The Legacy and Impact of German Unification: The Elusive Dream of 'Flourishing Landscapes' (New Perspectives in German Political Studies) 3030971538, 9783030971533

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Three Decades of “Flourishing Landscapes”: An Introduction to German Unification and the Challenge of Managing Its Legacy into the Next Decade
Introduction
Unification in Comparative Perspective
From Divided to United Germany: Germany’s “Crowded Hour”
Comparative Assessments of East and West and the Grist of Politics Revealed: Mind the Gaps
Comparative Aggregate East–West Differences in Wealth, Social Dynamics, and Opportunity
East–West Comparisons Within the European Context
A Comparative Survey of the 2017 and 2021 Elections in Germany: The Political Patterns of Division and Gaps
The Bundestag Elections of 2017 and 2021: Comparing East and West
Institutionalizing Support: Comparing How Well the AfD Met Expectations in 2017 and 2021
Structural Development and Comparative Vote Patterns for the AfD: Do Gaps Matter?
A Comparative Survey of the Social and Cultural Divide
Context
Basic Attitude and Belief Patterns Across East and West
Cohesion: National Pride and Identity
Differing Perceptions Regarding Advantages and Disadvantages of Unification, and Life’s’ Fairness’
Differing Dispositions Toward Refugees and Foreigners
Differing Profiles on Postmaterialism, Social Anomia, and Populism
Controls for Sex, Education, Generation, and Populism
Gender Gaps
Differences Across Education
Generation Gaps
Populism
Gender, Family, Marriage, and Work
Conclusion: Gambit and Stakes in Germany’s Continuing Legacy of Unification Shaping Normal Politics
The Chapters That Follow
Literature
2 Continuity and Change in the Office of German Chancellor
Introduction
Institutional Stability
Areas of Change
Gaining and Losing Office
The International Role of the Chancellor
Personalization and Presidentialization
Conclusion
Literature
3 The German Party System Since 1990: From Incorporation to Fragmentation, Polarization and Weaker Ties
Introduction
Framework for Analysis: The Decline of Linkage
Basic Trends
Citizens Withdrawing from Parties
Party Elites Withdrawing from Civil Society
Party Finance and Traces of Cartel Parties
The Ambivalence of Digitalization
Conclusion
Literature
4 The Resurgence and Decline of the Social Democratic Party in the Berlin Republic (1990–2020)
Introduction
The Rise and Decline of the SPD in the Bonn Republic
The Resurgence of the SPD in the Berlin Republic
The Decline of the SPD in the Berlin Republic
Explaining Success and Misery of Social Democrats in Germany and Beyond
Prospects for 2021 and Beyond
Postscript After the Bundestag Election
Literature
5 Fighting Against the Decline: Concepts of Modernization of the Conservative “Volksparteien” in Germany
Introduction
The Rise and Decline of the German “Volksparteien”
Political Parties as a Complex Web of Relations
Conditions of Modernization of Political Parties
Concepts of Modernization of the Conservative “Volksparteien” in Germany
Conclusion
Literature
6 Post-Communism in a United Germany: Die Linke
Introduction
Freedom and Unity Revolution 1989/1990
Cutting off the PDS and the Party Die Linke in Federal Elections
Reasons for the Establishment of the Party Die Linke
Conclusion
Literature
7 Alliance 90/The Greens: A Left Party with a Centrist Appeal in Coalition Politics
Introduction
Electoral Results
Programmatic Evolution
Organizational Evolution
Coalition Strategy
Conclusion
Literature
8 The Right-Wing Populist Disruption in the Berlin Republic. Opportunity Structures and Success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD)
The Old Assumption: Germany as Exception in Europe
Disruption: The Rise of the AfD
Why the Establishment of a Right-Wing Populist Party is (not) Astonishing?
The Grounds for Disruption: Germany’s Two Populist Moments in the Berlin Republic: Sarrazin Debate and Refugee Crisis
Not a New League East, but a New Advocate of “Second-Class-Citizen”
The AfD Addressed to the Feeling to Be Second-Class-Citizen
Limits to Disruption
Literature
9 The Reluctant Modernizer: Gender Equality in Unified Germany
Introduction
The 1990s: Unifying Two Gendered States
The New Millennium: Investment in Women’s Human Capital
Dual-Track Gender Policy: Parity and Equality
Conclusion: Gender Equality in the Post-Merkel Era
Literature
10 The Götterdämmerung of the Nation Brand: German Identity After 30 years of Unification
Introduction: Why Germany Is a Brand?
The Constitution of the Brand: Trust
Overview: The Subjective German Brand Image
Trust and Democracy
Historical Consciousness and Anti-semitism
German Unification and European Integration Three Decades Later
Foreign Policy: The Anti-War Brand Germany
Emotions, Politics and the German Brand
Conclusion
Literature
11 “Germany Is a Disaster Now”: US Perspectives on the Berlin Republic Over the Course of Time
Introduction
The Berlin Republic from the Perspective of US Presidents
George H.W. Bush (1989–1993)
Bill Clinton (1993–2001)
George W. Bush (2001–2009)
Barack Obama (2009–2017)
Donald Trump (2017–2021)
Discussion and Outlook
Literature
12 The Changing Faces of Germany’s Social Market Economy
Ordo-Liberal Beginnings
The Road to State Intervention
Half-Hearted Supply-Side Policies
German Unification—The Economy Becomes Politics
Social Market Eclecticism and Globalization
The Financial Crisis and Its Aftermath
The Coronavirus Rewrote the Social Market Economy
Conclusion: The Social Market economy—A Flexible Concept
Literature
13 European Divergences: Germany, France, and Italy in Global Economic Governance
Introduction
Theoretical Framework: The Societal Approach
EU Member States’ Preference Formation in the G20
The Role of Ideas in Public Debt and Economic Stimulus
The Role of Interests in Global Trade Imbalances
Conclusion
Literature
14 France, Germany, and European Security: “Building Castles in the Sky”?
Great Ideas, Modest Reality, Open Questions
Europe’s Role in World Politics: Diverging Concepts in France and Germany
Further Bumps on the Road to a New International Role for the EU
Building “Castles in the Sky”: France, Germany, and European Union’s Search for International Actor Identity
Literature
15 Frozen in Trump’s Headlights—Germany’s Astounding Foreign Policy of Obstinacy
Introduction
Understanding Friendship in International Politics—Brief Theoretical and Methodological Overview
German-US Transatlantic Friendship Before and After Unification
Two Cases of German-US Friendship Under Trump
Condemning Human Rights Abuses in China
Reducing US Troops in Germany
Conclusion
Literature
Index

Citation preview

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN GERMAN POLITICAL STUDIES

Thee Elusive Dream of ‘Flourishingg Landscapes’ Editeed by Michaeel Oswald · John Robert rtson

New Perspectives in German Political Studies

Series Editors William E. Paterson, Aston University, Birmingham, UK Thomas Saalfeld, Universität Bamberg, Bamberg, Bayern, Germany

Far reaching changes are now taking place in Germany. Stability lay at the core of the German model and much of the writing from Peter Katzenstein and Manfred Schmidt onwards sought to explain this enviable stability. Changes in the external environment have created a number of fundamental challenges which pose a threat to that stability. Germany is now Europe’s central power but this has generated controversy about how it is to exercise this new power. Although attention is often centred on German power the migration crisis demonstrates its limits. New Perspectives in German Political Studies aims to engage with these new challenges and to cater for the heightened interest in Germany. The Editors would welcome proposals for single-authored monographs, edited collections and Pivots, from junior as well as well-established scholars working on contemporary German Politics.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14735

Michael Oswald · John Robertson Editors

The Legacy and Impact of German Unification The Elusive Dream of ‘Flourishing Landscapes’

Editors Michael Oswald University of Passau Passau, Germany

John Robertson Texas A&M University College Station, TX, USA

Free University of Berlin Berlin, Germany

ISSN 2947-6747 ISSN 2947-6755 (electronic) New Perspectives in German Political Studies ISBN 978-3-030-97153-3 ISBN 978-3-030-97154-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Stringer This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedication

The editors and authors of this volume dedicate this collective effort to the career of Prof. Dr. Winand Gellner. Gellner began his career in the Department of Political Science in Trier, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in 1987 following his dissertation, Regulatory Policy in Television. Political Framework and Development Conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain chaired by Prof. Dr. Erwin Faul. In 1997 he left Trier to assume the Chair of Political Science at the University of Passau, where he taught until his retirement in 2021. During his career he has been a Fulbright Fellow in the American Studies Program of New York University, an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University. He served as the Head of the “Citizen Media and Internet” project in cooperation with the Federal Office for political education (2000–2004), was the founder and editor of the political science online portal politik-im-netz.com (2000–2008), has been the Head of the DAAD project “Public Policy and Good Governance” (Helmut Schmidt Program) and recipient of the University of Passau’s award for meritorious contributions to internationalization. From his pathbreaking Europäisches Fernsehen—American Blend? Fernsehmedien zwischen ‘Amerikanisierung’ und ‘Europäisierung’ (Vistas 1989) [European television—American blend? TV media between ‘Americanization’ and ‘Europeanization’ ] and Ideenagenturen für Politik und Öffentlichkeit. v

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DEDICATION

Think Tanks in den USA und in Deutschland (Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1995) [Idea agencies for politics and the public. Think tanks in the USA and Germany], through his influential trilogy within Politische Begriffe (1998) “Informationsgesellschaft” [“Information Society”], “Massenmedien” [“Mass Media”], and “Medienpolitik” [“Media Policy”], through Demokratie und Internet (Nomos, Baden Baden 1998, with Fritz von Korff) [Democracy and the Internet ] to Policyforschung (Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2010 with Eva-Maria Hammer) [Policy Research] his many publications and papers deal with the power and influence of think tanks and media—especially mass media and television—as tools for guiding partisan messaging and shaping political strategies of policy makers and political parties alike. They have contributed to the foundations of our understanding of how mass media and institutional networks of communication contour public perceptions of political reality. Many years before it became so vividly evident that new digital technologies would have such profound impact via social media and partisan mass media outlets such as Fox News on framing political narratives and fueling partisan polarization, Gellner’s systematic analysis of media and politics in Germany, the US and in Europe as a whole exposed the effects of the twin challenges of powerful and politized think tanks and media networks and their fragmenting effect on public information and messaging within democracies. In recent years he has applied this to explaining how such institutionalized networks of messaging and information have impacted public health and the healthcare culture in Germany, culminating in his and Michael Schmöller’s pioneering studies Neue Patienten—Neue Ärzte? Ärztliches Selbstverständnis und Arzt-Patienten-Beziehung im Wandel (Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2008) [New Patients —New Doctors? Doctors’ Self-Image and Doctor-Patient Relationship In Flux] and Solidarität und Wettbewerb: Gesetzliche Krankenversicherungen auf dem Weg zu profitorientierten Versicherungsunternehmen—Zukunftsoptionen und Probleme (Nomos Verlag, Baden- Baden 2009) [Solidarity and competition: Statutory Health Insurance Companies on the Way to Becoming ProfitOriented Insurance Companies —Options for the Future and Problems ]. Together with his long-time colleague and friend, John Robertson, he also published the edited volume German Politics. The Berlin Republic: German Unification and a Decade of Changes (Frank Cass & Co., London 2002). In the spirit that has motivated and inspired Gellner for nearly four decades of scholarship and teaching, the chapters within this volume offer systematic analysis and insight into the complex dynamics

DEDICATION

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shaping perceptions and political consequences interacting with the capacities of institutional networks evolving from and reinforcing the legacies of German unification since 1990. Prof. Dr. John Robertson Dr. Michael Oswald January 2021, College Station & Passau

Contents

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Three Decades of “Flourishing Landscapes”: An Introduction to German Unification and the Challenge of Managing Its Legacy into the Next Decade Michael Oswald and John Robertson Continuity and Change in the Office of German Chancellor Sarah Elise Wiliarty The German Party System Since 1990: From Incorporation to Fragmentation, Polarization and Weaker Ties Thomas Saalfeld and Dmytro Lutsenko The Resurgence and Decline of the Social Democratic Party in the Berlin Republic (1990–2020) Patrick Horst Fighting Against the Decline: Concepts of Modernization of the Conservative “Volksparteien” in Germany Michael Weigl Post-Communism in a United Germany: Die Linke Eckhard Jesse

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CONTENTS

Alliance 90/The Greens: A Left Party with a Centrist Appeal in Coalition Politics Niko Switek The Right-Wing Populist Disruption in the Berlin Republic. Opportunity Structures and Success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Florian Hartleb

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The Reluctant Modernizer: Gender Equality in Unified Germany Sabine Lang

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The Götterdämmerung of the Nation Brand: German Identity After 30 years of Unification Felix Philipp Lutz

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“Germany Is a Disaster Now”: US Perspectives on the Berlin Republic Over the Course of Time Daniela Wawra

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The Changing Faces of Germany’s Social Market Economy Roland Sturm

321

European Divergences: Germany, France, and Italy in Global Economic Governance Stefan A. Schirm

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France, Germany, and European Security: “Building Castles in the Sky”? Michael Meimeth and Peter Schmidt

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Frozen in Trump’s Headlights—Germany’s Astounding Foreign Policy of Obstinacy Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Florian Hartleb, born 1979 in Passau, studied Political Science, Law and Psychology at Eastern Illinois University (USA) and the University of Passau (Master thesis supervisor Prof. Winand Gellner), and gained his doctorate from Chemnitz University of Technology in 2004 on the topic of ‘right- and left-wing populism.’ Currently, he lectures at the Catholic University of Eichstätt and the University of Police SaxonyAnhalt. As Managing Director of Hanse Advice OÜ in Tallinn/Estonia, he works as a consultant in the process of digital transformation. He is a member of the Parliament of Lower Saxony, an external advisor in the commission for the future of voluntary work, and also as advisor for the ministry of economics. Recent publications include: Lone Wolves. The New Terrorism of Single Right-Wing Actors (Springer, 2020); eEstonia. Europe’s Silicon Valley or a new 1984? in: Denise Feldner (eds.): Redesigning Institutions: Consequences of and Concepts for the Digital Transformation, Springer Nature: Heidelberg et al. 2020, 215–228. Patrick Horst is a Research Associate at the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn. His professional interests lie in the fields of comparative democracy research with special regard to parliaments, governments, and coalitions; elections and electoral systems; parties and party systems; federalism and direct democracy; transformations of authoritarian and democratic regimes. He is an expert on the political systems of the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany. His most recent publications include: xi

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Halbzeitbilanz der Trump-Regierung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019), Die USA—eine scheiternde Demokratie? (edited with Philipp Adorf and Frank Decker, Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2018), Die USA am Ende der Präsidentschaft Barack Obamas. Eine erste Bilanz (edited with Winand Gellner, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2016). Eckhard Jesse held the Chair for ‘political systems and political institutions’ at the Technical University of Chemnitz from 1993 to 2014. Jesse is one of the best-known German political scholars in the field of extremism and terrorism studies. He has also specialized in the study of German political parties and the German political system. Sabine Lang is Professor of European and International Politics and Jean Monnet Chair of European Union Studies at the Henry. M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, where she directs the Center for West European Studies/Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Her research focuses on gender and politics as well as on civil society-state relations in Germany and Europe. She has recently published Gender Equality in Politics. Springer Publisher 2019 (with Petra Ahrens, Katja Chmilewski, and Birgit Sauer), and co-edited (with Jill Irvine and Celeste Montoya) Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges: Contemporary Social Movements in Europe and North America. ECPR Press/ Rowman & Littlefield 2019. Dmytro Lutsenko is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bamberg and a Fellow of the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS). His research focuses on the analysis of electoral campaigns in the digital age, especially in Germany and Ukraine. Felix Philipp Lutz (Ph.D.) is Managing Partner of sophisticated knowledge gmbh, a marketing and research company in the field of neuromarketing. He is also an Associate with the HCA-Heidelberg Center for American Studies at Heidelberg University. While working on his Ph.D. thesis on consciousness and public memory in Germany, he was part of a research group on German Affairs at Mainz and Munich Universities. He was a Professor of International Relations at Schiller International University, and from 2007 to 2009, he was President of ibs-International Business School in Berlin. From 2009 until 2013, he was a Research Affiliate at Harvard University working on the neuro-anthropology of branding.

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Katharina McLarren is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. She holds degrees in International Relations and in Governance and Public Policy. In her research, she focuses on religion in international politics, with a particular theoretical focus on the English School and an empirical focus on state/transnational actors. She was a project coordinator of the DAAD funded project ‘Tunisia in Transition.’ Dr. Michael Meimeth, earned a Master degree in Political Sciences and his Ph.D. from the University of Trier, Germany. From 1985 until 1999, he held academic positions as Assistant Professor at the Universities of Trier, Cologne, and Saarbrücken. In 1990, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the New York University in New York City, USA. He has widely published on Theory of International Relations, European Security Affairs, French Security Policy and Franco–German Relations, and most recently on Sustainable Development. From 2000 until June 2010, he was Director of the ASKO EUROPA-STIFTUNG in Saarbrücken, Germany, where he supervised the foundation’s activities on promoting and exploring the idea of European Integration in research, dialogue, and high level academic teaching. From that moment until his retirement in June 2020, he held the position as a Director of Overseas University Program at the Centre International de Formation Européenne (Cife). Michael Oswald is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Passau, Associate Research Fellow and Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, and faculty member at International Center for European Education. His main interest lies in political communication, populism, and extremism research. He wrote his dissertation on the Tea Party movement and has held visiting scholarships at Texas A&M and Harvard University. He is the author/editor of numerous books and articles, most recently The Palgrave Handbook of Populism. John Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He is the author and co-author of numerous articles dealing with European affairs and comparative politics published in leading political science journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, German Politics, International Political Science Review, and International Studies Quarterly. He is coauthor with Robert Perry of Comparative

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Analysis of Nations: Quantitative Approaches, and edited volumes with Winand Gellner, The Berlin Republic: German unification and a Decade of Changes and with Michael Meimeth Sustainable Development —An integrative Paradigm? A Transatlantic View on Politics, Economy and Society. His recent work includes addressing the factors since 2010 in the USA which has fueled polarization, populism, and authoritarian tendencies within the US political system. Thomas Saalfeld is Professor of Political Science and Vice President for Research at the University of Bamberg. His research interests include German political parties, legislative organization, parliamentary party groups, and text as data in the context of legislative studies. Stefan A. Schirm is Professor of Political Science at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, where he holds the Chair of International Politics. He has taught at the Universities of Munich and Stuttgart, and served as J. F. Kennedy Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, and as Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. His research focuses on global economic governance, German, British, and US political economy, domestic preference formation, and the societal approach to IPE. His work has been published in journals such as Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Review of International Studies, International Political Science Review,European Politics and Society, European Journal of International Relations and Politics. Peter Schmidt is Honorary Professor of the University at the Mannheim (Germany). After his time as an Assistant Professor at the University of Mannheim, Professor Schmidt worked in different functions at the Foundation Science and Politics (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP) from 1983 to 2008. Aside his engagement at the University of Mannheim, he also taught at the Bundeswehr University and the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity in Munich. He also served from 2008 to 2010 during the summer and fall term as a Visiting Professor at Queen’s University and as McNaughton-Vanier Visiting Scholar at the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario. He organizes crisis management simulation and scenario workshops on a regular basis, especially at Cranfield University (United Kingdom). Bernhard Stahl has been Professor of International Politics at the University of Passau since 2010. His research areas cover European foreign

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policy (German, French, and EU foreign policy in particular), in particular vis-à-vis South Eastern Europe, identity theory, and comparative regionalism. From 2009 to 2010, he was Senior Lecturer in a Master’s program for Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordan students at the University of Düsseldorf. From 2013 to 2018, he led the DAAD funded project ‘Tunisia in Transition.’ Roland Sturm holds the Chair of German and comparative politics, European studies, and political economy at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Parliamentary Research, Berlin. He was educated at the Universities in Berlin (FU), Heidelberg, Sheffield, and Stanford. He taught at the Universities of Hamburg (Armed Forces), Heidelberg (where he got his qualifications), and was Professor in Tübingen. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Washington (Seattle), Peking University, and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). Niko Switek is currently DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School for International Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interest focuses on political parties and party systems as well as on coalition politics. He published extensively about the German Alliance 90/The Greens and the Green party family in Western Europe. In addition, he worked on parties on European level (‘Europarties’) and compiled a volume on fictional TV series about politics. Daniela Wawra is Professor of English Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Passau. Her research interests include political communication and US cultures. Michael Weigl is Assistant Professor at the Chair of Political Science at the University of Passau. The focus of his research lies on aspects of governance, party systems, and elections. After his studies of Bavarian history, modern history, and political science, he was a member of the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) and the Department for Political Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. His publications cover various topics of Bavarian and German politics. Sarah Elise Wiliarty is Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She received her B.A. from

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Harvard and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on European politics, women in politics, political parties, energy policy in Europe, and political leadership. Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as German Politics, German Politics and Society, and Politics and Gender. She is the author of the CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party (Cambridge University Press).

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3

Fig. 1.4

Fig. 1.5

Fig. 1.6

Fig. 1.7

Socialism is basically a good idea, it was just put into practice badly (% Agree) Comparative compensation rates 2010–2018 (Source Eurostat Regional Data Base https://ec.europa.eu/eur ostat/web/regions/data/database) UN Computed Human Development Index scores of Germany and German States (East and West) compared to EU15 and EEC11 member states, 1990–2018 (Source Global Data Lab https://globaldat alab.org/shdi/view/shdi/DEU/?levels=1%2B4&interp olation=0&extrapolation=0&nearest_real=) Mean per capita GNI of Germany and German states (East and West) compared to EU15 and EEC11 member states, 1990–2018 US$ 2011 PPP values, thousand (Source Global Data Lab, https://globaldatalab.org) Comparisons of ratio of per capita wealth among German regions and Visegrad 4 member states of EU (Source Global Data Lab https://globaldatalab.org) Distributional patterns of government and opposition parties relative to AfD, by East/West districts and election years, 2017 and 2021 Vote performance (2nd vote) AfD 2021 by vote performance (2nd vote) AfD 2017, by district

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34 35

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1.8

Fig. 1.9

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 7.1

(a) Residual 2021 percent 2nd ballot vote by 2017 percent AfD 2nd ballot vote at district level, by East/West region (b) Residual 2021 percent AfD 2nd ballot vote by residual 2017 percent AfD 2nd ballot at district level, by East/West region (a) 2017 2nd ballot vote for AfD by structural development at district level, by East/West region (b) 2021 2nd ballot vote for AfD by structural development at district level, by East/West region Combined Vote Share of CDU/CSU and SPD, 1949–2021 (Source Calculated and estimated from Deutscher Bundestag [2021], Feldkamp and Ströbel [2005], Schindler [1999]) Ideological Positions of the Main German Parties Regarding Economic Policy and the ‘GALTAN’ Dimension, 1999 and 2019 (99 following the party acronyms indicates a party’s ideological position in 1999, 19 shows the position in 2019; Source Data extracted from Bakker et al. [2015]) Voter Turnout in Germany, 1949–2021 (Source Estimated from data from Deutscher Bundestag [2021], Feldkamp and Ströbel [2005], Schindler [1999]) Aggregate Volatility 1953–2021 (Source Emanuele [2015] with updates for 2015–2021) Partisan Attachment, 1977–2020 (Source Forschungsgruppe Wahlen [2019]) Party membership 1990–2020 (Source Niedermayer [2020]) Election Results of The Greens and Alliance 90/The Greens (1978–2020) (Source Author’s illustration with data from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ der_Wahlergebnisse_und_Regierungsbeteiligungen_von_ B%C3%BCndnis_90/Die_Gr%C3%BCnen [September 2021])

37

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114 116 117 118

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Fig. 15.1

Roll-Call Votes in the Bundestag of the Green Parliamentary Group on Government Initiatives (1994–2017) (Note Roll-call votes are a subset of all votes taken in the Bundestag. The percentages in the figure reflect the percentage of cases where there were more “yes” than “no” votes, or more “no” votes more than “yes” votes [Rounding to a 100 percent where equal number of “yes” and “no” votes or abstentions was recorded.]; Source Author’s illustration based on data from Bergmann et al. [2018] and author’s coding from data computed from bundestag.de web site as part of Jungjohann and Switek [2019]) Government Participation of Greens (State and federal level) (Source Author’s own illustration with data from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Wahler gebnisse_und_Regierungsbeteiligungen_von_B%C3%BCn dnis_90/Die_Gr%C3%BCnen [September 2021]) German defense expenditures 1980–2019 (Authors’ own depiction based on numbers provided by World Bank [2021])

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 1.3 Table 1.4 Table 1.5

Table 1.6

Table 1.7

Table 1.8 Table 1.9 Table 1.10 Table 3.1 Table 3.2

Basic profiles of the East/West structural topography of Germany German unemployment and employment East and West by gender, and percent of population at risk Comparative German population patterns East–West Comparative German education attainment East–West, by gender East–West election results for major parties in 2017 and 2021 German general elections, by electoral district performance Mean values per electoral district of key demographic and socio-economic indicators defining broader structural development, by election and region Distribution patterns of East/West election districts by Structural Development Index quartiles computed from all-German Index distribution Comparative East–West German basic values Comparative East–West German basic values, by demographic group, 2018 only Basic German attitudes and beliefs toward women, family, marriage and work East–West, by gender, 2016 Electoral performance of the main German political parties, 1949–2021 Electoral Turnout by Region 1990–2021

18 21 22 23

32

41

43 52 61 71 109 115

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.3 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 8.1 Table 12.1 Table 12.2

Publicly funded staff of the members of the Bundestag (MdBs) and the parliamentary party groups, 2005–2019 Election results of the PDS and the party Die Linke in the federal elections since 1990 (in percent) Participation of the PDS and the party Die Linke to state governments or tolerance by them Positive response to the statement ‘Eastern Germans are second-class citizens’ (in 2019) Economic performance since German unification Unemployment rates in the East German states, 1994–2009

120 193 201 241 327 328

CHAPTER 1

Three Decades of “Flourishing Landscapes”: An Introduction to German Unification and the Challenge of Managing Its Legacy into the Next Decade Michael Oswald and John Robertson

Introduction As the German democracy navigates its way forward into the third decade of the twenty-first century—its fourth decade of unification following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defining moment that shattered the Iron Curtain dividing Europe since World War II—a stark and vivid reality relentlessly demands continued attention from the German public and its

M. Oswald (B) University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] J. Robertson Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_1

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political leadership. The legacy of division weighs heavily on Germany. In many ways, the polity is one federal republic and two Germanies. It has been such since October 3, 1990, and it remains so now—even if less obvious and pronounced—more than thirty years after the two surviving parts of the former Fatherland after World War II were united in a mixed atmosphere of fanfare, jubilance, and optimism, blended with skepticism, apprehension, and uncertainty. This comparison might not strike home with every German since it is perhaps less obvious to some than others what a strenuous effort the German unification was—economically, politically, and culturally. Because of the stark historical and situational differences, an attentive reading of comparative history will draw the parallel between Germany in the three decades since unification and the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Eric Foner, arguably the most renowned student of Reconstruction and its long reach through more than 150 years of American history, recently reminded his readers, decisions made right after the end of the conflict and the reunification of the American republic set in motion the trajectory of contests over law, inspired by narratives and powered by partisan energy which continue to shape everyday lives of American citizens today, as well as energize the passions of division that continue to shape American politics. These ‘conflicting constructions’ which began with a Reconstruction undermined the spirit and promise of the period of American history known as the ‘second founding’ built on the hope of reuniting two parts of the American union and integrating an enslaved population into the civic polity of the democracy. The gaps persisted in many ways through decades of transformation and change in no small part because of the differing perspectives and interpretations surrounding inevitably less than precise designs and definitions of what the reconstituted American union should be with regard to the ideals of equality and rights that would guide politics and social construction moving forward. “Ambiguity creates possibilities. It paved the way for future struggles, while giving different groups grounds on which to conduct these conflicts. Who determines which of a range of possible meanings is implemented is very much a matter of political power?” (Foner, 2019, p. xxvi). Abolitionists in America saw the future as the fruition of the highest ideals of the alignment; anti-abolitionists and protagonists of the defeated southern states saw that future emerging after the Civil War as a betrayal of something profoundly sacred and an

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existential threat to their vision of a proper society moving forward. The divisions which defined the challenges from the beginning of Reconstruction took root and constrained the course of the politics over how to realize the contending values which inspired its birth. This served to pave the path forward which leads through periods of sharp regionally reinforced and socially inspired political conflict. “It is impossible,” asserts Foner, “to understand American society today without knowing something about the Reconstruction period a century and a half ago” (Foner, 2019, p. 176). Of course, there is a vast difference between a unification driven by four years of bloodshed fueled by the rival visions of slavery and the fulfillment of liberal ideals, and a unification coming on the heels of a complex Cold War imbued with competing ideological principles and theories of economic and social justice. Not to mention the most obvious difference: Reconstruction was about managing the scars of open warfare between the parts to the union where one part to the unification did not seek through popular demand to rejoin the other part, and which required reinventing virtually entirely a slave-based economy and wholly segregated society in that regime which was aggrieved by the union process itself. The difficulties in the German case were managing a unification that began with a reasonable expectation of an improved life for one of the two unifying partners—and where large segments of the public within both parts to the union embraced the process (Novotná, 2015). The American example was a tragic reckoning of incontrovertible inconsistencies grudgingly embraced during its constitutional founding in the eighteenth century; the German example was one of finally correcting in effect an historical detour. Nonetheless, despite these stark and unmistakable differences in details and historical context, it is hard to ignore the isomorphisms that can be seen to expose the broad similar outlines of America’s long journey in struggling with the legacy of the reunion, and the merger of the two German regimes separated by deep animosities and contempt following at least two generations of starkly different state structure and civic authority. What connects the two vastly different experiences is the most basic issue shared by the two cases, and perhaps the only relevant common experience bridging them. From the beginning of each county’s experiment in union and reunion, the differences that distinguished the two parts in each case were influenced at the outset by a combination of diverging circumstances, normative aspirations, and

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subsequent decisions emerging from the political process shaping the reconstructed polity in both the American and German experiences. Thirty years of German unification reveals evidence of cracks and crevices which could ossify trajectories that threaten to reinforce differences between the two parts to the union created in 1990 into the next decade. Any serious effort to explore the process should at least offer some insight as to what might make a thirty-year assessment something of significance. Certainly, one such justification is embracing the possibility that at this point into the history of German unification it is somewhat specious to suggest that the fault for differences between East and West German regions lies solely with the character of the East and the wrong lessons learned by the East from years of Communism (Wittlinger, 2010). Major insights into how misleading this simple characterization may be can be found in the excellent special issue of German Politics edited by Lang et al. (2017), as well as Palgrave Series on “New Perspectives in German Political Studies” edited by William E. Paterson and Thomas Saalfeld. More balance may be provided if we resist denying the plausibility that like the complicated path of American Reconstruction many decades ago, something about the decisions and content of policies during the first generation of the post-unification era has had a powerful if not permanent and lasting impact on unification’s trajectory going forward.

Unification in Comparative Perspective Underscoring the discussion above is the empirical analysis of Novotná (2008, 2015) who has explicated the basic types of unification characterizing the broader process of change associated with German unification and the enlargement of the EU. Given Germany’s indispensable place within the experiment of European integration, her perspective has distinct relevance. From her proposed framework, German unification is clearly a ‘Transplantation’ type of unification, as opposed to ‘Adaption’ unification which generally characterizes EU enlargement (Novotná, 2015, pp. 15–21). German transplantation unification was characterized at the outset years (1990 to roughly 1994) as being immediate, rapid, and largely unexpected. Such unification sees the ‘entering’ partner (e.g., Eastern Germany) of the unification pair to have little say in the process ahead of time, nor much in the way of the use of referendums which might serve to invest the accepting partner with equal ownership and

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responsibilities for the ensuing risks, costs, and obligations of unification. The ‘accepting’ party (e.g., Western Germany) exercised a largely top-down process of integration and unification, applying strong leadership to dominant negotiations surrounding the process of initial union. The ‘accepting’ partner largely controls the outlines of an economic plan prior to securing a clear agreement on a new political structure in an effort to offer the entering partner various resource allocation before the heavy weight of burdens and costs are fully realized. The ‘entering’ partner receives a full-fledged transfer of institutional authority in accordance with the ‘accepting’ partner, with political elite and agents of policy within the ‘entering’ partner being largely replaced by methods determined by the ‘accepting’ partner. The ‘entering’ partner accepts the economic parameters of the new partnership, while having little if any time to fully institutionalize reforms within their system to prepare and buffer the public and their markets from the impact of the radical transformation. This ‘shock’ therapy approach to unification initially enjoys popularity among the publics of both the ‘entering’ and ‘accepting’ partners. However, when the full consequences and their respective costs are felt among the public, nostalgia sets in among the ‘accepting’ public and a slow identity-divide begins to take hold, while the ‘accepting’ partner grows weary of what it sees as ingratitude on the part of the ‘entering’ partner. …the Transplantation Type of Integration exemplifies an immediate, speedy integration which proceeds, due to a strong leader from the accepting entity, as a top-down course of action without a vote on the accession and favors economic integration over political integration. The German unification precisely copies this model…The Adaptation Type of Integration, on the contrary, assumes a much slower and gradual pace; it requires bureaucratic, consensual leaders in the entering entity who first embark on democratization and economic transformation, meet all the political conditions, and then, after conducting a ‘bottom-up’ voting procedure, are rewarded by an allowed accession. (Novotná, 2008, p. 96)

Amitai Etzioni (1962) constructed a paradigmatic framework for understanding how unification might proceed successfully. Like Novotná, he distinguished between rapid, sudden, and top-down unification as opposed to one that is more drawn out and tempered by gradual institutionalized reform with shared values between partners before unification.

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And, he draws a comparison between a unification sealed with referenda and broad public involvement through discussion, participation, and grass-roots engagement in the critical moments of decision making during the pre-unification period. Yet, Etzioni’s paradigmatic framework anticipated that something approaching a ‘shock’ unification could be successful if certain conditions characterized the moment of union. His framework identified several of these “conditions” which could facilitate rapid German unification of 1990. These included something a shared culture between the parts (East and West Germany), with deep experiences from many previous patterns of economic and cultural intercourse between the two parts building a strong degree of trust between the two partners, combined with territorial proximity of the unified regions, and absent state coercion forcing the two parties into unification, with crucial allocation of economic rewards before the pain and burden of unification would take hold, all of these conditions sealed with the normative consent among the two populations before unification creates the new regime. These requisite conditions basically constitute the core of what would assure some degree of legitimacy to the newly unified political system and sustain it through the three phases that would, according to Etzioni, characterize the first generation of the post-unification era. These three sequential phases would consist first of the ‘take-off’ phase where the promised and intended transfers and new institutional arrangements would be implemented and adjusted in the face of inevitable challenges to unification. It would be followed by the second phase of building where a period of institutionalized political, economic, and cultural exchange between the publics and political elite of the two parts hone an accommodation tempering the more resistant residual differences. This is the building phase. Unification concludes with the third phase characterized by an awareness that the union of the two parts is no longer the culprit blamed for the ills and shortcomings facing one or both parts moving forward with political and economic policy. It might be reasonable to assume—all else being equal—that a decade would be the approximate space of time required for the take-off phase to conclude, another decade for the elite and public to absorb the routine expectations flowing from the transformation immediately following the unification, and a third decade to accept the unification as no longer the source of political apprehension and distrust, focusing instead on the normal debates, discourse and political engagements over preferences and values within the newly formed civil society. This three-part phase-structure offered by Etzioni

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(1962) underscores the potential significance of the point made by Foner (2019) with respect to the long-term significance of unification: once institutionalized, the ripple effects following from union spread over subsequent decades highlighting the impact of decisions made at take-off which may be forgotten or taken for granted within subsequent phases yet which continue to echo through time and serve as the sources of energy contouring debates and political discourse in the newly formed union. They set the stage for the future course of policy and political debate. Altering the trajectory of unification may of course still be an option, yet with each passing decade the task becomes more complex as the new normality raises barriers to change by attaching prospects of higher costs and the anxiety of uncertainties following from disruption and dislocation within daily life. Marcus Böick (2020, p. 143) reduces to a simple pertinent question why there is a continuing interest in German unification: “What are the long-term effects of this shortcut strategy in politics, economics, and culture?”. Indeed, Lang et al. (2017, p. 444) remind us that this task may not be so simple. The years since unification, they note, have been characterized by “many new crises affecting Germany and the region, such as the Eurozone crisis, [which] have given rise to a number of curiously reciprocal (as opposed to unidirectional) interactions among foreign and domestic actors and networks, making it harder to disaggregate direct from indirect forces for change; the ostensible ‘effect’ of globalization in one arena can quickly become a new cause for change in some other domain.” The causal linkages explaining such differences with respect to the outcomes of unification in the form of attitudes and indicators of shared wealth and priority may be much harder to track given such interactions. Furthermore, unification and the progress of cohesion between East and West may also be due to structural features unrelated to the subsequent effects of institutional decisions made at the moment of unification. These include the lingering effect of communism itself as a system of organizing society (Alesina & Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007), inherent differences between East and West that predated the division of Germany before World War II (Becker et al., 2020), or merely a product of personal development of youth over time “under conditions of social change” associated with transformations impacting “social structures and institutions, norms, values, cultural products, and symbols” (Silbereisen, 2005, p. 2). Yet, after 30 years, any assessment of where the course of unification has carried Germany is bound to reveal two fundamental conclusions:

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(1) where Germany is today with respect to extant differences between West and East says something more about inherent differences between the two territorial units to the original unification decision, and (2) there is some utility to be realized from embracing the logic that differences shown in the present reflect not merely a temporary aspect still encumbered by the calculations of unification and its effect, but also something of the outgrowth of the decisions which set in motion the unification era and became institutionalized features of subsequent phases and decades of political, economic, and social interactions coloring everyday politics and market challenges. Certainly, these institutionalized patterns of politics, economic, and social transactions have helped define how Germany has confronted its roles and responsibilities as a sovereign political actor within Europe, as well as a leading member state of the broader European Union, in addition to the country’s interactions with the region and the broader global arena. After more than thirty years since Helmut Kohl promised East Germany “flourishing landscapes,” Germany has navigated eight federal elections (yet only four Chancellors as of 2022), two large global economic crises (1998, 2008–2010), a European currency union (1999–2002), enlargement of the EU from 12 to 28, and back to 27, a EU constitutional crisis in 2005, two serious Euro currency crises of epic proportions (2010 and 2012), three Middle Eastern wars dividing NATO and Europe (1991, 2001 and 2003), Russian military aggression in 2008 and 2014, a European land war in 2022, and the rise of a populist anti-EU and anti-democratic parties and movements threatening the postwar international order. Each of these has served to define and modify German perceptions of leadership and accompanying responsibilities to Europe and the global community, as well as fashion a sense within the German public of what are the preferred balances of contending priorities within the German civil society. One would be hard pressed not to say that any assessment of German unification must reflect on Germany’s post-unification normal politics—its post-unification political reality. Well past the ‘take-off’ and building phase of unification, Germany stands in the ante way of the fourth decade following unification and should be approached now as if the “normal” of today connects that legacy of union to the social, economic, and political contests surrounding the pursuit of various opportunities and policy strategies moving into the next decade and beyond. The chapters presented within this volume offer important insight into not only why unification continues to be a factor shaping German politics

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now and into the future with consequent challenges to German elites and the public alike, but also how the union of East and West opened critical cleavages and fissures in the landscape of German civil society. The course of German unification continues to play out within the broader contours of the social, economic, and political German landscape still digesting the complex and electrifying aspirations inspiring the drive for a union of East and West between August 1989 and October 1990. However, to help us grasp the links between the beginning of the take-off phase and contemporary Germany, as well as gauge the scope and impact of unification, it is necessary to take stock of the union’s legacy, in general. In so doing, we may be better placed to assess the challenges wrought by unification which help to appreciate the context surrounding the economic, political, and social challenges Germany faces moving into the next decade. One such context is familiarity and intimacy with the event of unification itself. Working from statistics provided publicly by the German Federal Office of Statistics (Statistisches Bundesamt ) in its 14th Coordinated Population Projection for Germany, 2021, we know that approximately 31 percent of Germans in 2021 were not yet alive in 1990 when the two Germanies united, three times the figure for 2000. Let us assume age 25 is roughly when one has become rooted in firm viewpoints on politics and has undertaken at least the considerations of the advantage and disadvantages of raising a family and bearing children, a point in life when for the vast majority of people they have passed through most, if not all, of their education, and in effect become not only fully socialized into a cultural and social system, but experienced as an adult with at least some of the responsibilities and burdens confronting adults within a polity (Berntsen & Rubin, 2004). The data offered by the Federal Office of Statistics show that approximately 64 percent of the German population in 2021 was not yet at their 25th year of life in 1991; indeed, 50 percent were not yet 15 years of age at unification (German Federal Office of Statistics, 2021). Thus, with first-hand memories absent and dimming overtime, it would seem prudent to begin our introductory assessment with a review of some of those defining decisions and decisive moments between November 1989 and October 3, 1990 which set German unification on its course through the next three decades.

