continental as well as global stability. Too often, though, both tend to talk past each other rather than work together on security issues. Defense Minister von der Leyen will be facing the same problems many of her predecessors faced in terms of both military and financial capabilities. The need for Europe to pool and share those capabilities will be of critical importance to maintaining the strength of the alliance. Russia The coalition agreement makes it clear that relations with Russia loom large in Berlin’s worldview. Trade, energy, and cultural ties are significant factors in the German-Russian relationship. Though Germany’s leaders will not always agree with the direction of U.S. policy, both clearly see the benefits and the challenges of bringing Russia closer to Europe. Unfortunately, Russian resistance to European policies in the post-Soviet space has undermined its support in the West. Even before the 2014 Ukrainian conflict emerged, there were grounds for friction over how to deal with Russia. What this crisis now does to the transatlantic dialogue, for better or for worse, remains to be seen. Middle East and Afghanistan The U.S. and Germany have several shared interests in the Middle East. U.S. power in the region is perceived to be declining, but its active involvement remains critical. Germany is a major trading partner and arms exporter, but is also seen as a neutral player. The tragedy continuing to unfold in Syria, and the unpredictability in Egypt and the so-called Arab Spring countries requires an active German engagement. China The U.S. “pivot” to Asia raised concerns that the U.S. was turning away from Europe. While these concerns have been exaggerated, the question remains to what degree U.S. policy on China and Asia in general is coordinated with our European allies. European countries have fewer security commitments •••

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in East Asia than the United States, but equally strong business interests in the world’s largest market. Both are anxious about China’s domestic reforms and its “peaceful rise” in the region. No other European country has stronger trade ties with China than Germany. The question Germany needs to raise is: does that relationship bring with it responsibilities? Consequences The consequences of not establishing a bilateral agenda are significant. Without an agenda, the relationship will lack coherence. Policy decisions can be made without a grand strategy, but they lack staying power without a plan to win popular support. With an agenda, it will be easier for leaders to identify where Germany and the United States are interdependent. This is a first step toward expanding what has always been a prosperous partnership—a sum that is greater than its parts. There is more at stake than just the German-American relationship. The recent fissures in the European project brought about by the financial crisis will take many years to resolve. In the past, the United States’ commitment to Europe was an essential catalyst for the region’s integration, expansion, and growth. Its continued involvement with the European Union depends in large part on its relations with Europe’s major countries including Germany, the symbol of a once divided Europe and a benefactor of its success.

Setting a Course What is the alternative to closer relations between Europe and the United States? Americans recognize the need to maintain our partnerships. A 2013 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that three-quarters of Americans opt for shared leadership with our allies.7 A “go it alone” attitude has never been a core part of America’s identity and, due to a new equation of power in the world, the United States is only one of many competing players. Thus, transatlantic relations remain as important as they have always been. And the German-American partnership is at its core. Merkel will be dealing with Obama through January of 2017. Then she will deal with his successor. That will be the third president the chancellor will confront. How much continuity and change she will see remains unknown. Nevertheless, she will have a rich set of experiences to use as a guidepost. Merkel’s new government enjoys a supermajority in the Bundestag. Merkel herself enjoys a high level of popularity, also in Washington. The challenge she will face will lie in forging an agenda she can share not with •••

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her counterparts in government, but with her own public. While this term could be her last as chancellor, she has a unique opportunity to help set a new course for Germany and the EU and therefore for transatlantic relations. There is perhaps no other leader in Europe today with that chance. DR. JACKSON JANES is the President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. Dr. Janes is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Bundestag Intern Network (ABIN) in Washington, DC, and on the Advisory Board of the Allied Museum in Berlin. He was also Chair of the German Speaking Areas in Europe Program at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC, from 1999-2000. In 2005, Dr. Janes was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Germany’s highest civilian award. Dr. Janes earned his PhD in International Relations from Claremont Graduate School, his M.A. from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, and his B.A. in Sociology from Colgate University.

