The Merkel Republic

An Appraisal

Eric Langenbacher, Eric Langenbacher

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782388968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Chancellor Angela Merkel has dominated German and European politics for almost a decade. Her stellar reputation, sound political and economic management, and popularity inside of Germany resulted in one of the most decisive electoral victories for her conservative parties in postwar Germany—the country can rightfully be deemed the Merkel Republic. Bringing together German politics experts from both sides of the Atlantic, this volume addresses the campaign, results, and consequences of the 2013 Bundestag election. Chapters delve into a diverse array of themes, including immigrant-origin and women candidates, the fate of the small parties, and the prospects for the SPD, the new coalition partner, as well as more general structural trends like the Europeanization and cosmopolitanization of German politics.

··· 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 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 Red-Green 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.

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 EU-imposed 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.

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 (1998-2009) 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 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.

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 t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Merkel’s Nachsommermärchen?
• Chapter 1 Follow-up to the Grand Coalition: The German Party System before and after the 2013 Federal Election
• Chapter 2 Chancellor Hegemony: Party Politics and the Bundestag Party System after the 2013 Federal Election
• Chapter 3 Past Imperfect, Future Tense: The SPD before and after the 2013 Federal Election
• Chapter 4 Small Parties and the 2013 Bundestag Election: End of the Upward Trend?
• Chapter 5 Many New Faces, but Nothing New? The Sociodemographic and Career Profiles of German Bundestag Members in the Eighteenth Legislative Period
• Chapter 6 Closing the Gap: Gender and Constituency Candidate Nomination in the 2013 Bundestag Election
• Chapter 7 Immigration into Politics: Immigrant-origin Candidates and Their Success in the 2013 Bundestag Election
• Chapter 8 The Reluctant Cosmopolitanization of European Party Politics: The Case of Germany
• Chapter 9 European Integration and Party Competition in German Federal Elections
• Chapter 10 The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis: Two Puzzles behind the German Consensus
• Chapter 11 Merkel 3.0: German Foreign Policy in the Aftermath of the 2013 Bundestag Election
• Epilogue: Concluding Thoughts on the 2013 Bundestag Election
• Index