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From Divided to United Germany: Germany’s “Crowded Hour” The events leading up to the final unification of the two Germanies stretched essentially from August 1989 to October 1990. Three consecutive periods comprise these 14 months: (1) the months from August 1989 until November 9, 1989, defined by the growing migrations of East Germans via various routes to reach West Germany, highlighted by the ‘freedom trains’ transporting East Germans who had sought sanctuary with the West Germany embassy in Prague via railroad over Eastern Germany and on to the West Germany, the rise of the ‘new Forum’ as political opposition group in mid-September 1989 and the growing ‘Monday demonstrations’ beginning in Leipzig and spreading to Dresden and other cities in the East. The critical moment in the first period leading to the breach in the Berlin Wall occurred on October 17, 1989, when in an effort to reform the political situation in the GDR and slow the rising tide of fleeing East Germans to the West, Erich Honecker was forced out of his position as General Secretary of the SED by the Politburo and replaced by Egon Krenz. It did nothing to staunch the public street marches, stem the flow of East Germans seeking exit to the West, or defuse the growing opposition in the GDR for democratic reform. To fend off the pressure, the SED and the East German government announced plans to ease travel of restrictions to the West. An impromptu statement on November 9, 1990, by East German official Günter Schabowski during a press conference indicating the wall was now open for transit led to the flood of East Berliners to the gates and through to the West.1 The second period extends from November 1989 until March 1990 and is marked by three dramatic events: (1) Helmut Kohl’s speech to the West German Bundestag on November 28, 1989, announcing a 10Point Plan to move toward complete German unification, (2) key summits and conferences between Berlin, Washington, Moscow, and Germany’s European allies to build support for the dynamic pressures facing the 1 Schabowski should have only announced that restrictions would be eased. Yet, when

he was asked when this would happen, he stated, “as far as I know — effective immediately, without delay.” People went to the borders where officials finally opened up the gates. It is assumed that the Honecker regime sought to give out visas more easily. Thus, Schabowski’s ‘announcement’ and its impact was a shock to the leadership stemming from a mistake regarding a relaxation of visa restrictions.

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Kohl government in Bonn, and (3) the March 9, 1990, general elections to the East German parliament (Volkskammer), the first and last free national elections in the GDR. Kohl’s 10-Point Plan caught many in both West and East by surprise. The scope and comprehensiveness of Kohl’s bold pronouncements were the first official public breach of the unspoken wish on the part of many to seek full unification between the two remaining parts of the Fatherland. By Kohl’s fait accompli, swift unification was now in motion. Between then and the Volkskammer election in March 1990, intense discussions between Bonn and Washington, Bonn and Moscow, Washington and Moscow, and Bonn and their European allies worked to sort out concern over unification. It became clear by February that there was little prospect for the GDR to salvage two independent states, with the GDR reformed rather than absorbed into the West. The GDR’s days were numbered. Nonetheless, East German government convened a national round table in February consisting of opposition groups, government, and other key players in the ongoing tumult of the moment to try to sort out the complex differences and anxieties constraining political and economic reform, a new constitution, and the preservation of an autonomous and sovereign GDR. Yet, the greater swell of the East German public was now well past being satisfied with a merely modified GDR. Scheduled elections in March 1990 to the East German parliament in hopes of clarifying the boundaries of possible maneuver for the GDR resulted in a stunning victory for the CDU-led Alliance for Germany which emerged as the plurality winner in the elections. This in effect closed the last remaining pathway to reform in the GDR and dealt the fatal blow to any hope of those still clinging to the prospect of a gradual transition toward a confederacy of the two parts of Germany or a lengthy transition period of evolution. From this point onward, the initiatives lay almost solely with Helmut Kohl’s Bonn government and his CDU Party in forging a unification strategy in line with his earlier 10-Point Plan articulated in November 1989. This ushered in the third and final period of unification stretching from March 1989 until the final legal unification on October 3, 1990. Kohl and his government had to manage the openly expressed concerns of his allies (primarily France and the UK) that German unification might imbalance power within Western Europe and NATO. To these worries were added Washington’s concern about Germany being anything other than a full participating member of NATO and Moscow’s anxiety about German

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unification weakening Gorbachev’s reform effort in the USSR and destabilizing what remained of Soviet interests in Central and East Europe. The USSR’s apprehension was shared as well by more oppressive and less-progressive one-party states within the Soviet orbit, such as Bulgaria and Romania, who looked warily on what was transpiring in democratic Poland and Hungary as harbingers of a future torn by transformations out of control. Bonn’s own worries centered on the realization that without a solution to the demands for unification the West would continue to be inundated with East Germans fleeing westward fearful that the last best opportunity to escape the grip of the SED and the East would be lost if Moscow simply refused to cooperate. Through promises to reduce the West German military, coupled with interest free loans and grants-in-kind to Moscow, Bonn managed to soften the Soviet Union’s anxiety and resistance. This was further aided by Washington’s controversial promise and agreement with Moscow not to expand NATO into the former member states of the Warsaw Pact (and agreement proclaimed and formalized by NATO in the July 1990 London Declaration). Kohl executed statesman’s skills to the utmost in drawing on the trust he had gained from Francois Mitterrand and his promise to Paris and London to accept a monetary union within the EU. To Washington, Bonn formally promised to remain a full and loyal participant within NATO and not a neutral player. To East Germany, Kohl extended full monetary and economic union, offering in effect nearly a full 1:1 exchange of the by then worthless East German currency for the powerful West German Deutschmark. Economically, this did not make much sense and complicated plans to create economic parity between the two Germanies. However, it was a stunning political decision and designed to solidify social stability. The Kohl administration also set up a German Unity Fund which allocated DM 115 billion to the East. The fund was increased to DM 146 billion in August 1990 (some $87 billion). To all this, Kohl added to Berlin the promise to extend West Germany’s extensive and renowned welfare support system to East Germans once unification was formalized. It was also the position of Bonn that unification take place within the principle outlined in Article 23 of the German Grundgesetz (or, in effect the West German constitution) thereby fast-tracking the process by avoiding the necessity of delaying unification until lengthy negotiations were concluded over a new constitution and referenda in both parts of Germany. This proposal was accepted by the newly elected Volkskammer, and on July 1, 1990, the State Treaty was signed between East and

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West Germany establishing the German monetary and economic union. On August 23, 1990, the East German Volkskammer voted to enter the existing West German state under the auspices of the West German constitution’s Article 23, including the restoration of the five former Eastern states of the former regions within the GDR formally abolished in 1952. This was followed by the signing of the Unification Treaty between the GDR and FRG on August 21, 1990, taking effect on October 3, 1990. The last step in the process shaping the final period of the German unification process was the Treaty on the ‘Final Settlement with Respect to Germany,’ signed within the framework of the 2 + 4 group (the two Germanies, plus the four major war allies of USSR, United States, France, and UK who had once formed the Allied War Council) formally ending World War II and fully restoring German sovereignty on September 21, 1990. The long arc of semi-sovereignty for Germany dating from the September 1944 when the Third Reich’s homeland began to be penetrated by allied armies and the planning for a post-war Germany by the tripartite European Advisory Committee (devised by British, American, and Soviet planners) had reached its end point. These three periods set in motion the ‘take-off’ phase of German unification which entailed three key elements during the period 1990–1994. First, the actual transfer of the promises made by Bonn to Berlin and specified in both the State Treaty and the Unification Treaty. Second, the formal institutionalization of the Trust Agency (Treuhandanstalt, or Treuhand, for short) for handling the privatization of property and businesses in the former GDR states (the period known to many older East Germans as the era of the ‘Abwicklung ’) in effect transforming the Treuhandanstalt from an advisory body into semi-autonomous agency which would eventually privatize and close down several thousand enterprises throughout East Germany, send 4 million East Germans into unemployment, and subject East Germans to the harsh realities of a strong competitive capitalist market and simultaneously exposing the East to the powerful West German economy while opening it to the expanded and vast EU single market. And, finally, the third factor shaping the take-off stage of German unification was Germany’s ascendance as the first-among-equals within the newly formalized European Union founded on a common currency and the recent but powerful single market of the 12 (to be 15 in 1995) member states of the EU who recognized Germany’s leadership role due to its powerful financial and economic status and its newly expanded

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population from 56 to 81 million. These factors defined the Federal Republic as the indispensable member state of the post-cold war EU. Germany’s modern ‘crowded hour’ was driven forward by a series of complex and breathtaking compromises largely orchestrated by Helmut Kohl and West German diplomats fashioned in a tight space of time in order to prevent the momentum and the enthusiasm fueling the promise of unification from being lost. Mikhail Gorbachev had warned the SED and East German government in 1989 that “Life punishes those who come late.” The political leadership of West Germany, and Helmut Kohl in particular, pursued unification as if driven by this warning—a warning his East German counterpart Erich Honecker had not sufficiently heeded. The rapidly changing situation in the East by which the process proceeded at break-neck speed can be grasped by tracing the public’s expectations of what would occur. In October 1989, 30 percent of West Germans believed unification would occur in the next few years and 56 percent thought it impossible; only 2 percent of West Germans saw the prospects of unification likely within the next year. In February 1990, 70 percent of West Germans shared the opinion that unification had proceeded too rapidly, a number only slightly lower in June when 52 percent of West Germans still expressed the belief that unification had proceeded too quickly (Novotná, 2008, p. 87). Conventional wisdom holds that it was the ‘Treuhand’ itself that led many in the East and West alike to look back to these early years of the take-off and see a legacy of shock-therapy that set in motion a trajectory to unification that continues to plague Germany to this day. As Böick (2020, p. 152) explains, It is quite striking how the modes of political and/or economic decision making transformed over time: From the negotiations between communists and dissidents on the Central Round Table in February 1990 to the dramatic first (and last) election of March 1990 as a spectacular turning point. From that stage the governments in East and West engaged in hastened negotiations that led to the Economic, Currency, and Social Union as well as the Treuhand law in June and July of 1990. Afterward, a new exceptional regime of economic experts was established that tried to stay outside of political debates and to make quick decisions on the basis of economic standards. Reaching its dramatic peak in 1991–1992—with several hundreds of privatizations per month often accompanied by massive protests and debates—this economic regime was finally brought down by politics after 1993 and was again increasingly controlled and limited in its actions.

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For Böick and others, it is not merely the communist legacy or the logic of social change, nor just the traditions of structural difference between the Eastern and Western parts of Germany that fueled the division between East and West in Germany that would follow in the wake of the ‘shock-therapy.’ It is the largely unintended outcome associated with the extreme economic challenges and difficult political decisions that shaped the take-off stage of German unification that still bears such a burden for the East and the Federal Republic as a whole. “In retrospect, for many Easterners, the Treuhand poses as symbol of the first and hard contact with representative democracy and market economics that struck the Eastern population like an extreme thunderstorm, producing many individual setbacks and disappointments” (Böick, 2020, p. 153).

Comparative Assessments of East and West and the Grist of Politics Revealed: Mind the Gaps Thirty years after unification and more than $2 trillion of investment into Eastern Germany by the German federal government (half being in the form of welfare, unemployment, and pensions), with nearly 2 million Germans having left the former East Germany for the former West Germany, the East and the West regions still remain divided on a number of dimensions that undergird the political debates and policy preferences that are most likely to shape German politics moving into the next decade of unification. At the most basic level, Fig. 1.1 draws on data from the German General Survey (ALLBUS) to confirm that large majorities of Germans living in the East still believe socialism as an organizing principle is a good idea which was put into practice badly, a position shared by less than 50 percent of the those living in the West (GESIS, 2020).2 Whether this gap reflects ‘ostaglia’—the nostalgia for the GDR and another way of life (Arnold-de Simine, 2013)—or more profound addictions to habits of the heart (Alesina & Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007) embedded within a past much further back than 1945 (Becker

2 The question in the German General Social Survey asks respondents to react to the

statement: “Socialism is basically a good idea, it was just put into practice badly.” The data reported in Fig. 1.1 reflect the percentage of respondents among Eastern and Western respondents, respectively, who answered they either “Completely” or “Tend to” agree with the statement. Results based on weighted values according to the German General Survey design appropriate for making comparisons between East and West samples.

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90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1994

1998

2000 West Regions

2006

2010

2018

East Regions

Fig. 1.1 Socialism is basically a good idea, it was just put into practice badly (% Agree)

et al., 2020), or merely the rational aspirations of a population suffering from failed expectations (Böick, 2020), Fig. 1.1 symbolizes one of the gaps between the two parts of the Federal Republic. In the sections that follow, we offer an overview of what has been widely documented in different ways in many reports and studies using a wide array of methodologies, especially in recent years surrounding the thirty-year anniversary of Germany’s unification. However, we divide the overview into three parts to offer a three-dimensional contour to the broader context of German politics: (1) the aggregate differences in wealth, social dynamics, and opportunity; (2) the electoral choices that seem tied to the structural realities, at least in part, based on an assessment of the 2017 and 2021 German general elections; and finally (3) the social and cultural divide that exposes the foundations for potentially disparate narratives defining responsibilities, burdens, obligations, culpabilities, and fears which threaten to sustain the gaps between the two parts of Germany. Taken as a whole, these three dimensions supply the grist to the mill of politics in the now post-unification phase of modern German history which serves to vividly remind us that decisions of the past come due eventually with some interest attached. German unification was not a short-term loan, but a long-term mortgage.

1

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

17

Comparative Aggregate East–West Differences in Wealth, Social Dynamics, and Opportunity In their assessment of the cohesion across Germany three decades after unification, the authors of a recent Halle Institute’s report reflect many of the findings over the years since unification which underscore several unique components driving social and economic differences across Germany, both North and South, as well as East and West (Halle Institute for Economic Research, 2019). The East–West divisions, clearly the most vividly expressed, were identified by these authors as products of differing levels and qualities of productivity, labor and capital, education and training, research and development and entrepreneurial culture, among many other items of more granular nature. In other words, the usual suspects in the eyes of economists and sociologists. However, their comprehensive and often very detailed analysis brought into focus the crucial parameters of differences that in a broad, macro-sense set the East apart from the West in ways that threaten cohesion. And, these differences are revealed to be persistent and sharp not only within the context of an intra-German comparative framework, but also within the context of the EU, Germany’s most relevant and salient international context. Before considering a few of the more critical differences, let us first provide a clear appreciation of the scope of core comparisons one assumes when one speaks of modern unified Germany. First, some basics. Table 1.1 reports the basic profiles of the 16 German states with respect to a few of the core structural indicators distinguishing each, across East and West. More importantly, and in a crucial basic sense, the table clarifies what formal territorial units one is speaking of when one refers to the ‘East’ of the ‘West’ in contemporary Germany. The Federal Republic’s 16 formal states (Länder) are reported in Table 1.1, along with Germany as a whole. Berlin is reported separately, and not as West nor East as it was not entirely an Eastern or Western unit during the era of divided Germany. Western states comprise a population equal to 80 percent of the entire country, with six times the workers of the East and one-third more productivity (as measured by GDP per employee) than the East and 44 percent wealthier overall than the East (as measured by GDP per capital). Figure 1.2 documents how the standard of living within the East remains below that of the West consistently since at least the end of the take-off stage of unification. From 2010 through 2018, employees in the

East states Brandenburg Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Saxony Saxony-Anhalt Thuringia 2512 1610 4078 2208 2143

18,450 20,454 16,202

4085 991 2897 6682 66,824

19,858 2571 15,804 30,933 247,461

29,654 23,295

11,070 13,077 683 1841 6266 7982 17,933

83,019

Population (2018, 000)

35,748 70,542 419 755 21,116 47,710 34,112

357,582

Germany

West states Baden-Wuerttemberg Bavaria Bremen Hamburg Hesse Lower Saxony North Rhine-Westphalia Rhineland-Palatinate Saarland Schleswig–Holstein State average Total of west as a whole

Area (km2 )

221 108 132

85 69

206 385 183 232 270

310 185 1629 2438 297 167 526

232

Population (per km2 )

$124,895,050 $61,977,420 $62,322,900

$72,470,750 $44,835,630

$143,786,820 $35,839,360 $61,977,420 $280,992,054 $2,809,920,540

$514,002,710 $617,825,240 $33,001,030 $119,694,530 $286,785,890 $297,716,890 $699,290,650

$3,356,410,000

GDP (2018, 000 $)

$30,627 $28,065 $29,080

$28,851 $27,854

$35,200 $36,165 $21,396 $42,050 $42,050

$46,434 $47,246 $48,318 $65,010 $45,770 $37,296 $38,995

$40,429

GDP PC $ (2018)

Basic profiles of the East/West structural topography of Germany

Regions

Table 1.1

2,060,542 1,416,678 1,047,852

1,123,388 755,825

2,034,038 534,319 1,006,201 3,643,358 36,433,579

6,340,232 7,650,199 436,131 1,274,276 3,498,441 4,109,506 9,550,136

44,854,146

Persons employed

$60,613 $43,749 $59,477

$64,511 $59,321

$70,691 $67,076 $61,596 $77,125 $75,844

$81,070 $80,759 $75,669 $93,932 $81,976 $72,444 $73,223

$74,829

GDP/Employee ($ 2018)

16 9 8

10 6

15 4 11 – 244 (Includes 6 of Berlin’s 12)a

38 46 2 6 22 30 64

299

# of electoral districts

18 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

891

44,980 108,056

Area (km2 )

3645

9994 12,551

Population (2018, 000)

4090

123 116

Population (per km2 )

$146,806,610

$73,300,350 $366,501,750

GDP (2018, 000 $)

$40,278

$29,201 $29,201

GDP PC $ (2018)

2,016,282

1,280,857 q6,404,285

Persons employed

$72,811

$57,534 $57,228

GDP/Employee ($ 2018)

– 55 (Includes 6 of Berlin’s 12)a 12a

# of electoral districts

there are six of which are coded as within the former GDR, (Berlin-Mitte, Berlin-Pankow, Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg—Prenzlauer Berg East, Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Berlin-Lichtenberg) and six coded as within the former FRG (Berlin-Reinickendorf, BerlinSpandau—Charlottenburg Nord, Berlin-Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin-Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Berlin-Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Berlin-Neukölln) Sources Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder https://www.regionalstatistik.de/genesis/online/ and Eurostat regional data base https://ec. europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/data/database

a Berlin is divided into 12 federal electoral districts. Though there is some overlap across the former East–West Berlin border (e.g., the Wall),

Berlin

State average Total of east as a whole

Regions

1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

19

20

M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

$50,000

$45,000

$40,000

West $35,000

Germany $30,000

Berlin

$25,000

East $20,000

$15,000

$10,000

$5,000

$0 2010

2011

Fig. 1.2 Comparative Regional Data Base abase)

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

compensation rates 2010–2018 (Source Eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/data/dat

East have been compensated at about 60 percent of that of the West. More telling perhaps is the fact that within the Eastern states long-term unemployment has consistently been greater than that of the Western states, as shown in Table 1.2. This is consistent across males and females since 2000. Employment rates of young German workers remain lower in the East, albeit only about 2 percentage points lower during recent years, as shown by the average rate over the period 2016–2020. Yet, the East is also characterized by a slightly higher rate among their population who are at risk, a gap of about 2 percentage points during the period 2016–2020. While one or two percentage points may seem small in size, if stretched out over a decade or more will translate into substantial absolute numbers that could be the fuel for reinforcing the gaps between the two regions of Germany, adding further political pressure and potential public discontent and frustration, and in effect feed political polarization. Table 1.3 depicts a different dimension of the same challenge. From the outset of unification, the concern of demographers, economists, and politicians has been the potential loss of population in Eastern Germany and a declining population base. The East has clearly shown a significant improvement in fertility rates, growing from 1.27 per woman in the early 2000s to a more recent average annual rate of 1.60 children

1

21

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

Table 1.2 German unemployment and employment East and West by gender, and percent of population at risk Long term unemployment 20–64 years old, 2000–2019 2000–2005

2006–2010

2011–2015

2016–2019

Germany Male Female

4.9 5.1

4.4 4.4

2.7 2.2

1.7 1.2

West Male Female

4.3 3.5

3.9 3.4

2.2 1.7

1.5 1.1

East Male Female

9.3 12.9

7.8 8.4

4.6 4.5

2.7 2.2

Berlin Male Female

10.8 8.5

10.5 8.7

5.8 5.0

2.9 2.5

Total

Male

Female

87.8 87.3 85.0 86.8

89.4 88.9 87.2 87.7

85.9 85.6 83.3 86.1

Employment rates ages 15–34 years old, 2016–2019

Germany West East Berlin

Percent of population at risk, 2016–2019 Germany West East Berlin

20.4 19.7 21.2 22.5

Notes Long term unemployment is defined as the number of people who are out of work and have been actively seeking employment for at least a year. People at risk are defined as those persons who are at risk of poverty or severely materially deprived or living in households with very low work intensity; they are persons with a standardized disposable income below the risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60 percent of the national median disposable income (after social transfers) Source Eurostat Regional Data Base https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/data/database

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M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

Table 1.3 Comparative German population patterns East–West Mean annual fertility rate per period Regions Germany West East Berlin

2002–2005

2006–2010

2011–2015

2016–2019

1.35 1.33 1.27 1.18

1.37 1.35 1.38 1.30

1.44 1.42 1.50 1.43

1.57 1.57 1.60 1.47

30.1 30.1 29.0 30.1

30.7 30.8 29.5 30.9

31.1 31.1 29.9 31.3

Mean annual age at childbirth per period Germany West East Berlin

29.3 29.4 28.2 29.2

Mean annual population change per 1000 persons 2016–2019 Population change Germany West East Berlin

3.0 3.4 −1.6 10.4

Natural population change −1.8 −1.6 −5.3 1.5

Net migration 4.8 5.0 3.7 8.9

Notes Fertility Rate is the mean number of children who would be born to a woman during her lifetime; Age at Childbirth is the average age of women delivering their first child (live birth); Population Change is the difference between the size of the population at the end and the beginning of the period; it is the difference in population size on 1 January of two consecutive years. It consists of two components: natural change and net migration; Natural Population Change is the difference between the number of live births and the number of deaths during the year, where a positive natural change, also known as natural increase, occurs when live births outnumber deaths and a negative natural change occurs when live births are less numerous than deaths; and Net Migration is the difference between immigration (moving into region) into and emigration (leaving region) in an area during the year (net migration is therefore negative when the number of emigrants exceeds the number of immigrants) Source Eurostat Regional Data Base https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/data/database

per woman by 2016–2019, a growth rate of 25 percent, compared to the West’s growth during the same period of approximately 18 percent (from 1.33 to 1.57 live births per woman). In terms of ages when women across the regions are giving their first birth, the East is also showing a promising trend overall and relative to that of the West. An Eastern woman on average has her first child at an age about 14 months before that of her Western counterpart (29.9 years compared to 31.1 years).

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THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

23

However, for both women in the East and West, this is a delay in their first child of about a year compared to the early 2000s. However, on the whole during the period 2016–2019, the East is experiencing more deaths than live births contributing to a negative natural population rate, and translating into an overall negative net population change of −1.6 per 1000 persons, compared to a net population change of 3.4 persons per 1000 in the West. The East compares favorably to the West with respect to education. Using two basic measures, higher education and “early leavers,” we see from Table 1.4 that in recent years the East has a slightly higher rate of people holding university or college certificate qualifications than that of the West. However, the patterns change with respect to gender. Nearly 30 percent of Eastern females hold higher education certifications compared to the 23.2 percent in the West, while among males the East lags the West by nearly 5 percentage points (25.8 percent in the East versus 30.2 percent in the West). Notably, the East is characterized by fewer early leavers overall and by gender, than of the West. Table 1.4 Comparative German education attainment East–West, by gender Regions

Total

Male

Female

Percentage holding certificates from universities and other higher education institutions among those 20–64 years, 2009–2019 Germany 27.7 29.2 West 26.7 30.1 East 27.6 25.8 Berlin 38.2 36.8

26.2 23.2 29.5 39.6

Percentage early leavers among those 18–24 years, 2016–2019 Germany 10.3 West 11.4 East 10.3 Berlin 7.4

9.1 10.2 8.9 6.5

11.4 12.9 11.7 8.2

Notes Early leavers have not completed at most their lower secondary education and are not involved in further education or training Source Eurostat Regional Data Base https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/data/database

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M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

East–West Comparisons Within the European Context While these basic intra-German comparisons show evidence of a mixed picture regarding cohesion, at least as reflected in broader macroindicators of compensation, employment, education, and population change, both in general and by gender, when we extend the range of the comparisons to include the broader regional comparative context within which Germany competes economically, a different perspective emerges. Figure 1.3 reports the UN Human Development Index (HDI) scores as a broad measure of social and economic development to place the East and West of Germany into a comparative picture. The HDI is a composite index based on a country’s or region’s life expectancy, mean years of schooling completed, as well as expected years of schooling upon entering

UN Computed Human Development Index Scores of Germany and German States (East and West) Compared to EU15 and EEC11 Member States, 1990 - 2018 0.95

0.9

West German States (Mean Annual Value; Excludes Berlin) East German States (Mean Annual Value; Excludes Berlin)

0.85 Germany (Total)

0.8

EU15 (Mean Annual Value)

0.75

EEC11 (Mean Annual Value)

0.7

Fig. 1.3 UN Computed Human Development Index scores of Germany and German States (East and West) compared to EU15 and EEC11 member states, 1990–2018 (Source Global Data Lab https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/view/ shdi/DEU/?levels=1%2B4&interpolation=0&extrapolation=0&nearest_real=)

1

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

25

the education system, and per capita income, with an overall score ranging from 1.0 to 0, where 1 is essentially a country/region with the highest standardized scores for all measures within the composite index relative to all other countries or regions. The graph in Fig. 1.3 clearly shows the persistent gap from 1990 until 2018 separating Eastern Germany from their Western German counterparts. However, Eastern Germany has done much better than that of the average score recorded for the 15 countries which were the EU member states as of October 1990 (including the Germany as a whole). Focusing further on the EC 11—those 11 European countries who were former Communist states along with the GDR and who acceded to the EU after 1990—Western German states have far outpaced their former fellow communist states, even before these 11 states were part of the EU (individual countries joining at different stages between 2004 and 2013). Figure 1.4 strips away the broader measures of HDI and reduces the comparison solely to wealth, or per capita income, 1990–2018. Specifically, the measure of wealth is measured in terms of domestic income, per capita (GNI), a variant of the broader GDP. Here, the gaps narrow between Eastern Germany and the 11 member states of the EU who were once communist regimes of East and Central Europe. And, unlike the broader HDI measure which includes life expectancies and education, East German per capita wealth compares less favorably with the 15 EU member states of West Europe as of 1990. And, of course, as expected, the wealth of the East remains substantially below that of the Western states of Germany during the entire period of unification. Finally, Fig. 1.5 converts per capita GDI wealth to ratios and thereby affords us a more revealing image of how the wealth of Western German states over time compares to that of not only the Western German states, but as well to that of the four most proximal and potentially relevant former communist states for the former East Germany: the Visegrad 4, a formal group within the EU comprising Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The ratio of Eastern GDI relative to the Western German states has remained relatively narrow, while those of the Visegrad 4 have grown considerably closer to that of the Eastern German states’ values. Immediately after unification, the vast wealth improvement experienced by the East which followed from wealth transfers and exchange rate conversions worked to the advantage of Germany’s Eastern states relative to the Visegrad 4. By 2018, those ratios had closed considerably, though

EEC11 (Mean Annual Value)

East German States (Mean Annual Value; Excludes Berlin)

EU15 (Mean Annual Value)

Germany (Total)

West German States (Mean Annual Value; Excludes Berlin)

Fig. 1.4 Mean per capita GNI of Germany and German states (East and West) compared to EU15 and EEC11 member states, 1990–2018 US$ 2011 PPP values, thousand (Source Global Data Lab, https://globaldatalab.org)

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

$20,000

$25,000

$30,000

$35,000

$40,000

$45,000

$50,000

$55,000

26 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

GDI of West German States as % of GDI of East German States

GDI of East German States as % of GDI of Visegrad States

GDI of West German States as % of GDI of Visegrad States

Fig. 1.5 Comparisons of ratio of per capita wealth among German regions and Visegrad 4 member states of EU (Source Global Data Lab https://globaldatalab.org)

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

350%

1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

27

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M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

the Eastern German states still enjoy more than double the Visegrad 4’s level of GDI. Thus overall, the thirty years of unification have seen the five Eastern German states of Germany enjoy significantly more robust wealth levels relative to their fellow former communist regimes of East and Central Europe who now populate the EU. There is a more mixed picture with regard to the 15 West European democracies (including Germany) who comprised the EU in 1990. In terms of wealth, Eastern Germany has remained considerably below the levels recorded for the EU15; yet, in terms of broader UN HDI scores, Eastern German states have been much more competitive with the EU15. Nonetheless, intra-German wealth and HDI comparisons show a distinct gap between the West and East of Germany, with the gap in wealth remaining of virtually a constant proportion over time (unlike the Visegrad 4 who have narrowed their gaps with respect to the Eastern German states since 1990). Overall, the data reflect the conclusions of the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy in its 2020 update on “German Unification and Strengthening the Economy of their Regions,” which notes that “the economic power [of the East] is still considerably below the overall German level and that of the highly developed European regions.”

A Comparative Survey of the 2017 and 2021 Elections in Germany: The Political Patterns of Division and Gaps The German Federal Ministry for Economy and Industry’s (2020) Office of the Commissioner for the New Federal States underscored vividly the second dimension of the broader context of German unification’s political legacy when it drew the direct connection between the gnawing gaps marring regional cohesion since German unification and the public uncertainties and frustrations that motivate political choice: the state of German unity does not satisfy all citizens equally. The consequences of the GDR dictatorship and the profound economic and social upheavals after reunification continue to have an impact in the new federal states. At the same time, the changes of the last few years and decades are associated with worries and uncertainties for many citizens - in the old and the new federal states - which have led to new polarizations in our society.

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THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

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This concern for imbalanced socioeconomic and structural development has drawn attention to the electoral attraction of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political party. The rising impact and expanding influence of right-wing and populist movements in Germany and the linkages to the AfD have been widely analyzed and discussed in the literature (Arzheimer, 2021; Vorländer et al., 2018). The challenges of immigration, refugees, and cultural differences aggravated dramatically by European open borders and the Merkel administration’s policies of 2015 energized reactionary political responses from all corners of German society, but especially the far right. These were particularly profound in the Eastern states of the Federal Republic. Reflecting and amplifying the anti-immigration movements were Götz Kubitschek and his Identitarian Movement, as well as the more internationally known organization, PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident). To these may be added the anti-democratic Reichsbürgerbewegung (Reich’s Citizen Movement) whose followers openly deny the legal existence of the Federal Republic, its laws and institutions, and who believe the only legitimate political authority is the former German Reich. These and other elements of the German New Right Movements were distinctly interconnected within networks across the Eastern states of Germany. Working through formal publications such as Sezession and Tumult, the Identitarian Movement and PEGIDA offered a “spread of ideas pursuing the protection of homeland, culture, with which older nationalistic concepts and right-wing ideological backgrounds are semantically recoded” (Vorländer et al., 2018, pp. 62–63). The accumulating political success and growing attraction of the AfD Party since its founding in 2013 tracks closely the rise of the New Right in Germany. Though moving through various internal debates over its message and overall role within the German party system and enduring leadership turnover, and in spite of being eventually identified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) as an extremist group in 2021, by 2017 the AfD was represented in 13 state parliaments in Germany, beginning in the East and later expanding to the Western states, including Baden-Würtemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Vorländer et al. explain that the linkages between PEGIDA, the New Right, and the AfD afforded the later “considerably greater resources for political work” and thereby helped catapult the later into a true “opposition” party within Germany by 2017 (Vorländer et al., 2018, p. 55). These trends have drawn close attention to “political-cultural lines of conflict between

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M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

eastern and western Germany” (Vorländer et al., 2018, p. 177). They reason that rising inequalities [and cultural divergences] have caused a feeling among many in the new federal states that they are economically, socially, but also politico-culturally, disadvantaged in relation to their Western German counterparts. While the democratization in West Germany after 1945 has mainly positive connotations in the collective memory of the Western German population because it was connected with an enormous economic boom, this experience …is lacking to this day in many parts of eastern Germany…On the contrary, many eastern German families were affected by unemployment, a loss of social status as well as the feeling of the devaluation of personal achievements in one’s life during the GDR times…These experiences with the “real existing capitalism” were connected directly with the new social and political model and contributed to the fact that although democracy is firmly established as a political idea in the new federal states, in its concrete form it is still experienced by many as ‘foreign.’

Thus, it is in the East where the far-right AfD has found its greatest support in the two Bundestag elections of 2017 and 2021 (Arzheimer, 2021; Franz et al., 2018). However, before exploring the direct linkage between the structural socioeconomic differences between eastern and western states in Germany and the patterns of support among voters for the AfD and the more “mainstream” parties of Germany, let us review briefly the evidence which depicts the implied linkage between elections and regional divisions shaping the second dimension of the broader context of German unification’s political legacy. The Bundestag Elections of 2017 and 2021: Comparing East and West The contrast between the two elections of 2017 and 2021 afford a measure of the institutionalized support for the AfD across regions of Germany three decades after unification. The Bundestag election in 2017 represented what many see as the last of the immediate post-unification era in Germany and marked a potential turning point for the Federal Republic. The context of the 2021 general elections was seen as unique in contemporary German history as it was the first time since the Federal Republic’s founding that none of the large parties (Volksparteien) had an incumbent Chancellor nominated by the party thereby offering a fresh break with the two dominant Chancellors and of the unification

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THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

31

years: Kohl and Merkel. On December 8, 2021, Olaf Scholz formally became Chancellor of the Federal Republic heading a coalition of the SPD, Greens/B’90 and FDP—the fourth SPD Chancellor since 1949. More significantly, it marked only the second time in 39 years that an SPD Chancellor served as the formal head of German government, an era characterized by 32 years of CDU/CSU coalition leadership. Furthermore, it was the second election since the rise of the most intense reactions to the immigration and refugee crisis of 2014–2019 in both Germany and the European Union had energized German domestic politics. To many, the election served as a barometer for gauging how well-sustained were the reactionary passions across sectors of the electorate between 2017 and 2021. Table 1.5 reports the overall comparative results of the 2017 and 2021 elections. Panels A and B in Table 1.5 present detailed summaries of the vote for the parties across both elections, as well as across regions. The regional vote total in Panel A of Table 1.5 reports the mean values for 2nd ballot votes per district within each of the two regions of Germany. Utilizing data reported by the German Federal Returning Officer (2017, 2021), we can clearly see that while the support for the AfD has declined slightly in Germany as a whole by 2.3 percent (from a 2nd ballot vote of 12.6 percent in 2017 to 10.3 percent in 2021), support levels for the party were still twice as strong in Eastern states as among Western states. Among Eastern states, the mean district support level for the AfD was 21.7 percent in 2017, declining slightly to 20.5 percent in 2021 based on 2nd ballot vote totals. In the West, the mean district vote total for the AfD for 2nd ballot votes was 10.7 percent in 2017, falling to 8.3 in 2021. In contrast to the AfD, the SPD and Greens/B’90 saw sizeable gains across Germany, while the CDU/CSU suffered substantial losses (dropping nearly 11 percentage point from 33 percent in 2017 to 24.1 in 2021). The Linke Party also saw a sharp drop of nearly 5 percent, while the FDP slightly recovered from 10.7 percent in 2017 to 11.5 percent in 2021. The general outcome of the election—the recovery of the SPD and the significant rise of the Greens and staving off of a governing threat from the AfD—is seen by many as evidence of 2021 being something a signature departure from trends shown in 2017. However, this seems to be going far afield of the actual empirical results, especially when we review regional comparisons of district voting results across Eastern and Western Germany. Figure 1.6 plots the votes for three vote population groups

Statistical summary

Mean Median Std. deviation Minimum Maximum

Mean Median Std. deviation Minimum Maximum

Districts grouped by former East/West legacy

West (N = 244)

East (N = 55) 14.0 14.2 3.1 7.8 21.0

13.9 35.8

11.0 37.8

22.3 53.1

27.6 27.8 4.4

22.1 22.5 5.8

SPD

34.1 34.0 5.6

CDU/ CSU

5.3 10.3

7.4 7.6 1.1

6.6 19.7

11.4 11.1 2.4

FDP

2.2 20.4

5.1 3.7 3.6

4.4 21.2

9.6 8.9 3.5

B90/ Greens

12.8 29.3

17.9 17.1 3.5

4.2 18.2

7.3 6.6 2.3

Linke

6.3 35.5

21.7 21.1 5.9

4.9 19.2

10.7 10.5 2.6

7.0 23.5

16.9 17.1 3.2

11.2 38.5

25.6 24.9 5.2

CDU/ CSU

15.5 34.0

24.2 23.8 4.5

13.5 43.3

26.4 26.7 6.2

SPD

Government parties

AfD

Government parties

Opposition parties

2021 General election

2017 general election

Summary results across 2017 and 2021 elections

Panel A: District percent vote for major parties (2nd vote)

6.3 12.2

9.5 9.4 1.4

7.1 18.1

11.8 11.5 2.2

FDP

3.3 36.7

9.2 6.0 7.0

0 31.9

15.7 14.7 5.7

B90/ Greens

6.6 18.2

10.4 10.2 2.7

1.8 11.9

3.7 3.2 1.5

Linke

Opposition parties

4.1 32.5

20.5 19.9 6.6

2.9 14.1

8.3 8.3 2.3

AfD

Table 1.5 East–West election results for major parties in 2017 and 2021 German general elections, by electoral district performance

32 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

33

20.5

10.7

8.9

9.2

12.6

24.1

25.7

−0.288 1.276

1.144 −5.075

−1.203 5.339

0.026 −0.115

Government parties

AfD

Government parties

Opposition parties

2021 elections

2017 elections

11.5

4.9

0.823 −3.645

Opposition parties

14.8

−0.137 0.606

AfD

10.3

Notes District level residuals for Government Parties 2017 are based on a simple linear regression model: 2017 residuals for % Government Parties % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2013 Government Parties 2nd Ballot Vote) + e; 2017 residuals for % Opposition Parties % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2013 Opposition Parties 2nd Ballot Vote) + e; 2017 residuals for % AfD % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2013 AfD 2nd Ballot Vote) + e. District level residuals for Government Parties 2021 are based on a simple linear regression model: 2021 residuals for % Government Parties % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2017 Government Parties 2nd Ballot Vote) + e; 2021 residuals for % Opposition Parties % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2017 Opposition Parties 2nd Ballot Vote) + e; 2021 residuals for % AfD % 2nd Ballot Vote = a + b (% 2017 AfD 2nd Ballot Vote) + e Source for District Second Ballot Votes: German Federal Returning Officer https://bundeswahlleiter.de

West mean value per district East mean value per district

Districts grouped by former East/ West legacy

Panel C: Mean residuals of percent vote for major party groups and AfD (2nd ballot vote) across districts

Total percentage 2nd vote

Panel B: Aggregate percentage 2nd ballot vote across Germany as a whole

1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

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M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

Government OpposiƟon

AfD

Government OpposiƟon

AfD

Government Opposition

A fD

Government Opposition

A fD

Fig. 1.6 Distributional patterns of government and opposition parties relative to AfD, by East/West districts and election years, 2017 and 2021

of the 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections: (1) the combined aggregate 2nd ballot vote total of the two large “governing” parties (CDU/CSU and SPD), (2) the combined aggregate 2nd ballot vote total of the three traditional “opposition” parties (FDP, Linke, and the Greens/B’90), and (3) the combined aggregate 2nd ballot vote total of AfD alone. The plots confirm that the 2021 elections should be seen as a marginal shift from that of 2017. Indeed, it was on the whole a “normal” election. The two panels to the left in Fig. 1.6 report the results from the West districts, while the two panels on the right report the results of the East districts. Though East and West differ markedly in the overall support shown the two party groupings and the AfD, within each region there is little distinctive shift, with the obvious exception of the sizeable drop in support for the “government” parties in the East driven by the sharp drop-off in support for the CDU/CSU. Of course, governing mandates are more often than not decided at the margins. And, in the case of the 2021 Bundestag elections shifts of 2–5 percent for one party or the other, especially the government parties, let alone a change of nearly 10 percent will have dramatic implications

1

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

35

Slope of East Districts r = .945

Slope of West Districts r = .906

Fig. 1.7 Vote performance (2nd vote) AfD 2021 by vote performance (2nd vote) AfD 2017, by district

for policy over a measurable course of time. Nonetheless, on the whole, partisan preferences revealed in the two elections since 2017 and across the two regions of Germany show little volatility. More central to our concern here, however, is the clearly limited volatility shown for the AfD between 2017 and 2021. Figure 1.7 reports a simple plot of the respective slopes of the East and West districts across the 2017 and 2021 elections. From these slopes, we see that the 2017 election accounts for nearly 90 percent of the 2021 vote percentage for the 2nd ballot in the East (r = 0.945) and more than 80 percent of the 2021 vote percentage for the 2nd ballot in the West (r = 0.906). Institutionalizing Support: Comparing How Well the AfD Met Expectations in 2017 and 2021 Rounding out this brief comparative survey of the 2017 and 2021 elections and further underscoring the particular “Eastern effect” that the AfD seems to hold in general (and continues to hold since 2017), we

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report the results of a simple residual analysis of district votes of the 2nd ballot in 2017 and 2021 across East and West. Panel C in Table 1.5 reports the results of these residual analyses. To underscore our primary object of analysis—that is, the comparative AfD attraction across regions of Germany—we have reported these residual analysis results for the two respective party groups reported in Fig. 1.6 and contrast these with those of the AfD across the 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections. The residuals reflect simply the difference between what one would expect of a district percentage vote for the 2nd ballot based on the variance pattern for all 299 districts in Germany during the preceding election. While the percentage vote received by a party group captures the comparative scale of preference across a voting public for one party or another, the residuals reveal a different picture. Specifically, regardless of the percentage vote a party received in a district in either election, of particular importance is assessing how much that party “over” or “under” produced based on what we would expect from the predictions based on the patterns of the previous election. We see that across the Eastern districts in 2017, the AfD outperformed dramatically (on average), with a mean residual for these 55 districts of more than 5 percentage points per district over what would have been expected based on 2013. Sustaining that magnitude of “over-production” in the East would be hard under any circumstance. Yet, nonetheless, in the East the AfD in 2021 was able to once again “outperform” its predicted results based on 2017 results. Though the magnitude of the mean residual per district in the East was less than 1 percent (0.61) on average in 2021, this outcome was better on the whole than the opposition parties, whose residuals confirm significant underperformance in 2021 relative to 2017 (−3.645). Indeed, in the face of significant gains for the governing parties’ aggregate vote in 2021 (from 2017 East residuals of −0.115 in 2017 to 1.276 in 2021), the AfD was still able to sustain an “over” performance thus affording it a credible claim that it continues to hold a distinctive attraction to voters across the 55 districts in the East. Once again turning specifically to contrasting voter support shown the AfD across the East and West districts of Germany in 2021, Fig. 1.8 reports two plots side by side. Figure 1.8(a) reports the respective slopes for the 2021 residuals for East and West districts relative to the percentage 2nd ballot vote received in 2017, which in effect estimates the expected change in 2021 from what would be expected based on 2017 vote percentages. Figure 1.8(a) depicts two separate trajectories

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a

Slope of East Districts r = .069, p = .615

Slope of West Districts r = -.551, p = .000

b

Slope of East Districts r = .330, p = .014

Slope of West Districts r = - .103, p = .110

Fig. 1.8 (a) Residual 2021 percent 2nd ballot vote by 2017 percent AfD 2nd ballot vote at district level, by East/West region (b) Residual 2021 percent AfD 2nd ballot vote by residual 2017 percent AfD 2nd ballot at district level, by East/West region

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across East and West. For Eastern districts, success in 2017 in terms of magnitude of percent 2nd ballot vote had little predictive value in driving the gaps between expected outcomes and recorded outcomes across their region (r = 0.069). Certainly, had the AfD recorded a much stronger performance than it did in the region in 2021 rather than seeing a slight decline of nearly two percentage points, there would have been a much more robust positive correlation shown in Fig. 1.8(a). However, among West districts, Fig. 1.8(a) vividly documents the AfD significant setbacks in 2021 in its vote total for the 2nd ballot vote (r = −0.551). Figure 1.8(b) reveals a different and arguably a more important story regarding the AfD support across East and West. Figure 1.8(a) confirms that contrary to 2021 results for West districts, there was no association among East districts that year between how well the party did overall in the percentage votes received for the 2nd ballot in 2017 and how well or poorly the party subsequently performed in 2021 based on predications from the previous election. As noted in Table 1.8(a), under- or overperformance (based on linear predictions from 2017) of the East in 2021 varied randomly across districts relative to the actual percentage vote the party received in the 2017 percentage 2nd ballot vote. However, Table 1.8(b) shows that the more an East district in 2017 improved on their expected outcomes from 2013 (i.e., the residuals of 2017), the better they did in 2021 out-performing at the district level based on predictions from 2017 (r = 0.330). In other words, across the East, the momentum built in 2017 from 2013 continued in 2021, at least based on the average East district’s performance progressing from 2013 through 2021. Certainly, the AfD lost votes in 2021 from levels they achieved in 2017. However, Fig. 1.8(b) confirms that the institutionalized support for the AfD in the East—if we understand institutionalized support to be expected outcomes sustained from one election to another—continued to deliver results for the AfD in the East largely in line with what should be minimally expected given their performance overall in 2017. It may not have been as dramatic in terms of actual percentages received (Fig. 1.8(a)), but it was not, as in the case of opposition parties in the aggregate (as shown in Panel C of Table 1.5), a stunning drop from reasonable statistical expectations. And, of particular note, the patterns for the East and West districts shown in Fig. 1.8(b) are radically divergent. The West shows no such comparable institutionalization for the AfD.