Notes 1. The author is grateful to Parke Nicholson, Jessica Riester Hart, and Robert Coe for their assistance with this article. 2. President Joachim Gauck, “Speech to Open the 50th Munich Security Conference,” 31 January, 2014, available at http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/ JoachimGauck/Reden/2014/140131-Munich-Security-Conference.html, accessed 26 March 2014. 3. See “New Power, New Responsibility: Elements of a German foreign and security policy for a changing world,” A paper of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), 2013. 4. Gauck (see note 2). 5. Author’s translation. See “Koalitionsvertrag: Deutschlands Zukunft gestalten,” Bundesregierung, 2013; available at http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/StatischeSeiten/Breg/koalitionsvertrag-inhaltsverzeichnis.html, accessed 26 March 2014. 6. “Remarks by President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate,” The White House, 19 June 2013; available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/remarkspresident-obama-brandenburg-gate-berlin-germany, accessed 26 March 2014. 7. “Public Sees U.S. Power Declining as Support for Global Engagement Slips: America’s Place in the World 2013,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 3 December 2013; available at http://www.people-press.org/2013/12/03/public-sees-u-s-power-decliningas-support-for-global-engagement-slips/, accessed 26 March 2014.

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Epilogue • • •

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON THE 2013 BUNDESTAG ELECTION Jeffrey Anderson

Democratic elections are important for many reasons. In the most general sense, election outcomes express the will of the people, and, as such, directly shape the formation of government and the direction of public policy. The campaign process preceding an election entails the clash of positions, promises, ideas, and ideals—in short, elections present choices to the people, who ultimately decide. In one sense, “elections are important because they engage politicians in conversation with their constituents.”1 And quite apart from their formal attributes, democratic elections can and do take on huge historical significance. The British parliamentary elections of 1945 and 1979 marked the end of one era of political competition and the beginning of another; the same can be said for the U.S. presidential and congressional elections of 1980. The German parliamentary election of 2013 more than met baseline expectations from the standpoint of democratic theory—an open and transparent campaign, a free and fair election process, and a clear and uncontested outcome. Yet, as several of the authors in this volume underscore repeatedly, this election, viewed in its totality, is unlikely to find its way into the annals of electoral politics, German or otherwise. The seeming inevitability of Merkel’s path to a third term as chancellor, the pale distinctions between the programs offered by the mainstream parties, the absence of burning issues in the campaign—all of this added up to a predictable and arguably “boring” affair. One should not be terribly surprised at the absence of fireworks and a Wendepunkt! in the 2013 Bundestag election result. With the onset of the economic crisis in 2009, elections across Europe have become an exercise in

Jeffrey Anderson

“firing the coach”—that is, punishing incumbents for poor economic performance.2 What was there to punish in Germany, though? The Federal Republic of Germany weathered the intense economic storm over the past four years, and so it is understandable that the German electorate would reward the incumbent with another term in office. Certainly, Merkel and the CDU/CSU played on the theme of stability and continuity, in a manner reminiscent of Adenauer’s call for “keine Experimente” in the late 1950s, and a large section of the electorate responded favorably. The German electorate’s decision to renew the coach’s contract does not mean that this was an entirely forgettable election. As the contributors to this volume point out, there are several subtle and potentially significant developments embedded in the election results which, if they hold over the longer run, could point the way to new dynamics in the German political system. A notable yet fairly subtle aspect of the 2013 Bundestag elections is the small but perceptible increase in the share of the vote garnered by the two large centrist parties, the CDU /CSU and the SPD. This represents a reversal of a decades-long trend, and could—if sustained—limit the incremental fragmentation of the party system that has been unfolding since the early 1980s. Although it is too early to speak about a renaissance of the Volksparteien, there is clearly good reason to benchmark the 2013 election and keep a close eye on developments going forward. A second and potentially reinforcing outcome of the election is the disappearance of the FDP from the Bundestag, just missing the 5 percent electoral threshold. The origins of the party’s seemingly inexorable decline is well documented in this volume, and the party faces a long and problematic march back to the national parliament in four years with the loss of public financing and public profile. The impact of the FDP’s absence is masked in the current parliament by the re-emergence of the grand coalition formula, but it is safe to say that should it fail to re-establish itself as a national force, the coalition calculus for most if not all of the remaining parties will change dramatically. Opportunities to claim at least part of the vacated space in the party system will open up for the Green Party, which could in turn make a coalition with the CDU more likely. On the other side of the spectrum, the reformist wing in Die Linke could be emboldened to shift the party in a direction more amenable to a partnership with the SPD and/or Greens. To the extent that these shifts in the electoral space occur, this could lead to a repositioning of the two main Volksparteien in a way that accentuates the left-right divide in German politics. Finally, the election results suggest a transformation of the issue space in the German party system. Even though the Alternative for Germany •••