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Therefore, based on data reported in Table 1.5 and Figs. 1.6, 1.7, 1.8(a), and 1.8(b), one would be hard pressed to demonstrate convincingly that the AfD is seen by the voting public in the East as a non-sustainable representative of the preferences and values which have served to bring it into the German mainstream during the last decade. Indeed, the data we have seen here show a sharpening and sustained breach between East and West in terms of the respective voting population’s willingness to invest their priorities in a political party actively casting itself as a true alternative to contemporary German democracy. Structural Development and Comparative Vote Patterns for the AfD: Do Gaps Matter? Nonetheless, before this conclusion can be confidently endorsed, it is necessary to verify the assumptions articulated by Vorländer et al. (2018) and others. Namely, we should confirm that socioeconomic structural development disparities anchor political support for the AfD more profoundly in the East than the West. Echoing Vorlander et al’s assessment, Weisskircher’s (2020) study of the 2017 general elections in Germany and patterns across the Eastern and Western states drew out the sharp connections between the outcomes of unification and the rise of the far right and in particular, the AfD and connects the results directly to such structural divergences as anchoring effects toward the AfD. a long term perspective points to the importance of economics, migration, and representation, linked to social disintegration and feelings of a lack of recognition. While such developments are particularly visible in eastern Germany, it is also important to note that the region mostly stands out in comparison with western Germany… The case of eastern Germany also points to Germany’s often overlooked deep political and economic problems. Moreover, to some extent at least, ‘the wall after the wall’ still stands thirty years after reunification. Weisskircher (2020, p. 620)

Supporting this logic, Rädel (2019, p. 38) warns that interpreting differences between Eastern and Western regions of Germany as a result of the East’s inability to manage modern society overlooks the important impact following from perceptions of ‘postcolonial’ adjustments which Western German states are moving through since unification. He explains:

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The modernization lens sees the success of the AfD as connected to deficiencies in the east German democratization and economic modernization process since 1990. East Germany has still not reached west German standards of political and civic culture… The postcolonial perspective criticizes the inherent marginalization of east Germans within the debate by paying attention to the subjective feelings of deprivation.

Therefore, whatever success the AfD should see across Germany, such success should align most dramatically across East districts due to the unique disparities we have seen and others have documented with regard to three decades of diverging structural development and perceptions of disproportionate costs of unification across East and West. So, we now ask: Do the data from 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections, plotted across the two regions of the Federal Republic, suggest that at least for the moment, linkages are institutionalized between the German public perceptions of preferences and values pushed by diverging structural development across regions and the voting public’s willingness to support a party hovering on the margins of extremism? Table 1.6 reports nine indicators of structural socioeconomic development measured at the electoral district level across Germany at two different time periods: those levels in the years immediately prior to the 2017 general elections and these levels recorded at the point just prior to the 2021 general elections. Structural data are reported for Germany as whole, as well as mean values per electoral district for the West and East of Germany. These data provide a district-level portrait of development across East and West Germany during the last decade of German unification. Increasing values of seven indicators reflect improving structural development (GDP Per Capita, Disposable Income Per Capita, Percent Population Age 18–24 Years, Net Population Migration, Population Growth, Population Density, and Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving with College Qualifications), while larger values of two of the nine indicators would generally be associated with challenges to advancing structural development (Percent Population Age 60–74 Years and Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving Without Certificate). However, to simplify our comparison in a meaningful fashion, we have converted the nine individual measures into one single scaled measure which we will label as the Structural Development Index reported in Table 1.6. This combined index measure is determined by summing the individual standardized value (z-scores) of each of the nine indicators in

37,221 21,700 8.2 16.0 14.2 −2.1 896 5.3

34.6

0.452

35,224 21,040 7.7 16.6 13.7 −2.5 905 5.9

34.5

0.000

34.8

0.000

−2.005

3.9 −2.2 925 6.8

17.3

7.5

39,395 22,779

34.3

11.9 −4.5 947 8.6

18.9

5.3

26,362 18,113

0.281

34.7

3.8 −1.6 911 6.3

16.8

7.9

41,499 23,377

West

Germany

East

Germany

West

Before 2021 elections

Before 2017 elections

−1.251

35.1

4.2 −5.1 989 9.1

19.4

5.7

30,060 20,122

East

Notes Figures for 2017 election are based on 2014 and 2015 structural data reported by German Federal Returning Officer https://bundeswahlleite r.de; figures for 2021 election are based on 2018–2020 data reported by German Federal Returning Officer https://bundeswahlleiter.de Structural Index Score is based on sum of z-scores across the nine indicators of Comparative Structural Development; scores reported indicate mean z-score value per district for respective election years

GDP per capita (e) Disposable Income Per Capita (e) Percent Population Age 18–24 years Percent Population Age 60–74 years Net Population Migration Population Growth Population Density per km2 Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving Without Certificate Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving With College Qualifications Structural Development Index Score (Sum of z-scores)

Indicators of comparative structural development

Table 1.6 Mean values per electoral district of key demographic and socio-economic indicators defining broader structural development, by election and region

1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

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Table 1.6 for each of the all of Germany’s 299 electoral districts for 2017 and 2021 separately. To ensure consistent alignment of each measure with assumptions of its contribution to relatively higher or lower degrees of structural development, prior to the final summing of all nine z-scores for each district we have inverted the computed z-score values for Percent Population Age 60–74 Years and Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving Without Certificate for each district in 2017 and 2021. Thus, a negative z-score for Percent Population Age 60–74 Years for a district would reflect low level of the measure, and as such, this sign would be revered to a positive score to accurately reflect the structural measure’s promoting effect on structural development; a positive z-score (in other words, a mitigating impact on structural development) would thus be reversed to a negative sign prior to the summation of the nine individual measures of structural development. This procedure was repeated for Percent Students in Secondary Education Leaving Without Certificate. Table 1.6 reports the mean district values across East and West, as well as for Germany as whole. For Germany as a whole, the z-score value will be 0, as z-scores always sum across the sample from which z-scores are computed a whole to 0. However, the z-scores for the two regions reflect the scores for the 244 West districts and the 55 East districts respectively, thus revealing the differing degrees of departure from the mean value of the 299 districts, as a whole. A negative z-score is a value reflecting a smaller level of structural development relative to the 299 districts, as a whole; a positive score is a value reflecting a greater level of structural development relative to the 299 districts, as a whole. Besides the expected obvious differences in mean z-score values across East and West districts for both 2017 and 2021 in Table 1.6, these data do show a narrowing of degrees of structural development at the district level on the whole between the two regions over the period 2014– 2020. The mean Structural Index Score for the East districts in 2017 was −2.005; by 2021 that had narrowed to −1.251, in effect confirming that the corresponding measures for the West therefore narrowed as well from a mean value of 0.452 in 2017 to 0.281 in 2021. Despite this narrowing in degrees of structural development captured through the nine indicators we have presented in Table 1.6, the distribution of regional representation across development levels remains strongly tied to whether a district is East or West. This is vividly illustrated in Table 1.7 which reports the number and percentages of districts within three different configurations of the district’s placement within the quartile

N = 2 0.7%

N = 73 24.4%

2nd

N = 65 21.7%

N = 48 16.1%

N = 36 12%

N = 10 3.3%

N = 27 9%

N = 73 97.3%

N = 39 52%

N = 2 2.7%

N = 36 48%

N = 65 86.7%

N = 48 64%

West

N = 10 13.3%

N = 27 36%

East

N = 39 13%

East

1st Low levels of structural development

West

West

East

West

East

2017

2021

2017

2021

Panel B % of districts of the 75 districts per quartile (1st–3rd), 74 districts (4th), respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is the proportion of the row total, or total number of districts contained within each quartile of Structural Development. A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 82% ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 18% ( N = 14) with each row total equaling 75 districts per quartile

Panel A % of region districts within respective quartile of development as % of all 299 German districts, respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is a proportion of total number of German electoral district ( N = 299). A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 20.4 percent ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 4.6percent ( N = 14)

Quartiles based on all-German Structural Development Index Distribution

N = 73 29.9%

N = 39 16%

West

2017

N = 2 3.6%

N = 36 65.5%

East

N = 10 18.2%

N = 27 49.1%

East

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

(continued)

N = 65 26.6%

N = 48 19.7%

West

2021

Panel C % of districts within all 244 west districts and 55 east districts, respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is the proportion of the column total, or the total number of districts contained within each district, per quartile of Structural Development. A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 25% ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 25% ( N = 14). with column totals equaling 244 for West column and 55 for East column

Table 1.7 Distribution patterns of East/West election districts by Structural Development Index quartiles computed from all-German Index distribution

1

43

N = 12 4%

N = 70 23.4%

N = 62 20.7%

3rd

4th High relative levels of structural index

N = 12 4%

N = 6 2%

East

N = 62 83.8%

N = 70 93.3%

West

N = 12 16.2%

N = 5 6.7%

East

N = 62 83.8%

N = 69 92%

West

2021

N = 12 16.2%

N = 6 8%

East

N = 62 25.4%

N = 70 28.7%

West

2017

N = 12 21.8%

N = 5 9.1%

East

N = 62 25.4%

N = 69 28.3%

West

2021

N = 12 18.4%

N = 6 10.9%

East

Panel C % of districts within all 244 west districts and 55 east districts, respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is the proportion of the column total, or the total number of districts contained within each district, per quartile of Structural Development. A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 25% ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 25% ( N = 14). with column totals equaling 244 for West column and 55 for East column

Notes Results were obtained by running separate tabulations of East/West distribution by development index quartile scores for 2017 and 2021 samples. Chi. Sq. for 2017 model = 63.257, p = 0.000; Chi. Sq. for 2017 model = 22.398, p = 0.000

N = 62 20.7%

N = 69 23.1%

N = 5 1.7%

West

2017

2021 West

East

2017

Panel B % of districts of the 75 districts per quartile (1st–3rd), 74 districts (4th), respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is the proportion of the row total, or total number of districts contained within each quartile of Structural Development. A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 82% ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 18% ( N = 14) with each row total equaling 75 districts per quartile

Panel A % of region districts within respective quartile of development as % of all 299 German districts, respectively per region, all-German distribution For each year model (2017 and 2021) each cell is a proportion of total number of German electoral district ( N = 299). A random distribution proportional to the respective numbers of East and West districts of the 299 German districts would result in each West district cell with 20.4 percent ( N = 61) and each East district cell with 4.6percent ( N = 14)

(continued)

Quartiles based on all-German Structural Development Index Distribution

Table 1.7

44 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

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45

distribution of the Structural Development Index. These different configurations are presented by region in three panels, A, B, and C in Table 1.7. Each panel tests the simple hypothesis that the number (and corresponding percentage) of districts across East and West Germany should be randomly distributed within each configuration, or unrelated to structural development levels. This would be reflected by 61 West districts in each quartile of the Structural Index measure (or 25 percent of the total of 244 for the region), and 14 for three of the East quartiles and 13 for the fourth (or essentially 25 percent of the 55 percent of East districts). The quartiles are computed separately for 2017 and 2021 values of Structural Development Index. For our purposes of gauging the linkages between structural development and support for the AfD, it is the 1st Quartile which is of particular interest (or the districts within each region which have the smallest degree of structural development relative to the 299 districts across Germany). Panel A reports the distribution of districts by Structural Development quartiles across East and West regions relative to the population of all 299 districts in the Federal Republic. Each percentage reported is the number of districts within the quartile of development relative to a population 299 districts. West districts in both 2017 and 2021 are under-represented in Quartile 1 (N = 39, or 13 percent, and N = 48, or 16.1 percent in 2021), while East districts are disproportionally represented within this lowest level of Structural Development (N = 36, or 12 percent in 2017 and N = 27, or 9 percent in 2021). Panel B in Table 1.7 highlights the overrepresentation of East districts per quartile. Thus, we see that the 36 East districts in the 1st Quartile of Structural Development in 2017 are three times larger than simple random model would predict; the 27 East districts in 2021 constitute 36 percent of the region’s districts, or twice the size of what we would expect of a random distribution. The random model would predict 18 percent and 82 percent, respectively, for West and East districts for both 2017 and 2021. Finally, Panel C in Table 1.7 reports the distribution of districts relative to the respective region. Thus, we see that the 36 East districts in the 1st Quartile of the Structural Development Index represent nearly 70 percent of the 55 East districts during the 2017 general election; the respective proportion for the 2021 elections was nearly half of all East districts (49.1 percent). However, only 16 percent of the West districts were found in

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the lowest quartile of Structural Development in 2017, and merely 20 percent in 2021. The data reported in all three panels within Table 1.7 underscore clearly the disproportionate representation of the East in both 2017 and 2021 within the lowest level Structural Development across Germany. Given the imbalances across East and West on broader macro-measures of economic development which we reviewed earlier, the Structural Development data reported in Table 1.7 should not be surprising. Furthermore, with these differences in Structural Development at the district level, it is not surprising to find a relationship between the degree of Structural Development among districts and the district’s support for the AfD, as shown previously in Table 1.5. However, it should be asked if this relationship between development and voting support for the AfD is more robust in the East than the West, and is it sustained across the 2017 and 2021 general elections in Germany? To address this, we need to plot the patterns suggested in Table 1.7 with votes for the AfD, across elections and regions. Figures 1.9(a) and 1.9(b) provide this confirmation. Each figure reports the respective slopes for East and West district percentage 2nd ballot votes for AfD. Each slope is statistically significant and in the expected direction. Thus, electoral support for the AfD declines sharply across districts as their structural development increases. However, these slopes, especially among East districts, are sharper and notably stronger in 2021 than in 2017 (r = −0.854). One can clearly see that after thirty years of unification, the next decade may be crucial to reversing the trends shown in the structural gaps which underscore a divided Germany. Based on data presented in Tables 1.6 and 1.7 across the 299 electoral districts of Germany, core indicators of Structural Development gaps have narrowed between East and West at the electoral district level. Nonetheless, as demonstrated in the 2017 and 2021 general elections, these structural differences remain distinctly attached to institutionalized voting support in the East to the AfD.

A Comparative Survey of the Social and Cultural Divide The third and final dimension shaping the trajectory of German unification and its significant impact on German politics into the next decade and beyond is the degree of differences in a number of important values

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47

a

Slope of East Districts r = -.654, p = .000

Slope of West Districts r = -.365, p = .000

b

Slope of East Districts r = -.854, p = .000

Slope of West Districts r = -.521, p = .000

Fig. 1.9 (a) 2017 2nd ballot vote for AfD by structural development at district level, by East/West region (b) 2021 2nd ballot vote for AfD by structural development at district level, by East/West region

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and attitudes across East and West. These add concerns about a widening gap between the two parts of Germany with distinctly diverging contours reinforcing separate narratives each of which offers competing visions buttressed by perceptions of conflicting responsibilities, burdens, obligations, culpabilities, and fears distinguishing the two regions. As Liu and Hilton (2005, p. 537) remind us, History provides us with narratives that tell us who we are, where we came from and where we should be going. It defines a trajectory which helps construct the essence of a group’s identity, how it relates to other groups, and ascertains what its options are for facing present challenges. A group’s representation of its history will condition its sense of what it was, is, can and should be, and is thus central to the construction of its identity, norms, and values. Representations of history help to define the social identity of peoples, especially in how they relate to other peoples and to current issues of international politics and internal diversity.

Context Since Germany’s unification in 1990, perhaps no nation-state has been the focus of such intense scrutiny with respect to national identity, especially as it is exhibited across the former East and West regions. This is not merely because Germany offers a unique real-time laboratory observation of identity challenges associated with intense political, cultural, and social change occurring largely unexpectedly and abruptly (Wike et al., 2019; Wittlinger, 2010). It is also because of the seemingly self-evident nature of the differing cultures and value systems that defined the two parts of the unification at the moment of union in 1990, despite both regions sharing several cultural traditions. Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007, p. 1525) summarize this by stating simply that “individuals’ preferences are rather deeply shaped by the political regime in which they live.” They elaborate on this when they draw a core conclusion from their carefully constructed study, The difference in preferences between former East and West Germans is due in large part to the direct effect of Communism. This effect could arise due to indoctrination, e.g., in public schools, or simply due to becoming used to an intrusive public sector. If Communism has indeed what made East Germany poorer than the West, then a second, indirect effect of

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Communism is that it has made the former East more dependent on redistribution and therefore more favorable to it.” (Alesina & Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007, p. 1523)

They further note that based on their findings, “under the strict assumption of linearity, it will take about 20–40 years to make the difference between East and West Germans disappear almost completely…” (Alesina & Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007, p. 1508). Becker et al. (2020) drew a similar but subtly different conclusion when they explained that while convergence would take time, the driving force separating the identities between East and West was a result of historical geo-cultural patterns of different experiences across Eastern and Western Germany that long predated World War II. They assert that “…any East–West differences in reunified Germany cannot necessarily be interpreted as a pure effect of communism…evidence of pre-World War II differences persisting over many decades suggests that convergence between the two parts of Germany may take longer than commonly thought” (Becker et al., 2020, p. 167). Blank (2003, p. 284) drew on innovative survey data to support his overall conclusion that “the East–West-specific significance of authoritarianism for the explanation of national identity and patriotism points toward more deeply rooted differences of thinking.” Focusing on the transactional stress theory, Silbereisen et al. (2006) suggest that such differences are more related to the very forces of contemporary disproportionate coping resources available to East and West, respectively. Far from these differences being the mere product of history or a particular social system, their research draws attention to the “personal and social resources in coping with social change” (Silbereisen et al., 2006, p. 8). They elaborate: stress is neither inherent to the environment nor to the individual alone, but results from the ongoing relationship between the two—the so-called transaction. The transaction is mediated by appraisal and coping processes. In primary appraisal, individuals evaluate events as harmful, threatening harm, or challenging, whereas in the secondary appraisal they assess available resources and options for coping with the situation. If the individual perceives his or her situation as changeable and believes in own resources to change it, problem-focused coping is used. In other cases, individuals use emotion-focused coping in order to adapt to the unchangeable outer conditions and to regulate the accompanying emotions.

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This transaction connection is underscored by Schmidtke (2017) who draws attention to the powerful and transformative impact of migration and demographic change in Germany which has set in motion what Silbereisen et al. (2006) would tie to the force of transaction stress associated with powerful redefinitions of national identity. Imbedded within an affluent European Union with a single market just coming into play throughout the member states of the EU at the moment of German unification in 1990, Schmidtke (pp. 511–512) reasons unification itself: provided a watershed moment for the country to face its increasing cultural heterogeneity in light of continuous levels of migration and a profound commitment to the process of European integration. The traditional ideational underpinning of the political community lost its narrative plausibility. German unification set in motion a long-term process of recalibrating national identity, steadily changing the rules for communal belonging and citizenship status…. The immediate and direct consequence of unification (new levels of migration and cultural diversity) has had long-term transformative effects, which in turn have resulted in the ‘normalisation’ of migration as a governance issue and a defining feature of contemporary public life.

While Schmidtke’s research confirmed that gradually during the postunification era until 2017 a narrowing of the gaps took shape between political parties with respect to the narratives embracing diversity within Germany, the sheer pressure of asylum and refugees in 2015–2019 may have served only to reignite distinct differences regarding the benefits of continued diversity due in part to what Silbereisen et al. (2006) would suggest are disproportionate coping capacities across East and West. The more general importance attached to the factors driving identity differences—to whatever extent they may or may not exist—across the two regions of Germany is in some degree the still highly intriguing fate and history of one of Europe’s most civilized and advanced societies slipping into tragic dictatorship in the 1930s which continues to draw attention to the barometer of civil cohesion within the Federal Republic. Indeed, the current populist temperament so readily apparent across Europe and the United States and which has taken on significant forms of expression since the 25th anniversary of German unification only serves to reinforce the fascinationabout where a unified Germany is going with respect to its enlarged polity moving into the next decade (Galpin, 2017). Berman (1997) reminded readers of this during the later stages of

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Germany’s ‘take-off’ stages of unification when he observed that Weimar Germany still has important lessons to be more carefully cultivated than crude comparisons directed toward populists and authoritarian advocates. It is particularly pertinent in an era of social media and the fragmentation of news, information, partisan motivated filter bubbles, and reinforced echo chambers across networks of entrenched and diverse discourses. Berman (1997, p. 426) cautions that civil society may not be the obvious remedy to discontent and disassociation growing from clashing identities. German political development [historically] raises questions about what has by now become practically conventional wisdom, namely, that there is a direct and positive relationship between a rich associational life and stable democracy. Under certain circumstances, clearly the very opposite is the case: associationism and the prospects for democratic stability can actually be inversely related. Furthermore….individuals with political and social skills, creating bonds between citizens, facilitating mobilization, decreasing barriers to collective action can be turned to antidemocratic ends as well as to democratic ones. Perhaps, therefore, associationism should be considered a politically neutral multiplier: neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but rather dependent for its effects on the wider political context. (emphasis added)

Such divisions within the imaginations and preferences across the East and West parts of Germany form the broader context that connects aggregate social and economic conditions through electoral motivations to divergent patterns of structural decline or ascendancy. Thus, the values and attitudes of Germans constitute the third dimension of those factors shaping unification’s role in Germany as the country moves into the next decade and beyond. Basic Attitude and Belief Patterns Across East and West To assess generally the range of differences or similarities between the Eastern and Western regions of society and the identities binding the two toward a common community and political system, we draw on the cumulative German General Survey (ALLBUS). Table 1.8 reports results on items within the survey which we have grouped into six domains which capture attitudes and values undergirding some of the more basic pillars of support and attachment to the German political community: (1) German pride and nationalism, (2) German identity, (3) advantages of unification,

Comparative East–West German basic values

2006 26 83 2000 32 96

1994 28 79 1994 b 33 94 N/A – – –

Advantages of unification West receives more advantages than disadvantages (% Agree) East receives more advantages than disadvantages (% Agree)

Satisfaction with circumstances Receive less than fair share (% Agree) One can live well in Germany (% Agree)

Refugees and foreigners Refugees bring more risks to Germany (%) Dangerous degree foreign influence (% Agree) Foreigners should marry within ethnic group (% Agree)

2008 N/A 59 24

2000 72 – 70 – 11 22

1994 N/A – N/A – N/A 24

German identity Identify with Germany (% Strong)a Identify with GDR (% Strong; asked of east sample only) Identify with former FRG (% Strong; asked of west sample only) Identify strongly with GDR/Not strongly with Germany (%) Identify strongly with former FRG/not strongly with Germany (%) Other Germans (West/East) Seem foreign to me (% Agree)

2008 68 68 35

1996 N/A N/A 39

2018 55 56 25

2018 35 96

N/A – – –

1994 2 63 80

1994 69 46

1994 N/A N/A – N/A – 22

2016 a 79 – 62 – 5 17 2018 53 83

1996 N/A N/A 73

2018 66 62 24

2008 N/A 69 39

2000 63 85

2006 70 55

2000 67 68 – 21 – 22

2008 72 69 76

Second decade

First decade

Third decade

First decade

Second decade

East sample

West sample

German pride and nationalism Proud to be German (% Agree) Nationalism displays (% Agree) Pride in basic law (% indicating top 3)

Social and political issue

Table 1.8

2018 66 68 43

2018 55 93

2018 85 62

2016 a 82 63 – 9 – 16

2018 76 69 51

Third decade

52 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

a ”Identify With Germany” is for 2018 (2016 not available) b “Receive Less Than Fair Share” is for 1996 (1994 not available) c “Populist” Index is for 2008 (2002 is not available)

Trust and postmaterialim Post material goals (% Important) Social anomia (% High anomia attitudes) Populist (% Populist disposition)c

Social and political issue

1994 51 N/A N/A

2018 52 41 43

2002 c 55 53 52 1994 39 N/A N/A

2002 3 47 67 68

Second decade

First decade

Third decade

First decade

Second decade

East sample

West sample

2018 47 54 58

Third decade

1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

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(4) satisfaction with circumstances, (5) refugees and foreigners, and (6) trust and post-materialism. Where possible we have noted percentages of the sample estimating these respective attitudes and values across three decades. The first decade (what we have labeled earlier as the ‘take-off’ stage of unification) reports results for either 1994 or 1996 depending upon when such items were included in the survey; the second decade offers a result for either 2000, 2002, or 2008; and the third decade offers results for 2016 or 2018 (the latter being the latest available in the current cumulative file). Where an item is unavailable for any year within a decade, it is noted as “N/A” in Table 1.8. All data are available for 2006 or 2018, and most for the second decade, as well. Cohesion: National Pride and Identity Turning first to the three items selected to represent public pride in Germany and attitudes toward expressions of nationalism, we see similar patterns across Eastern and Western populations with respect to those who agree they are proud to be German and the proportions of the population who believe Germany should show the courage to have strong national feelings. However, while both regions have seen a decline in recent years in the proportions who select the German Basic Law (the German constitution) as one of the top three things they are most proud of regarding German accomplishments, the most glaring difference is the 51 percent of Eastern respondents who select pride in the Basic Law as one of their top three things about Germany for which they are proud, though that proportion has dropped over time from 76 percent in 2008. This compares to only 24 percent for Western Germans choosing pride in the Basic law, down from a high of 39 percent in 1996.3

3 All data reported in Tables 1.8–1.10 were based on weighted values according to the German General Survey design appropriate for making comparisons between East and West samples. The data percentages reported in Table 1.8 for Proud to be German are those respondents indicating they “tend to agree” or “completely agree” that they are “proud to be German.” The percentage reported for Nationalism Displays are those who responded they “tend to agree” or “completely agree” that it is “about time we found the courage to have strong national feelings again.” The data reported for Pride in Basic Law are the percentage of those respondents who included “Pride in the Basic Law” as one of the three things respondents were most proud of when asked which things make them proud as a German. Respondents were offered several items which as a German they could be proud.

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German identity shows an equally symmetrical picture across the two regions. By 2006, both Easterners and Westerners showed strong identification with Germany as a whole. Furthermore, roughly equal proportions of Eastern and Westerns expressed an identity with the former regimes of their respective region (GDR for Easterners and the former FRG for Westerners). However, neither region indicated they had a strong identity with the former regime of their region but not with Germany as a whole. For Eastern respondents, as late as 2008 one in five (21 percent) expressed a strong identity for the GDR but not Germany as a whole. However, by 2018, this has dropped by more than half, though at nine percent it is still almost twice as large as that of the Westerners who have a strong identity for the former FRG but not Germany as a whole (five percent). We note that of importance, citizens within neither region view the other as seeming to be ‘foreign.’ Taken together and in combination with the three items measuring German pride and nationalism and the six items in the category of German identity show little evidence of major separation across the two Germanies regarding identity and pride in their nation and national community.4 Differing Perceptions Regarding Advantages and Disadvantages of Unification, and Life’s’ Fairness’ However, sharper differences arise when we consider the four remaining groups of items included in Table 1.8. Respondents in both East and West view the other region as having received more advantages than disadvantages from unification, while also indicating in large majorities that their region enjoyed fewer advantages than disadvantages from unification. Indeed, in 2018, by more than 30 percentage points, the Eastern sample indicated the West had received more advantages than disadvantages relative to what Westerners themselves assessed (85 percent and 53 percent, respectively). On the other hand, the proportion of Easterners 4 The German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) asks respondents “how strongly you identify” with the former FRG (asked only of respondents in Western Germany), the former GDR (asked only of respondents in Eastern Germany), and the Germany as a whole (asked of all respondents). Respondents were given four choices. Those who selected “Very strong identification” or “Pretty strong identification” were coded as identifying with the respective territorial unit (former FRG, GDR, or Germany as a whole). Those who selected “Only weak identification” or “No identification at all” were coded as having no identification with the territorial unit.

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who agree their region has received more advantages than disadvantages from unification has grown from 46 percent in 1996 to 62 percent in 2018. Westerners viewing their region as having more advantages than disadvantages have grown over time even more strongly, from 28 percent in 1994 to 53 percent in 2018. Yet, each sees the other’s region as benefitting more from unification than they have lost.5 With respect to respondents’ assessments as to whether they have received “less than fair share… compared with how others live in Germany,” over half of Eastern respondents indicated they had not (55 percent), a sharp decline for Easterners from 1996 and 2000, compared to 35 percent for Westerners who have remained stable over the three decades in their opinion on “fair share.” However, both regions agree that overall, one can live well in Germany, with well over 9 in ten in each region affirming this assessment.6 Differing Dispositions Toward Refugees and Foreigners The gaps become more distinct when comparing attitude and beliefs with regard to refugees and foreigners—a particularly challenging issue in Germany since 2015.7 By differences ranging in size between 10 and 5 Percentages reported in Table 1.8 with respect to West Receives More Advantages Than Disadvantages reflect those respondents in German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) who indicate they either “completely agree” or “tend to agree” with the statement that “Reunification has brought more advantages than disadvantages for the people in the old federal states.” Percentages reported in Table 1.8 with respect to East Receives More Advantages Than Disadvantages reflect those who indicate they either “completely agree” or “tend to agree” with the statement that “Reunification has brought more advantages than disadvantages for the people in the new federal states.” 6 Data reported in Table 1.8 for Receive Less Than Fair Share is the percentage of respondents in German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) who when asked “Do you think you get your fair share compared with how others live in Germany” indicated they received “very much less” or “somewhat less.” Data reported in Table 1.8 for One Can Live Well in Germany are the percentage of respondents in German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) who indicated they either “tended to agree” or “completely agreed” with statement: “All in all, one can live very well in a country like Germany.” 7 Our measure of Refugees Bring More Risks to Germany is a composite index based

on the combined responses of four separate items in the German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) relating to an aspect of Germany society which might face risks or opportunities due to refugees. Each of the four items pertaining to an area of German society asks the respondents: “Do you think that, in the following areas, there will be “more opportunities, more risks or neither of these as a result of the refugees?” The four areas

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20 percent, Eastern Germans believe refugees present Germany with more risks than opportunities; the country has become dominated by foreigners to a dangerous degree; and express negative attitudes toward foreigners marrying outside their ethnic group. Differing Profiles on Postmaterialism, Social Anomia, and Populism On attitudes reflecting a person’s overall degree of trust in government (i.e., populism) and their general disposition toward optimism and confidence (i.e., anomia), we again see sharp differences across the two regions. Populist attitudes are more pronounced in Eastern Germany.8 of German society are (1) the welfare state, (2) public security, (3) people living together in society, and (4) the economic situation in Germany. Responses ranged along a 5-point scale from “considerably more risks” to “considerably more opportunities.” The four items were summed for each respondent, producing a score for each respondent between 4 (all responses to each of the four items indicating refugees posed “considerably more risks”) and 20 (all responses to each of the four items indicating refugees posed “considerably more opportunities”). A score ranging from 4 to 10 was coded as indicating a person who believes refugees present more risks than opportunities, overall. The percentage reported in Table 1.8 reflects this percentage within the sample. Data reported in Table 1.8 for Dangerous Degree Foreign Influence are the percentage of respondents in German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) who indicated they were either ambivalent (neither agree nor disagree) or “tended to agree” or “completely agreed” with statement: “Because of its many resident foreigners, Germany is dominated by foreign influences to a dangerous degree.” Data reported in Table 1.8 for Foreigners Should Marry Within Ethnic Group are the percentage of respondents in German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) who indicated they were either ambivalent (“neither agree nor disagree”) or “tended to agree” or “completely agreed” with statement: “Foreigners should always marry people from their own ethnic group.” 8 Our measure of populism is a composite index of nine separate items within the German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020). Four of these nine items express a person’s lack of confidence in politicians and representatives. Specifically, they record a person’s belief that politicians do not care about people like them (a four-point scale from “Completely Agree” to “Completely Disagree”), are not interested in representing the will of the people (a four-point scale from “Completely Agree” to “Completely Disagree”), and believe the performance of government in general, and the federal government in particular, to be unsatisfactory (a five-point scale from “Very Satisfied” to “Very Dissatisfied”). Each of these four items was recoded into a binary scale (“Agree/Satisfied” or “Not Agree/Not Satisfied”). Five separate items measure a person’s trust in German political institutions. These items include a person’s trust in the German Constitutional Court, the judiciary in general, the Bundestag, the federal government, and political parties. Each of these five items asked respondents to choose a score along a 7-point scale from “absolutely no trust at all” with score of 1 to “a great deal of trust” with a score of 7. These five trust measures were then summed into a single total for each respondent, providing a

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Among Eastern respondents, 58 percent in 2018 would generally be of the populist disposition, compared to 43 percent for Western respondents, though Eastern respondents have seen a decline of 10 percent in expressed populist attitudes since 2008. Among Easterners, 54 percent of the population in 2018 held relatively strong anomia attitudes compared to 41 percent of Western respondents, though again the level in 2018 had declined for Easterners from 67 percent in 2008, a trend they share with their Western counterparts, as well, dropping for Westerners in 2018 from 53 percent in the decade before 2018.9 Finally, by 2018, Eastern Germans expressed comparable degrees of postmaterial preferences, with only five percentage points separating the relative proportions of Eastern

cumulative score ranging from 7 to 35. This was then recoded into a single binary score, with “No trust” being assigned to respondents with scores 7–21, and with “Trust” being assigned to respondents with scores 22–35. The five separate variables (4 binary recoded scores for Agree/Satisfied” or “Not Agree/Not Satisfied”) ranging from 1 to 2 and the single combined measure of trust ranging in value per respondent from 1 to 2 were then summed across each respondent again, with a minimum score being 5 and a maximum score of 10. A “Populist” reflects a final score of 5–6 and a “Non-Populist” a score of 7–10. 9 Our measure of social anomia is a composite index based on the combined responses of five separate items in the German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020). Four of these items in the survey are binary values with a score of 1 assigned to “agree” and a score of 2 for “disagree” with each item’s statement. The four “agree/disagree” statements are: (1) “life is getting worse for common people” (agree or disagree), (2) “with the future looking as it does, it’s almost irresponsible to bring children into the world” (agree or disagree), (3) “most politicians are not really interested at all in the problems of ordinary people,” (agree or disagree), and (4) “most people don’t really care in the slightest what happens to others” (agree or disagree). These four binary response scores were summed across each respondent, delivering for each respondent a minimum score of 4 to a maximum score of 8. These were then recoded into a single new aggregate binary measure, with a score of 1 (“high anomia”) assigned to respondents with a value of 4–5 on the summed value and a score of 2 (“not high anomia”) assigned to respondents with a value of 6–8 on the summed value. The fifth item of our final measure of social anomia asked respondents what they thought about the statement: “Some people think that most people can be trusted. Others think that one can’t be careful enough when dealing with other people. What do you think?” Respondents were given three options: (1) “most people can be trusted,” (2) “one can’t be careful enough,” or (3) “it depends.” This item was recoded into a binary measure, with a value of 1 assigned those who indicated “one can’t be careful enough,” and a score of 2 assigned those who responded either “most people can be trusted” or “it depends.” These two recoded binary items (the “agree/disagree” score and the trust score) were then summed for each respondent, with a minimum score of 2 and a maximum score of 4. Those with a value of 2 were defined “High Anomia,” and those with scores of 3–4 were coded as “Not High Anomia.”.

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and Western Germans on this measure.10 In 2018, 47 percent of Eastern respondents tended to show more inclination to prioritizing expression and an overall quality of life rather than simply material acquisition and security (i.e., postmaterialists), compared to 52 percent of Western respondents sharing similar postmaterial values. This 5 percentage point gap was considerably smaller than the 18 percent gap recorded in 1994 at the outset of Germany’s unification. Overall, the survey data presented in Table 1.8 and summarized above confirm comparably strong proportions of German identity and support for its key national German symbols across the regions thereby depicting a legacy to date of solid cohesion and integration between East and West Germany following three decades of unification. However, as suggested in the previous data, we have confirmed sizeable gaps emerge between the two Germanies with respect to macroeconomic indicators of wealth and structural capacities and electoral tendencies in the 2017 national elections which align with the degree of declining wealth and economic capacities across districts in the East and West. In short, these data depict two regions of the 1990 union which stand distinctly apart from one another in significant degrees and with respect to economics, politics, and social dispositions. They each believe the other region has received more advantages than disadvantages from unification, while also believing they have absorbed more disadvantages than advantages to unification. This is coupled by the fact that they are sharply divergent with respect to believing they have recovered a fair share in life. Their respective publics express strong difference with respect to tolerances and risk assessments for foreigners and refugees, and hold distinctly differing attitudes about foreigners marrying outside their ethnic group. On the whole, while these 10 Our measure of postmaterial is based on coding provided by the German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020) and which is based on responses to four preferences: (importance of law and order, fighting rising prices, free expression of opinions, and influence on governmental decisions). The survey provides four separate types of respondent based on these four preferences: the postmaterialist, the mixed-postmaterialist, the materialist mixed-type, and the materialist. We have recoded these four types provided by the survey into two types—a binary measure. Post-materialists are those who express priority to both free expression of opinions and influence on governmental decisions, or either one of these two and either importance of law and order or fighting rising prices. Thus, our measure of a post-materialist is either what the survey codes as a postmaterialist or a mixed postmaterialist, while our measure of non-postmaterialist is someone coded by the survey as materialist or mixed materialist. Table 1.8 reports the percentage of respondents who are postmaterialists.

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patterns may not define two totally different communities within the Federal Republic, they do suggest that the parts remain less integrated within a shared and cohesive set of attitudes and values which are among the core dispositions serving to shape the respective civic preferences and political priorities. Controls for Sex, Education, Generation, and Populism Table 1.9 presents results which further assess the patterns across the regions on the items explored in Table 1.8, filtered by gender, education, and generation. We also include populism as a separate control variable. Given its powerful place within the landscape of European democracies during the last decade, and the particular concern it poses to students of German and European politics, populism should be thought of as not only a demographic attribute embraced to varying degrees by publics in the East and West, but as an effect, as well. In other words, a force filtering one’s attitudes and values across the range of items dealing with assessments of advantages and disadvantages of unification, attitudes toward refugees and foreigners, and postmaterialism and social anomia (Table 1.9). The results reported in Table 1.9 cover only those three groups of attitudes and values in Table 1.8 which reflected the greatest degrees of variation across the East and West samples in the German General Social Survey during the third decade (items from General Social Survey from 2016 or 2018): (1) perceptions of advantages of unification relative to disadvantages of unification, (2) attitudes toward refugees and foreigners, and (3) levels trust, social anomia, and postmaterialism, as well as the individual item asking respondents whether they agree they have received a fair share in life. We exclude from Table 1.9 the results of demographic controls for those survey items contained with Table 1.8 dealing with German pride and nationalism, and identity (as well as the individual item asking a respondent if one can live well in Germany). None of these items showed any departure from those patterns reported in Table 1.8 when controlling for gender, education, generation, and populism, confirming the strength of cohesion across the regions and across segments of the population within the East and West for these broad measures of support for German nationalism and identity. However, the remaining items from Table 1.8 expose important patterns of differences not only across the

Advantages of unification West receives 56 51 more advantages than disadvantages % (Agree) East receives 84 82 more advantages than disadvantages (% Agree) 84

60

64

Female

86

Male

Male

Female

East

West

82

48

Noncollege

West

83

59

College

51

84

Noncollege

East

75

85

College

Education certification received

84

49

Pre

West

81

57

Post

Generation (Relative to unification)

57

86

Pre

East

71

83

Post

79

46

Populist

West

85

60

Not populist

Populism dispositiona

Comparative East–West German basic values, by demographic group, 2018 only

Social and Responses grouped by political issues Gender

Table 1.9

89

86

Not populist

(continued)

48

82

Populist

East 1 THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

61

(continued)

Refugees and foreigners Refugees 56 55 bring more risks to Germany (%) Dangerous 60 52 degree foreign influence (% Agree)

Satisfaction with circumstances Receive less 33 37 than fair share (% Agree)

68

68

69

61

Female

65

48

Male

Male

Female

East

West

Social and Responses grouped by political issues Gender

Table 1.9

66

66

41

Noncollege

West

44

44

28

College

77

79

67

Noncollege

East

56

50

38

College

Education certification received

61

60

33

Pre

West

51

52

57

Post

Generation (Relative to unification)

72

71

36

Pre

East

61

60

50

Post

74

70

51

Populist

West

42

44

25

Not populist

Populism dispositiona

76

83

64

Populist

East

57

42

39

Not populist

62 M. OSWALD AND J. ROBERTSON

26

23

47

63

67

53

49

45

45

41

Female

53

57

48

32

Noncollege

West

32

28

56

16

College

69

71

42

51

Noncollege

East

42

40

52

32

College

Education certification received

42

40

52

34

Pre

West

43

45

52

16

Post

Generation (Relative to unification)

60

63

42

49

Pre

East

54

50

54

32

Post

–

66

53

31

Populist

West

–

24

52

19

Not populist

Populism dispositiona

a Populist data not available for 2016, therefore cannot be cross-tabulated with identity measures toward former FRG, or GDR

Trust and post-materialism Post material 51 53 goals (% Important) Social 39 46 anomia (% high anomia attitudes) Populist (% 47 39 populist disposition)

Foreigners should marry within ethnic group (% Agree)

Male

Male

Female

East

West

Social and Responses grouped by political issues Gender

–

77

53

57

Populist

East

–

29

41

24

Not populist

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two regions of Germany, but across the demographic groups themselves within each region. Gender Gaps Table 1.9 reveals very little difference in gender patterns between the two regions regarding German assessments of the advantages relative to disadvantages associated with unification. Relatively minor differences separate male and female’s attitudes regarding either’s general assessments of whether unification delivers more advantages than disadvantages to their own region or that of the other’s region of Germany. This pattern is sustained when considering attributes toward refugees and foreigners, as well. However, sharp gender differences emerge when asking respondents to assess whether life has been fair to them, and when assessing differences across the two genders with regard to populism, social anomia, and postmaterial attitudes. Thus, we see that 61 percent of Eastern German females believe that life has not delivered to them their fair share, compared to 48 percent holding the same opinion in the West; and both males and females within the West record much lower percentages of ‘unfairness’ than their Eastern counterparts. This underscores the widespread concern that unification may have actually undermined the aspirations and expectations of women within the former GDR at the moment of unification. Blending through unification at the time with the more traditional Western Germany, many of the previous market opportunities afforded East German females may have been diluted or extended much too slowly and cautiously over the post-unification decades that followed. Much stronger gender differences characterize the trust and preferred goals expressed by the German public. Females in both regions are much more likely to express clear attitudes in line with high social anomia and populist dispositions than their male counterparts, an especially dominant pattern among Eastern respondents where the gap between men and women is 10 percentage points (53 percent and 63 percent, respectively) and 18 percentage points (49 percent and 67 percent, respectively), respectively, for social anomia and populism. Among Western respondents, the differences between males and females with regard social

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anomia and populism are each less than 10 percentage points. Furthermore, females in the East are far more likely than their female counterparts in the West to express these dispositions, with 63 percent of Eastern females holding social anomia attitudes and 67 holding populist dispositions, compared to 46 percent and 39 respectively for Western females. Differences Across Education Controlling for education reveals numerous significant differences both within and across regions. Our model for education reported in Table 1.9 divides the sample into those which have some degree of collegelevel certificate qualifications, and those which have not obtained such qualifications. More than three-quarters of post-secondary and college educated/qualified Eastern Germans believe both the East (75 percent) and the West (85 percent) have experienced more advantages than disadvantages from unification. However, only 59 percent of Western respondents holding post-secondary qualification agree that more advantages than disadvantages have come to the West with unification. Indeed, only a 10 percentage point gap separates college certified Eastern Germans who believe the West has achieved more advantages than disadvantages from unification (85 percent) from those college qualified Easterners who believe the East has received more advantages than disadvantages from unification (75 percent). However, a 24 percentage point gap divides the Western college qualified respondents, where 83 percent believe the East has received more advantages than disadvantages from unification compared to only 59 percent who believe the West has accrued more advantages than disadvantages from unification. Furthermore, 67 percent of Eastern respondents who are non-college certified also share the opinion that they have not received a fair share from life, compared to only 41 percent among the same group for Western Germans who lack college certification. Education sharply separates the publics within each region of Germany on dispositions toward refugees and foreigners. For each of the three items in this issue group from Table 1.8, the education gap within East and West Germany is stark. Across each of the three items for West and East alike, the gap on expressed attitudes toward refugees and foreigners between those with college qualifications and those without ranges from 29 percent difference (79 percent and 50 percent respectively, for Eastern

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Germans without and with college qualifications on the question of whether refugees bring more risks than opportunities to Germany) to 21 percent (77 percent and 56 percent, respectively, for East Germans without and with college qualifications on the question of whether there is a dangerous degree of foreign influence in Germany). Additionally, for each of the three items on attitudes toward refugees and foreigners, college qualified East Germans are more likely by a sizeable percentage point difference to see refugees, foreign influence and foreigners who marry outside their ethnic group with more negative perspective than their college qualified West German counterparts. Indeed, twice as many Eastern German college educated citizens (32 percent) express agreement with the position that people should marry within their ethnic group as those among college qualified West Germans (16 percent). Those with lower educational qualifications across Eastern and Western Germany hold generally negative attitudes toward refugees and foreigners and the impact they have on German society. West Germans without college educational credentials are more willing to tolerate foreigners marrying out of their ethnic group. Only 32 percent agree foreigners should not marry outside their ethic group while a much larger proportion of Eastern Germans (51 percent) without college qualifications express such a viewpoint. These general trends across education continue with respect to trust and social preferences, as well. For both East and West, large gaps are shown across the non-college qualified Germans from those with college qualifications with respect to postmaterial values, social anomia, and populist attitudes. Ranging from an eight percentage point difference for Western Germans holding postmaterial attitudes (48 percent versus 56 percent) to a 31 percentage point gap between Eastern Germans with and without college qualifications who express social anomia attitudes (71 percent versus 40 percent, respectively). Social anomia and populist attitudes are far more likely to characterize non-college qualified Eastern Germans (71 percent and 69 percent, respectively) than Western respondents who are non-college qualified (57 percent and 53 percent, respectively). This pattern is repeated when considering the college qualified Germans. Eastern German college qualified respondents are 12 percentage points more likely to hold social anomia dispositions (40 percent) than those with similar educational qualifications among the West (28 percent). A ten percentage point gap separates Eastern college

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educated respondents holding populist attitudes (42 percent) from those in the West with similar educational certification (32 percent). Generation Gaps Generation as a filter divides respondents into two groups. We may refer to these two as the pre-unification generation, or those who acquired adulthood values before unification, or who were 25 years or older in 1990, and the post-unification generation who had not yet reached the age of 25 in 1990 and were therefore not yet likely to have completed their education and begun progress with their professional and vocational careers. The pre-unification generation was born before 1966, while the post-unification generation was born after 1965. The generation gap is seen clearly among Eastern Germans with respect to their perceptions of advantages from unification coming to either region of Germany. Seventy-one percent of the Eastern postunification generation assesses Eastern Germany as having received more advantages than disadvantages, while only 57 percent of the Eastern preunification generation shares this assessment. Only 57 percent of the West German post-unification generation public believes the West benefitted more than it lost from unification, compared to the 71 percent of the East German post-unification generation who share that assessment toward their Eastern region. Additionally, the post-unification generation in both East and West are much more likely to believe they have not received their fair share in life compared to their respective pre-unification generation, the gap being 14 percentage points for both Western Germans (57 percent versus 33 percent, respectively) and Eastern Germans (50 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). The post-generation public in the East and West are more likely to be more tolerant toward refugees and foreigners. These generational gaps within each region are very large with respect to expressing tolerance for people who marry a person of another ethnic group. In the West, the generation gap is 18 percentage points across the two generations (34 percent versus 16 percent), and a 17 percentage point separation across the two generations in the East (49 percent versus 32 percent). Generation differences within the West are generally less evident regarding attitudes related to postmaterialism, social anomia, and populism. It is among Eastern Germans that strong patterns of differences

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emerge. The post-unification generation in the East is 12 percentage points more likely to be postmaterialist than the pre-unification generation (54 percent and 42 percent, respectively) and less likely to express social anomia dispositions (50 percent versus 63 percent across the respective generations). The East German post-unification generation is more likely to hold populist attitudes than those of the West German postunification generation, 54 percent and 43 percent, respectively. However, what may be more telling is the large gap between the Eastern German pre-unification generation and the Western German pre-unification generation with regard to social anomia and populism: 63 percent of the pre-unification generation of the East hold social anomia disposition, and 60 percent express populist attitudes. This compares to 40 percent and 42 percent respectively among the Western German pre-unification generation. Of final note, we see that 52 percent of the Western German pre-unification generation are postmaterialists compared to only 42 percent of those pre-unification Eastern Germans. Whether we can directly connect differences in generations across the two regions directly to the lingering effects of uniting two distinctly different social, economic, and political systems before 1990 is unclear. Nonetheless, the differences are powerful in suggesting the two parts of Germany have experienced sharply diverging experiences in coping with the challenges Silbereisen et al. (2006) have documented. Previous evidence of substantial differences regarding structural resources available to the East relative to those available to the West carries the implication that political and social differences reinforced by generational difference relative to unification could present distinct challenges for Germany moving forward into the next decade. Populism Finally, large differences color the landscape of German public opinion when we factor in populism as an effect, and not merely a demographic type. Populists in both Eastern and Western Germany see the other region as having received more advantages than disadvantages from unification, while also showing much greater willingness to express the belief that within their region they have received more disadvantages than advantages. However, of particular note is the large gap between Eastern populists and non-populists when assessing the advantages of unification for Eastern Germany. Among non-populist Eastern Germans, 89 percent

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express agreement that the Eastern region has received more advantages than disadvantages from unification, compared to only 48 percent of populist Eastern Germans. This gap is not as wide among Western Germans (85 percent versus 79 percent), though sizeable, nonetheless. Among Western respondents who are non-populist, 60 percent believe Western Germans have received more advantages than disadvantages compared to only 46 percent of Western populists. Populism is a distinct characteristic of the population separating the public within each region regarding the opinion as to whether they have received less than their fair share in life. Among Western populists 51 percent agree they have not, while 64 percent of Eastern populists agree they have been ‘shorted.’ Populism dramatically divides the German public in both Eastern and Western Germany. By respective margins of 26 percentage points, 32 per percentage points, and 12 percentage points, Western populists and non-populists are separated on the three measures relating to refugees and foreigners. Among Eastern Germans, the gaps between populists and non-populists are even larger: 41 percent, 19 percent, and 33 percent, respectively, across the three items measuring attitudes toward refuges and foreigners. Among populists in the East, 57 percent believe there is a dangerous degree of foreign influence within Germany, a view shared by only 42 percent of Western populists. Moreover, 57 percent of Easterners believe foreigners should marry within their ethnic group, compared to only 31 percent of Western populists. Finally, while Table 1.9 shows that only a small percentage separates the proportion of the publics across East and West being postmaterial, Western non-populists are more likely to be postmaterialists (52 percent) than are Eastern non-populists 41 percent. For both the Eastern and Western German publics, similar large gaps separate the populist and non-populists with respect to social anomia dispositions. The gap between populists and non-populists in the West is 42 percent (66 percent and 24 percent, respectively) and 48 among Eastern populists and non-populists (77 percent and 29 percent, respectively). Gender, Family, Marriage, and Work Unification in 1990 blended the differing values of West and East Germans regarding employment relations between men and women, attitudes toward gender roles within marriage and family, and beliefs about

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respective rights regarding work for men and women. The more generally gender-progressive and egalitarian East presented the West with more liberating attitudes toward a wide range of issues impacting women, family, child rearing, and the rights and obligations of married women within the workforce. The narrative was that in the East women are more emancipated since they were part of the workforce, but later it rather showed that in reality women in the East factually had a triple workload since they were still taking on most of the household and familial duties. Still, the role of the family, women, and work in society was seen by many to be the one area of social relations within the former GDR which many believed would carry significant impact into the West with transforming effect following unification. Therefore, in assessing the legacy of three decades of unification and understanding how its legacy may shape social policy and politics within Germany into the near future, a consideration of how aligned and disparate are values toward women, gender roles, and workforce opportunities for men and women should be generally assessed in order to provide a clearer picture of the broad impact of unification. Table 1.10 offers vivid evidence that Germany has transformed since its unification with respect to attitude on family, work, marriage, and gender roles. Across nine selected items from the German General Social Survey measuring attitudes on these issues, one notes a significant increase in views in the West offering a more egalitarian environment for females.11 11 Data reported in Table 1.10 are drawn from nine separate items within the German General Social Survey (GESIS, 2020): (1) Need a Family for Happiness: “Do you think one needs a family to be really happy, or do you think one can be just as happy living on one’s own?” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent believes “One needs a family”). (2) Should Marry if There is a Child: “what if there is a child? Do you think one should get married then?” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose “yes”). (3) Working Mom a Better Mother: “A child actually benefits from his or her mother having a job rather than just concentrating on the home” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (4) Working Mother Can Establish Relationship with Her Children as Well as Non-Working Mother: “A working mother can establish just as loving and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who doesn’t work” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (5) Child Suffers with Working Mother: “A small child is bound to suffer if his or her mother goes out to work” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (6) Husband’s Job More Important than Wife’s Job: “A married woman should not work if there are not enough jobs to go around and her husband is also in a position to support the family” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (7) Better for Everyone if Man to Work

73

47

27

76

63

39

69

–

36

77

76

47

22

44

86

62

25

61

33

48

92

67

–

83

First decade 1996

Third decade 2016a

First decade 1996

Second decade 2004a

East sample

West sample

24

29

94

81

31

79

Second decade 2004a

15

26

93

80

20

77

Third decade 2016a

26

48

83

53

33

18

40

88

71

19

55

2016

2016 66

Female

Male

West: by sex, 2016

17

30

92

76

22

75

13

22

93

83

18

77

2016

Female

THREE DECADES OF “FLOURISHING LANDSCAPES” …

(continued)

2016

Male

East: by sex, 2016

Basic German attitudes and beliefs toward women, family, marriage and work East–West, by gender, 2016

Need a family for happiness (% Agree)a Should marry if there is a child (% Agree)a Working mom a better mother (% Agree) Working mother can establish relationship with her children as well as non-working mother (% Agree) Child suffers with working mother (% Agree) Wife should give up work after marriage (% Agree)

Issue

Table 1.10

1

71

17

51

26

–

–

25

26

–

14

18

Second decade 2004a

83

17

14

Third decade 2016a

49

20

52

14

22

2016

2016 31

Female

Male

West: by sex, 2016

83

18

17

2016

Male

82

15

10

2016

Female

East: by sex, 2016

2000 and 2018 only

a Data for “Need a Family for Happiness” is for 2006 and 2018 (2004 and 2016 not available); data for “Should Marry if There is a Child” is for

26

42

First decade 1996

Third decade 2016a

First decade 1996

Second decade 2004a

East sample

West sample

(continued)

51 Better for everyone if man to work and woman stays home looking over home/children (% Agree) More important 36 for wife to help husband than pursue own career (% Agree) Better for family – if both partners work and share home/child responsibility equally (% Agree)

Issue

Table 1.10

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This transformation has indeed brought the Western region closer to that of the Eastern region. We note that for 2016, the latest year available for these items, the data reveal significant gaps between men and women within both regions, with stark differences on the patterns across the two regions, when controlling for gender. The Western public has become more open to the attitude that a working mother can be a better mother (from 36 percent in 1996 to 62 percent in 2016); has become less committed to the idea that a child suffers with a working mother (declining from 76 to 44 percent); that a wife should give up work after marriage declining, from 47 to 22 percent; that it would be better for everyone if a man were to work and the woman remain home to take care of children, declining from 51 to 26 percent; and that it would be more important for a wife to help her husband than to pursue her own career, declining from 36 to 17 percent. However, the proportions of the Western public holding these views in 2016 approximate the levels of the Eastern public who held those same views in 1996. Yet, the Eastern public have also become more willing over three decades of unification to accept working mothers (80 percent in 2016); have seen smaller percentages of their public believing working mothers mean suffering for children (26 percent in 2016); that women should surrender their career to help their husbands (15 percent in 2016); and hold that women should remain home to raise their children (14 percent in 2016). Thus, while the Eastern region continues to express more progressive and liberating attitudes toward women, work, marriage, and gender roles, these attitudes across Germany have shown progress in advancing the egalitarian opportunities to women. However, these broader regional measures hide the difference that still exists between genders within each region. Across our nine items reported

and Woman Stays Home Looking Over Home/Children”: “It is much better for everyone concerned if the man goes out to work and the woman stays at home and looks after the house and children” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (8) More Important for Wife to Help Husband Than Pursue Own Career: “It’s more important for a wife to help her husband with his career than to pursue her own career (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”). (9) Better for Family if Both Partners Work and Share Home/Child Responsibility Equally: “The best way to organize family and work life is for both partners to work full-time and to look after the home and children equally” (percent reported in Table 1.10 indicate respondent chose either “completely agree” or “tend to agree”).

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in Table 1.10, the mean gender gap for each item in 2016 is 10 percent among the Western public, yet only 4 percent for the East. The largest gap for the West is with respect to a person’s belief about whether a working mother is a better mother, where 53 percent of men agree compared to 71 percent of women. The gender gap for this item is only 7 percent for the Eastern public, with 83 percent of Eastern women affirming their view that working women are better mothers. Overall, both Western males and females are less disposed to embracing egalitarian gender roles than their Eastern counterparts. After three decades of common union across the two regions of Germany, attitudes toward gender, family, work, and marriage still separate the two regions, though these differences have narrowed considerably in many regards as shown in Table 1.10.

Conclusion: Gambit and Stakes in Germany’s Continuing Legacy of Unification Shaping Normal Politics Fundamentally, democratic politics is essentially a normative transaction. It is the primal process of the social exchanges between contending interests in society involving public authority charged with the task of forging policy which embraces some sense of fair and effective balance between the contending social preferences. These contentions are reflective of the differing aspirations in the public about how society ought to be organized with respect to the governed and the governing, what rights, opportunities, personalities, and obligations ought to be available to the public and embraced in the daily lives of citizens, and what choices ought to be made in the public sector in order to ensure the future which the broader public believes ought to be realized. Citizens conduct their daily lives in large measure by how these contending ‘oughts’ are sorted out. Civil society is a measure of how well or poorly government and its public attend to the continual challenges confronting the existing normative structure through a communication network between society’s partners and opponents crucial to finding the ‘sweet spot’ that minimizes the residue of distrust, discontent, frustration, and contempt from crystalizing into intractable dissension and enmity. It is easy to take for granted the normality of everyday politics and the give and take it entails over the contending perceptions in society about

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what out to be, or ought not to be. However, recent events and developments across so many democracies once presupposed to be pillars of stability and sturdy dedication to long embedded norms-of-conduct in democracy have had the effect of reminding even seasoned students of comparative democracy that seemingly small issues can fester into something implacable. This reality inspires the intense interest and serious task of measuring the dramatic gambit that defines German unification. Within the Western democracies, no single polity with such outsized impact on regional and even global stability has undertaken a similar gamble assuming such breathtaking scope and scale. The survey of the context of German unification and the three empirical dimensions measuring its legacy over thirty years which we have presented in the preceding sections of this essay hopefully remind the reader that German unification is more than just a statistical profile, or a dramatic story with both abstract and practical implications. It is an ongoing dynamic process of the social, political, and economic forces driving no matter how imperceptibly a transformation of profound implications for not only Germany, but Europe, the European Union, and Germany’s allies and foes alike. And, while the early phases of this process—the ‘take-off’ and the ‘building’ phases, as outlined above— may have moved into history, the more difficult task of managing the long reach of the continued trajectory following from these early phases continues to resonate with impact well into the foreseeable future. Based on our evidence summarized above, the foundations of this gambit are reasonably secure. Identity and expressed commitments to national pride and accomplishments, and the clear opinion that one can live well within the unified Germany are widely shared across the former East–West boundaries of the post-unification Germany. Moreover, contemporary Germany—East and West—has embraced more inclusive and tolerant attitudes toward the place of women in society and their aspirations to share as equals in the process of building a society and a political community. This measured progress is almost certainly connected to what the former East German polity had to offer as a pillar of its defunct system. These trends largely favor the future, as the post-unification generations of both regions for the most part by sizeable majorities are disposed to a cohesive view of how Germany ‘ought’ to be governed and organized. However, the data also clearly document the potential risks of several seemingly small gaps and differences in relative wealth, social dynamism, structural decline, perceptions of loss and gain, and unfavorable appraisals

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of life’s fairness, as well fears and apprehensions about refugees and foreigners and related degrees of distrust, cynicism and social despair and pessimism which distinguish the Eastern from the Western regions. The small gaps between the two parts continue undoubtedly to gnaw at the fabric of German democracy today. Still, what we see after thirty years of unification is that East and West came closer together, a fact we often overlook by focusing solely on the differences. No single country in Europe and the west is monitored more closely for signs of anti-democratic fever—except for now perhaps the United States. Germany long ago reminded civilized polities that no political community can safely assume it is inoculated from anti-democratic, authoritarian and tyrannical temperament. Germany’s great enduring legacy to the brilliant ideals inspiring Europe’s broader union is simple: ‘All democracies are democracies, until they are not.’ We must all ‘mind the gaps.’ The data presented above warn of stress and cracks within the foundation of Germany’s democracy—the one democracy seen by so many as the keystone to Europe’s political stability. The evidence we have surveyed broadly does not suggest immediate crisis. The next decade will no doubt find plenty of commitment within the German political system to relieving stubborn disparities in wealth, development, and with it absorb in time whatever wider separations persist across the East–West divide. These data do not prove the existence of long-term trends that cannot be reversed or tempered. Rather, these data show what social statistics are supposed to show—the degree of evidence which serves to help us appreciate how the presumed confidence in the normality of politics may be conditioned by those small issues which could if left unattended crystalize into calcified division. It is a risk that Eric Foner and students of the American era of Reconstruction understand well. It is a risk that the German public and public authority alike must manage and navigate. Thirty years after unification, this defines their ‘normal politics.’ The Chapters That Follow The chapters that follow in this volume document in more detail and with vivid insight some of the more defining domains of normal politics that has both been shaped by and continue to shape the path of Germany’s transition into the next decade after thirty years of unification. The volume is organized into three parts: (1) the changing landscape of parties and political landscape in Germany, (2) the dynamics and

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processes of Germany’s changing society and its implications for the postunification era moving forward, and (3) the complex and challenging course of German foreign relations, especially as it relates to its most closely connected partners in Europe and the Atlantic alliance system, and how these long-established relationships are constrained by the realities associated with Germany’s need to balance domestic interests defined in its post-unification era with ongoing changes and modifications within Germany’s international environment. All the chapters offer necessary perspectives and implications for how Germany’s legacy of unification present opportunities and constraints to managing its domestic political social pressures, as well as define the limits of how it can maneuver within the international context. Four chapters add rich detail and context to the broader issues of social change implied in the survey material presented above. Two papers in this section extend our understanding of the broader aspects of social and cultural change of Germany and serve to elevate with clarity and detail some of the most consequential issues noted in the previous sections presented above. Felix Lutz systemically explores the German brand name which has served to construct the identity of Germany and manage the changes it has both undergone with unification and legitimate to those outside of Germany who and what post-unification Germany is to and for them. Sabine Lang extends in detail the social and cultural forces which have been only broadly surveyed in the final section of the preceding pages of this introduction. She does so by articulating three phases of German politics in recent years that have marked Germany’s post-unification general politics and connects this process to the broader European context within which Germany strives to flourish, if not lead. Roland Sturm argues that Germany’s flexibility and adaptability during recent years have been the hallmark of navigating complex and threatening economic and financial challenges constraining Germany’s management of normal politics in its post-unification era, and makes clear such adaptability and flexibility will be needed and essential for the country moving into the next decade. Daniela Wawra’s detailed analysis of narratives contained in US presidential speeches offers an innovative pathway to gaining insight as to how Germany’s pursuit of normal politics entails carful balancing of domestic pressures and regional obligations and can serve the post-unification era moving forward to reshape relations with allies and partners, with consequences intended, or those not intended.

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Seven chapters explore changing party and political leadership dynamics within Germany’s post-unification era. Thomas Saalfeld and Dmytro Lutsenko offer a comprehensive review and survey of the transformation of the German party system since the onset of the unification era of Germany. They systematically explore the ties connecting the party to civil society and the unique and intense challenges that have confronted German political parties during unification with organization issues and strategies of partisan development. Five papers focus on individual German parties and offer detailed consideration of how they have navigated the demands of normal politics during the era of German unification and beyond. Patrick Horst considers the travails tasking the German Social Democratic (SPD) Party. Michael Weigl considers the modernization pressures confronting the CDU/ CSU and the German ‘Volksparteien.’ Eckard Jesse explains the strategies employed by the left parties in Germany (the PDS, the reformed version of the GDR’s SED, and Die Linke, the contemporary expression of left representation in Germany). Florian Hartleb examines the rise of the right-wing populist AfD and looks at the differences regarding the rightwing in East and West 30 years after reunification. Niko Switek charts the course of the German Green Party (Die Grünen) as they have positioned themselves to be the dominant bridge serving to connect the often diverging demands of Eastern and Western Germany. And, rounding out this section, Sarah Wiliarty focuses on Germany’s most prominent symbol of steady progress and steadfast dedication to normal politics, Angela Merkel and her 16-year tenure as Germany’s most impactful Chancellor during unification. One is hard pressed to understand fully the legacy of unification if one fails to appreciate the chancellorship and political maneuverings of this complex and dominant figure of modern German politics whose personal legacy is so deeply intertwined with that of the county’s management of the post-unification era and the course of ‘normal politics’ it has entailed. Three papers place Germany and its unification legacy into the broader international perspective. Stefan Schmidt reminds readers that what may be normal politics within the German context, and which play a crucial role Germany’s stability moving forward after thirty years of unification may not always be the tonic which fellow EU partners find appetizing or palatable when it comes to fiscal and economic policies. Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl consider German-American relations at

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the outset of the post-Trump era. Their analysis adds to our appreciation of the implications that follow from a post-unification Germany which must weigh carefully that from the past which should be preserved in its relations with allies and partners, and that which must be redefined during the course of adjustments necessitated by the demands of normal politics in Germany during the next decade and beyond. Finally, Michael Meimeth and Peter Schmidt place into context the cornerstone of Germany’s most vital European relationship, the famed Franco-German partnership. Perhaps no single bilateral relationship for Germany so vividly exposes the challenges that contour German politics during the decades of unification than its constant vigilance shown to its French connection. Together, these 15 chapters provide the rich nuances and details that have characterized German politics in the three decades of unification and which help define its legacy and guide the trajectory of German politics into the next decade.

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Etzioni, A. (1962). A paradigm for the study of political unification. World Politics: A Quarterly Journal of International Relations, 15, 44–74. Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy. (2020). Balance sheet and economic situation: Much achieved—And still much to do. https://www.bmwi.de/Red aktion/DE/Dossier/neue-laender.html Federal Returning Officer. (2017) Bundestag election 2017 . https://www.bun deswahlleiter.de/dam/jcr/045af0c9-209a-4292-82fd-f0a97559ef3d/btw17_ heft1.pdf Foner, E. (2019). The second founding: How the Civil War and reconstruction remade the constitution. WW Norton & Company. Franz, C., Fratzscher, M., & Kritikos, A. S. (2018). German right-wing party AfD finds more support in rural areas with aging populations. DIW Weekly Report, 8(7/8), 69–79. Galpin, C. (2017). The Euro crisis and European identities: Political and media discourse in Germany. Springer. German Federal Office of Statistics, “14th Coordinated Population Projection for Germany, 2021”. https://service.destatis.de/bevoelkerungspyramide/index. html#!y=2022a&a=25,67&l=en GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften. (2020). German General Social Survey (ALLBUS)—Cumulation 1980–2018. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5276 Data file Version 1.0.0. https://doi.org/10.4232/1. 13483 Halle Institute for Economic Research. (2019, March 4). United country— Three decades after the wall came down. https://www.iwh-halle.de/en/pub lications/detail/united-country-three-decades-after-the-wall-came-down/ Lang, S., Mushaben, J. M., & Wendler, F. (2017). German unification as a catalyst for change: Linking political transformation at the domestic and international levels. Liu, J. H., & Hilton, D. J. (2005). How the past weighs on the present: Social representations of history and their role in identity politics. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44(4), 537–556. Novotná, T. (2008). The transplantation and adaptation types of political integration: The case of the German unification in parallel with the eastern enlargement of EU. Perspectives: Review of Central European Affairs, 16 Novotná, T. (2015). How Germany unified and the EU enlarged: Negotiating the accession through transplantation and adaptation. Springer. Rädel, J. (2019). Two paradigmatic views on right-wing populism in east Germany. German Politics and Society, 37 (4), 29–42. Schmidtke, O. (2017). Reinventing the nation: Germany’s post-unification drive towards becoming a ‘country of immigration.’ German Politics, 26(4), 498– 515.

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Silbereisen, R. (2005). Presidential address social change and human development: Experiences from German unification. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29(1), 2–13. Silbereisen, R. K., Pinquart, M., Reitzle, M., Tomasik, M. J., Fabel, K., & Grümer, S. (2006). Psychosocial resources and coping with social change. Vorländer, H., Herold, M., & Schäller, S. (2018). PEGIDA and new right-wing populism in Germany. Springer. Weisskircher, M. (2020). The strength of far-right AfD in Eastern Germany: The east-west divide and the multiple causes behind ‘Populism.’ The Political Quarterly, 91(3), 614–622. Wike, R., J. Poushter, L. Silver, K. Devlin, J. Fetterolf, A. Castillo, & C. Huang (2019, October 15). European public opinion three decades after the fall of communism most embrace democracy and the EU, but many worry about the political and economic future. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/ 10/15/european-public-opinion-three-decades-after-the-fall-of-communism/ Wittlinger, R. (2010). German national identity in the twenty-first century: A different republic after all? Springer.

CHAPTER 2

Continuity and Change in the Office of German Chancellor Sarah Elise Wiliarty

Introduction More than 30 years into the Berlin Republic, it is clear that German unification brought with it many changes. This chapter examines developments in the office of Chancellor. Most of the institutions relating to the Chancellorship have remained unchanged, not just since unification, but since the founding of the Federal Republic. Some of the practices surrounding these institutions have changed, however. Furthermore, unification not only brought 16 million more people into the Federal Republic, it also involved the addition of five new federal states (Länder). Many of these changes affected the practical day-to-day functioning of the Chancellor’s office.

S. E. Wiliarty (B) Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_2

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One aspect of the Chancellorship which has not changed is the tendency of German Chancellors to serve quite long terms. Since unification, only three people have served as Chancellor, Helmut Kohl (1982– 1998), Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005), and Angela Merkel (2005– 2021). If we consider that Merkel’s tenure bridged four US Presidencies, five British Prime Ministers, and four French Presidencies, we can get a sense of how long German Chancellors tend to stay in office. Because of this trend, our “N” for post-unification Chancellors is very low. We must therefore keep in mind that any insights about developments of the office are likely also insights about the three particular leaders who have served as Chancellor. Nonetheless, an examination of the post-unification period reveals some clear trends of continuity and change. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the institutions directly related to the office of Chancellor, again noting that the vast majority of these institutions have not changed. It then investigates three areas in which change may have occurred, including (1) how Chancellors gain and lose office; (2) the role of the Chancellor in international affairs; (3) the presidentialization/personalization of the Chancellorship. For these three areas, this study finds solid evidence of change in the first two and a more ambiguous result regarding whether the office of Chancellor has become more presidential or more personalized. Despite the presence of only three individual Chancellors, most of the changes appear likely to continue into the future. These developments are part of the evolution of the German political system in the post-unification era, and not idiosyncratic shifts linked to the personalities of particular Chancellors.

Institutional Stability Most of Germany’s institutions remained the same through the unification process, even leading to the popular accusation that West Germany was “colonizing” East Germany (Rosenberg, 1991). Unification was accomplished through Article 23, which gave territories the right to join the existing Federal Republic without changing the Basic Law. Regarding the Chancellor’s office, this meant unification did not imply any noteworthy procedural changes. The method of electing the Chancellor, by a vote in the Bundestag, remains the same. Likewise, the potential methods for removing the Chancellor—through a lost election, through resignation, or through the mechanism of a constructive vote of no confidence—also remained unchanged. The constructive vote of

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no confidence is particularly worth noting. Unlike in standard parliamentary democracies, the Bundestag must vote in a replacement Chancellor while simultaneously voting to remove the current Chancellor. Generally speaking, the constructive vote of no confidence makes removing the Chancellor more difficult and therefore increases the Chancellor’s power vis-à-vis the Bundestag. None of these institutions changed with unification. Another institution which remained the same is the lack of a clear leader of the opposition. Unlike many parliamentary democracies, such as the United Kingdom and most states using the Westminster system, the German Bundestag does not designate a minority leader or “shadow Chancellor.” This practice also adds to the power of the Chancellor, as he or she does not face a clearly identifiable opponent outside of campaign times. The media do not cover the “leader of the opposition” as commonly happens when this person is clearly labeled. Indeed, as Grand Coalitions have become more common in the post-unification era, the possibility of a “shadow Chancellor” has arguably become even less likely. Finally, policy making in Germany shows a very high level of consensus, with most democratic parties in the Bundestag agreeing on most legislation and the Bundesrat also agreeing on most legislation (Behnke, 2019; Burkhart & Lehnert, 2008; Lehmbruch, 2000). This practice, however, highlights the constraints of the Chancellor’s office. Because Germany is a system with many veto points, the Chancellor and his or her cabinet can not necessarily assume that all legislation that is proposed will also be passed as originally suggested. The Bundesrat must approve all legislation that affects the competencies of the Länder as well as all constitutional amendments. The Bundesrat can also issue a suspensive veto, which the Bundestag can override, but only with a stronger majority. Furthermore, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) places genuine limits on the legislation the Bundestag can pass because it must be in keeping with the Basic Law. Rather than passing a law that is destined to end up in court, the Bundestag tends to pre-emptively craft legislation that will pass not just parliament, but also constitutional muster. Both Germany’s style of tightly knit federalism and the authority of the FCC constrain the power of the German Chancellor. However, none of these institutions and their surrounding practices changed with unification. In these ways, the Bonn Republic and the Berlin Republic show enormous continuity.

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Areas of Change While many of the institutions of the German Chancellorship remained the same after unification, some important changes occurred as well, sometimes in surprising directions. As we reflect on the evolution of the Chancellor’s office during the Berlin Republic, we need to keep two factors in mind. First, as previously mentioned, Germany has only had three Chancellors since 1990. Some of the changes in the office may be linked to the particular occupants of that office. Second, quite apart from unification, over thirty years have passed since 1990 and some change in the executive branch would have been likely even in the absence of unification. Sorting these two factors out from changes that can be directly connected to unification is probably impossible, but we can certainly examine developments over time and consider their causes. The next section of this chapter does exactly that, focusing on three issues: how Chancellors gain and lose office, the international role of the Chancellor, and the presidentialization and personalization of the office.

Gaining and Losing Office We begin our consideration of changes and continuity in the Chancellor’s office by thinking about how politicians gain and lose the Chancellorship. Unification did not bring any serious changes to the electoral system. Germany holds federal elections every four years, using a system of personalized proportional representation. The Members of the Bundestag then vote to elect the Chancellor from their midst. So far, every Chancellor has been a member of one of the two major “Volksparteien,” the Christian Democrats [CDU/CSU] and the Social Democrats [SPD]. Chancellor candidates are designated prior to the election. Coalition government in Germany is the norm. Common practice is that the leader of the largest party in the Bundestag forms the governing coalition, but exceptions have occurred as well. Despite broad continuity in terms of both institutions and practices, several important aspects of electing and dismissing the Chancellor have changed since unification. At the beginning of the process of electing a Chancellor, political parties must choose their Chancellor candidates. German political parties do not have formal rules or anything similar to primaries in the United States to select a Chancellor candidate. Germany does not have term limits and incumbent Chancellors frequently

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choose to run for re-election. Furthermore, the Chancellor candidate is sometimes, but not always, the party chair. Standard practice for both the CDU/CSU and the SPD has been that the Chancellor candidate “emerges” from discussions among the party elites. One change since unification is the possibility of choosing the Chancellor candidate through a process of intraparty democracy. The SPD was the first mainstream political party to choose its candidate through a process of membership voting in 1993, for the 1994 election. Rudolf Scharping outpolled Gerhard Schröder and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul in an internal election to win the right to run as the Social Democratic candidate for Chancellor. Scharping went on to lose in the general election against Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The SPD has not yet repeated its foray into internal party democracy. Instead, subsequent Chancellor candidates have been chosen confidentially by party leadership. The Christian Democrats have an additional wrinkle for selecting a Chancellor candidate. The two sister parties—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU)—each have a party chair. The two parties campaign together, running a single Chancellor candidate. They have no institutionalized procedure for selecting the candidate, though the most common choice is the chair of the CDU. In 1980 and 2002, however, the chairs of the CSU (Franz-Josef Strauss and Edmund Stoiber, respectively) were chosen as Chancellor candidates. Whether the CDU party chair or the CSU party chair (or some other party leader) ends up as Chancellor candidate is context-specific and often the product of discussions of party elites behind closed doors. The selection of a Christian Democratic Chancellor candidate in 2021 occurred in stages. When Merkel declared she would not run again, the presumed CDU candidate became party chair Annegret KrampKarrenbauer. However, when Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned in February 2020, the position of CDU chair and presumptive Chancellor candidate became open. The election of a new CDU chairperson was delayed until January 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. By that time, it was clear that the winner of the internal party election would also be the CDU’s choice for Chancellor candidate. The vote was highly contested with three candidates, Armin Laschet, Friedrich Merz, and Norbert Röttgen. Laschet was elected chair of the CDU, but the CSU chair, Markus Söder, was also interested in running for Chancellor (Oltermann, 2021). The joint CDU/CSU leadership chose Laschet as the Chancellor candidate in April 2021. In this case, the election of the CDU party chair

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was not officially an internal party vote for the Chancellor candidate, but it was clear that that was the most likely outcome. Parties might resort to internal party democracy for a variety of reasons: because of ideology, to increase party legitimacy (Katz & Mair, 1995), to reinvigorate party membership (Scarrow, 1996), or to get around mid-level party elites (Mair, 1997), to name a few. In the cases of the 1993 SPD membership vote and the 2021 CDU party congress delegate vote, the primary reason for moving away from the more standard practice for leadership selection appears to be using internal party democracy as a method for ameliorating internal party conflict (Astudillo and Detterbeck, 2020). In the German context, an outright fight for the right to run for Chancellor is definitely looked down upon by voters. However, experimentation with intraparty democracy as a method for selecting the Chancellor candidate should not be seen as successful. The SPD has not repeated this procedure since 1994. More recently the extended process of selecting the CDU party chair has been seen as damaging to the party. Resorting to internal party democracy as a selection method can be seen as a sign of increased internal party conflict. As will be seen in the remainder of this section, unification contributed to increased tension and volatility in a variety of areas. Another change in how Chancellors gain office relates to which parties choose to nominate “Chancellor candidates.” Unlike in the United States, the role of “Chancellor candidate” is not formal. The two major parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, traditionally designate a party leader as their Chancellor candidate, but this isn’t a requirement and that designation does not have any official influence over the Bundestag’s vote after the election to choose a Chancellor. Normally only those two parties designate Chancellor candidates, but in the lead-up to the 2021 election, the Green Party chose Annalena Baerbock as their official Chancellor candidate. The Greens normally run campaigns with two lead candidates, a man and a woman. Party statutes require that the first position on party lists be given to a woman. The Greens broke with this practice once before, when Joschka Fischer was chosen as the sole lead candidate in 2002. Coming out of the first-ever national SPD-Green government, Fischer was the most popular politician in Germany. The Green Party’s selection of Fischer as their top candidate should be regarded as a campaign tactic designed to win votes. No one expected Fischer to win the election and his clear choice was to continue the coalition with the SPD (“In Joschka We Trust,” 2002).