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(Alternativ für Deutschland, AfD) failed to surmount the 5 percent threshold, its credible performance suggests that European integration is no longer a valence issue (one that all mainstream parties agree on), but rather is a legitimate source of debate and contention among the parties. The broader European trend that started in the 1990s, in which European integration has become increasingly contested in national politics, has finally found formal expression in the German political party system, despite efforts by mainstream German political elites to substitute lofty rhetoric and aims for Europe in favor of a much more hard-nosed calculus based on national interests. The AfD will exercise a strong pull on both of the mainstream parties, especially the CDU, holding in check any tendency to adopt a more accommodating stance toward European integration. In this manner, the party will play a very similar role to UKIP in the United Kingdom. And as long as the AfD remains electorally active and viable, it will vie with the Greens to fill the issue space previously commanded by the FDP, further complicating the Free Democrats return to national prominence. The months since the September 2013 election have generated several useful hints as to whether these subtle markers and trends have the requisite staying power to shift the dynamics of the German political system over the long run. The return of the Grand Coalition governing formula to German national politics has refocused the spotlight on the two Volksparteien, understandably. Whether this solidifies their position in the party system remains to be seen, though—it will ultimately depend on the coalition’s performance on a range of challenging issues, including Ukraine, the ongoing response to the European financial crisis, immigration, and domestic reforms. The May 2014 elections to the European Parliament (EP) presented another opportunity to read the tea leaves. EP election day passed relatively quietly in the Federal Republic, even if the electoral performance of extremist parties elsewhere in Europe provided plenty of fuel for analysis (and hand wringing) in the media. Of interest, though was the AfD’s performance—the upstart Euroskeptic party garnered 7 percent of the vote, netting nine seats in the European Parliament in the process. The FDP mirrored this result, dropping 7.6 percentage points (and nine seats) from the last EP election, ending up with 3.4 percent of the vote and three seats. At the same time, there was no surge in support for right wing extremist parties like the NPD, and the mainstream political parties appeared to keep matters in the family, with the CDU /CSU losing approximately two percentage points (to 35.4 percent) and the SPD gaining over six (to 27.3 percent). •••

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Despite much more media attention than in previous years, there is still much evidence that voters still take EP elections less seriously as “secondorder elections.”3 Indeed, polling from August 2014—almost a year after the Bundestag election—shows very little evidence of changing preferences. The CDU /CSU was at 41-43 percent (having achieved 41.5 percent in the 2013 election) versus 24-26 percent for the SPD (25.7 percent), and the other parties (including the AfD) hovering around their 2013 vote share.4 In the end, the September 2013 election was not the kind that that sends political pundits or historians into rapture. There was no turning point, no landslide, no final reckonings. Rather, the Bundestag election of 2013, like a vintage detective mystery, left behind a number of tantalizing clues about the possible future of German politics that are meat and potatoes to political scientists and political sociologists. The changes taking shape are by no means transformational—they are instead an intriguing mix of revived patterns of continuity and early signs of profound changes in the basic dynamics of the system. J EFFREY ANDERSON is the Graf Goltz Professor and Director, BMW Center for German and European Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Georgetown University, as well as the Faculty Chair of the School of Foreign Service. He is an expert in European politics, with special emphasis on the European Union and postwar German politics and foreign policy.

Notes 1. G.R. Boynton, G.W., “Legislatures” in Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, 2nd edn, ed. Mary Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan (New York, 1992), 294-306, here 298. 2. Josep Colomer, “Firing the Coach: How Governments are Losing Elections in Europe,” Democracy & Society 10, no. 1 (2012): 1-6. 3. Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, “Nine second-order national elections—a conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results,” European Journal of Political Research 8, no. 1 (1980): 3-44. 4. See http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/; accessed 8 August 2014.