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The choice of Baerbock as the lead candidate for the Greens in 2021 is an entirely different story. During the 2017–2021 legislative period, the Greens overtook the SPD as the second largest party in Germany, at least according to the polling institutes (Zicht & Cantow, n.d.). The Greens even briefly outpolled the Christian Democrats in May 2021 after Baerbock’s nomination. A Green victory and a Baerbock Chancellorship were not terribly likely outcomes, but that development was certainly not impossible either. Unlike Fischer, whose Chancellor candidacy was primarily symbolic, Baerbock ran a genuine campaign. While the Fischer candidacy was more about public relations, the Baerbock candidacy is a result of changes in the party system, resulting at least partially from unification. Thus, we have seen two changes in how Chancellors gain office—an increased use of internal party democracy to select Chancellor candidates (or the party chair, and presumptive Chancellor candidate) and the nomination of a Chancellor candidate from a minor party. Neither of these developments has occurred frequently, yet both are entirely novel since unification and both can arguably be linked to greater disruption of the party system caused by unification. Prior to 1990, Germany had what was called a “Two-Bloc System.” Two mainstream parties of the right, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats (FPD), faced off against two mainstream parties of the left, the SPD and the Greens. Since unification, the two-bloc system has been disrupted. The former East German Communist Party dropped its commitment to Marxist-Leninist doctrine and changed its name to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). In 2007, the PDS merged with an SPD-splinter party, Labour and Social Justice—the Electoral Alternative (WASG), to form the Left Party (Patton, 2011). In 2013, the radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered politics as an anti-EU party, but quickly evolved into a more generic radical right party. Counting the Christian Democrats as a single party (which is dubious), unified Germany now has six relevant parties. The older, more established parties have thus far refused to form a coalition at the national level with either the Left Party or the AfD. This more complex system allows for and even promotes more variation in how parties compete. Unification has led to more complexity and therefore also more innovation. In addition to changes in how Chancellors gain office, the postunification era has seen changes in how Chancellors lose office as well.

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Since unification, German voters have increasingly voted against incumbent Chancellors. Prior to 1990, the most common way for a Chancellor to leave office was through resignation. Adenauer, Erhard, and Brandt all resigned. Kiesinger and Schmidt both left office as part of a change in governing coalition. Though the circumstances were somewhat different, neither of them was defeated at the polls. From the beginning of the Federal Republic through the election of 1998, no incumbent Chancellor had ever been voted out of office. On the other hand, since unification, both Kohl and Schröder left the Chancellorship after losing elections. Kohl’s defeat in 1998 was a message from voters that they were tired of his leadership and ready for someone new. Although Germany’s democratic credentials were never seriously in doubt, Kohl’s loss and the change of governing coalition after 1998 showed clear evidence that German voters were prepared to reject a seated Chancellor. Schröder’s exit was more complicated. Normally, the Bundestag can vote against a seated Chancellor only through a “constructive vote of no confidence” which also simultaneously selects new leadership. In other words, the members of the German parliament must reject the incumbent Chancellor and elect a successor in a single vote. This provision was adopted after World War II as a safeguard against the instability that plagued the Weimar Republic. Gerhard Schröder, however, wanted to trigger early elections in an attempt to shore up his support after an electoral loss at the regional level. This maneuver had not previously been used in Germany, but the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that it was legal. Schröder asked for a vote of no confidence, which he failed, as planned, and new elections were held the next month. Schröder had hoped that by triggering early elections, he would reinvigorate support for his party, resulting in a new mandate for his planned economic reforms. This maneuver backfired, however, and Schröder lost the election. Initially, he claimed victory and attempted to hold onto the Chancellor’s office, despite the CDU/CSU leading the SPD in the election results. The ensuing coalition negotiations resulted in a Grand Coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, with Merkel as Chancellor, but the SPD holding a majority of ministries in the cabinet. Schröder retired from politics when Merkel took office. Schröder’s exit represents two changes in how German Chancellors leave office. First, his loss at the polls reinforces the trend that it is possible to vote an incumbent Chancellor out. Second, introducing the

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mechanism of the vote of no confidence to trigger elections potentially gives the Chancellor a new tool in shaping the electoral calendar. If the German Chancellor can dissolve the Bundestag at will, he or she might be able to time elections to be beneficial to the Chancellor’s party. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled the no confidence vote constitutional; however, the political fallout was significant enough that future Chancellors are likely to be reluctant to make use of this tool. Furthermore, the technique did not play out well for Schröder so future Chancellors may assess the no confidence vote as too hazardous to be useful. Merkel is leaving office through retirement and returning to the most common pathway for Chancellors to end their terms. Upon retirement, she will have won four consecutive elections and been in office for 16 years, just shy of Helmut Kohl’s record. It’s possible, even likely, that Merkel would have won had she chosen to run again. The tendency for Chancellors to remain in office for exceptionally long terms remains. Nevertheless, Kohl’s and Schröder’s losses represent evidence that defeating an incumbent is not impossible. This denotes an important shift in the political landscape of the Federal Republic.

The International Role of the Chancellor One of the primary expectations of unification was that a bigger Germany would take on a more important role internationally. Some observers hoped for this change and others feared it. Such a shift would naturally give rise to a greater international role for the German Chancellor. One incentive for the Maastrict Treaty, which furthered European integration, was to bind a larger, more powerful Germany more closely to the European Union. Two questions arise from this expectation. Did a more powerful Germany come to pass? If so, was this largely a positive or a negative development? This section assesses these questions both within the EU and in the larger international context. Overall, Germany has certainly increased its influence, both within Europe and across the globe and the office of Chancellor has gained international prominence. Fears of German aggression, however, were unwarranted. The new more powerful Germany has largely been a force for peace and international cooperation. Because of the long tenure of German Chancellors, it remains to be seen whether these changes are due to particular Chancellors or changes in the office itself. The increased importance of the Chancellor’s office was likely

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inevitable. The use of that office is more connected with particular office holders. During the initial post-unification period, the second half of Helmut Kohl’s Chancellorship, Germany helped lead the way to a more tightly integrated European Union. The Maastrict Treaty, which reinvigorated the European project, was at least partially a result of German unification. French President François Mitterrand, nervous about a larger, more powerful Germany, insisted on deeper integration as a way of ensuring Germany would not become a major independent player. Kohl himself saw combining deeper European integration with German unification as the path forward. Maastrict helped lay the groundwork for the introduction of the euro. The Berlin Republic under Helmut Kohl clearly represented a Europeanized Germany (rather than a Germanized Europe). This shift brought with it a greater international role for the Chancellor (Katzenstein, 1998; Wendler, 2017). Schröder’s Chancellorship, on the other hand, represented a more ambiguous relationship to the European Union and an enhanced role for Germany beyond Europe. Schröder was not always an unabashed EU-booster. Prior to his election, Schröder had joined forces with Kurt Biedenkopf and Edmund Stoiber to ask for a five year delay in adopting the euro (Schmid, 1997). Shortly after assuming office, he asked to reduce Germany’s contribution to the European Union, a position he later reversed (Cohen, 1999). Despite a more mixed pattern of support, Schröder was certainly a solid Europeanist, if not the EU superstar that Kohl had been. Schröder’s term as Chancellor made clear that Germany was not simply at the service of the European Union. Schröder’s most prominent expansion of German power was to send German troops to Kosovo and Afghanistan. This campaign was the first time German soldiers were sent into military action since World War Two. The decision to send German troops to Kosovo was extremely controversial and caused a major crisis within the SPD’s coalition partner, the Green Party. Germany later also sent troops to Afghanistan. In both cases, these engagements were under the NATO umbrella. These campaigns represented a major change in German policy. In many ways, however, the shift brought Germany into alignment with other NATO countries. Certainly, sending troops abroad represented an expansion of Germany’s role internationally. This change reflected Schröder’s desire for an expanded German role in world affairs (Hyde-Price, 2001).

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Schröder’s willingness to take on a greater role internationally also manifested itself in how he directed Germany’s relationships with the United States and Russia. Schröder took a hardline against the US-led war in Iraq. Other major European powers were divided on this issue with Great Britain backing the United States and France opposing the military action. Schröder’s position was likely influenced by the 2002 German national election. German public opinion dramatically opposed the war. But his willingness to break with the United States also showed greater independence for German foreign policy. On the other hand, Schröder often took on a pro-Russian perspective. He was criticized for calling Putin a “flawless democrat” and also for backing the Gazprom pipeline—and then overseeing the project shortly after leaving office (“Gerhard Schröder’s Dangerous Liaison,” 2004). Whatever one makes of the appropriateness of these policies, criticism of the United States and cooperation with Russia definitely represented new international positions for Germany. Chancellor Merkel’s foreign policy has shown a clear commitment to European integration. She played a central role in developing the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. Merkel faced several challenges related to European integration, including the European sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, and the refugee crisis. Her leadership on these issues cannot accurately be described as Germany “unleashing” its power to control the actions of the EU, but neither should we view it as a “tamed” Germany bound to the interests of European integration and unable to exert its own agenda. Instead, Merkel has managed a series of difficult issues by balancing European and German interests. Germany’s role in Europe has turned out to be more complex than originally envisioned in the early years of the Berlin Republic, but there is no denying that German power within the European Union has increased. Under Chancellor Merkel, Germany’s international role beyond Europe has expanded even further. Merkel’s leadership in foreign affairs has often been praised and she’s been called the “Chancellor of the free world” (Gibbs, 2015) and the “Liberal West’s Last Defender” (Smale & Erlanger, 2016). During her long tenure in office, Merkel has had four different Ministers of Foreign Affairs, with one of them, Franz-Walter Steinmeier, serving two separate terms. Merkel has been personally very active in foreign affairs and in shaping Germany’s new international role. Despite trepidation in the transition from the Bonn to the Berlin Republic about a new, more powerful and possibly threatening Germany, under

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Merkel, German foreign policy has focused broadly on increasing international cooperation and supporting human rights. Merkel has earned deep international respect from a variety of sources (Pazzanese, 2019). Under Chancellor Merkel, Germany has become more engaged internationally in areas outside of Europe as well. Merkel’s Chancellorship alone spans four United States presidencies, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. The US–German relationship during the Berlin Republic has seen more ups and downs, due to both increasing German autonomy and sometimes greater American belligerence. When Merkel took office, the normally strong transatlantic relationship had been damaged by Schröder’s criticism of the US-led war in Iraq. US–German relations improved under Merkel especially during the Merkel-Obama era. This partnership was a priority for both sides and the close relationship even survived disclosures of a mass surveillance program in which the American NSA and the German BND purportedly shared data. The Obama-Merkel era marked a high point in GermanAmerican relations and an instance of Merkel extending German influence beyond the boundaries of Europe. The Trump presidency, on the other hand, marked the nadir of transatlantic relations. Merkel and Trump disagreed on a wide range of issues: appropriate contributions to NATO, climate and trade policy, as well as relations with Russia to name a few. In the spring of 2017, after a disappointing meeting of the G7, Merkel noted that Europe could no longer “fully rely on others” in reference to the United States (Smale & Erlanger, 2017). Trump’s frequent criticism of Germany in general, and Merkel specifically, continued throughout his term. Although Trump is the actor who changed direction here, Merkel’s choice in favor of a more autonomous position shows a Germany and a Chancellor less reliant on the United States. Merkel’s leadership in international affairs also manifested itself in the German-Russian relationship (Forsberg, 2016). During Merkel’s time in office, Germany has become more critical of Russia in response to the crisis in Ukraine and Russian annexation of the Crimea. The GermanRussian (or indeed, European-Russian) relationship is a complicated one. Germany certainly prefers a peaceful and cooperative Russia. Germany’s dependence on Russian gas also potentially puts it in a vulnerable position. Over time, Merkel has become significantly more critical of Russia, for its international belligerence but also for its human rights violations and its non-standard democratic practices. Merkel is viewed as one of the

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most important liaisons between the West and Russia, able to manage the balancing act of continued peaceful relations and significant criticism. This role definitely reflects an expansion of the German role internationally, but not a negative one (Mathhijs, 2016). At the moment of transition from the Bonn Republic to the Berlin Republic, the question of Germany’s role in the world was a pressing issue. In retrospect, there can be little doubt that Germany has taken on a larger global influence. From Kohl’s presence in the European Union to Schröder’s criticism of the US to Merkel’s much-expanded global presence, Germany’s international position is much greater than it was prior to 1990. Somewhat surprisingly, however, French fears about a rising German power have not materialized. Instead, under Chancellor Merkel, Germany has moved in the direction of becoming a force for international cooperation on issues such as climate change, migration policy, free trade, and human rights. Clearly, German interests also still matter—consider Merkel’s insistence on austerity policy for Greece during the euro crisis. So far at least, a more powerful Germany has turned out to look quite different from what might have been expected by many at the time of unification. Because of Merkel’s long tenure in office, we have no way to disentangle what future Chancellors will do in foreign relations, but it is hard to imagine any German politician with an aggressive international agenda winning office.

Personalization and Presidentialization One trend that scholars think might be happening across western democracies is an increase in personalization and/or presidentialization of politics. The exact meaning of this concept is not entirely clear, nor is its precise measurement. We have widespread evidence that party ties have weakened over time (Dalton et al., 2000). As parties lose their ability to influence political behavior, individual candidates might become more important. Furthermore, other research argues that the media are increasingly covering candidates rather than political parties and that coverage focuses more on personality instead of issue positions or competence (Adam & Maier, 2010). These tendencies are thought to hold in the United States, but also possibly across western democracies. The terms “personalization” and “presidentialization” are sometimes, but not always, used interchangeably. This research takes personalization

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to mean a greater attention to candidates or politicians rather than political parties or other organizational actors. Personalization is also often used to refer to a greater focus on leaders’ personalities and personal lives. Presidentialization can be considered a sub-category of personalization. Whereas personalization refers to the trend of placing more importance on individual politicians, presidentialization refers to more concentration the leader in particular. Presidentialization can also mean that the leader is able to act more independently of his or her political party (Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014). There is good reason to expect that both trends of personalization and presidentialization in Germany might accelerate with unification moving forward. Germany has been called a “Kanzlerdemokratie” because of the importance of the Chancellor’s office (Sartori, 1997). This trend could be expected to have increased with unification, particularly with the greater international role of the Chancellor. Greater television coverage might also increase both personalization and presidentialization. More media focus on individual leaders and their personalities and the genuinely greater role of the Chancellor internationally might be especially likely in the German system, which is already predisposed to have an elevated role for the executive branch. The scholarly evidence examining personalization and presidentialization in Germany is decidedly mixed, however. The best case for an increase in personalization comes from research examining media coverage after Germany introduced televised debates among Chancellor candidates (Reinemann & Wilke, 2007). In their study of all campaigns from 1949 to 2005, the authors found no long-term trends of any kind prior to 1998. Press coverage of the elections of 2005 and 2009, however, featured an increased focus on individual candidates (rather than political parties). Furthermore, the content of the 2002 and 2005 election coverage changed. It included more images of candidates and more negative statements. The percentage of “interpretive coverage”— meaning opinion pieces and features—also increased. Despite some variation over time, this study also shows a generalized trend toward a greater percentage of articles mentioning candidates by name. We have some evidence then that the candidate debates shifted media coverage of campaigns. Televised debates have become an established part of the German federal election campaign cycle with three debates scheduled for 2021.

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More commonly, though, research has found little-to-mixed evidence in support of the personalization/presidentialization thesis. Kaase’s study of the 1990 election concluded that political parties received much more coverage than individual politicians. He reported no evidence of personalization (Kaase, 1994). Looking at the 2009 election, Holtz-Bacha et al. (2014) compared Germany with the UK (2010 election) and confirmed significantly more personalization in the British case. This finding fits with the insight that rather than a general trend across all western democracies, personalization trends vary both cross-nationally and over time (Kriesi, 2011). Countries such a France, with a semi-presidential political system, unsurprisingly show more focus on individual politicians (Kriesi, 2011). In Germany, Kriesi actually finds a larger percentage of coverage devoted to particular candidates in the 1970s than in the 1990s or the 2000s. Other studies that include Germany also don’t reveal clear trends toward personalization/presidentialization (Karvonen, 2010). Therefore, in general, the jury is still out on the trend toward personalization and presidentialization. With its strong Chancellor’s office, weakening party ties, and increasing importance of televised debates, Germany would make a likely case for these shifts to occur. On the other hand, political parties continue to play a central role in the German political system, above the importance of individual politicians. Furthermore, most of the German media system remains reluctant to sensationalize coverage of politics and largely refrains from covering personal lives of politicians. Existing research does not support a claim that the Chancellor’s office is becoming more personalized or more presidentialized.

Conclusion Unification clearly brought many changes to the German political system. Part of the challenge of sorting through these changes is that, of course, Germany was not frozen in time even quite apart from unification. This chapter has focused on the Chancellor’s office, with the goal of discerning what has changed about that office as well as examining whether and how those changes can be linked to unification. We need look no further than the 2021 election slate to see one significant change in the Chancellor’s office: three important candidates, Christian Democratic, Social Democratic, and Green. The rise of the Green party pre-dates unification and in fact, the party stumbled with unification. On the other hand, the official name of the party “Alliance

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90/The Greens” reminds us that this party has worked hard to integrate east and west. Without the disruption and fragmentation unification caused in the German party system, the Greens might not have risen to where they are now: Potentially Germany’s second most powerful party. The second major shift in entrance to and exit from the Chancellor’s office is also indirectly linked to unification. For forty years, West Germans were unwilling to “vote the rascals out” yet in only the third election of unified Germany, that’s exactly what happened. German voters repeated that feat again in 2005. This change can also be more clearly linked to disruption in the party system. Unification brought with it party fragmentation and the German political system has not yet settled into a clear new pattern. The significantly increased international role of the Chancellor is surely the clearest change linked to unification. With approximately 20 million more people and much larger territory, unified Germany dwarfs France and Britain much more than West Germany did within the EU and within the European context more generally. Germany is more powerful economically than its European neighbors and has the potential—as yet unused—to be more powerful from a military perspective as well. The prominence of the Chancellor’s office has increased with each subsequent office holder in the post-unification era. Whether that trend continues remains to be seen. The unexpected development in international affairs is that Germany has become a significant force for international cooperation. It is nearly unthinkable to imagine a Germany that takes on a threatening role either within or outside of Europe. Instead, Germany is coming into its own, especially under Chancellor Merkel. German interests may not always overlap with those of its European neighbors or with the United States, but so far Germany has found a way to balance competing tensions in a reasonable fashion. Germany might even take on a leading role in guiding the West’s relationship with Russia. Finally, the greater prominence of the Chancellor internationally has not been reflected in a similar shift domestically. Despite the importance of the Chancellor’s office, political parties remain important actors in Germany. German Chancellors have not been fully able to “Go it alone” or to “Go public” in way that might be comparable to what US Presidents can do. Even media coverage of the Chancellor has shifted little over time. Arguably both Great Britain and France have become more personalized and presidentialized than Germany.

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It would be remiss to conclude this chapter without a look forward. Germany has still only had three Chancellors in the post-unification era so each of their influences on the office remains high. With Merkel’s retirement pending in September 2021, a new Chancellor will soon take office and give his or her particular imprint to the office. What happens after that remains to be seen.

Literature Adam, S., & Maier, M. (2010). Personalization of politics: A critical review and agenda for research. In C. Salmon (Ed.), Communication yearbook 34 (pp. 213–257). Routhledge. Astudillo, J., & Detterbeck, K. (2020). Why, sometimes, primaries? Intraparty democratization as a default selection mechanism in German and Spanish mainstream parties. Party Politics, 26(5), 594–604. Behnke, N. (2019, October 3). Consensual governance – The German governmental system [Blog post]. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://blog-iaclaidc.org/70-years-of-the-german-basic-law/2019/10/3/consensual-govern ance-the-german-governmental-system Burkhart, S., & Lehnert, M. (2008). Between consensus and conflict: Lawmaking processes in Germany. German Politics, 17 (3), 223–231. Cohen, R. (1999). Statesmanlike Schroeder pulls harmony from Europe’s hat. The New York Times, p. 4. Dalton, R., McAllister, I., & Wattenberg, M. (2000). The Consequences of partisan Dealignment. In R. Dalton & M. Wattenberg (Eds.), Parties without partisans: Political change in advanced industrial democracies (pp. 37–63). Oxford University Press. Forsberg, T. (2016). From Ostpolitik to ‘frostpolitik’? Merkel, Putin and German foreign policy towards Russia. International Affairs, 92(1), 21–42. Gerhard Schroeder’s Dangerous Liaison. (2004, December 1). Spiegel International. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.spiegel.de/international/ moscow-mon-amour-gerhard-schroeder-s-dangerous-liaison-a-330461.html Gibbs, N. (2015, December 9). Why Angela Merkel is TIME’s Person of the Year. TIME. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://time.com Holtz-Bacha, C., Langer, A., & Merkle, S. (2014). The personalization of politics in comparative perspective: Campaign coverage in Germany and the United Kingdom. European Journal of Communication, 29(2), 153–170. Hyde-Price, A. (2001). Germany and the Kosovo war: Still a civilian power? German Politics, 10(1), 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/096440004123 31307374

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In Joschka We Trust. (2002, January 24). DW . Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.dw.com/en/in-joschka-we-trust/a-414138 Kaase, M. (1994). Is there personalization in politics? Candidates and voting behavior in Germany. International Political Science Review, 15(3), 211–230. Karvonen, L. (2010). The personalization of politics. A study of parliamentary democracies. ECPR Press. Katz, R., & Mair, P. (1995). Changing models of party organization and party democracy: The emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics, 1(1), 5–28. Katzenstein, P. (Ed.). (1998). Tamed power: Germany in Europe. Cornell University Press. Kriesi, H. (2011). The personalization of national election campaigns. Party Politics, 18(6), 825–844. Lehmbruch, G. (2000). Parteienwettbewerb im Bundesstaat: Regelsysteme und Spannungslagen im politischen System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (3rd ed.). Westdeutscher Verlag. Mair, P. (1997). Party system change: Approaches and interpretations. Clarendon Press. Matthijs, M. (2016). The three faces of German leadership. Survival, 58(2), 135–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2016.1161908 Oltermann, P. (2021, January 16). Germany: Merkel’s party chooses Armin Laschet as leader. The Guardian. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www. theguardian.com/ Patton, D. (2011). Out of the East: From PDS to left party in unified Germany. State University of New York Press. Pazzanese, C. (2019, May 28). Angela Merkel, the scientist who became a world leader. The Harvard Gazette. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://news.har vard.edu/gazette/ Reinemann, C., & Wilke, J. (2007). It’s the debates, stupid! How the introduction of televised debates changed the portrayal of Chancellor candidates in the German press, 1949–2005. Press/politics, 12(4), 92–111. https://doi. org/10.1177/1081180X07307185 Rosenberg, D. (1991). The colonization of East Germany. Monthly Review, 43(4), 14+. Sartori, G. (1997). Comparative constitutional engineering. An inquiry into structures, incentives and outcomes (2nd ed.). New York University Press. Scarrow, S. (1996). Parties and their members: Organizing for victory in Britain and Germany. Oxford University Press. Schmid, J. (1997). Another German Premier seeks delay on the euro. The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.nytimes.com Smale, A., & Erlanger, S. (2016, November 12). As Obama Exits World Stage, Angela Merkel May Be the Liberal West’s Last Defender. The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.nytimes.com

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Smale, A. & Erlanger, S. (2017, May 28). Merkel, After Discordant G-7 Meeting, Is Looking Past Trump. The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.nytimes.com Wendler, F. (2017). Recalibrating Germany’s role in Europe: Framing leadership as responsibility. German Politics, 26(4), 574–590. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09644008.2017.1364364 Zicht, W., & Cantow, M. (n.d.). Sonntagsfrage Bundestagswahl. Retrieved July 15, 2021 from https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

CHAPTER 3

The German Party System Since 1990: From Incorporation to Fragmentation, Polarization and Weaker Ties Thomas Saalfeld and Dmytro Lutsenko

Introduction Political parties are both competitive organizations and, usually, associations of like-minded people sharing political ideas, values and policy preferences. They are thus characterized by a combination of ‘interests’ and ‘passion’ as Pomper (1992) puts it. In representative democracies, they play an important role in linking voters and civil society on the one hand and state institutions on the other (Mair, 2013). They do so by

T. Saalfeld (B) · D. Lutsenko University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] D. Lutsenko e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_3

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competing for legislative and government office in elections. Insofar they have a defined ideology, they offer policy choices to voters. Given the low levels of information voters have about politics (Achen & Bartels, 2016; Zaller, 1991), party ideologies and reputations serve as heuristics for voters. They can be seen as ‘brand labels’ lending credibility to the electoral pledges candidates make and simplifying choices for voters (Cox, 1987). From the golden age of mass parties to the mid-twentieth century, some parties also served as important elements of their voters’ sociopolitical ‘identities.’ High levels of party identification simultaneously stabilized the links between parties and particular voter groups in civil society on the one hand and provided information shortcuts for people to make sense of political information on the other (Campbell et al., 1954). In the German case, party membership was often not only psychological but also organizational as many people joined political parties or one of their collateral organizations (including leisure clubs, cooperatives and the like). These collateral structures, which dated back to the heyday of mass parties during the late nineteenth century (Katz & Mair, 1995), allowed parties to influence and stabilize their organizational environment at least to an extent. Linkage with the governmental sphere was achieved through the parties’ representation in elected parliamentary assemblies at all levels of the political system and control of both the parliamentary agenda and governments (Saalfeld & Strøm, 2014). In the first decades of the Federal Republic of Germany, three parties— the Christian Democratic CDU and CSU and the Social Democratic SPD—developed strong elements of so-called catch-all parties with a broader voter base than the mass parties of the interwar period. Like mass parties, catch-all parties had large membership organizations, but unlike this older party model, they were ideologically more centrist (Kirchheimer, 1966; Smith, 1982, 1989). National unification in 1990 came as an exogenous shock to Germany’s party system. The dominant West German political parties responded by extending their organizations to the territory of the collapsed German Democratic Republic. However, they could not rely on any social, psychological and organizational ties to civil society equivalent to those they had established in the West. In the East, only the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor organization of East Germany’s former ruling party (the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED), was supported by a strong membership base and dense organizational networks in civil society. During the first decade

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after unification, the PDS had the character of a regional party representing East German mentalities in unified Germany. Even after the party’s merger with the West German Electoral Alternative Labour and Social Justice (WASG), the result of the merger, the ‘Left Party,’ remained an organization with virtually all of its strongholds located in the East. The focus of this chapter is the development of the all-German party system since 1990. We will take a macroscopic look at the evolution of the German party system. In the next section, we will locate the evolution of Germany’s party system in the context of broader trends in the development of European party systems in the past decades and important academic discussions around these changes. This will be followed by the main part of this contribution, a description of the loosening of ties between political parties and civil society in both parts of Germany. Finally, we will briefly discuss two strategies employed by the parties to retain their organizational strength despite their weakening links with the electorate: a growing reliance on state subsidies and the use of new digital technologies and campaign techniques. We will argue that the former strategy has contributed to a growing dominance of the parliamentary party groups vis-à-vis the extra-parliamentary party organizations. Regarding the latter strategy, we will argue that German parties have been relatively slow in adopting digital technologies to substitute for organizational ties, but that they are likely to play a growing role in future.

Framework for Analysis: The Decline of Linkage Mair (2006, 2013) painted a pessimistic picture of representative democracy and responsible party government in European democracies. In his diagnosis of a ‘hollowing’ (Mair, 2006, p. 25) of Western democracy, he observed a ‘twin process of popular and elite withdrawal from mass electoral politics’ (ibid.). On the one hand, he claimed, this involved a growing indifference toward politics and democracy among citizens: ‘politics and politicians,’ he suggested, ‘might simply be deemed irrelevant by many ordinary citizens’ (Mair, 2006, pp. 25–26). At the same time, Mair argues, political elites have withdrawn from representative liberal democracy by ‘depoliticizing’ important political decisions (Mair, 2006, p. 26). Based on his comparative studies of European party systems, Mair (2006, p. 33) characterizes what he considers to be a failure of political parties as follows:

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Parties are failing as a result of a mutual withdrawal, whereby citizens retreat into private life or more specialized and often ad hoc forms of representation, while party leaderships retreat into institutions, drawing their terms of reference ever more readily from their roles as governors or public-office holders. The traditional world of party democracy – as a zone of engagement in which citizens interacted with their political leaders – is being evacuated.1

Political parties have traditionally been able to link civil society and the political sphere because their organizations often straddled the boundaries between both. They are rooted in civil society as ‘party-in-the-electorate’ in the words of Key (1964). Simultaneously, they compete in elections to occupy public office both in legislatures and governments. This ‘partyin-the-government’ (Key) or ‘party in public office,’ as Katz and Mair (2002) refer to it, is firmly embedded in the system of government. They form disciplined organizations at the level of legislative assemblies with high levels of party unity in voting and speeches. Cabinets are largely recruited from the parliamentary party groups. Based on the parliamentary majority of one or several parties, governments control the parliamentary agenda whereas opposition parties have both legislative time and resources to scrutinize and challenge the government majorities’ decisions. Historically the third element of ‘partyness,’ the ‘party on the ground’ (Katz & Mair, 2002; Key, 1964), maintained a range of collateral organizations and was thus deeply rooted in civil society. This extends to non-party interest groups affiliated or allied with political parties (such as trades unions). While the ties with such non-party organizations have often declined, parties frequently expanded their internal interest-based sub-organizations (such as women’s and youth groups and caucuses) (Allern & Verge, 2017). Apart from loosening ties to external collateral organizations, there has been growing organizational independence between the ‘party on the ground’ and the ‘party in public office’ leading some authors to speak of ‘loosely coupled anarchy’ (Wiesendahl, 1999). Developments of this type led Katz and Mair (1995) to develop the ideal type of a ‘cartel party,’ which protects itself from the negative effects of looser ties with civil society (declining organizational resources) by relying more strongly on state funding. This, in turn, strengthened the ‘party in 1 Emphasis in the original.

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public office,’ which benefited most clearly from state funding in the form of salaries for legislators and support staff for both individual legislators and the parliamentary party groups. The argument of elite withdrawal from the party-based electoral democracy emerged in part from the study of multi-level governing in the European Union rather than studies of political parties (e.g., Majone, 1994, 2003). Authors such as Caramani (2017) and Zürn (2013), for example, describe the growing tendency of policy decisions to be taken in ‘non-majoritarian’ bodies of technocrats and experts deliberately avoiding electoral politics as a form of decision-making that policy makers consider to be inadequate in terms of policy outputs. Party leaders remain part of such bodies, but the logic of decision-making is deliberately shaped by functional rather than political considerations. Party leaders have played their part in delegating key policy decisions to European and international organizations as well as independent central banks. Theorists of democracy have identified this development as a challenge to the traditional mechanisms of the ‘party model of representative democracy’ (Caramani, 2017), especially as far as ‘input-oriented’ democratic legitimacy is concerned (Scharpf, 1999). It could even be argued that the disregard of some elites for the party model of liberal democracy entails not only a technocratic but even a populist position when decision-makers believe that ‘depoliticizing … key decision-making is a vital element in bringing power closer to the people’ as Lord Falconer once described a key tenet of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s governing (Mair, 2006, p. 26). What is the evidence to support such claims of a mutual withdrawal of citizens from political parties and party leaders from civil society in the German case since 1990? Typical indicators for the measurement of the links between political parties and civil society are turnout in elections and the stability in the support for parties between elections. Beyond voting, the link can also be tested by assessing the number of people feeling attached to a (any) party and the number of people signing up to join a political party as formal members. Valid indicators for the withdrawal of elites from party politics are more difficult to establish. One measure used by Mair and others is the growing tendency for political elites to extract resources from public institutions outside the political parties, i.e., public subsidies for party leaders in public office (for Germany see Saalfeld, 2000c). A further indicator is the extent to which party leaders rely on political parties to communicate with voters. In the age of the mass party of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, communication was

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conducted not only via newspapers owned by the major parties, big rallies and the collateral organizations affiliated with political parties. One indicator could thus be the extent to which members of the ‘party in public office’ rely on new communication technologies rather than the party on the ground when communicating with voters.

Basic Trends Table 3.1 provides a first macroscopic impression of the evolution of German’s party system since 1949. In its first legislative period elected in 1949, the Bundestag included nine parties. The largest parties—the Christian democratic parties CDU and CSU and the social democratic SPD—achieved around 30 percent of the national vote. The liberal FDP was elected by slightly more than one-tenth of the voters. In addition, there were six further parties in this Bundestag, including a small Communist party and a number of parties on the political right (Saalfeld, 2000b). The effective number of parties, which weights each party by the squared share of the seats it held (Laakso & Taagepera, 1979) was 3.99. After the first Bundestag legislative period (1949–1953), the Federal Republic’s party system experienced a strong concentration and remained what might be called an effective ‘two-and-a-half-party system’ until the Green Party straddled the five-percent threshold of Germany’s electoral law for the first time in 1983 and has subsequently become a permanent feature of the German party system. However, the Green Party initially remained a relatively small party. As a result, the effective number of parties in the Bundestag remained less than 3. Unification added one further player to the party system, namely the PDS, which merged with the West German WASG, a left-wing breakaway from the Social Democrats, to become the Left Party in 2005. In 2017, the nationalpopulist right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected to the Bundestag increasing the effective number of parties in the Bundestag to 5.58. This value increased to 5.80 in the 2021 election. As a result of these developments, Germany’s (parliamentary) party system has become more fractionalized since 1990. Voting trends in the Western and Eastern parts of the country have differed since the 1990s in at least four aspects. Firstly, the acceptance of the whole notion of responsible party government has met with widespread skepticism in Eastern Germany with its long history of a one-party dictatorship. The levels of confidence in political parties have

31.0 45.2 50.2 45.3 47.6 46.1 44.9 48.6 44.5 48.8 44.3 43.8 41.5 35.2 38.5 35.2 33.8 41.5 32.9 24.1

CDU/CSU %

29.2 28.8 31.8 36.2 39.3 42.7 45.8 42.6 42.9 38.2 37.0 33.5 36.4 40.9 38.5 34.2 23.0 25.7 20.5 25.7

SPD %

11.9 9.5 7.7 12.8 9.5 5.8 8.4 7.9 10.6 7.0 9.1 11.0 6.9 6.2 7.4 9.8 14.6 4.8* 10.7 11.5

FDP %

1.5 5.6 8.3 3.8

Greens %

1.2 7.3 6.7 8.6 8.1 10.7 8.4 8.9 14.8

Alliance’90/Greens %

2.4 4.4 5.1 4.0 8.7 11.9 8.6 9.2 4.9

4.8* 12.6 10.3

PDS, AfD % Left Party %

27.9 16.5 10.5 5.7 3.6 5.4 0.9 0.9 0.5 0.4 1.3 4.3 3.5 5.9 3.0 4.0 6.0 6.2 5.0 8.7

Others %

Electoral performance of the main German political parties, 1949–2021

60.2 74.0 82.0 81.5 86.9 88.8 90.7 91.2 87.4 87.0 81.3 77.3 77.9 76.1 77.0 69.4 56.8 67.2 53.4 49.8

CDU/CSU plus SPD %

9 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 6 6

Absolute number of parties in the Bundestag

3.99 2.77 2.39 2.51 2.38 2.24 2.34 2.31 2.44 2.51 2.80 2.65 2.91 2.90 2.79 3.44 3.97 3.51 5.58 5.80

Effective number of parties in the Bundestag

Sources Andersson et al. (2014), Deutscher Bundestag (2021), Feldkamp and Ströbel (2005), Schindler (1999), updated by own calculations. Smaller parties in the Bundestag legislative periods 1949–1961 are not individually listed. Due to rounding errors, the sums for 1957 and 2017 do not add to 100.0% *Party not represented in the Bundestag in the 2013–2017 legislative term

1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1972 1976 1980 1983 1987 1990 1994 1998 2002 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021

Election year

Table 3.1

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remained low in the East. If confidence in political parties has declined in Germany overall since 1990, this has largely been the effect of Western voters becoming more similar to their Eastern compatriots in not trusting political parties (Gabriel, 2013). Secondly, the PDS and its successor, the Left Party, have had their main strongholds in the East of Germany since the 1990s. From their foundation, the PDS and the Left Party were caught in a strategic dilemma: Should they remain a left-wing party representing the regional interests and sentiments of ‘the East’ in the new Berlin Republic, or should they become a national party to the left of the SPD (Hough, 2001)? The party has not resolved this dilemma to the present day. Despite considerable electoral decline in the East and some gains in the West, it still has many strongholds in bigger East German cities and East Berlin. While the party could be seen as being pragmatic including a willingness to compromise in local and regional government coalitions in the East, many West German branches have remained more extreme ideologically. This has limited the Left Party’s appeal in the West (Neu, 2013). Thirdly, some of the smaller parties such as the FDP and the Greens have remained relatively unsuccessful in the East both in terms of membership and electoral support (Eith, 2000). Finally, the extreme right (e.g., in the form of the National Democratic Party, NPD) or populist parties on the far right (e.g., the AfD) have gradually become major competitors for the larger parties in the East. Since 2013, the AfD has become one of the leading parties in East German regional assemblies challenging the CDU (in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt), the Left Party (in Thuringia) or the SPD (in Brandenburg) for the spot as the strongest party in the regional legislature (Kellermann & Winter, 2019; Rädel, 2019; Weisskircher, 2020). The growing fragmentation of the German party system overall is a result of the declining dominance of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats between 1949 and 2021. This is shown in Fig. 3.1, which plots the combined vote share of the two major parties and a fitted trend line. In 1949, around six out of ten voters in the Federal Republic supported one of the two dominant parties. By 1972, this share had increased to over nine out of ten. It began to drop gradually in the decade prior to unification. From the early 1990s, the decline of the vote share of the two major parties accelerated. By 2021 the combined share of the two dominant parties had been reduced to less than half of the total vote (49.8 percent).

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Fig. 3.1 Combined Vote Share of CDU/CSU and SPD, 1949–2021 (Source Calculated and estimated from Deutscher Bundestag [2021], Feldkamp and Ströbel [2005], Schindler [1999])

Figure 3.2 is a plot of the current main parties’ positions in a twodimensional ideological space using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al., 2015), which has generally been shown to produce valid point estimates and uncertainties for European parties’ ideological positions in various policy dimensions (Marks et al., 2007). The survey was first conducted in 1999. The most recent survey at the time of writing was carried out in 2019. We are following a common approach plotting mean expert ratings for each party regarding economic policy on a scale from 1 to 10 on the horizontal axis. The vertical axis plots ratings on a composite dimension referred to as ‘GALTAN’ (ranging from ‘GreenAlternative-Libertarian’ to ‘Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist’ values on a scale of 1–10). This second dimension is frequently employed to capture a distinctive further arena of party competition in many European party systems, which has become more salient in recent years. This second dimension is intended to capture positions on a ‘cultural’ dimension over cosmopolitan and socially liberal values on the one hand and national

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Fig. 3.2 Ideological Positions of the Main German Parties Regarding Economic Policy and the ‘GALTAN’ Dimension, 1999 and 2019 (99 following the party acronyms indicates a party’s ideological position in 1999, 19 shows the position in 2019; Source Data extracted from Bakker et al. [2015])

identity and social and economic protectionism in an age of globalization on the other (Bornschier, 2015; Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Kriesi et al., 2008). This dimension is frequently used to explain the rise of nationalist parties. We are plotting the positions of the main German parties for 1999 and 2019 (party acronym and 99 or 19, respectively). The plot reveals a strong ideological continuity in the German party system since 1999. There is also little evidence of significant trends toward ideological convergence. In terms of economic policy, the Left Party occupies a position favoring a strong redistributive state in the economy with very little change between 1999 and 2019. The Greens and the SPD are also part of the parties left of center on this dimension, the Social Democrats occupying the

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most centrist position among the left-wing parties. The CDU and CSU are nearly indistinguishable along the economic dimension and occupy a center-right position. The liberal FDP is clearly furthest to the right here, i.e., a position advocating low taxes and small government. The extreme right-wing AfD (AfD19) is less extreme on this dimension than the FDP. It replaces the Republikaner party, an extreme right-wing party competing successfully at the regional level during the 1990s (Saalfeld, 1993). On the vertical, ‘cultural’ axis, ranging from cosmopolitan and libertarian to authoritarian and nationalist values, the Greens continue to occupy the most strongly pronounced green, alternative and libertarian position. On this dimension, the differences between Left Party, SPD and FDP are much smaller than on economic policy. Right of the center, the CDU occupies a space on the moderate right with the AfD (and formerly the Republikaner party) being the most traditional, authoritarian and nationalist players in the party system. The CSU, the CDU’s independent Bavarian ‘sister party’ occupies an intermediate position between CDU and AfD on this dimension.

Citizens Withdrawing from Parties After establishing some simple general trends in Germany’s party system, we turn to Mair’s description and claim of a weakening link between political parties and civil society—or, put differently, ‘citizen withdrawal’ from political parties (Mair, 2006, p. 34). One of the most important indicators in this context has been a gradual reduction in electoral turnout. This decline has been observed across most European democracies without compulsory voting from very high levels (usually around 90 percent during the 1960s and 1970s) to much lower levels between 65 and 75 percent since the 1990s. In general, Central and Eastern European party systems experienced lower levels of electoral participation in the decades following their democratic transformations and often witnessed a further decline in the early 2000s (Hooghe, 2014, p. 65; Mair, 2002). Germany has been no exception to this general European pattern, and the Eastern European patterns have been replicated in the Eastern parts of Germany after unification. Figure 3.3 illustrates increasing levels of electoral participation during the 1950s and 1960s with a peak in 1972 and 1976 of 91.1 percent (1972) and 90.7 percent (1976) of those eligible to vote, respectively. The dots represent the actual turnout, the line is a quadratic fitted trend

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Fig. 3.3 Voter Turnout in Germany, 1949–2021 (Source Estimated from data from Deutscher Bundestag [2021], Feldkamp and Ströbel [2005], Schindler [1999])

line. Turnout reached its lowest levels historically in the 2009 and 2013 elections with 70.8 percent and 71.5 percent of the eligible voters, respectively. Not least due to the mobilization achieved by the AfD, the elections of 2017 and 2021 witnessed a slight recovery to over 76 percent. Table 3.2 illustrates the differences between Western and Eastern Germany corroborating the claim that East German citizens have been more reluctant to engage in electoral politics since unification. Electoral participation in the Eastern parts of Germany, those territories located in the German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1990, has consistently been lower than in the West and the national average. The difference was smallest (2.8 percent) in 1998 and largest in 1994 (7.9 percent). Nevertheless, both parts of the country experienced a clear downward trend between 1994 and 2013 with a slight recovery since. Another standard indicator of the loosening ties between citizens and political parties is the extent to which voters change their party choices between elections. Such information can be collected at the

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Table 3.2 Electoral Turnout by Region 1990–2021 Election year 1990 1994 1998 2002 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021

Turnout %

Turnout West %

Turnout East %

Difference West-East

77.8 79.0 82.2 79.1 77.7 70.8 71.5 76.2 76.6

78.6 80.5 82.8 80.6 78.5 72.3 72.4 76.8 77.2

74.5 72.6 80.0 72.8 74.3 64.8 67.6 73.2 74.0

4.1 7.9 2.8 7.8 4.2 7.5 4.8 3.6 3.2

Source Deutscher Bundestag (2021), Feldkamp and Ströbel (2005), Schindler (1999). Values for the Western states include those for West Berlin. Similarly, the values for the Eastern states include those for East Berlin

level of individual voters or at the aggregate level as the net gains and losses experienced by the competing parties compared to the previous election. Aggregate volatility can be decomposed into total volatility and its components.2 In Fig. 3.4, we apply Emanuele’s (2015) definitions of these components. The Figure illustrates that total aggregate volatility declined from the 1950s to reach its lowest level in the 1976 general election. In other words, this election experienced the lowest level of aggregate volatility and, hence, the highest level of party-system stability. From this point onward, total aggregate volatility has increased exponentially to reach levels almost as high as in the period 1949–1957 when the 2 The sum of the changes between the parties between elections (divided by 2) is usually referred to as aggregate volatility and is plotted for Germany in Fig. 3.4. The data were calculated by Emanuele (2015) who decomposes total volatility (TV in the figure) into its major components. Firstly, one part of the aggregate electoral volatility (AltV in Fig. 3.4) is caused by vote switching between existing parties (in the case of the dataset we are including only parties receiving at least 1 percent of the national share in both elections under scrutiny). Second, a further part of the total aggregate volatility is caused by vote switching to, and from, parties that entered or exited the party system (RegV in Fig. 3.4). In Emanuele’s dataset, a party is considered as entering the party system when it received at least 1 percent of the national share in an election at time t + 1, while it had received less than 1 percent in election at time t. Conversely, he considers a party as exiting the part system when it received less than 1 percent in election at time t + 1, while it received at least 1 percent in election at time t. Finally, there is the part of the overall volatility caused by vote switching among parties with a voting strength below 1 percent of the national share in both the elections at time t and t + 1 (OthV).

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Fig. 3.4 Aggregate Volatility 1953–2021 (Source Emanuele [2015] with updates for 2015–2021)

CDU/CSU was very successful in absorbing the voters of a large number of smaller conservative parties and several parties were abandoned or banned by the Federal Constitutional Court. The figure also reports the aggregate changes between parties that achieved more than 1 percent of the vote in both elections (AltV) and parties that entered (or left) electoral competition by achieving at least 1 percent, or dropping below 1 percent, of the vote (RegV). The data suggest that the increase in aggregate volatility is very largely the result of an increased amount of volatility between established parties with at least 1 percent of the vote in at least two consecutive elections (AltV). Only a relatively small part is due to completely new parties entering the electoral arena (RegV). A further important indicator of the links between citizens and political parties is citizens’ psychological attachment to a political party, i.e., the extent to which individuals feel a sense of belonging or commitment to particular political parties. In line with most European countries, the attachment to a political party has fallen in Germany (Dalton, 2013; Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000). This downward trend occurred in waves,

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but the overall trend in Fig. 3.5 is clear: it has been downward until 1997 and stagnant since. One final indicator of the more and more tenuous relationship between parties and civil society is the number of persons having joined a political party as formal members. Based on data collected by Niedermayer (2020) from official records, Fig. 3.6 demonstrates an overall decline of persons with formal membership of one of the main parties. The total number nearly halved from approximately 2.4 million in 1990 to just over 1.2 million in 2020. The most dramatic decline was suffered by the SPD whose membership dropped from over 943,000 just after unification in 1990 to around 419,000 in 2020. Albeit at a lower level, the only two parties experiencing moderate increases in members in recent years were the Green Party and the AfD.

Fig. 3.5 Partisan Attachment, 1977–2020 (Source Forschungsgruppe Wahlen [2019])

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Fig. 3.6 Party membership 1990–2020 (Source Niedermayer [2020])

Party Elites Withdrawing from Civil Society One part of Mair’s (2006) argument about elite withdrawal from electoral politics and the responsible party government model is the growing tendency for important aspects of policy making to be removed from electoral politics, i.e., from meaningful voter choice. The partisan ‘depoliticization’ of some policy areas such as monetary policy or banking regulation observed by students of regulation (Majone, 1994) was as a functional consequence of party policy appearing to be primarily driven by electoral cycles rather than responsible government and long-term general welfare (Nordhaus, 1975). The result was the establishment of many ‘non-majoritarian’ decision-making bodies especially where governing involves ‘intersecting cross-territorial jurisdictions at all levels of the multilevel state structure,’ including independent central banks and regulatory authorities, international organizations, trans-governmental networks and agencies and independent regulatory authorities (Caramani, 2017, p. 58). In Germany, the use of non-majoritarian decision-making has had a long tradition in Germany’s ‘semisovereign state’ (Green & Paterson, 2005; Katzenstein, 1987) with its decentralized system of policy-making

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and independent regulatory agencies. As a result, there has always been a need to balance partisan competition and its logic of majoritarianism with a logic of negotiation in a very decentralized political system (Lehmbruch, 1978). Hence, recent international moves toward non-majoritarian institutions that are removing crucial policy decisions from the voter-based chain of democratic delegation and accountability (Bergman & Strøm, 2011) have reinforced a long-standing logic of non-majoritarian elite bargaining in Germany’s decentralized political system (Holtmann & Voelzkow, 2000). However, even party elites have come to be relatively independent from civil society, especially from their extra-parliamentary party organizations.

Party Finance and Traces of Cartel Parties Public funding for political parties controlled by party elites has been identified as an important indicator of an ‘elite withdrawal’ from electoral competition. This claim was advanced most powerfully by Katz and Mair (1995) in their work on cartel parties. Table 3.3 summarizes publicly available data on the number of staff members the German ‘parties in public office’ have at their disposal on the national level (that is, not counting the regional level of the federal states). The funding for these staff members is covered by the public purse and cannot be influenced by the parties grassroots organizations on the ground. For the Bundestag elected in 2017, for example, 709 Members of the Bundestag (MdBs) had an allowance of over 20,000 Euros per annum each to pay for staff, which they could employ in their Berlin and their own constituency offices. In total, the 709 MdBs employed over 5000 full-time and parttime members of staff from public funds. Hence, the work of the average MdB was supported by approximately 7 full- or part-time staff members. In addition, the parliamentary party groups in the Bundestag were able to spend a total of almost 67 million Euros per annum from public funds on their own staff. This allowed them to employ 1150 members of fulland part-time staff in 2017, 549 of which were qualified as university graduates (‘höherer Dienst’). In other words, both individual legislators and the parliamentary party groups receive significant public funding to support their parliamentary work, which makes them virtually independent from their extra-parliamentary party organizations and members as far as resources are concerned. Within the party organizations, they have become strongly dominant as they have virtually monopolized the

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Table 3.3 Publicly funded staff of the members of the Bundestag (MdBs) and the parliamentary party groups, 2005–2019 No. of MdBs

Total staff of MdBs

Year

2005 2010 2015 2017 2019

614 622 631 709 709

5326 4209 4394 5173 5430

Total staff of PPGs Total number

… of which at graduate level Level (‘höherer Dienst’)

Annual staff expenditure PPGs

863 870 821 * 1150

363 397 426 * 549

45,883,684 55,706,612 61,633,175 * 66,882,998

Source Deutscher Bundestag, (2021, Chapters 5.9 and 17.4) *Data not available

resources for policy formulation. The extra-parliamentary party organizations have income from membership dues and donations but cannot match the superior and continuous support enjoyed by the ‘party in public office.’ Since these state-funded support structures are replicated at the level of federal states (albeit at a less generous level), those Eastern German parties represented in the Bundestag and in the federal-state diets (Landtage) were able to compensate at least in part for their lack of developed membership organizations. However, this has come at a price from the perspective of grassroots influence: the predominance of party elites has been even stronger in the East with the possible exception of the PDS and its successor, the Left Party.

The Ambivalence of Digitalization A second major dimension of the growing independence of party elites from their grassroots is political communication. The classic mass and catch-all parties relied heavily on their membership and collateral organizations to communicate with their core voters. At least three developments have made the ‘party in public office’ more independent of members and affiliated organizations. Firstly, some authors have characterized many modern parties as ‘electoral-professional’ organizations where party policy is strongly influenced by communication experts

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and agencies to which parties often outsource their campaign activities (Beyme, 1985; Panebianco, 1988). In this model of party organization, party elites have increasingly sought to bypass the ‘party on the ground’ in formulating party policy and conducting election campaigns. The former development has often been illustrated in relation to New Labour in the United Kingdom where the Blair and Brown leaderships sought to rely on expert bodies such as ‘national policy forums’ for the formulation of policy, circumventing the elected bodies of intra-party representation such as the Annual Conference (Russell, 2005). In the German case, the main locus of party policy making has increasingly moved to the parties’ parliamentary party groups (see above). Advocates of the cartel-party thesis would argue that this has contributed further to a de-coupling of party leaderships and grassroots (Saalfeld, 2000a). Moreover, party leaderships in the electoral-professional party have increasingly relied on professional external support for the organization of their central campaigns. Although the ‘party on the ground’ has remained an essential resource in canvassing in the districts, developments have also been observed in Germany partially, for example, in the highly professionalized SPD electoral campaign in 1998. Although this campaign has remained exceptional in the strength of its reliance on a centralized structure separated from the party’s organization (the so-called Kampa), the 2020–2021 local, regional and national elections under social-distancing restrictions have forced the party headquarters to embrace digital technologies in communicating directly with voters. First analyses suggest that this has favored large established parties and incumbents (Kersting, 2021). A final development relates to the digitalization of political communication. As with many advanced liberal democracies, digitalization has begun to transform the way parties and candidates communicate with voters in Germany. Given their ability to rely on a (shrinking) membership base and public subsidies as well as some legal constraints pertaining to data protection, the main German parties have been relatively cautious in adopting the technologies employed in the United States or the United Kingdom, including the data-driven micro-targeting of potential voters (Kruschinski & Haller, 2017). Nevertheless, some recent developments demonstrate opportunities and risks for party democracy and a different type of ‘gap’ between voters and political elites. The national-populist AfD has been effective in influencing a ‘counter-public’ of nationalist, anti-immigration and Eurosceptic echo chambers in the social media

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contributing to a polarization of political debate and a populist narrative based on a struggle between the decent people and corrupt elites (Gäbler et al., 2018). However, the development of digital technologies involves promises as well as risks for the model of responsible party government. Rather than favouring the established large parties and their top candidates, further digitalization has a potential to promote decartelization and a reinvigoration of the parties and the party system as parties may be able to lower entry barriers for potential members. Grass-roots members may be able to influence the decision-making processes or elect the party leaders. One example of such an anti-hierarchical model was the Pirates Party founded in 2006 (Neumann, 2011; Odenbach, 2012). The idea of liquid democracy was known for including interested voters in the party’s discussions and decision-making processes, thus bringing the transparency to another level with the help of online communication tools. The participation in these events was even to be extended to non-members (Odenbach, 2012, p. 67). In an ideal case, the decisions that members agreed on would have become official party policy (Zolleis et al., 2010, p. 18). Although such experiments did not develop any transformative power in the end (Bukow & Poguntke, 2013, p. 179), they demonstrate the scope for broader participation and increased demand for online grassroots participation as in the election of the SPD party leadership in 2019. The effect of digitalization and the development of online communication on the linkage between parties and voters will have to be seen in the future. From a comparative perspective, Kosiara-Pedersen et al. (2017, p. 236) observe that European parties are using digital means to reduce the monetary and non-monetary cost of formal membership by creating ‘affiliates’ below that level: Parties are … taking advantage of new social media, web pages and blogs to connect with supporters in other ways, encouraging them to provide contact information to party outlets, thus enabling the party to send them Facebook updates, Twitter messages, blog posts or the like. The new types of affiliation carry neither the rights nor the obligations of traditional party membership, but they do resemble it in some other crucial ways. Most importantly, self-identified supporters voluntarily connect with a party, and the party is able to use this connection to communicate with, and mobilize, its supporters.

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The authors conclude that affiliation in this looser sense could be either a substitute for, or a first step toward, formal membership (KosiaraPedersen et al., 2017, p. 236). However, digital tools are Janus-faced as they also have also helped individual politicians to communicate directly with voters and grassroots party members side-lining the ‘party on the ground’ altogether. The gradual adoption of digital technologies in election campaigning has demonstrated a potential for both decentralization as well as further centralization within political parties. Since the creation of political parties’ websites in the middle of 1990s (Jungherr & Schoen, 2013, p. 130), political parties have expanded the usage of the internet in their campaigning. They use internet-based communication to inform citizens about their policies, collect donations, respond to criticisms from their rivals and let their supporters know about the upcoming campaigning events. Parties have also begun to use social media more effectively. Despite the gradual development of online campaigning, scholars claim that it was only the 2017 campaign that may be called the first ‘social media election campaign’ (Haller, 2017, p. 85). Nevertheless, some political parties have been more successful in their usage of the internet and social media than others. Research shows that two smaller parties, the AfD and Die Linke, were relatively successful in the use of Facebook during the 2017 national election campaign. Their Facebook profiles had far more shares, likes and comments from their supporters than competing political parties (Haller, 2017, p. 85). Thus, digital technologies have a potential to lower the politics entry barriers for smaller parties, especially when established political Goliaths find it difficult to adjust their organizational routines. The initial success of the Pirates Party and the more sustained inroads the AfD made into the German party system are cases in point. Beyond new parties, social media have allowed smaller parties to reduce some of the organizational advantages traditional membership parties have enjoyed so far. These trends accelerated in the 2021 campaign as restrictions resulting from publichealth measures in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic hindered the full application of traditional campaigning tools and incentivized parties to invest more resources in online campaigning. Although the digitalization of political communication has opened up opportunities for the model of responsible party government to evolve and reform, it has also exposed some risks. ‘Rather than allowing parties to stay in touch with the electorate,’ Caramani (2017, pp. 58–59) argues, ‘mediatization has made it

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possible for populists … to justify bypassing parties, raise critique, and continuously bring up new issues which parties themselves are not aware of and do not foresee.’ Other developments seen in the United States or the United Kingdom, such as online micro-targeting, have not yet been broadly applied in Germany, partly due to legal constraints on the data-gathering and storage procedures (Kruschinski & Haller, 2017) which makes researchers skeptical about the potential for their implementation (Neu, 2017). However, the situation may change soon, especially since parties possess extensive data on citizens that they collect during the door-to-door campaigns and which may be utilized with the help of advanced statistical procedures, assisting parties in targeting specific voters online as well. To sum up, although the digitalization of German political parties remains in its infancy, the application of online tools has shown to have a potential to reinvigorate parties as membership organizations. Firstly, the modification of decision-making procedures within political parties may attract more members, partisans and volunteers as well as looser affiliates. Secondly, online communication has lowered the entry barriers for new and small political parties and thus contributed to the success of smaller parties with lower budgets. This may help to break down the existing political cartels and reach more citizens. Thirdly, the increasing use of online streaming platforms and social-media channels in leadership elections has allowed the inclusion of ordinary members in high-level party politics. Finally, digital media have simultaneously shown to involve some risks ranging from a further personalization of politics at the expense of parties to the growing role of professional consultancy firms and data scientists advising on the use of media as well as a segmentation of the public sphere, contributing to a fragmentation of political discourse in ‘filter bubbles,’ the spreading of ‘fake news’ and a growing polarization and aggressiveness of political debate (Gärtner & Wuttke, 2019). Although there is a lack of systematic research, it is likely that the technological developments referred to above may have a stronger effect in the East where the parties’ formal membership their links to collateral organizations and voters’ psychological attachments to parties are less robust than in the West. As a result, the potential effects of technological developments—lower entry barriers for new parties and political entrepreneurs, stronger polarization and stronger fragmentation—are likely to be stronger in the East. Given declining formal membership and

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partisan attachment in the West, however, the Eastern party branches may be in the vanguard in this respect.

Conclusion The German party system has shown many signs of citizens moving away from political parties since unification. This confirms Mair’s (2006, 2013) analysis for European democracies in general: Voter turnout, which had started to drop in the Federal Republic prior to unification, declined at an accelerated speed. Electoral volatility increased. Party identification and formal party membership declined. Engagement with political parties had always been lower in the Eastern parts of post-unification Germany. Rather than citizens in the East gradually ‘moving up’ to the more extensive links most political parties had in the West, the Western pattern has gradually become more similar to the Eastern one. Voting patterns have also shown persistent differences between West and East. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the strength of the leftwing PDS (and later Die Linke) initially differentiated Eastern Germany’s party system from the West. Since 2013, the right-wing and populist AfD has been much stronger in the East and made the formation of majority coalitions more complicated in the East. The success of the AfD—with its emphasis on a struggle between the ‘will and interest of the German people’ and its contempt for traditional elites in the political parties and mass media—supports the view that political parties in the East of Germany are less successful in fulfilling the linkage function attributed to parties in most theoretical accounts. While the same trends can be observed in the West as well, they are not as pronounced in the ‘old’ Federal Republic where parties still enjoy more popular confidence and better organizational resources such as members. Yet, Mair’s diagnosis goes beyond the familiar argument of declining support for political parties among citizens. He also argues that the elites of political parties have withdrawn from their grassroots and, ultimately, civil society. In line with the arguments advanced in the cartel-party thesis, the German parties ‘in public office’ have used state funds to increase their autonomy vis-à-vis their party organizations outside parliaments and governments. Other indicators such as the establishment of structures resembling Panebianco’s (1988) model of ‘electoral-professional’ parties have been more ambivalent. Although such developments can be observed for particular periods and elections, the German parties have

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remained organizationally conservative membership organizations since unification, albeit with strong differences in density between the Western and Eastern branches. The post-unification party system also witnessed the digitalization of the public sphere, including party competition. On the one hand, the establishment of central databases, websites and communication tools may have played their part in the domination of the parties’ grassroots by the ‘party in central office’ within political parties. Moreover, the increasing use of social media to promote populist agendas has contributed to the polarization of political discourse and aggravated popular perceptions of ‘the people’ (now communicating on social media) on the one hand and established party elites on the other. At the same time, the digitalization of party politics has shown opportunities as well as risks: For example, the entry barriers for competitors have become lower. Digitalization has allowed many parties to explore looser types of less formalized membership and more extensive (if looser) membership participation. Although the Pirates Party could not sustain its initial successes in regional elections, their concept of ‘liquid democracy’ has shown the potential for partisan regeneration.

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CHAPTER 4

The Resurgence and Decline of the Social Democratic Party in the Berlin Republic (1990–2020) Patrick Horst

Introduction Winand Gellner and John Robertson (2003, p. 2) concluded in 2003 that the “the real costs” of this successful reunification would not be foreseeable for years to come. This could be described as almost clairvoyant with regard to the fate of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as well as the development of Germany’s party system. In 2002, the SPD was in nearly as good a position as it had been thirty years earlier, when it had become the strongest party for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD) had been confirmed in office as leader of the social-liberal coalition. In the

P. Horst (B) Department of Political Science and Sociology/North American Studies Program, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_4

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2002 Bundestag elections, the SPD also came in just ahead of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) was able to continue the red-green coalition formed in 1998. Even the party system had hardly changed since 1972: Apart from the CDU/CSU, SPD, and the Liberals (FDP), only the Greens were represented in the Bundestag, while the PDS, the successor to the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s state party SED, had failed for the first time since 1990 at the election threshold. Nearly two decades and four disappointing Bundestag elections later, we know that the real costs of reunification for the SPD occurred only after a considerable delay—although it goes without saying that not all the challenges facing the SPD and the German party system today can be traced back to the political upheaval of 1989/90. Many socioeconomic developments that continue to affect the parties began long before reunification and were sometimes only intensified, sometimes not even touched by it, and sometimes even halted for a time (Saalfeld, 2003). Moreover, the further history progressed after reunification, the less the changes could be traced back directly to the epochal upheaval, and the more they intermingled with the following actions of political actors. The direct consequences of reunification thus increasingly became indirect consequences mediated by political action. It was only the “Agenda 2010”, which Chancellor Schröder pushed through against resistance in his own ranks, that led to a split in the political Left and turned the PDS, which had hitherto only been successful in the East, into a Left Party that was successful throughout Germany. Thus, although the current “misery of Social Democracy” (Steinbrück, 2018) can hardly be dismissed, it has causes that go back further than reunification (Dahrendorf, 1987) and even beyond. In historical retrospect, the SPD has already experienced its rise and fall in the Bonn Republic. This history represents the backdrop against which the resurgence of Social Democracy took place in the first decade after reunification, culminating in the “red-green project” (Egle & Zohlnhöfer, 2007; Egle et al., 2003; Wolfrum, 2013) and the adoption of “Agenda 2010”, the hotly contested political program to renew the welfare state that laid the foundation for Germany’s economic success over the past two decades. The new decline of the SPD from 2003 to the present has many causes, most of them like Agenda 2010, the changing cleavage structure of German society or the organizational calamities of the party unconnected to reunification. The explanations offered by the literature

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on the decline of Social Democracy, which is not confined to Germany but is international in scale, can be sorted into five approaches: materialist, ideational, electoral, institutional, and personal (biographical). Particular attention will be paid to the extent to which each approach considers the decline of Social Democracy fateful and irreversible. The contribution concludes with an outlook on the 2021 Bundestag election.

The Rise and Decline of the SPD in the Bonn Republic Although the Social Democrats, along with the Christian Democrats, were the main political force behind the adoption of the Basic Law (Niclauß, 1998), the SPD quickly fell into political marginalization at the federal level during the first decade of the Bonn Republic. This had just as much to do with the political issues the party represented as with the people acting on its behalf. The first SPD chairman, Kurt Schumacher (1949–1952), was a man of principle who committed the party to an anti-capitalist, socialist course in economic policy. In foreign policy, he was committed to rapid reunification and opposed Adenauer’s policy of Western integration and rearmament. His successor Erich Ollenhauer (1952–1963) was a colorless party secretary who continued Schumacher’s political course. Like Schumacher, he was unsuccessful in rebuilding the old workers’ and class party SPD and opening it up to new voter strata (Walter, 2018, pp. 145–165). Even if the often-painted picture of the old “Traditionskompanie” may be too simple, efforts to form a leftist “Volkspartei” (Mintzel, 1983) did not make much progress at first (Grebing, 2000, pp. 51–83). The election results turned out accordingly: In the first three Bundestag elections with Schumacher and Ollenhauer as chancellor candidates, the SPD stagnated at 30 percent of the votes. Moreover, party membership declined by a third between 1947 and 1954 from approximately 900,000 to 600,000 (Wiesendahl, 2006, p. 29). The modernization of the SPD began during the 1950s in the states: first in Hesse, Lower Saxony and the city states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia in the 1960s. At the federal level, the landslide defeat of 1957 marked the decisive turning point: With Fritz Erler, Carlo Schmid, and Herbert Wehner, party and parliamentary group chairman Ollenhauer was joined by three deputy leaders who pressed for political reforms. The party’s center of power shifted to the parliamentary group and, beginning in 1958, to a new,

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broad-based party presidium. In 1959, a new basic program was adopted, the Godesberg Program, with which the SPD finally began the transition from a socialist labor party to a Social Democratic “Volkspartei”. The SPD recognized the market economy, committed itself to a pluralistic model of society and accepted Adenauer’s fundamental foreign policy decisions. In the 1961 Bundestag elections, the Social Democrats did run with the comparatively young and telegenic mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt. Nevertheless, another five years were to pass before the SPD could enter government for the first time at federal level—as the junior partner in a grand coalition (Grebing, 2007, pp. 153–172; Walter, 2018, pp. 167–195). The SPD conquered the chancellorship for the first time in 1969 when Willy Brandt formed the social-liberal coalition with the FDP. It was only then, 20 years after its foundation, that the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) had passed the democracy test and completed its first meaningful “change of power” (Baring, 1982; Bracher et al., 1986). It was only then, as well, that the SPD became fully a “Staatspartei” (Grebing, 2000, pp. 65–83) at the federal level. In the 16 years that the SPD governed in the grand and social-liberal coalition, major political reform projects in foreign and domestic policy were initiated and carried out. This included a new détente policy toward the East, development aid to the “Third World”, reforms in the fields of economic, educational, social, and judicial policy. The social-liberal 1970s were the heyday of Social Democracy in Germany. With Brandt’s re-election in 1972, the SPD surpassed the Christian Democrats as the strongest party in the Bundestag for the first time. Although it was unable to repeat this result in 1976 and 1980, the SPD remained strong enough under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1974– 1982) to govern with the FDP until 1982 in what was then the German two-and-a-half party system with two big parties above 40 percent and a small hinge party, the FDP, with approximately 10 percent of the vote (Horst, 2013, pp. 173–174). Since the end of the 1960s, members have been flocking to the SPD in droves. In 1976, the party achieved its current record of over one million members (Wiesendahl, 2006, p. 33). The 1980s saw the decline of the SPD. However, from today’s perspective this was still a quite high level. The fall of the SPD was initiated in the last years of the social-liberal coalition when Chancellor Schmidt was no longer able to convince his party’s left wing of the value of his policies. At the end of the 1970s, the limits of expanding the welfare state were reached everywhere in the West, and the party moved on to

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a policy of budget consolidation. Neo-Keynesian economic governance, which had led to the problem of stagflation (economic stagnation coupled with inflation), was replaced by supply-side economics, which sought to unleash forces of growth again. Especially on the left wing of the SPD, this approach found much less approval than with the chancellor and the liberal cabinet members. In addition, the left wing of the SPD was alarmed by the expansion of nuclear energy, legal border crossings in the fight against terrorism, and above all the forthcoming installation of Pershing II and cruise missiles in West Germany in accordance with NATO’s double-track decision, as advocated by their chancellor (Jäger & Link, 1987). Parallel to the internal conflicts of the social-liberal coalition, new social movements gained in importance and even led to the emergence of a new political party, the Greens, who first entered the Bundestag in 1983. Since the Greens of the 1980s regarded themselves as in fundamental opposition and the FDP had reoriented itself toward the CDU/CSU, the SPD’s chances for entering government had declined sharply. Neither in 1983 nor in 1987 did the party have a realistic prospect of power.

The Resurgence of the SPD in the Berlin Republic When the citizens of the GDR brought down the SED dictatorship in the fall of 1989 and forced free elections (Thaysen, 1990)—first to the GDR’s People’s Chamber on March 18, 1990, and then to the first allGerman elected Bundestag on December 2, 1990—the German parties needed to react. The SPD was considered by many to be the favorite for the elections in East Germany because it had once had strongholds in Saxony and Thuringia during the Weimar Republic. However, not only had more than five decades passed since the collapse of Germany’s first democracy, but the SPD had also been absorbed by the SED in the GDR and had modernized considerably in the FRG. Neither the newly founded Social Democratic Party (SDP), renamed the “SPD in the GDR” in January 1990 (Grebing, 2007, p. 235), nor its sister party in West Germany were up to the historic moment. Both party leaderships were skeptical of a quick reunification, SPD chancellor candidate Oskar Lafontaine also argued against the economic and monetary union of the two states. CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl, on the other hand, seized the “mantle of history” (Leopold von Ranke) with his ten-point plan for German unification and became the chancellor of German unity. In the

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first and last free People’s Chamber election on March 18, 1990, the CDU-led Alliance for Germany won an overwhelming 48 percent of the vote, while the SPD stuck with 22 percent. The SPD won only one of the five elections in the new eastern states (Brandenburg) on October 14, 1990 (Schmitt, 2001). In the first all-German Bundestag elections on December 2, 1990, the SPD was defeated with its worst result since 1957. From this low point, the only way forward was up. And, so it did— starting in in the states. At the time of reunification, Social Democrats already governed in eight of the eleven German states, including Johannes Rau (1978–1998) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Oskar Lafontaine (1985– 1998) in Saarland, and Gerhard Schröder (1990–1998) in Lower Saxony. In the first half of the 1990s, other SPD minister presidents included Manfred Stolpe (1990–2002) in Brandenburg, Hans Eichel (1991–1998) in Hesse, Rudolf Scharping (1991–1994) and Kurt Beck (1994–2013) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany’s first female minister president, Heide Simonis (1993–2005), in Schleswig–Holstein, Reinhard Höppner (1994– 2002) in Saxony-Anhalt, and Henning Scherf (1995–2005) in Bremen. Increasingly, Social Democrats also governed together with the Greens in the German states (Horst, 2010, pp. 349, 402–404). In national politics, however, the SPD initially acted without fortune. First, the new SPD chairman Björn Engholm resigned in the wake of scandal in Schleswig–Holstein. His successor Rudolf Scharping then lost the fourth consecutive election to Helmut Kohl in 1994. Scharping was the first and until 2019 last SPD chairman to be elected in an internal party membership vote. The defeated Schröder, however, did not give up his ambitions. Lafontaine toppled the hapless Scharping the year after the lost Bundestag elections and led the SPD on a confrontational and effective opposition course in Bonn. Lafontaine and Schröder were able to collaborate to replace Kohl’s government after 16 years in office. Their 1998 election campaign under the slogan “justice and innovation” was considered the most modern the SPD had run since Willy Brandt’s legendary 1972 campaign (Machnig, 1999; Müller, 1997; von Webel, 1999). For the second time in the history of the FRG, the SPD finished ahead of Christian Democrats in the 1998 Bundestag elections. Together with the Greens the SPD achieved the first complete transfer of power in the history of the republic, i.e., neither of the two coalition partners had belonged to the previous government. Contemporary historians interpreted the “red-green project” as a generational change in politics

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(Wolfrum, 2013): For the first time, the German government was led by politicians who had been politically socialized during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Joschka Fischer, the popular Green foreign minister, for example, earned his political spurs as a squatter in Frankfurt in the 1970s (Kraushaar, 2001, pp. 38–79), while Schröder was chairman of the SPD youth organization and as an attorney defended Horst Mahler, lawyer and member of the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction (Anda & Kleine, 2002, pp. 19–41). As a coalition, however, the red-green project in 1998 came rather “belatedly” (von Lucke, 2002, p. 5). There was thus no honeymoon, because the intra-party conflict between the modernizers around Schröder and the traditionalists led by Lafontaine had hardly been resolved. Since Lafontaine was not only “opposing the government, but history” he quickly maneuvered himself into the sidelines (Hennecke, 2003, p. 135). In March 1999, Lafontaine resigned his portfolio as finance minister after less than five months in office and stepped down as party chairman. However, the turnaround was limited to the new fiscal consolidation policy, while the traditionalists still had the upper hand in labor market and social policy during the first legislative period. Health care reform and “activating” labor market reforms failed. Only the state-subsidized “Riester pension” opened a pathway toward a “Third Way” and a “renewal of Social Democracy” (Giddens, 1998). In other respects, too, the balance sheet for the first four years of the red-green coalition was rather sobering: The Immigration Act was maneuvered through the Bundesrat. The nuclear phase-out was pushed to the back burner in negotiations and the ecological tax reform was significantly diluted. What remained were civil rights advances such as dual citizenship and a registered civil partnership for homosexuals, falling short of same-sex marriage. The biggest achievement in foreign policy was a change of course that could have been accomplished only by the red-green coalition: the historic deployment of German troops to first Macedonia and then Kosovo. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Schröder government declared its “unrestricted solidarity” with the United States and supported “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan. These were undoubtedly remarkable achievements. However, they were by no means ones that brought Chancellor Schröder applause among Social Democrats. In fact, he had to resort to the vote of confidence to push through this position in his governing

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coalition. Moreover, the alliance obligations within NATO, like the obligations to fiscal solidity within the framework of EU convergence criteria, were a rude reminder that governments cannot always do what they would prefer and that their room for maneuver is limited by exogenous constraints (Zohlnhöfer, 2003). Since the Chancellor’s key election promise to bring the number of unemployed below the 3.5 million mark was missed, the coalition’s reelection was anything but a foregone conclusion. The government victory nevertheless came about by the narrowest of margins and had less to do with its successful track record than with the government’s incumbency advantage, aided by the weakness of the opposition and some unlikely good fortune. The CDU had to struggle with the consequences of a campaign finance scandal triggered by former Chancellor Kohl and was forced to hand over the chancellor candidacy to CSU party leader Edmund Stoiber who had little appeal beyond the Christian Democrat’s base. The FDP lurched between Jürgen Möllemann’s national populist course and the “fun party” concept of its chairman Guido Westerwelle. By contrast, the two protagonists of the red-green coalition found their way back to their political element in the summer of 2002. Fortune prevailed. In August 2002, Schröder resolutely opposed the military campaign against Iraq that George W. Bush was planning at the time. And, the chancellor used the catastrophic floods on the Elbe and Danube rivers to showcase his hands-on approach in crisis management (Niedermayer, 2003). Schröder’s election campaign was particularly well received in the new states. In 2002, the SPD achieved a higher vote share in the east than in the west for the first time since reunification (Schultze, 2003, pp. 87–88). It also succeeded in persuading one in five PDS voters to cast their district vote for the SPD. In the end, the red-green coalition was confirmed in office only because the PDS was successfully pushed out of the Bundestag (Raschke, 2003, p. 18).

The Decline of the SPD in the Berlin Republic The Schröder II government had only been sworn in for two weeks when on November 13, 2002, the German Council of Economic Experts criticized the finance minister’s over-optimistic tax estimate. On the same day, the European Commission announced that it would open infringement proceedings against the German government for violating the Maastricht convergence criteria. The opposition spoke of “electoral fraud”,

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and Arnulf Baring, writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, called on citizens to “go to the barricades” against plundering by the state (Hennecke, 2003, p. 7; Thaysen, 2003, p. 206). In the polls, Social Democrats had already plummeted to below 30 percent in December 2002, while Christian Democrats were approaching the 50 percent mark. The SPD lost the state elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony on February 2, 2003. This further strengthened the Christian Democrats’ dominant position in the Bundesrat. To counter the government’s failed start, Chancellor Schröder decided to act. On March 14, 2003, in a government statement to the German Bundestag he announced the “Agenda 2010” with which the red-green coalition and, above all, the SPD is still associated (Thaysen, 2003). The core element of Agenda 2010 was the so-called Hartz reforms. They originated in the Commission on Modern Services in the Labor Market, which Schröder had appointed at the beginning of 2002 under the leadership of Volkswagen manager Peter Hartz. In line with the philosophy of the “Third Way”, the overriding goal of the labor market reforms was to combat long-term unemployment by activating benefit recipients. The legislative package was divided into four individual measures: Hartz I primarily tightened the requirements in benefit law and introduced education vouchers. Hartz II and Hartz III regulated startup subsidies (Ich-AGs), marginal employment contracts (Mini-Jobs) and reformed the Federal Labor Office with the aim of transforming it into a customer-oriented, modern service agency within the labor market. Hartz IV contained the most consequential element of the reform for workers. It merged unemployment assistance and social welfare into a new uniform basic security (Unemployment Benefit II), which reduced the level of payments and shortened the time of sinking into social welfare for workers aged 55 and older (Schmid, 2007, pp. 279–280). With the Hartz Commission and the “Alliance for Jobs” Schröder had energized the German tradition of neo-corporatism (Gellner & Robertson, 2001). Particularly problematic was the fact that the Commission had bypassed Parliament and the governing parties in drawing up its reform proposals. From the outset, the reforms therefore smacked of a governmental privilege that the chancellor had pushed through against opposition from within his own ranks. At a special SPD party conference on June 1, 2003, Schröder once again threatened to resign in order to extort approval for Agenda 2010. Resistance continued nonetheless. In 2004, “Monday demonstrations” returned to German cities directed

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not against the SED dictatorship but against the SPD-led government (Schmid, 2007). To afford the protest an outlet Schröder resigned as party chairman. From the end of 2002 to 2005, the SPD lost a net total of nearly 100,000 members. Numerous former party members gathered in the “Electoral Alternative Work & Social Justice” (WASG), which was soon joined by former SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine. In the same period the SPD also lost all state elections. After the election in North RhineWestphalia in May 2005, the party no longer controlled a single vote in the Bundesrat. Schröder then called early elections, claiming that his government had lost its ability to govern (von Alemann & Spier, 2008, pp. 41–43). For these snap elections, the WASG formed an electoral list together with the PDS. The new WASG returned to the Bundestag with 8.7 percent of the vote and prevented the formation of both a red-green and a black-yellow coalition. Chancellor Schröder, although in his seventh year in government, ran an attack campaign of the kind usually conducted only by opposition parties. With his warnings about painful social cuts that a black-yellow government under Angela Merkel’s leadership would bring, he was able to gain considerable ground in the final spurt of the election campaign. With 34.2 percent of the vote the SPD finished just behind the Christian Democrats (35.2 percent). Schröder had to vacate the field. However, the Social Democrats were able to govern for four more years in the grand coalition (Horst, 2010, p. 356). Under the grand coalition, the SPD was unable to stem its decline. Although it did not lose 100,000 members as in the three years before, it still lost 80,000 members in the four years between 2005 and 2009. While it no longer lost every state election during this period it did lose most (von Alemann & Spier, 2011, p. 61). Where it did win, as in Hesse in January 2008, the SPD squandered its victory again. Although SPD top candidate Andrea Ypsilanti had ruled out forming a coalition with the Left Party before the election, she did an about-face after the election. This “voter betrayal” not only shook the SPD in Hesse, it also cost the SPD in Hamburg a possible victory in February 2008 (Horst, 2008, pp. 519–522; Zastrow, 2009). SPD party chairman Kurt Beck resigned in September 2008. Beck was the third SPD chairman to fail after the 2005 federal election. He was replaced once again by Müntefering who returned to Berlin from political retirement to organize the SPD election campaign for 2009 alongside Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier. During this “disintegration phase of

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the Schröder cycle”, the SPD was best characterized by “strategy under wavering leadership” (Raschke, 2010). The power struggles at the top of the party were based on deeply rooted conflicts over politics and policies. Müntefering saw the grand coalition as a suitable means of securing the legacy of Agenda 2010. As vice chancellor and labor minister (2005–2007) he watched over the continuation of the Agenda policy. He successfully resisted attempts by the left wing of his party to weaken the Hartz reforms. Only in the case of Unemployment Benefit I did party leader Beck succeed in October 2007 in getting the grand coalition to reverse the reduction in the entitlement duration introduced by the red-green coalition (Dümig, 2010, pp. 282–286). Beck not only stood for a traditional labor market policy. He also strategically represented an opening to the left in order to make the SPD a chancellor’s party again. In contrast, Müntefering and 2009 chancellor candidate Steinmeier were staunch opponents of a left-wing coalition. Steinmeier was officially aiming for a coalition with the Greens and the FDP. The FDP was not, however, open to joining such a coalition (Raschke, 2010, p. 87). At the end, the SPD achieved 23 percent of the vote, its worst election result in post-war history. After the historic electoral defeat in 2009, Müntefering resigned as party chairman. The era of Sigmar Gabriel (2009–2017) dawned. He was to stay in office longer than any other party chairman after Willy Brandt. Gabriel led the party for four years in opposition and the first three and a half years of the third grand coalition (2013–2018), of which he was vice chancellor. Nonetheless, the decline continued here as well as there. Although Gabriel wanted to increase inner-party democracy and transparency, the SPD lost another 40,000 members between 2009 and 2013. For the first time, Social Democrats were overtaken by the CDU as Germany’s strongest membership party between 2008 and 2011. In the states, the SPD did win back minister presidencies in NorthRhine Westfalia (Feist & Hoffmann, 2010), Hamburg (Horst, 2011), and Schleswig–Holstein (Horst, 2012), but it was unable to decisively broaden its voter base. Nevertheless, by the summer of 2012 it had recovered to at least 30 percent in national polls—not least because the FDP remained unsuccessful in the black-yellow coalition (Jun, 2015) and Merkel relied on an informal grand coalition (Schmidt, 2008) in euro rescue policy (Zimmermann, 2015). However, in 2012 the SPD undermined all the advances

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that had been made to date by nominating the wrong chancellor candidate. Both parliamentary group leader Steinmeier and party leader Gabriel shied away from a candidacy, and by default it fell to Peer Steinbrück, the former finance minister of the second grand coalition. Steinbrück was popular in the media (for a while), but not in his own party. Similar intraparty conflicts as in 2009 paralyzed the party’s election campaign. Once again, it was not clear what the party’s substantive and strategic goals were. Once again, too, the SPD rejected a grand coalition and a leftwing coalition, but was unable to offer a credible coalition alternative (Spier & von Alemann, 2015, pp. 51–57). With 25.7 percent of the vote, Steinbrück made only marginal gains compared with 2009. In 2013, the FDP fell out of the Bundestag and the Greens were not yet ready to join a coalition with the CDU/CSU. As in 2005, only the grand coalition remained as a viable alternative. In order to bring his reluctant party members into the coalition, SPD leader Gabriel let the party members vote on the coalition agreement for the first time in German history. This gave him leverage for the coalition negotiations. Even more important was the fact that from 2013 to 2017 the SPD was the center party in the German Bundestag against which no ideologically coherent coalition could be formed (Horst, 2015, p. 866). The SPD’s gains in coalition bargaining were not realized through offices but through policies. Particularly in labor market and social policy, the SPD was able to achieve its distributive policy goals. These included the statutory minimum wage, strengthened collective bargaining autonomy, limits on labor leasing and fixed-term employment contracts, imposing stronger rent controls, and improving long-term care and pension insurance (Schulze Buschoff & Hassel, 2019; Voigt, 2019). From the middle of the election period onward, however, the “refugee crisis” overshadowed all other policy areas. Although the initial failures in asylum and migration policy became a problem for Merkel’s Christian Democrats in particular and gave her a new political competitor on the right flank in the form of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), the SPD was unable to electorally capitalize on this opportunity. Martin Schulz who was promoted to chancellor candidate (and party chairman) in early 2017 did not follow a strict immigration policy. Worse, having been a member of the European Parliament for 23 years, he had no executive or legislative experience in national politics (Walter, 2018, p. 346).