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INDEX

A academization, 96-97 Adenauer, Konrad, 1-2, 4, 58, 192, 204 Afghanistan, 81, 95; German role in, 194, 200 Aigner, Ilse, 92, 107 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 88-89, 177; and 2013 campaign, 7, 36, 79; and the Eurocrisis, 186; and euroskepticism, 35, 48, 167, 173-174; and the far right, 36-37; and 2013 results, 8, 11, 32, 34-35, 84-86; see also Bundestag 2013 election anti-Americanism, 147 asylum, 121, 140, 148 Aussiedler, 141, 143 austerity, 76, 79, 182 Austria, 43, 45, 87-88, 154, 165 B Baden-Württemberg, 10, 14, 41, 63, 83, 129 Bartsch, Dietmar, 34, 80 Basic Law, 137, 148 Bavaria, 11-12, 22, 37, 78, 113, 136, 170 Beck, Kurt, 63 Beck, Volker, 6 Belgium, 114, 148, 154 Betreuungsgeld, 65, 69 Bisky, Lothar, 10, 81 Brandenburg, 8, 11, 43, 80 Brandt, Willy, 27 Brüderle, Rainer, 8, 77 Bundesrat: 2013 composition, 12, 42 Bundestag: demographics of, 95-99; and five-percent threshold, 8, 26, 49, 74; and immigrant origins of members, 121, 151152; members’ occupation, 96-97; and women, 94-95, 105, 116

Bundestag 2013 election, 1, 48, 65, 92, 122; campaign issues, 3-6, 28-30, 68-69, 78, 184; cost of, 15; immigrant origin of candidates, 122, 124-131; and media, 15, 177; opposition parties, 10-11; results of, 7-8, 49-50, 67, 73-74, 162, 192 Bundestag 2009 election, 73; and the Left, 31; and the Pirates, 33; and the SPD, 61 Bundestag 1998 election, 140-141 Bundeswehr, 81, 195 Bush, George H.W., 198 C Cameron, David, 60, 137 campaign posters, 6 catch-all party. See Volkspartei China, 200-201 Christian Democratic Party (CDU), 86, 93; and 2013 campaign, 4, 76, 204; and citizenship, 140; and the Eurocrisis, 179, 184-186, 188; female candidates, 124; and immigration, 139-143, 145. See also Merkel, Angela Christian Social Union (CSU), 88, 93, 154; and citizenship, 140; and immigration, 136-137, 139, 140, 146. See also Christian Democratic Party citizenship, 137-138, 140-141, 154 coalition agreement (2013), 69, 192-193; and the Eurocrisis, 186, 188; and immigration, 150 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 6 Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 45 Comparative Manifesto Project, 19, 163, 167 compensatory mandates, 14 Connemann, Gitta, 115 Constitutional Court, 13, 78, 87, 149, 179, 182, 184

Index cosmopolitanism, 138-139, 142, 144, 147, 150-151, 154-155 cybersecurity, 199. See also Snowden, Edward Cyprus, 183

France, 140, 148, 151, 154; and the European Constitution, 165 Frauen Union (FU), 112 Free Democratic Party (FDP), 92; and 2013 campaign, 2-3, 6-7; female candidates, 124; 2013 results, 7-8, 38-39, 77-80, 87. See also Bundestag 2013 election Frey, Gerhard, 34 Fukushima, 83 Funktionspartei, 80

D data protection. See Snowden, Edward debt mutualization, 186, 188 Denmark, 154, 165, 166, 168 Diaby, Karamba, 153 Die Linke. See Left Party Dietsche, Hans-Jörg, 29 Doppelte Quote, 123 dual citizenship, 65, 69-70, 155

G

E eastern Germany, 5, 20, 180; and the Left, 10, 31, 43, 81-82 economy of Germany: performance of, 1-2, 28, 76; and Russia, 21 electoral system, 13-14, 26, 38, 123; and immigrants, 126-127; and occupations, 110; and women, 102, 117 Energiewende, 6, 83-84 Ernst, Klaus, 32, 81 ethnic closure, 140 Euro, 28, 178-181; as campaign issue, 184 Eurocrisis, 1, 28, 36, 68, 163, 173, 182, 199; influence on German policy, 178, 181, 184-185, 187 European Central Bank (ECB), 21, 36, 179180, 182, 185 European integration, 56, 59, 164-165; political salience of, 167-169, 171-172, 205 European Monetary Union, 179. See also Euro European Parliament: 2014 elections, 8-11, 37, 85, 87, 98, 162 European Stability Mechanism (ESM), 39, 179 European Union, 162; and immigration, 136, 143; unemployment in, 5 euroskepticism, 55, 61, 163-167; and Germany, 65, 86, 172 equalizing mandate, 78 Evers-Meyer, Karin, 115 expellees, 140 F Fischer, Joshka, 56 Flügelpartei, 75, 77, 79, 82, 88 foreigners. See immigration formateur, 16, 55, 58