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Initially, the prospects for the 2017 Bundestag elections were not bad. Chancellor Merkel had lost popularity as a result of her immigration policy, and the rise of the AfD (Lengfeld, 2017) was more of a problem for Christian Democrats. When the SPD nominated Schulz as its top candidate in January 2017, it jumped to over 30 percent in national polls. This “Schulz hype” continued until the end of March. During this time, the SPD was on a par with the CDU/CSU. The SPD’s plunge in the polls from 32 percent at the end of March to 20.5 percent in the Bundestag election on September 24, 2017, followed clear missteps by Schulz. First, he distanced himself from Agenda 2010 and flirted with a left-wing coalition in Oskar Lafontaine’s Saarland. This only served to assist the grand coalition led by Saarland CDU Minister President Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to prevail in the state elections (Faus et al., 2018, pp. 9–10). Schulz then suspended his campaign at the request of North Rhine-Westphalia’s SPD Minister President Hannelore Kraft at a time when he should have continued to ride his wave of approval (Wiesendahl, 2017a, p. 5). This led to SPD losses in the Schleswig– Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia state elections in May 2017. After this series of electoral defeats in the spring 2017, former SPD leader Gabriel maneuvered against his successor (Faus et al., 2018, pp. 9–13, 46–57) and Schulz’s election campaign entered an inexorable downward spiral (Feldenkirchen, 2017). The only positive legacy of the brief “Schulz hype” remained an increase of 10,000 party members, the first time in the Berlin Republic that the party had gained members at the end of a year. Nevertheless, the bottom of the Social Democrats’ decline had not yet been reached. Although Schulz had categorically ruled out forming a grand coalition again on election eve, he had to back down a short time later after the FDP refused to form a coalition with the CDU and the Greens. Head of State Steinmeier appealed to the SPD’s political responsibility, and the party agreed to join the grand coalition for the third time after 2005 and 2013. As in 2013, the SPD held a member referendum on the coalition agreement (Horst, 2018). However, with a turnout of 78 percent only two-thirds of members voted in favor, compared with three-quarters four years earlier. Schulz had to hand over the party chairmanship to Andrea Nahles who in April 2018 was supported by only 66 percent of party delegates. Nahles, too, was unable to stop the SPD’s decline. Under her watch, the SPD lost members again. It also lost the 2018/19 state elections in Bavaria, Hesse, and Bremen by significant margins.

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In the European elections on May 26, 2019, the SPD finished behind the CDU/CSU and the Greens. Nahles, who was also the parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, retired from all political offices. The SPD elected two new chairpersons in a difficult primary election extended over several months. Turnout was low with 53 percent. Norbert WalterBorjans and Saskia Esken, who until then had been barely visible in federal politics, prevailed over Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz in December 2019. Former party leader Gabriel (2020, pp. 256–261) called the process a “collective leadership failure”. At the end of 2019, the SPD stood at below 15 percent in the polls and was competing with the AfD for third place in the German party system.

Explaining Success and Misery of Social Democrats in Germany and Beyond Coming into the 2021 general elections German Social Democrats will have been in government for 19 of the last 23 years. During this time the SPD held the Chancellor portfolio for seven years and was junior partner in the grand coalition for twelve years. This impressive track record in government formation is mirrored by solid accomplishments, prominently underscored by falling unemployment rates from 11.7 percent in 2005 to 5.0 percent at the end of 2019 and GDP growth by an annual average of 1.9 percent between 2010 and 2019 following the financial and economic crisis (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2020; Statistisches Bundesamt, 2020). Public finances have also developed positively since the introduction of the constitutional debt brake. From 2012 to 2018, the target of a maximum new debt of 0.35 of GDP was achieved in every year, and debt was even structurally reduced in every second year (Bundesministerium der Finanzen, 2019). These successes were accompanied by numerous social improvements like the statutory minimum wage and lowered retirement age for many. Furthermore, the societal modernization with respect to immigration law, modern family law, and marriage for all would not have happened without the SPD. Nevertheless, the prevailing perception is that of a decline (Berman & Snegovaya, 2019; Manwaring & Kennedy, 2018), a crisis (Bandau, 2019; Dostal, 2017), or a misery of Social Democracy (Dahrendorf, 1987; Steinbrück, 2018)—a perception which extends across Western Europe. Although Social Democrats are a partner in half of Western European governing coalitions, only the

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Portuguese PS won more than 40 percent of the vote in the last national parliamentary election. How can this apparent discrepancy be explained? Nick Randall (2003) has distinguished four strategies that can be employed to explain the historical development of the British Labour Party: (1) materialist, (2) ideational, (3) electoral, and (4) institutional (Bandau, 2019). This is a useful classification which can apply to the assessment of the SPD as well. Materialist approaches focus on the economic and social conditions of politics, especially globalization (Giddens, 1998), Europeanization (Scharpf, 2017; Streeck, 2013), and the financial limits of Social Democratic welfare policies. They highlight the scope for political action in the nation-state as small. From their point of view, politicians are mere executors of economic constraints under the banner of TINA (“There Is No Alternative”) politics (Vormann & Lammert, 2019). Within the materialist perspective, the crisis of capitalism is above all a crisis of democracy which is at best a post-democracy (Crouch, 2004; Mouffe, 2018). Closely related to the materialist strategy of analysis are ideational approaches. They place ideas at the center of their analyses. Ideas are viewed as arising from economic demands growing from Marxist conceptions like base and superstructure. In this narrative, the decision of prominent Social Democrats to join the neoliberal economic policy consensus is the original sin of Social Democratic politics. Initial attempts of supply-side and austerity politics (Blyth, 2013) were already undertaken by Jimmy Carter in the US or Helmut Schmidt in Germany in the 1970s, but were then resolutely pursued by conservative politicians—Thatcher, Reagan, and Kohl—in the 1980s (Horst, 1995). In the 1990s, Social Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schröder adapted their programs to the neoliberal consensus in following “Third Way” policies. Ideational explanations are generally less deterministic and grant political actors greater room for maneuver than materialistic approaches. A decline of Social Democracy is thus not inevitable. Politicians may also choose to adopt a different governing philosophy (Vormann & Lammert, 2019). For example, they might combat right-wing populism with more traditional welfare-state policies or even left-wing populism (Berman & Snegovaya, 2019; Mouffe, 2018). The phenomenon of populism leads to the electoral strategy employed to analyze political party development. The problems that a changing voter structure poses for Social Democratic and Christian Democratic

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mainstream parties have been discussed for decades. Social Democratic parties suffer particularly from the decline of their working-class base, as well as from the dealignment of once loyal core voters and the increase in swing voters. Social Democratic parties face a further challenge in that party competition is no longer one-dimensionally oriented toward the conflict between the market and the state on the socioeconomic axis, but additionally on a sociocultural conflict axis. This new conflict in values was described in the 1970s as a shift from material to post-material values (Inglehart, 1977). Two decades later it was framed as a conflict between authoritarian and libertarian values (Kitschelt, 1994). Two more decades on it is characterized as a conflict between cosmopolitans and communitarians (Merkel, 2017), or the anywhere and somewhere (Goodhart, 2017), or the distinctions between TAN (traditional/authoritarian/nationalist) and GAL (green/alternative/libertarian) parties (Hooghe & Marks, 2018). In this regard, the particular difficulty for the mainstream Social Democratic (and Christian Democratic) parties lies in the pluralization of society serving to create a “society of singularities” (Reckwitz, 2017). The younger competitors on the electoral market, especially green and right-wing populist parties, generally have a sharper programmatic profile on these issues (Decker, 2018, 2019). The fourth approach outlined by Randall is the institutional strategy to analyzing political party development. This perspective draws attention to the organizational change of a party and the implications for its relations with the electorate. Party research has a long tradition of conceptualizing typologies to define the course of party development. As a rule, national conservative and liberal parties began as parties of more singular sectoral or economic interests which later evolved into “catch-all” parties after World War II (Kirchheimer, 1966). The “Volkspartei” of the first two or three decades after World War II was perhaps the highest stage of maturity for the Christian and Social Democratic parties in Europe. In the 1970s, the German SPD reached the peak of its power to date. At the same time, however, being a catch-all party that wanted to reach as many groups in society as possible with its ultimately interchangeable programs, the socially diverse “Volkspartei” carried within it the seeds of decline because it alienated its loyal core voters. The very purpose of parties is not to represent the people as a whole or the common good. Their task is to represent parts of the whole, to fight for the interests of certain groups. In this function, they map social inequalities

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(Wiesendahl, 2017b). According to the common criticism of catch-all, “electoral professional” (Panebianco, 1988) and “cartel parties” (Katz & Mair, 1995), they have increasingly lost sight of this task. Mid-level party officials have a strong interest as a political class in monopolizing state resources, i.e., state funding for parties and parliamentary groups, in order to stall competition. Party leaders have sometimes experimented with membership referendums or primary elections to open their parties to new ideas and sympathizers. In the German case, however, they have not been very successful with their reforms of the “member party” (Decker, 2016, pp. 241–264). The cartel party thesis has been criticized from many sides (Helms, 2001; Poguntke, 2002). The cartelization of party competition may not stand up to empirical scrutiny (Detterbeck, 2016). However, there is ample empirical evidence which documents the tightening of party ties to the state and their declining roots in society. To be sure, the parties themselves emphasize that their party membership is still important to the party’s political identity. However, contrary to this self-image, the German party membership studies show considerable gaps in representation of all parties and of the CDU and SPD in particular (Klein et al., 2019; Spier et al., 2011). In addition to the massive decline in membership already described above, core problems for the SPD are the lack of representation of women (31 percent versus 52 percent in the general population) and the growing age of its membership. Just under half of SPD members were over 65 in 2017 (just over a quarter in the general population), with one in ten even over 80. More than half of all members were pensioners in 2017 (versus 32 percent in the population). That the party had increasingly lost touch with its core voters was particularly evident in members’ formal educational qualifications and occupational status. From 1998 to 2017, the share of members with a secondary school diploma fell from 39 to 23 percent, while the share of those with a high school diploma or university degree rose from 44 to 54 percent over the same period. In 2017, only 16 percent of SPD members were blue-collar workers (compared with 9 percent in the population), while 44 percent were employed in the public sector, four times as many as in the population (Klein et al., 2019). The specific membership structure of the SPD is seen by many party researchers as the reason why the SPD today is no longer a workers’ party but a culturally left-wing party (Micus & Walter,

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2017, p. 75)—similar to the “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) and righteous progressive left in the United States (Haidt, 2012). Randall’s fifth explanatory approach, the synthetic strategy, is not particularly convincing. It serves primarily to combine the other four approaches. I would, however, suggest a useful alternative approach which we may label as the personal or biographical strategy. This draws upon the epistemological perspective common in contemporary historical approaches or in studies of political leadership and strategy making (Raschke & Tils, 2007). This fifth explanatory approach takes into account the unavoidable fact that a party’s success or decline is primarily determined by its political leaders. The success of the SPD in the Bonn Republic in the 1960s and 1970s cannot be explained without the successful interaction of Willy Brandt, Herbert Wehner, and Helmut Schmidt over a long period of time (Rupps, 2004). Nor can the SPD’s resurgence in the Berlin Republic be explained without the effective cooperation of Oskar Lafontaine, Gerhard Schröder, and Franz Müntefering. The accelerating disintegration of the SPD since Agenda 2010 and after Schröder’s departure can also be explained by the actions of leading Social Democrats and their respective strengths and weaknesses. Müntefering, Platzeck, Beck each failed as party chairs between 2005 and 2009 (Sturm, 2009). In preparing the 2009 election campaign, Müntefering and Steinmeier did not harmonize; neither was a hands-on leader, but rather a loyal follower (Raschke, 2010). Sigmar Gabriel failed, despite his talents and good approaches, primarily because of his caprice and vulnerability. By surprisingly backing out of a chancellor candidacy twice, in 2013 and 2017, he became the real gravedigger of German Social Democracy. Steinbrück and Schulz played their personal part, but they were also Gabriel’s victims (Hickmann & Sturm, 2016; Gabriel, 2020, pp. 233–321).

Prospects for 2021 and Beyond How can the SPD return to its old greatness? If one follows the materialistic and electoral explanations, such a resurgence of the SPD is quite impossible. Vote shares at the national level of more than 40 percent, as in the 1970s, are nostalgic reveries; even 30 percent seems utopian at present. Based on early election polls for the 2021 Bundestag election, it seems reasonable to expect a battle with the Greens for second place in

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the German party system. Since the Greens will be running a chancellor candidate (Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck) for the first time in their history, a second place finish with 25 percent or more of the vote could be considered a great success. At least it would save the SPD’s status as a potential chancellor’s party for the time being. For a number of personal, ideational, and institutional reasons, however, the SPD seems rather well positioned for the 2021 general election cycle. Certainly, it would seem the party is in more favorable circumstances than the more fatalistic predictions following the logic of the materialistic and electoral strategies would predict. Due primarily to the unresolved chancellor candidacy within the CDU/CSU, the pattern of election cycles (Korte & Fröhlich, 2009, pp. 319–349), the unique characteristics of the fluid six-party system, the open coalition question, and a corruption scandal among Christian Democrats the prospects for the SPD in the 2021 elections seem more reasonable than some might assume. After 16 years as chancellor, Angela Merkel, who already stepped down from the CDU party presidency at the end of 2018, will not run again in 2021. Winning elections after such a long time in government would be hard enough with Germany’s most popular politician. Without Merkel’s incumbency advantage it will be much more difficult. Both of the two leading candidates—the new CDU party chairman Armin Laschet who is Minister President of North Rhine-Westfalia and Bavaria’s Minister President Markus Söder (CSU)—have weaknesses at the federal level. Compared with the two potential CDU/CSU chancellor candidates, SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz enjoys the advantage that this time the SPD already agreed on him early as its top candidate in August 2020. The two newly elected SPD leaders support his candidacy, as does Kevin Kühnert, the influential former left-wing leader of the Young Socialists. The necessary unity within the party thus seems to be ensured. Scholz also has better governing credentials than any of his potential Christian Democratic or Green rivals, having served as labor minister in the second grand coalition (2007–2009), first mayor (i.e., Minister President) of Hamburg (2011–2018) and finance minister in the current grand coalition (since 2018). A certain skepticism remains whether Scholz, who is soberly pragmatic and comes across as rather stiff, can spark enough enthusiasm among his supporters and the electorate. His political ideas presented to the public remain rather mainstream (Scholz, 2017). Scholz’s biggest problem may be his party’s weak personnel, which has had little success in recent years.

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The SPD can draw some hope from the fragmentation and volatility of the German party system. Losses and gains on the order of ten percentage points between two Bundestag elections are no longer unusual for the parties. The six-party system represented in the Bundestag opens up the possibility of major shifts between parties. However, this also makes coalition building a poker game. A look at the states is instructive in this regard. In early March 2021 the CDU/CSU, SPD, and Greens are governing in eleven states each, the FDP and the Left in three, all parties facing several crucial state elections during the year. Almost every conceivable coalition combination in government is now possible. Currently (early March 2021), there are 15 different coalition governments across the 16 states (Bundesrat, 2021). Significantly, in addition to the Christian Democrats and the Greens, the SPD can also form coalitions with the FDP (in Rhineland-Palatinate) and the Left Party (in Berlin, Bremen, and Thuringia). Thus, for the first time in the history of the Berlin Republic, a left-wing coalition no longer seems impossible—although doubts remain about the Left’s ability to form a coalition due to its foreign policy positions. But while the SPD inevitably needs two more coalition partners due to its weakness in the polls, the Christian Democrats could also form a two-party coalition together with the Greens as things stand at present. Finally, the SPD can also draw hope from the bipolarity and the federal nature of the German party system. In the past, Bundestag election campaigns have always been fought between candidates from the CDU/CSU and the SPD. When Guido Westerwelle (FDP) tried to break this rule in 2002, he failed grandiosely. In principle, it cannot be ruled out that in future a Green chancellor candidate could take the place of a Social Democrat. However, the coalitions formed so far in the states hint in another direction. In January 2021, there are seven minister presidents each from the CDU/CSU and the SPD, while the Greens and the Left each have only one minister president in their ranks. Against this backdrop, a successful chancellor candidacy by Habeck or Baerbock, of whom only the former has some executive experience in state government, seems more than doubtful. This is even more true in times of the coronavirus pandemic, in which people in top executive positions have far more opportunities to raise their profile than candidates without such positions—which is why since March 2020 Christian Democrats have gained strongly under the sovereign leadership of Chancellor Merkel,

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Social Democrats have increased slightly and the Greens have lost significantly in the national polls. On the other hand, the management of the pandemic will also be the great unknown in this campaign. Postscript After the Bundestag Election The original manuscript was completed in early March 2021, when neither the CDU/CSU nor the Greens had nominated their candidate for chancellor. At that time, no one—with the possible exception of SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz—expected the SPD to win the September Bundestag election in September. As argued in the previous outlook section, however, the SPD’s chances were better than the supposedly hopeless situation in the election polls suggested. The election victory of the SPD with Olaf Scholz at the helm, which came as a surprise to many, was therefore not so unexpected. It was caused by the fact that the CDU/CSU had worn itself out after 16 years of Angela Merkel in government and chose the wrong person as its candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet. Unlike Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, Laschet had no support among the party base or among political pundits. His election campaign was therefore doomed to failure. The Greens, the SPD’s other competitor, did no better. Their candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, made some serious campaign mistakes and was seen as too inexperienced by too many voters. In the end, Olaf Scholz alone appeared to two-thirds of Germans to be ready for chancellor. Only he stood for government experience and, as vice chancellor of the current government, embodied continuity (Horst, 2021, p. 6). After two decades of decline, the SPD now has at least a chance to begin its resurgence with Olaf Scholz as chancellor of the new coalition government. However, the starting conditions are much more difficult than ever in the current fragmented six-party system for at least five reasons: First, even as the election winner, the SPD received only just under 26 percent of the vote, barely more than the CDU/CSU. Second, almost half of SPD voters gave their vote not to the party but to the potential new chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Third, Scholz’s outstanding popularity ratings are the result of adverse selection and are accordingly fragile. Fourth, the continuing popularity of the new chancellor and the future electoral success of the SPD will depend crucially on whether the coalition led by Scholz will be a success. This is certainly possible, but given the enormous political challenges (pandemic, climate change, European and

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world future) of this coalition, it is anything but a foregone conclusion. Fifth, the fact that this so-called traffic light coalition (Ampelkoalition) is an untested alliance of three parties in the federal government and that the FDP has significant policy differences with the SPD and the Greens does not make things any easier either. The Social Democrats—and Germany as a whole—face challenging times ahead.

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Krisenmanagement. Eine Bilanz der Regierung Merkel 2013–2017 (pp. 397– 414). Springer VS. Spier, T., Klein, M., von Alemann, U., Hoffmann, H., Laux, A., Nonnenmacher, A., & Rohrbach, K. (2011). Parteimitglieder in Deutschland. VS Verlag. Spier, T., & von Alemann, U. (2015). In ruhigerem Fahrwasser, aber ohne Land in Sicht? Die SPD nach der Bundestagswahl 2013. In O. Niedermayer (Ed.), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 2013 (pp. 49–69). VS Verlag. Statistisches Bundesamt. (2020, December 16). Entwicklung des realen Bruttoinlandsprodukts (BIP) in Deutschland von 2008 bis 2019 und Prognose des DIW bis 2022. Steinbrück, P. (2018). Das Elend der Sozialdemokratie. Anmerkungen eines Genossen. Verlag C.H. Beck. Streeck, W. (2013). Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus. Suhrkamp Verlag. Sturm, D. F. (2009). Wohin geht die SPD? dtv. Thaysen, U. (1990). Der Runde Tisch. Oder: Wo blieb das Volk? Der Weg der DDR in die Demokratie. Westdeutscher Verlag. Thaysen, U. (2003). Fehlstart der Regierung Schröder II? Regierungsbildung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – das Beispiel September 2002 bis 14. März 2003. In E. Jesse (Ed.), Bilanz der Bundestagswahl 2002. Voraussetzungen – Ergebnisse – Folgen (pp. 181–219). Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit. Voigt, L. (2019). Let the good times roll. Eine Bilanz der Sozialpolitik der dritten Großen Koalition 2013–2017. In R. Zohlnhöfer & T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Zwischen Stillstand, Politikwandel und Krisenmanagement. Eine Bilanz der Regierung Merkel 2013–2017 (pp. 415–443). Springer VS. von Alemann, U., & Spier, T. (2008). Doppelter Einsatz, halber Sieg? Die SPD und die Bundestagswahl 2005. In O. Niedermayer (Ed.), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 2005 (pp. 37–65). VS Verlag. von Alemann, U., & Spier, T. (2011). Erholung in der Opposition? Die SPD nach der Bundestagswahl 2009. In O. Niedermayer (Ed.), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 2009 (pp. 57–77). VS Verlag. von Lucke, A. (2002). Etappen eines schleichenden Endes? Eine kurze Geschichte von Rot-Grün. Vorgänge. Zeitschrift Für Bürgerrechte Und Gesellschaftspolitik, 22(1), 4–7. von Webel, D. (1999). Der Wahlkampf der SPD. In E. Noelle-Neumann, H. M. Kepplinger, & W. Donsbach (Eds.), Kampa. Meinungsklima und Medienwirkung im Bundestagswahlkampf 1998 (pp. 13–39). Verlag Karl Alber. Vormann, B., & Lammert, C. (2019). Democracy in crisis: The neoliberal roots of popular unrest. University of Pennsylvania Press. Walter, F. (2018). Die SPD. Biographie einer Partei von Ferdinand Lassalle bis Andrea Nahles. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.

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CHAPTER 5

Fighting Against the Decline: Concepts of Modernization of the Conservative “Volksparteien” in Germany Michael Weigl

Introduction Parties are the backbone of German democracy. The spirit of the era when they were crowned, with constitutional blessing, the “mouthpiece drawn on by a people who have come of age” (Decision of the Federal Constitutional Court 1952) is indeed over. Today, when it comes to the discursive negotiation of political issues, parties in Germany also act in competition with a large number of other actors—from interest organizations to individuals from the midst of the citizenry who have gained a voice through social media. At the intersections of power in the Federal Republic, however, political parties continue to occupy a key position: in the Bundestag and in the state parliaments. Nothing goes against the will

M. Weigl (B) University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_5

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of their parliamentary groups. They provide the governments in the form of coalitions and they continue to have a monopoly on the recruitment of political staff. The parties of the government majority in the parliaments at the federal and state level which are completely differentiated in terms of how they are organized, both enable and limit the agency of their heads of government and ministers as powerful veto players. The so-called major Volksparteien on the conservative side (Christian Democratic Union, CDU; Christian Social Union, CSU1 ) and/or social-democratic side (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) which address all layers of the electorate have held a special position in Germany’s political system from the very beginning of the Federal Republic. All previous Federal Governments since 1949 have been led by Chancellors from their ranks, and the Union, in particular, has shaped Germany like no other party. In the 72 years since the founding of the Federal Republic (1949–2021), the Union has been involved in government for 52 of those years represented the office of federal chancellor in all of those years. While the Social Democrats did not part from some of the more strident socialist traditions until 1959, the Union parties were constituted as parties for all voters without distinction from as early as after the Second World War. Even denominational oppositions such as those that had shaped the political landscape of the Weimar Republic were overcome, with the CDU and CSU coming to define themselves as “non-denominational” parties that from their founding on addressed both Catholic and Protestant (Evangelical-Lutheran) citizens. For decades, the Volksparteien were the undisputed powerhouses of German politics. Today, however, their former sheen has worn off. Both the Union parties (CDU/CSU) and the SPD are struggling with decreasing party ties which result in an ongoing decline in membership and ever-decreasing popularity at the ballot box. The result of the 2021 federal election, in which the CDU/CSU lost 8.8 percentage points (24.1 percent) and the SPD achieved the third worst result in its history in federal elections (25.7 percent), although the chancellor is a Social Democrat for the first time since 2005, is a visible expression of this creeping 1 The “sister parties” CDU and the CSU, the latter being organized and running for elections only in Bavaria, act as one parliamentary group in the Bundestag at the federal level. The term “Union” designates both.

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decline. This development, which is discussed in the research on German political parties as the “crisis of the Volksparteien” (Wiesendahl, 2011), is not new but has been virulent since at least the early 1990s. The reunification, with its expansion of the federal territory to 16 states (previously: 10+ Berlin), the establishment of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)—the successor to the State Party of the GDR—in the German Bundestag, and the need for the state to have to re-define itself for the first time as one that now has “full sovereignty over its internal and external affairs” (Art. 7, para. 2, Two Plus Four Agreement) have collectively and noticeably changed the premises of German politics (Falter, 2010, pp. 35– 39). However, if initial efforts to modernise the Volksparteien because they were approached too half-heartedly, a different picture has emerged recently. The aim of this work is to trace these concepts of modernization of the conservative Volksparteien in Germany and to classify them within the framework of core literature within political science.

The Rise and Decline of the German “Volksparteien” The German Volksparteien experienced their rise in the years when the German Federal political system was being formed and internalized. It is true that the social milieus on which they were based had already been weakened compared to the years prior to the two world wars. However, in the 1950s and 1960s, the milieus were still sufficient for legitimizing the major Volksparteien as their quasi-natural representatives. This was so because from that point forward the Volksparteien oriented themselves toward the center of society; they contributed to the democratization of the Federal Republic and to a Federal German self-image based on the experiences of National Socialism, the Holocaust and the World Wars. Old cleavages between the milieus were also gradually closed through the forging of a democratic consensus of the established parties and their shared idea that politics should exemplify democracy. Even if the political competition was conducted with pointed acerbity, democratically legitimized political decisions and measures, as well as election results, were to be accepted as a matter of course. The structural and social change that began after the Second World War and gained momentum in the 1960s brought the Germans closer together in the long term (Wolfrum, 2006, p. 144). German society was increasingly leveled out and met in a middle-class center, which

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was also important for people’s own self-positioning. This process, as well as the political disputes that accompanied it, initially benefited the Volksparteien. Their potential constituency of voters steadily grew, and, despite increasing agreement between them on central issues, the high level of polarization of individual issues (e.g., the question of the Neue Ostpolitik [“new eastern policy”]) contributed to the emotionalization of politics, and thus also to the mobilization of voters. Never before or after did the German Volksparteien amass more votes and more members than in the 1970s and early 1980s.2 However, after the formation of the basic rules system of German politics, which is essentially still valid today, their gradual decline began. In that moment when the citizens had developed democratic self-confidence, the importance of the Volksparteien began to gradually decline. The more democratic Germany became the more critical and selective Germans became. The higher the German standard of living became within the Federal Republic thereby satisfying the population’s essential needs in accordance with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1943), the more voters emancipated themselves from the parties in their pursuit of self-realization. A decisive factor in the formation of the party system of the Federal Republic of Germany was its orientation along the cleavage between labor and capital that was associated with a materialistic value system (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967). The two German Volksparteien are still positioned there today—albeit both align much more to the political center. The SPD remains more supportive of redistribution and equalization achieved through the welfare state, while the CDU/CSU policy course favoring a market economy, with as little state intervention as possible. Due to the dissolution of the classic working-class environment as a result of the structural change in the Federal Republic, it has become particularly difficult for the SPD to continue to position themselves within this cleavage. On the other hand, with the erosion of the cultural cleavage between religion and the state, which was formerly the second axis of conflict in the German party system, the CDU/CSU has been placed

2 Although, the start of the decline of the Union parties was somewhat delayed. The

SPD achieved its best result in the 1972 Bundestag elections (45.8%), and its membership peaked in 1976 (1.022 million). The CDU, on the other hand, was only at the height of its development in 1983, when it registered its best Bundestag election result (48.8%), with the exception of 1957, as well as its highest number of members (CDU: 734,555, CSU: 185,428).

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under greater pressure than the SPD, parties that have to struggle. For these two parties, the weakening of the former Christian-conservative milieu through growing secularization meant that their most important anchor in society had broken away. The new affliction of the Volksparteien was already evident at the beginning of the 1980s when the landscape of German political parties was ploughed up for the first time since 1961 as the Greens moved into the Bundestag. The period reflected new lifestyle milieus (Hradil, 1996), the materialistic cleavage in competition with an increasingly pronounced post-materialistic orientation within German society. Just as the Volksparteien had failed to integrate the new social movements arising during the 1970s, so, too, their power to integrate broader segments of the German electorate continued to decline as post-materialist valued took root and seeped into society as a whole. The Volksparteien were increasingly confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, they had to find a way to satisfy their core voters still loyal to their respective ideologies. However, they also had to find a way to embrace these new value systems. The SPD was the first to see their electoral power decline. In the wake of German unity, the PDS and later Die Linke delivered new competition to the SPD, while the party, strengthened under Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was castigated by critics for the Chancellor’s “neoliberal” reform agenda. as it was termed by castigating critics. The conservative Volksparteien were not spared the trend of declining identification with a party. The surge of the right-wing populist and extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is seen by some observers to be primarily attributed to a deficit in the representation of national conservative interests that the CDU/CSU and Chancellor Angela Merkel are responsible for (Patzelt, 2018). Like the SPD, the conservative Volksparteien in the Federal Republic are now struggling with a considerable loss of power, further intensified with the 2021 federal election and the move of the CDU/CSU into opposition. The CDU/CSU are increasingly relying less on the claim of being a Volkspartei for all. For decades, they have met with declining popularity at the ballot boxes, their membership rolls have steadily decreased (CDU −48.6 percent 1990–2019, CSU −25.3 percent; Niedermayer,

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2020) strongly marked by a skew toward older voters within the electorate. Indeed, their appeal among young is notably weaker relative to the Greens who are attracting the youth of German voters into its ranks. Fundamental reforms have thus become inevitable to secure the survival of the CDU/CSU and to defend their political priorities. Yet, the character of the German parties as complex actors makes these reform efforts extremely difficult.

Political Parties as a Complex Web of Relations According to party-change research, the German Volksparteien are often counted among the “catch-all parties”, as termed by Otto Kirchheimer (1965). Structurally, this type of party is characterized by strong party leadership while the party base holds only minor importance or within a differentiated party organization characterized by a loose relationship with the electorate. Functionally, the catch-all party follows the principle of maximizing votes through an appeal to all groups of the electorate equally by means of a pragmatic, largely “ideology-free” program. However, research is divided as to whether the German Volksparteien actually correspond to a typical “catch-all party” (Wiesendahl, 2010). The German Volksparteien have never actually been free of ideology. They have always “emphasized and even cultivated their character of ‘Weltanschauungspartei’” [“ideology-driven party”] (Oberreuter, 2007, p. 139). It is true that the German Volksparteien try to appeal to the broadest possible spread of voters through their manifestos and policy trajectories, but they have never arbitrarily aligned their programs to broader social demands. For one thing, the idea of fluid voters who float freely in the political arena and are equally accessible to every party must be rejected. Firmly established milieu structures are difficult to see today and the volatility and fragmentation of the German party system have increased while the number of swing voters has grown (Alemann et al., 2018, p. 106). Yet, most voters still at least have clear preferences for one political camp, or the other (Korte et al., 2018, p. 201). It is still necessary to provide voters with a clear choice between the two largest parties distinguished by unmistakable value priorities For another thing, it has always been possible for the parties to free themselves from core values firmly anchored within their public image, as well as in their self-image given their tradition of mass integration still present today in contrast to a “catch-all” party.

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Even if the moral culture in which they were once based have eroded and been replaced by diffuse lifestyle values, they cannot and do not disconnect from their Volksparteien character and self-image (Wiesendahl et al., 2009). Not only do the membership fees continue to contribute significantly to the financial strength of the parties inspite of the sharp drop in membership numbers in 2019 (25.6 percent of total income for the CDU and 22.8 percent for the CSU) the commitment ensures the visibility of the major parties on the ground. This also serves well their ability to mobilize and canvass across Germany election campaigns (Grabow, 2000, pp. 14–19). Ultimately, however, the claim that the elite of the German parties acts largely autonomously and remains decoupled from the party base is misleading. The German parties are generally regarded as “loosely coupled anarchies” (Lösche & Walter, 1992). The idea of parties as “stratarchies” (Eldersveld, 1964, p. 99) refers to their polycentric power structure. According to Kenneth Carty (2004, p. 9), these parties have different functions, like a franchise company. In theory, these units of a party are viewed as largely autonomous. In practice, however, they are closely linked by a complex network of intertwined threads of relationship that establish influence and legitimation. In accordance with the requirement under the German Constitution (Art. 21, para. 1, of the Basic Law) and the Political Parties Act of 1967, parties in Germany are collegial bodies, led by a management board as the governing body. The party chairperson’s claim to leadership is therefore only weakly anchored in formal terms, and at first glance amounts to nothing more than the right to propose appointments to lesser party posts and to set up a few internal party bodies. It follows from their power of control over the party apparatus and its organizational and communicative resources that party chairpersons hold some instruments in their hands by which to enforce their own claim to leadership within the party. This does not guarantee leadership success as the party chairpersons’ claim to leadership is always precarious and must be fought for and enforced at all times. Any potential leader who wants to survive in the dense web of veto players within a party and assert their interests has to weave a network of support that extends across all levels of party organization (lower, middle and upper party levels) as explained by (Korte et al., 2018, pp. 27 f.), and across the three “faces” of the party (the party on the ground, the party in central office, the party in public office; Katz & Mair, 1995). Informal

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circles, alliances and local and regional roots ensure loyalties, without which nobody can survive when it comes to party-internal processes of policy formation and decision making. At the same time, this support is not free. All partners in the network expect considerations in return for appointments to office or support for policy priorities. The lower and, especially, the middle party levels are thus woven into the power structure of a party. To forgo them would mean giving up claims to power, losing the ability to get things done and negating the power-political coordinate system of German parties. The primary strategy for tying the closest possible network of loyal supporters to oneself is still the principle of accumulation of offices, which has not abated over the years of the federal Republic (Switek, 2014, p. 237). On the one hand, it is with noting the practice of politicians simultaneously holding a national political office and key national party leadership posts. This is vividly exemplified with a Federal Chancellor who also holds the party chairmanship. It is also customary for the party elite to be firmly rooted in local politics as in the case when Federal Ministers simultaneously hold on to an elected seat in a local parliament and thus build a close bond with the local grassroots. The same objective motivates the practice of assuming a party-political office at the lower or middle level of a party while at the same time maintaining their elected seat as a seat in a parliament and/or a high federal political office. In this way, too, the party elite creates loyalties within the party on the ground, which, as a “power base”, can significantly increase the influence the potential party leader has within the party’s internal policy-formation and decision-making processes. Such accumulation of offices allows the party to bundle potential influence afforded through each position. Each office is also associated with arenas of influence, which, when exercised enable leadership to extend beyond formally established catalogues of roles. Even if they are not members of the Federal Government, party chairpersons of the governing parties can exert considerable political influence at the federal level in the coalition committee. The collation committee has established itself as an important arena for voting and decision-making within the Federal Government, especially on controversial issues (Miller, 2011). Minister Presidents can also exercise influence on federal politics as part of the Federal Council exerted through countless formal and informal votes within both the Federal Bundestag and the respective Landtag. Constellations of this kind allow an incumbent to outflank existing powerbrokers

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within a party that act as party-internal veto players, such as a parliamentary group. In exceptional cases, such concentrations of power allow leading members of the party to impose his or her own will on the development and outcome of policy decisions. After all, it is informal networks within a party that have significant influence on potential party leadership. The alliances of actors in a party, usually referred to as cliques or “Seilschaften” (“rope teams”), can be sustained by an idea or a material interest. However, they primarily fulfill strategic and power-political objectives. Through cooperating with each other (even if only to a limited extent) and formulating fixed rules of the game (even if mostly in an only rudimentary way), their members hope to achieve a mutual advantage, especially with regard to their plans for their individual careers. However, such alliances, sometimes characterized as “secret societies”, are only the tip of the iceberg. Countless other informal circles of agreement within the parties, as well as additional “linkages” of the collective actor and its individual actors in the pre-political space (Allern & Verge, 2017) help to structure policy-formation and decisionmaking processes within the party and to stake out claims to power. Against the background of this complexity of the federal German Volksparteien, it is clear their ability to modernize appears to be limited. The immense density of interwoven constellations of actors within the Volksparteien contributes to them being “cumbersome steamboats” whose course is difficult to change. So far, various efforts to adapt the Volksparteien to the new conditions of an increasingly individualized, fragmented, secularized, digitized and globalized environment have remained half-hearted and largely ineffective (Neumann, 2013). The persistence of the organizations turned out to be stronger than the level of the willingness for change because of fear of negative consequences. But this has now changed. In the face of the threat of their own marginalization, the fate of the Volksparteien has been set in motion. Conditions of Modernization of Political Parties Parties are in a constant process of change and adaptation. Due to the regular exchange of staff and members at all levels of the party, new generations find their way into the party’s internal processes of policy formation and decision making—and, with them, new ideas. The constant shift in the party and political environment, as well as ever new political developments, force them to react and often modify and reform their agendas.