•••

Gabriel, Sigmar, 6, 9, 22, 65, 69 Gastarbeiter. See guestworker Gauck, Joachim, 88, 90, 193-195 gender quotas, 103-104, 123; and German parties, 105, 111-113; in Europe, 114 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 39, 77 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 78, 81, 84-85 German Football Federation, 138 German-American relations, 195, 197-198, 201 Giousouf, Cemile, 153 global financial crisis, 19, 54-55, 62, 76, 162, 163, 177, 185, 201, 205 Göring-Eckhart, Katrin, 83 Grand Coalition: in 2013, 3, 9, 12, 40-42, 61, 87, 205; in 2005, 62; and democracy, 42; public opinion of, 68. See also coalition agreement Greece, 180, 183, 185; and Germany, 15; politics of, 21 the Greens, 88, 94, 155; in 2013 campaign, 6, 29-30, 80; and 2013 results, 8, 10, 83-86 Grillo, Beppe, 66 Gröhe, Hermann, 32, 78 Grotelüschen, Astrid, 116 Grundgesetz. See Basic Law guestworker, 63-64, 128, 138, 154; in the Federal Republic, 140, 147-148 Guttenberg, Karl-Theodor, zu, 22 Gysi, Gregor, 10, 32, 81, 83 H Habermas, Jürgen, 3, 137 Hamburg, 11, 43, 131 Hartz IV reforms, 31, 182; impact on SPD, 61-62 Henkel, Hans-Olaf, 86 Hesse, 34, 42-43, 143 Huber, Charles M., 153 Hübinger, Anette, 115

208 • • •

Epilogue I

M

I-power, 54-55 Iraq War (2003), 196 Immigration Act 2005, 149 immigration, 121, 142, 148, 150, 153; antiimmigration politics, 35-36, 136-137, 143-144 integration summit, 149 incumbency advantage, 107-110, 116-117 India, 114 Ireland, 183, 185 Islam, 145, 149 Islamophobia, 22 Islam conferences, 149 issue competence, 67-68 Italy, 5, 114, 144, 156 ius sanguinas, 137, 140, 142 ius soli, 140

McAllister, David, 22, 153 Merkel, Angela, 77, 86, 89, 111, 149, 180, 199; and 2013 election, 1, 4-5, 7, 20, 204; and Eurocrisis, 183; and foreign policy, 195; image of, 5, 29, 56-57, 63, 76, 192; and immigration, 144-146; popularity of, 68 Merkelism, 5-6, 11-13, 28 Merkevellianism, 1, 62 Merz, Friedrich, 22 migration: as political issue, 35. See also immigration minimal winning coalitions, 52-54, 58 minimum wage, 78, 83, 85 Modell Deutschland, 2, 21 Möhring, Cornelia, 129 Möllemann, Jürgen, 34 Montag, Jerzy, 128 Müller, Nadine, 115 Müntefering, Franz, 9 multiculturalism, 22, 137-138, 151

K Kanzlerduell, 4 Khedira, Sami, 138 Kılıç, Memet, 128-129 Kipping, Katja, 32, 81 Kitas, 65, 69 Klaus, Ernst, 25 Klöckner, Julia, 115 Koch, Roland, 22, 143 Kohl, Helmut, 1, 56-57, 138, 140-144; campaign donations, 144; and immigration, 137, 147, 149 Köhler, Horst, 22 Korte, Karl-Rudolf, 52 Kraft, Hannelore, 22, 41

N

L Lafontaine, Oskar, 10, 31, 36, 80-81 Left Party, 31, 88, 93; 2013 campaign, 7; as coalition partner, 9; and the Eurocrisis, 186; female candidates, 124; future of, 32; and 2013 results, 8, 80-83; and the SPD, 9, 47n24, 63, 82. See also Bundestag 2013 election; eastern Germany Leitkultur, 70, 143, 146 Leyen, Ursula von der, 22, 28, 69, 194, 200 Libya. See NATO Lindner, Christian, 8, 39, 88 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 36 Lötzsch, Gesine, 32, 81 Lower Saxony, 31, 77, 79, 81, 83, 153 Lücke, Bernd, 34, 85-86

•••

National Security Agency scandal. See Snowden, Edward NATO, 70; enlargement of, 195; Germany’s role in, 193, 194, 197, 200; intervention in Libya 88-89, 91, 197. See also Afghanistan naturalization, 141, 143, 154. See also citizenship Nešković, Wolfgang, 128 Netherlands, 116, 148, 151, 154, 166, 172; and the European Constitution, 165 Niedermayer, Oskar, 27 North Rhine-Westphalia, 8, 31, 43, 80-81, 86, 143 O Obama, Barack, 197-199, 201 ordoliberalism, 177-183, 187 overhanging mandates, 15, 78 Özdemir, Cem, 10, 129 Özil, Mesut, 138 P Pakistan, 114 Party of Democratic Socialism. See Left Party party system of Germany, 11, 26-27, 50-51; cleavages of, 51; and euroskepticism,

209 • • •

Index 171-172; future of, 42-45; and personality, 55-56; transformation of, 31, 52-53, 58 Pegida, 22 Peter, Simone, 10 Philipp, Beatrix, 92, 107 Pirate Party: 2013 results, 14, 32-33, 86-88; female candidates, 124 Poland, 116 Portugal, 180, 185

Spain, 114, 154 Stability and Growth Pact, 180 Steinbrück, Peer, 4, 6, 29, 57, 61, 65-66, 68; and Stinkefinger, 6, 66 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 6, 22, 62, 110, 194-195 Stoiber, Edmund, 22, 140, 146 Strauss, Franz-Josef, 11 Syria: civil war, 66, 200 Syriza, 21

R

T

Raab, Stefan, 4, 66 Red-Green government, 6, 9, 83, 88, 138, 143-144, 147, 154, 186 Red-Red-Green, 9-10, 14, 70, 78, 80, 82-83, 88 refugees, 21 reunification, 45, 65, 74, 88, 92; and ordoliberalism, 180 Riexinger, Bernd, 81 right-wing extremism, 34 Rösler, Philipp, 8, 66, 77, 152 Roth, Claudia, 10 Röttgen, Norbert, 22 Rühe, Volker, 195 Russian-German relations, 21, 194, 199, 200 Rüttgers, Jürgen, 143, 159n36

Thuringia, 9, 41 Treaty on European Union/Maastricht Treaty, 182 Trittin, Jürgen, 10, 83-84 TTIP, 199 Turkey, 164, 169, 173 Turkish minority, 128-129, 140-141, 148, 151-152

S

U Überfremdung, 155 Ukraine, 21, 194, 200 United Kingdom (Great Britain), 140, 151, 165, 203, 205 United Nations, 193 USA, 113, 196, 203; view of Germany, 195, 197-198, 201

Saarland, 43, 86, 115 Sarrazin, Thilo, 35 Saxony, 41, 80, 131 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 5, 69, 77, 149, 183 Schavan, Annette, 22 Scheel, Walter, 39 Schengen Agreement, 147 Schleswig-Holstein, 31, 81, 86 Schmidt, Helmut, 89, 195 Scholz, Olaf, 22 Schröder, Gerhard, 27, 31, 56-57, 61, 82. See also Hartz IV reforms Seehofer, Horst, 22, 136-137 Sharma, Raju, 128 Snowden, Edward, 33-34, 87, 195, 197 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 95; 2013 campaign of, 6; and citizenship, 141; and the Eurocrisis, 185; and leadership, 47n20; and the Left, 9, 47n24, 63, 82; female candidates, 124; 2013 election results of, 30, 64, 73; future of, 70. See also Bundestag 2013 election South Korea, 109

V

•••

210 • • •

veggie day, 83-84 Volkspartei, 9-10, 42-43, 73-74, 76, 79, 83, 123, 204 W Wagenknecht, Sarah, 32, 83 wealth tax (Vermögenssteuer), 65 Westerwelle, Guido, 31, 38-39, 77 Willsch, Klaus-Peter, 179 Winkler, Josef P., 128 World Cup of Soccer, 1, 20, 23n3 Wulff, Christian, 22 X xenophobia, 139, 141, 145 Z Zylajew, Willi, 128