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Such updates, of course, only represent a shift in homeopathic doses (Wilson, 1994, p. 271). Yet, over longer periods of time, a party thus slowly assumes a different face. At the same time, such small evolutionary shifts in a party that are generally ongoing within any party are only one form of party change (see Harmel & Janda, 1994, among others). The second form of party change is tactical in nature. While it appears to be evolutionary, it differs in that it is situationally targeted therefore having more to do with power-politics adjustments to momentary demands and challenges and following from a deliberate calculation. They are planned (Raschke & Tils, 2012, p. 389). The targeted reorganization of the party is not the primary goal of the reforms, but a consequence of the situational safeguarding of one’s own claims to power. Party elite secure the power they have attained by organizing the party so as to secure their own future. This can also include efforts to preserve the party agenda by installing loyal followers in central party and national political posts, various nodes within the broader party network, selective reforms in organization and/or the establishment of new networks both inside and outside the party. These measures may not follow a master plan extending far into the future but are based on pragmatic assessments of what is feasible within specific situations. Tactical and evolutionary change is distinguished from a third form of party change characterized as strategic. Here, too, the modification is affected by several individual changes to the party agenda, personnel, organization and/or internal and external networks within the party. In contrast to tactical change, however, these measures follow a long-term strategy of party change. Goals for the future of a party are born from careful analysis of the weaknesses within the party’s current state. These, in turn, lead to concrete, interrelated changes. Regular reviews of the progress of the desired shift in the party as well as situational requirements and those dictated by power politics, result in adjustments and possible course corrections (Raschke & Tils, 2012, p. 393). All of these three manifestations describe forms of party change. Only tactical and strategic change may be accurately described as modernization. With strategic action planned can party change result in consequences intended. Strategic change requires targeted and coordinated efforts at modification and reform. Change does not just happen, it is intended and specifically pursued. Modernization describes the deliberately intended process of adapting a party to a changed political environment. The changing environment

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of a party is always accompanied by internal party clashes over spheres of influence and vested rights. Unlike corporate structures, parties are complex, and in the case of German parties are structured around dense networks rather than hierarchical organization. Party modernization processes are difficult to initiate and even more difficult to sustain. Whether or not party modernization processes can get started and succeed depends on the manifestation of six competencies: (1) leadership, (2) strategic, (3) analytical, (4), mobilization, (5) communication and (6) network. Leadership competence: Even when they do not have a formal leadership mandate, party leaders are the central veto players within parties, especially when the party office is further secured by a high office in national politics. If modernization is the goal, party leaders must actually want to lead toward the outcome. They must not see themselves as brokers between party interests and partisan centers of power. They declare their leadership and assert a combination of various tools of leadership—including hierarchical “commands”. At the same time, the party chairperson must not only declare their leadership. It must result in being granted chairperson of the party, endorsed by the party elite. As complex network-like structures, parties have many mechanisms which can be employed to sabotage the claims to leadership of party chairpersons. To avoid this, the leader must gather a stable and loyal network of supporters and followers (see Kellerman, 2008). The greatest challenge here for the party chairperson is not only to install a protective shield of supporters against possible attacks by opponents and their efforts to impeded change. It is just as challenging, at least, for the party elite to secure the loyalty of his or her followers over longer periods of time, especially in the face of difficult elections. Followers sanction the leadership as long as they believe it will benefit the party and themselves. Once doubts arise about the leadership to deliver the electoral rewards, loyalties quickly evaporate. Strategic competence: For leadership to be more than a claim key organizational conditions must be established. Modernization processes require a strategic center (Raschke & Tils, 2012, pp. 168–170). This center not only deals both with daily politics, but also with future challenges and developments which require strategic competence which can envision the effective and appropriate adjustments to party organization aligned with this anticipated future. This involves developing concrete measures in order to realize desired adjustments. Important here is the

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task of continuously evaluating the status of the modernization process and executing necessary corrections. Without a strategic center capable of these leadership skills, it is virtually impossible to formulate a consistent modernization concept and even more unlikely to sustain. Analytical competence: The task of these strategic centers is to work out the catalogue of measures that are necessary to modernize a party on the basis of cost–benefit considerations (Raschke & Tils, 2012, p. 135). The biggest challenge here is adhering to rational cost–benefit analysis guiding party change and not being bound solely to traditional party ideology. German political parties are characterized by their “Weltanschauungspartei” (“ideologically driven party”) logic. This establishes a firm foundation for their specific worldview dictating policy strategy and analysis of the broader political environment (Switek, 2014, p. 232). This presents a powerful filter which can distort or block effective cost–benefit analysis. Tactical and strategic considerations of party leadership must therefore forge a climate of impartiality, trust and confidentiality which can inspire and motivate objective analysis. Mobilization competence: Tactical-strategic considerations of the party chairperson and their environment are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for modernization. In order to successfully modernize, the entire party rank and file must be mobilized in support of the project (Tucker, 1995, pp. 59–61). It is, therefore, necessary to have internal party communication which clarifies the necessity of the measures by highlighting the weaknesses of the current party strategy which effectively justify the planned measures and enable mobilization by building affective emotional attachment across the whole party to change. Parties always combine a wide range of different interests, especially the Volksparteien, Internal communication amounts to a balancing act between several competing tasks. In order for party reform to acquire legitimation the party as a whole must share the conviction that long-term electoral success and therefore short and medium term change is necessary. Greater scope for action intended to bring about party change is likely if the current situation of a party is understood widely to be within a structural crisis and under great threat. Communication competence: Beyond the party itself, the public must buy into party reform. This necessitates the importance of communication competence within the party. Parties live off their image and their credibility (Bentele, 1998). To prosper and survive, public communication is an essential aspect of the party within modernization processes. To

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bring along the older electorate with party change and at the same time attract new groups of voters, any reform must be linked to core values and traditions, as well as new opportunities and visions. A radical departure from any established image would be recognized as a mere power strategy and would damage the party’s credibility. Clinging to old narratives too rigidly, however, sabotages the party’s own claim to modernization and thus also contributes to a loss in its credibility. A balance must therefore be found in communicating a message lowing a bridge to link the old and the new, which must prove able to sustain forward progress when situational challenges provoke a knee-jerk resistance from traditionalists and skeptics. Network competence: Finally, any reorientation of a party must also be accompanied by a reorganization of its networks during the preparation stage preceding change. In view of decreasing party ties and party members, the interdependence of key social actors with other social actors such as associations, non-governmental organizations or citizens’ initiatives takes on great importance in the strategy for party campaigns (von Winter, 2013, p. 400). In order to maintain or even expand the influence of a party during the modernization project, new social interests may have to be integrated into its own network. This strengthens the linkages of a party to specific segments of voters and deepens its roots and salience within society. This serves also to establish the modernization strategy with key elements of the electorate necessary to the success of the party’ electoral fortunes. It is not necessary that all six competencies must be simultaneously, nor immediately developed within the party’s modernization strategy. However, to the extent they developed will determine which reform projects are possible within the complex web of German parties. Concepts of Modernization of the Conservative “Volksparteien” in Germany Both the CDU and the Bavarian CSU have experienced a surge in modernization in recent years. Both have broken away from some of their conservative traditions of earlier times and have become more liberal and cosmopolitan. However, these processes take a very different course in both parties, despite them being closely linked as sister parties. While the modernization process of the CDU predominantly exhibits the characteristics of a tactical party shift, that of the CSU is more strategic.

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The CDU’s defeat in the 1998 Bundestag election, in which its vote fell by 6.5 percentage points to an historically low 35.1 percent relegating the party to second place in the Bundestag since 1972 had a profound impact on the party. The need for party reforms was obvious. Yet, there existed no consensus on reform. The contextual explanation of the electoral defeat was attributed to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s extended tenure of 16 years. The assumption was consolidation of government and party had prevented change reform within the CDU. This line of reasoning held that the party was too busy filling the power vacuum created by Kohl’s resignation to carefully plot and coordinate a transition to modernization. With a guest article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1999 (Merkel, 1999), the then General Secretary Angela Merkel distanced herself from Kohl, who was involved in an election donations scandal which toppled him from his post as honorary party chairman opening an avenue for the CDU to move toward reform. Merkel became the new party leader. Yet, for many of the “forefathers” of the party this leadership change was viewed as a transitional, not a permanent solution. Merkel, who only joined the party in 1990 and was quickly appointed Federal Minister by Helmut Kohl, had been able to establish contacts in the party during her time as General Secretary (1998–2000). However, because she was politically socialized within the GDR, her internal party networks were weaker and less developed than those of her opponents. Merkel first had to fight for her authority in January 2002: internal party headwinds forced her to renounce the CDU’s candidacy for Chancellor in favor of the CSU chairman and Bavarian Minister President Edmund Stoiber (Walter et al., 2014, pp. 109–117). However, she gradually expanded her position of power by systematically undermining all serious real and potential contenders to her fashioning a leadership majority within the party. When Merkel ascended to the chairmanship of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in 2002 while also retaining her chairmanship of the party thereby bounding to the center of power within the parliamentary group and the group as a “veto player” within the party. With the chairmanship of the parliamentary group, Merkel assumed the most important federal-level political office a CDU politician could occupy outside of ministerial authority (Walter et al., 2014, p. 122). If earlier speculation had existed about possible personal alternatives to Merkel’s leadership within the CDU, her position now was so deeply entrenched within the party that competitors like the Hessian Minister President Roland Koch no longer dared to attack Merkel head-on.

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Koch and the former chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, who had been pushed out of office by Merkel, were not only part of the establishment of the CDU. They reflected the conservative profile of the CDU. Friedrich Merz was the very face of the CSU’s economic policy, while Roland Koch was the very embodiment of the party’s internal security policy. With their ousting from the innermost circle of the party, their conservative positions within the CDU were also weakened, while moderate voices among the party’s elite gained weight. Merkel represented her party, but she never felt obliged to the ideological traditions of the CDU (Walter et al., 2014, p. 139). Instead of cultivating the conservative soul of the CDU she always followed a pragmatic approach in her leadership style. With her rise to the position of Federal Chancellor after the 2005 general election, Merkel’s claim to leadership in the CDU was finally consolidated. Only then was she in a strong enough position to compose a new party manifesto (CDU, 2007) that bore her signature and was to make any path back to the “old” CDU very difficult—which some in the party still dreamed of. However, such approaches at principle-driven reform did little to change the fact that Merkel always saw her own party less as a force of change than as a pragmatic instrument of power politics and electoral success. In 2015 extensive amendments to party statutes aimed to transition the party toward a “younger, more feminine and more diverse” profile was initiated by the party’s presidium. Additionally, Merkel’s goal of liberalizing the party in organizational structure was implemented. However, Merkel did not play a large public role in the drafting of the agenda, delegating this instead to the then CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber. Even if party Chairperson Angela Merkel as party chairwoman wanted to change the CDU, Chancellor Merkel’s own party was never at the forefront of her concerns. Rather than becoming entangled in battles over positions within the party, she concentrated her attention on government responsibility. Instead of strategically strengthening the party headquarters, she relied on a small circle of close confidants in the Federal Chancellery. She gave the CDU a new face, yet not through a strategically designed modernization process, but rather through government decisions where she was guided by what was pragmatically feasible in a given situation, inspired by her determination to maintain power and energized by her conviction of a policy strategy commanding the political center

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(Zolleis & Schmid, 2015, p. 29). Whether the suspension of compulsory military service (2010), Germany’s withdrawal from nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster (2011), the admission of refugees to Germany justified by Merkel with the words “We can do this” (2015), or a series of decisions that critics castigated as “social democratisation” of the CDU (e.g. the introduction of parental allowance, the introduction of a minimum wage, the introduction of a quota for women in management positions in the private sector), Merkel always used specific situational challenges, social moods and constellations of party-political coalitions afflicting Germany to drive CDU policy and thus downgrading the CDU modernization strategy secondary status consistent with her preferred moderate approach to political change (Zolleis & Schmid, 2015, p. 26; Oppelland, 2020). Last but not least, she made use of the tool of biding her time for long periods in which she observed partypolitical disputes without committing herself to political positions before exercising authority. By doing so, she created an aura of non-partisanship for herself, which earned her high popularity ratings with the public and which, silenced her within the CDU ranks (Walter et al., 2014, pp. 158p f.). Even if elements within the CDU disagreed with Merkel’s preferences remaining in the political center, criticism of her strategy had little chance of changing the Chancellor’s course of direction. During her 16 years as chancellor, Merkel gave Germany and the CDU a new face, as government decisions began to bend the CDU identity Merkel’s preferences. However, by limiting the role of the broader interests within the CDU to share in the direction plotted by Merkel in accordance with visions of liberalism, cosmopolitanism, social policy and the ecology, her policies and leadership remained controversial within the party. With the handover of the office of party chairperson to Annegret Kramp-Karenbauer in 2018 and Armin Laschet in 2021, the course was set to stabilize the party’s tactical strategy to modernization in the long term. Both Kramp-Karrenbauer and Laschet have always spoken out in favor of a fundamental continuation of the “Merkel course” and the CDU party manifesto adopted in 2021 mirrors this idea. However, with the renewed change at the top of the party after the loss of the 2021 federal election, this course is once again in question. The new party chairman from January 2022 on, Friedrich Merz, has announced that he also wants to modernize the party. However, according to statements made through early 2022, his focus is primarily on sharpening the CDU’s sociopolitical profile. In terms of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and the ecology,

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Merz represents a much more conservative profile than his predecessors. Whether Merz can succeed in strategically combining the individual reform steps into a reconciliatory overall picture that integrates all of the party’s interests remains questionable. Within the CSU, the situation was different. Its modernization course began only after significant delay. When the alarm bells began ringing at the CDU in the face of extended electoral setback, the CSU was still basking in the glory of its earlier political success. In 2003, the CSU not only defended its absolute majority in the Bavarian state elections, but also secured a two-thirds majority in the Bavarian state parliament for the first time with 60.7 percent of the vote. The result of the subsequent poor showing in the 2008 state elections shocked the party. Its mandate dropped to 43.4 percent of the vote and forced the party into a state coalition government for the first time since 1962. The new party chairman, Horst Seehofer, affirmed that the party had to modernize itself. The reforms that he actually introduced, however, were more like selective cosmetic corrections. The degree of soul-searching within the CSU following the devastating result in the state elections was profound. The resulting frustration was made worse when it became clear that Seehoferwas able to win the office CSU party Chairman, as well as Bavarian Minister President. However, because Seehofer was not rooted in the old party establishment and for this reason he was seen by many as a “a breath of fresh air” for the CSU turned out to be a fallacy (Weigl, 2011). Although an experienced CSU politician—Seehofer had few well-developed and relevant networks within the party. While adept at preventing majorities against himself , Seehofer was skilled at organizing majorities in his favor. The party rallied to Seehofer only hesitantly. When the CSU was able to recapture the absolute majority of seats in Bavaria in the 2013 state elections (47.7 percent of the votes), the traumatic days of 2008 were largely forgotten. Neither Seehofer, who cultivated more of a conservative and less of a creative leadership style (Schäffer, 2018), nor the vast majority of the broader party elite emphatically pushed for CSU modernization. On the contrary, the moderate approaches at reform from 2013 onward were finally shelved when the call for a renaissance of the “old” CSU, with its decidedly restrictive positions on migration and internal security gained ascendancy during the refugee crisis of 2015 and the party confronted the threat from the right-wing populist AfD. Seehofer and others within the CSU tried to counter these calls for retrenchment

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of modernization within the party. It was only in the face of the 10.5 percentage point drop in the 2017 federal election (to 38.5 percent of the votes) followed by the 2018 state election (37.2 percent of the votes) when the window of opportunity opened for the CSU to pursue a strategy of comprehensive modernization. Seehofer’s approaches to reform were hesitant and committed to what could be considered tactically feasible within the context of specific conditions. These efforts were never framed within a visionary perspective (Weigl, 2015, pp. 76–86). If the change of the CSU under Seehofer can thus be described as a tactical change, Markus Söder (Seehofer’s successor) campaigned for a strategic change of a far-reaching kind right from the start. While Seehofer made use of reforms not least to consolidate his always precarious position of power within the CSU, Söder used his largely undisputed position of power within his own party to enforce strategic party change. Söder pushed ahead with modernization aided by the greater support within the party for change in 2018 than was the case in 2008. There was general widespread agreement in the CSU of the need for reform which significantly widened Söder’s scope for strategic action. Söder demanded allegiance within the party and support for his leadership, both of which were extended. In the sense of a functional leader–follower pact, in which both sides seek to achieve common political goals, the majority within the CSU trusted Söder and his long-term reforms as suitable for achieving the party’s goals with regard electoral results, party organization and policy preferences. In this way, the CSU has invested Söder with all the necessary “competences, legitimacy and acceptance (formally and informally) for this purpose” (Fliegauf et al., 2008, p. 403). This party trust in Söder grows from the realization that the CSU is confronted with an “adaptive challenge” (Heifetz, 1994, p. 35) that cannot be solved by routine, pragmatic adjustment. However, Söder’s predominance within the party is increasingly unstable, and the CSU’s disappointing result in the 2021 federal election (Bavaria only: 31.7 percent, −7.1 percentage points) strengthens the party’s internal critics of his course. In concrete terms, the reform efforts of Söder’s CSU amount to partially abandoning the old, partisan mentality that has shaped the party for decades. The CSU has primarily always positioned itself along the labor-capital cleavage, with natural proximity to parties that are characterized by capital interests (especially the FDP) and an equally natural distance from parties that are characterized by labor interests. By contrast,

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the party never really worked on the post-materialist opposition that emerged in the 1980s. The primary goal of the CSU’s current modernization reforms is therefore to reproduce the post-materialistic value changes in German society (Inglehart, 2018, p. 30) In the past, CDU/CSU and SPD competed primarily for the new bourgeois middle classes. However, the Green Party has established itself in the fight for this segment of the electorate. Representing the change in society understood from a post-materialistic perspective—with priority going to values associated with a green environment and sustainable development, personal liberty and cosmopolitanism, post-materialism as a policy strategy has yet to characterize the CSU’s political profile. The change from traditional class and social strata issues to those associated with post-material lifestyle have shaped the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, as it has other democracies in Europe. These values now amount to nothing less than a redefinition of the concept of conservatism in the post-materialistic era. The aim is not to shift the party unilaterally toward the center, but to broaden its range and merge traditional materialist values such as order and security with post-materialist policy offerings, especially in the field of environmental policy. It entails not only reformulating the positioning of the party’s agenda within the parameters of that is affected by these reform efforts but also changing the internal organization and decision-making structure (Weigl, 2020, pp. 236–245). The extent to which all these reform steps will actually have an effect in practice is yet to be seen. As a result of COVID-19, the political agenda in Germany has been narrowed entirely to crisis management. Markus Söder was able to distinguish himself as a crisis manager which further strengthened his power within the party. However, further steps required to modernize the party have inevitably faded into the background. The fact that Söder tried to set a post-materialist tone even during the crisis, with references to the importance of ecology and sustainability, suggests that he wants to further promote party change in the post-COVID-19 era. However, it remains to be seen if this strategy will be successful. Prospects remain unclear.

Conclusion Evolutionary party change, characterized by slow incremental and pragmatic change offers the possibility of slowly providing a party a modern face. Modernization requires more than evolutionary change, In the

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complex web of relationships within parties, leadership is required that has sufficient authority to develop, initiate and sustain implementation of modernization processes. Since leadership strategy must be both wanted and provided. It seems clear that an opportunity has presented itself to design a new structure necessary for veto players within the party to temporarily forego their power and influence within the CDU/CSU. Within the party elite, which is connected to the middle and lower levels of the party through networks and relationships, the certainty must prevail that the goals of collective vote individual claims and interests within the party are subordinated to a strategy of modernization. This requires significant sacrifice within the parties of the Union. The more the party assesses the future electoral prospects as being favorable, the greater the probability avenues of opportunity for leadership and modernization will present themselves. The two conservative Volksparteien are still central party-political forces in Germany. However, with the disastrous result of the 2021 federal election it has become once again apparent that systematic modernization of the CDU and CSU is inevitable. For the CSU, dramatic defeats at the ballot box were required before that opportunity of strategic modernization driven by powerful leadership can be realized. Accommodation to this strategy within the CDU may have come relatively late. However, the party’s modernization has been sought all the more resolutely by Markus Söder and implemented with what has so far been a considerable amount of internal party discipline. Within the CDU, on the other hand, the factions within the party have not been suitable for enabling a strategic shift within the party. The modernization took place following a pragmatic and tactical course conditioned by the limitations and myopia of narrow situational context. Such party change was propelled more from the Federal Chancellery than from the party headquarters. The modernization processes of both parties are far from over. Their success is also uncertain. Furthermore, the Union parties currently see themselves at a crossroads. Since 2005 they have benefited considerably from the high popularity ratings of Chancellor Angela Merkel in elections. Time will tell whether during the post-Merkel will intensify absent Merkel’s popularity and delegitimize the modernization processes, or whether new structures of authority, as well as greater party-internal and public legitimation will provide the needed stability for sustaining transition to strategic change associated with the new realities facing Germany.

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The trend of the decline of the Volksparteien in Germany goes back to the 1970s. However, with reunification in 1990 and the accelerated transformation process of the German party system, their trend away from reform once again gained momentum. The Volksparteien have always practized a situational, multi-policy pragmatism. With their ideological orientation at the same time, however, they have given structure and stability to the competition within the German party system. As a result of the compulsory representation of the East German electorate during the pragmatic argument was again strengthened considerably. In the end, through the combination of West German character and East German pragmatism the modernization processes of the conservative German Volksparteien are reflections of unified Germany.

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CHAPTER 6

Post-Communism in a United Germany: Die Linke Eckhard Jesse

Introduction In the autumn 1989, the communist GDR collapsed; less than a year after the 40th anniversary of the GDR, which was ostentatiously celebrated, Germany was unified. The crisis-ridden Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev was no longer ready to intervene to sustain the state that was dependent on it. The SED had changed its name several times: from the SED/PDS (1989) to the PDS (1990) and Die Linkspartei/PDS (2005) to the Die Linke (2007, after merging with the WASG, or as known by its full name, “Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative”). The vague term “post-communist” deliberately leaves open whether the party (or a part of it) still is sympathizing with communism. This chapter will answer the question of how the successor parties to the SED managed to assert itself in the Federal Republic of Germany.

E. Jesse (B) TU Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_6

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First of all, the circumstances of the Freedom Revolution in 1989 and the course of the Unity Revolution in 1990 will be outlined—two events in which neither the SED nor the PDS played an active role. Furthermore, the performance of the party in the federal elections since 1990 will be discussed along with the reasons which explain how the party became institutionalized within the established German party system, even though it is no longer competitive. Finally, this chapter will offer an assessment of the post-communist party’s future.

Freedom and Unity Revolution 1989/1990 The uncoordinated interplay of escapes and demonstrations—of “exit” and “voice” (Hirschman, 1992)—promoted the collapse of the SED dictatorship within the GDR. The refugees to other Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary triggered a demonstration movement in the GDR. The slogan “we want out” provoked a reply from those still preferring to express loyalty, “we stay here.” Leipzig had been home prior to September 1989 to active groups demonstrating against the SED’s authority. The Leipzig Monday demonstrations of September 1989 built on this established renitent dedication fueling a great dynamic which the security forces could not stop. On October 2, the call “We are the people” rang out for the first time from the ranks of the 20,000 demonstrators. The date of October 9, 1989, is often regarded as the “day of decision” (Kuhn, 1992). A peaceful march of around 70,000 people circled around the inner city of Leipzig. The slogans “no violence” and “we are the people” were shouted by protestors. There was widespread fear that the GDR state security system would spark cause a bloodbath and provide a “Chinese solution.” But, in view of the sheer mass of people, the security forces remained in their barracks. On subsequent Mondays, as the risk of a bloodbath continued to diminish, the number of demonstrators rose to more than 100,000. Estimates suggest this number drew close to 500,000 on November 6. The celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the GDR’s founding on October 7, 1989, in a tried and tested—and reinforced—manner replete with a military parade presented a surreal atmosphere. The establishment celebrated; the public protested. As a result, public discontent escalated noticeably. After the overthrow of Erich Honecker, Egon Krenz wanted to pursue a “brake policy,” which is why he and the party endeavored to take control of the reform movement. By 1989, some three million

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people, including numerous bourgeois elites, had left the GDR for the Federal Republic (adding to the approximately 2.5 million who had already left before 1961 and the construction of the wall). Thus, no clear “loyal” opposition s could arise—they had already exited. In addition, the communist regime degraded the stubborn moniker of “class enemy” attached to the opposition. This complicated the complex political environment and ensured that after the collapse of the dictatorship, the opposition would find agreement on what they did not want (a communist dictatorship), but not about what they wanted going forward. During the period of upheaval, it was the Staatssicherheit (Stasi) which was officially charged with suppressing the political challenge to the regime. However, it chose not to actively intervene against opposition groups. None the less, it had placed its informants among the opposition groups. The Staatssicherheit was not a “state within a state,” as is often claimed, but rather was subject to the authority and leadership of the SED. However, the party was ideologically weakened and paralyzed as the GDR disintegrated. The Stasi’s unwillingness to confront the demonstrations aligned with the passive approach of the Soviet Union which itself refused to use bayonets to restore the regime. None the less, the GDR’s political turn from the Soviet Union is only one aspect of the story of the SED’s plight. Another dimension can be found the partial economic turn of the GDR away from the promises of “unity of economic and social policy” proclaimed in 1971 to a clear recognition of the relative success of the Federal Republic, the vilified “class enemy.” Thus, by 1989 the GDR leadership had no viable “hardline” option open to it. If the Stasi had once been the reliable bulwark holding the GDR together, it was now relegated to a rear-guard action more concerned with burning the files than shoring up the regime. Within a short time following the wall’s collapse, there was a constellational change across the GDP political landscape. The situation in the GDR came to a head as party leader Egon Krenz and the new Prime Minister Hans Modrow continued to face intense pressure. The GDR leadership wanted to press forward with its proposal for a “contractual community” between the two German states in an attempt to define the debate and control the initiative. The FRG until then had been cautious in order to not to inflame passions on either side of the fallen wall. This was the motivation behind Bonn’s preference for merely demanding basic reforms in the GDR. In the immediate aftermath of the wall’s collapse, this strategy was proving less than successful in containing and in effect

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controlling West German public opinion toward the “German Question.” Matters were further complicated for Bonn by FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s astute awareness that the Kremlin would demand the “German question” be included within the global political agenda. On November 28, there was a monumental surprise development. Just months prior to this date Kohl was forced to defend himself against forces within his CDU party working to overthrow his leadership. Now weeks after the wall’s breach, Kohl boldly announced his ten-point program to reorganize German-German relations and to thereby dramatically take the initiative in resolving the German question. However, only the Americans were informed beforehand, though not consulted. By moving on this unilaterally, Kohl in in effect “owned” the initiative. The program, which was mainly drawn up with Horst Teltschik from the Federal Chancellery, contained a step-by-step plan for German unity without any clearly defined termination point to the process. However, the Chancellor had only highlighted common issues. Circumstances required an operative German policy. The Ten-point plan generated a dramatic response. It was apparent from its content that the federal government was serious about reunification. On the same day in East Berlin the proclamation “for our country,” written mainly by the GDR opposition, was presented by the writer Stefan Heym (Borchert et al., 1994). He avoided addressing the unification of Germany and advocated a socialist alternative underscoring “anti-fascist” and humanist ideals. This call initially triggered a great interest but eventually fizzled. Kohl’s speech, which could also be interpreted as an “appeal for our country”—a unified Germany—had a broader appeal to the East’s imagination. It was, in fact, an overture toward abolishing the Soviet Union’s domination of the GDR. Despite the scale of its impact, Kohl’s “Ten-Point Program” none the less were met with some divided reactions. In the Federal Republic and among the GDR population, the plan was generally received positively, while the reception was more negative abroad. Kohl’s plan met with widespread support in the US, but the governments of France and Great Britain did not receive the idea of a unified Germany warmly. Even the term “Fourth Reich” made the rounds in the media, albeit among less serious news outlets. The GDR government protested sharply against any notion of German unity that endangered the stability of Germany as a whole. The Soviet Union also was unsupportive of the program. None the less, the domestic and foreign policy effects of Kohl’s speech soon served to soften these more negative reactions. In the GDR, the

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hopes aroused for unification were nourished while the flow of the escape movement continued to thrive. The extent of the crisis began to spread as the fear and expectation of a collapse of the GDR became more widespread. Civil rights activists spoke out at the Central Round Table for the disempowerment of the Staatssicherheit and advocated for the first democratic elections in the country to be held in eastern Germany since 1933 (though many active opposition groups would generally present a sullen and brooding posture toward the unification process). The center of the GDR’s former political power bloc was not represented at the Round Table. Indeed, Modrow attended the meetings only when critical decisions were necessary. Oppositionists (with the exception of the more radical representatives of the “United Left”) joined Modrow’s “government of national responsibility” (serving as ministers without portfolio) from the end of January 1990. In so doing, they in effect supported de facto the course of the last illegitimate GDR government and largely conceded their ability to steer the course of the GDR’s future fate. They were harnessed to Modrow and his politics. This was vividly on display when they visited Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn. None the less, it should not be overlooked what is perhaps their greatest achievement: they were the principle force behind the abolition of Staatssicherheit before becoming tethered to Modrow and his leadership. On the whole, the Round Table played an important role in the peaceful transition. Still, no attempts were made to extend it after the democratic election of the Volkskammer (the GDR’s People’s Chamber) in March 1990. The justification for the Round Table’s very existence would soon make its continuation superfluous. Adding to the diluting of the Round Table’s role was its lack of the necessary authority and ultimately power to control the course of government. In the end by fixating on the preservation of a democratized GDR, the Round Table ultimately contributed little to German unity. Beyond its limited scope of impact, the Round Table had a much more consequential influence. It appeared more and more as a representative of the “GDR identity” rather than a driving force for transforming German society toward a reunification era. Gradually, the positions between the “old” and the “new” forces blended into a common position. The CDU and the GDR’s LDPD (Liberal Democratic Party of Germany) set themselves apart from the SED/PDS, while some among the opposition groups adopted various issue positions of the transformed and renamed SED. The Round Table was effectual while suffering a lack of power at the

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same time. It was an effective force insofar as it contributed to the stability and peace accompanying the profound changes associated with early unification and contributed to the institutionalization of free elections, as well as the abolition of the GDR’s Staatssicherheit. On the other hand, it was simply the case that post-March 18 developments simply overshadowed many of its most controversial and widely dismissed proposals. In the end, the majority of the population—which was in favor of a rapid German unification—rejected many of the positions adopted by the Round Table. The election campaign of 1989–1990 was dominated by the question of a rapid German unification. Few expected that the result of the first democratic Volkskammer election of March 18, 1990. With an unexpectedly high voter turnout of 93.4 percent the final result delivered a clear victory for the “Alliance for Germany” which amassed nearly 50 percent of the votes. This alliance comprised the West’s CDU (40.8 percent), the conservative German Social Union (6.3 percent), and the GDR’s Democratic Awakening (0.9 percent). The Alliance had strongholds in the south of the GDR (Saxony, Thuringia). The SPD, which had been considered the favorite, received only about a fifth of the vote, while the PDS earned barley as sixth of the vote, and the liberal forces garnering merely 5 percent. The civil rights activists did even worse. The New Forum, Democracy Now and the Peace and Human Rights Initiative came together to form Alliance 90, which only achieved 2.9 percent of the March 1990 election. The Greens, together with the Independent Women’s Association, received a total of two percent of the votes. The aspirational vision of an autonomous GDR surviving and moving forward embraced by some within the east had been defeated. (Falter, 1992). The outcome of the March 1990 Volkskammer elections accelerated the pace toward German unity. The politicians, often mocked as “amateur actors,” confirmed that they were up to the difficult task of forging unification. The government of Lothar de Maizière from the “Alliance for Germany,” the SPD and the Liberals were confronted with demands for rapid German unity. On July 1, 1990, the “venture” of an economic, monetary, and social union (“State Treaty”) became reality making the Deutschmark (DM) the sole means of payment within the GDR (Grosser, 1998). The monetary union was precarious from an economic point of view. However, politically there was no adequate alternative if the newly elected representatives wanted to curb the flow of emigrants. The continued payment of wages, pensions, and rents took place at a ratio of

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1:1, and the conversion of assets and debts were set at a ratio of 2:1. This also set the course for political unity. From an economic point of view, matters could have been much worse for East Germans. But, politically, this was not an option from the Kohl government’s perspective. Unbeknownst to many, the outlines for the financial and economic merging of the two Germany’s within a viable political pact followed the plans of two innocuous and largely anonymous German bureaucrats within the Finance Ministry run by Finance Minister Theo Waigel. Thilo Sarrazin was a Head of the Department in the Ministry of Finance and later author of the hugely controversial 2010 best-seller in Germany Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself), and Horst Köhler, a state secretary in the Finance Ministry who would later become Federal President between 2004 and 2010. (Jesse & Schröder, 2020). On August 3, 1990, the “Agreement for the preparation and implementation of the first all-German election of the German Bundestag between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic” came into effect. The Federal Constitutional Court—the “guardian of the constitution”—later declared some provisions of this contract, such as the nationwide 5 percent clause, to be unconstitutional. In the first all-German election the Court ordered the threshold clause to apply separately to the East and West, thereby assuring the anticonstitutional PDS entry into the Bundestag effectively serving to extend the party’s survival. Around 3:00 in the morning on August 23, 1990, following a turbulent, excruciatingly long special meeting, the Volkskammer ratified the decision for the GDR to join the Federal Republic of Germany. The day ended a week-long tug-of-war over the specific point in time of which the two Germanies would reunite. The debate was driven by intense and impassioned party politics. The required two-thirds majority within the Volkskammer was clearly achieved: 264 MPs voted in the affirmative, while 62 MPs voted to reject the plan thus allowing the GDR to be absorbed into the FRG. Seven members of the Volkskammer abstained. The CDU/DA unanimously supported the union via absorption; SPD was four votes short of unanimity, with support coming also from the DSU and the DBD/DFD. The PDS unanimously voted to reject the absorption plan. The alliance of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen split their vote. Two (Joachim Gauck and Konrad Weiß) voted in favor of the planned unification via the East’s absorption into the FRG while seven other members voted against the plan (including Marianne Birthler, Gerd Poppe, Jens

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Reich, and Werner Schulz) and five abstained (including Günter Nooke and Vera Wollenberger). Many of the committed democrats were taken by surprise at the speed of the process by which the unification of the Germany was achieved within the Volkskammer. The “Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic” (known simply as the “Unification Treaty”) was signed on August 31, 1990. This comprehensive contract, negotiated under great time pressure (the negotiator on the East German side was Günther Krause, on the West German side, Wolfgang Schäuble) was seen as a remarkable achievement, despite some missteps that must be seen as inevitable given the enormous time and political pressure. The Treaty institutionalized the principle colorfully expressed as “return before expropriation,” though it was later modified in practice. Less than a year after celebrating the 40th anniversary of its founding on October 7, the newly democratized GDR formally came to an end. Germany was reunited on October 3, 1990. Over the years since, many have persisted in applying the adjective of “takeover” to describe the unification (Kowalczuk, 2019). Is this pejorative appropriate? For 40 years, the GDR was a dictatorship on German soil, but not a German dictatorship. The moment the Soviet Union abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine, the system of SED dictatorship collapsed. The final consequence of failing to effectively establish a solid east German identity was realized in the form of German unification. Neither the SED nor its successor, the PDS, played a major role in this process. Rather, the party employed a strategy of delay. While the SED tried to preserve the post-war order of the GDR, as with the Stasi during the demonstrations in the autumn of 1989, the party did not use force to prevent the transition from dictatorship to democracy. As a result of the SED’s adoption of a strategy of peaceful transition following the wall’s collapse absorption into the FRG was inevitable, an outcome profoundly at odds with hope of a GDR remaining as an autonomous state. This stark difference would expose the reality even more vividly of a former GDR built as it was on a foundation of state security and thereby serve to define the former East German state in the minds of many within the German public as an incarnation of evil fostered and sustained by the SED itself. This would implicate as well the SED successor party, the PDS. This reality did not prevent, however, a major change in party elite after 1989 in some areas of the former GDR now unified and absorbed into the FRG. All of this contributed to the fact that for many within the former

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GDR, it was not the old dictatorial system that was held responsible for the problems in the next few years, but the new democratic and unified, Germany.

Cutting off the PDS and the Party Die Linke in Federal Elections Just prior to unification, the peaceful revolution in the GDR quickly removed the SED, the “party of the working class,” as the sole source of political authority within the country. In the first and last democratic election to the Volkskammer held on March 18, 1990, the PDS received 16.4 percent of the vote; it was essentially the same outcome in the first and last local elections of the GDR on May 6, 1990. The eventual success of the SED’s successor—the PDS—in the federal elections was not foreseeable within the context of democratic elections and systemic transition during the spring of 1990 (Jesse, 2018). In fact, the PDS as the legacy party of the SED was established during this period of time (Holzhauser, 2014). For the first all-German federal election held on December 2, 1990, the PDS ran with “open lists,” including candidates from the German Communist Party (DKP). Due to the poor performance (11.1 percent) of the PDS in the new federal states, as well as in the east districts of Berlin (Table 6.1), scientists, journalists, and politicians assumed that the party would more or less quickly become meaningless, especially since its performance in the West was so poor (2.4 percent). By jumping the five Table 6.1 Election results of the PDS and the party Die Linke in the federal elections since 1990 (in percent)

1990 1994 1998 2002 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021

Total

East

West

2.4 4.4 5.1 4.0 8.7 11.9 8.6 9.2 4.9

11.1 19.8 21.6 16.9 25.3 28.5 22.7 17.8 10.4

0.3 0.9 1.2 1.1 4.9 8.3 5.6 7.4 3.7

Source Compilation based on official election statistics

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percent hurdle in the eastern states, it nevertheless succeeded in entering the Bundestag. Gregor Gysi was victorious in his East Berlin constituency winning the only direct mandate contest for the PDS. However, the widespread assumption that the PDS would gradually become a splinter party was deceptive. In the 1994 Bundestag elections, the PDS, under its party leader Lothar Bisky, won 19.8 percent of the votes in the new federal states, including East Berlin, but only 0.9 percent of the votes in the western states. By winning 4.4 percent across Germany, it nearly doubled its 1990 result. In East Berlin, the PDS was able to win four direct mandates. The party had campaigned on a platform that contained the slogan “Opposition to welfare cuts and shift to the right.” Supporters of the SED saw the choice of the PDS as a suitable outlet of their frustration. Furthermore, the PDS appealed to those German citizens who felt foreign in their own country. Higher education levels among the electorate helped the PDS’s election results, offset however by perceptions of economic hardship which worked against the party’s electoral chances. There were more voters supporting the PDS who held a sense of loss in the face of unification than among those assessing the union of the two Germanies from a more material point of view. In this respect, the motives of the PDS voters in the 1994 federal election were characterized by a combustible cocktail of ideology, nostalgia, and protest. (Falter & Klein, 1994, p. 34). The PDS faced a dilemma in the 1998 Bundestag elections. While they sought to dismantle the black-yellow coalition (CDU/CSU—FDP) in the federal government, its share of the vote was a deterrent to this opportunity. In addition, PDS leadership was still struggling to be seen by the western voters as a socially acceptable alternative political party. Thus, it fell back on its familiar claim of being unique due to its “East German competence” (Neugebauer & Richard Stöss, 1999, p. 124). With election results slightly better than in 1994, the PDS for the third time won representation in the German parliament in 1998. Having won four direct mandates the party was ensured of Bundestag representation. However, because it overcame the 5 percent electoral threshold it now for the first time won the right to form a parliamentary group within the Bundestag. “Gysi’s motley troop” achieved 21.6 percent in the new federal states and 1.2 percent in the western states. As the mouthpiece of the East, the PDS did not have to take the West into consideration within its populist narrative.

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At the outset of the election cycle in 2002, the PDS appeared to be in a comfortably competitive position. There were at least three factors which gave rise to this optimism. First, a red-green coalition (SPD–Die Grünen) in the federal government. This helped to accustom the German public to the left in government, thereby aiding the PDS image as a legitimate and acceptable party for the general public. Second, the party itself had made steady gains in the local and state elections since 1998. And, third, the threat of being declared a danger to German democracy and thereby excluded from participating in elections due to its ideology—the “exclusion” clause of the German constitution—had receded. However, the party’s core was shocked when their proportion of the vote fell to 4.0 percent (16.9 percent in the east, 1.1 in the west). It corresponded to a 4.9 percentage point drop in the east and 0.1 percent in the west. In winning only two direct mandates (Gesine Lötzsch and Petra Pau, both in East Berlin), it failed to win reentry to the Bundestag. Situational factors played a role in the party’s painful defeat. The dynamic and charismatic Gysi was no longer standing for election and the party waged its election campaign against Edmund Stoiber, the CDU/CSU candidate for chancellor, not Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD, the incumbent Chancellor. As well, the party leader, Gabriele Zimmer, projected little beyond the ranks of the PDS faithful. With the change at the top of the leadership ranks in 2003 (again to Lothar Bisky), the PDS regained its footing. It now changed its name to Die Linkspartei (The Left Party). Furthermore, by 2005, there was a distinctly different political environment working in favor of the new Linkspartei. That year the party was able to exploit more favorable circumstances in both east and West Germany. The Left Party ran a massive anti-Hartz IV election campaign with the popular and populist tandem of Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine, whose core strategy was to generously distribute the cornucopia of social benefits. These two dynamic candidates helped the party register 8.7 percent of the vote in 2005 (4.9 percent in the west), nearly doubling the former PDS result in 2002. Die Linkspartei now found itself enjoying growing appeal to a new group of voters with a lower level of education and suffering the effects of unemployment. Following the union of the Die Linkspartei with the WASG (“Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative”) to form Die Linke (The Left party) in 2007 (chaired by Lothar Bisky and Oskar Lafontaine), the new successor party to the SED now focused on their core issues

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of social justice, exemplified by resisting the extremely unpopular policies which they believed weakened pension options and demanding Bundeswehr withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, their opposition election campaign in 2009 assumed a much less demagogic tone than in 2005. The party again ran with its two top candidates Gysi and Lafontaine and effectively targeted the CDU/CSU-SPD grand coalition. Once again, it enjoyed notable electoral gains by winning 11.9 percent of the general vote (including 16 direct mandates). The success in the west—almost a doubling compared to the result of 2005—was “inextricably linked to the name of Oskar Lafontaine” (Hilmer, 2010, p. 164). The party owed its overall electoral reward in large part to the social democratic voter-reservoir fueled by the populism of the former SPD chairman. By 2010, Lafontaine and Bisky had retired from the top of the Die Linke’s leadership. Their hapless successors Klaus Ernst and Gesine Lötzsch, who were unable to resolve the internal quarrels, made way for Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger at the turbulent Göttingen party conference. In the 2013 federal election, the party fell 3.3 percentage points from 2009 levels to 8.6 percent of the vote. Yet, despite the setback, the party earned the distinction of being the third largest bloc of seats within in the federal parliament and the leading opposition party. Despite considerable losses, it cannot be said the strategy which Die Linke employed to gain ground in the west had been a total failure. (Jesse, 2014). The party went into the election campaign with a team of eight, led by the reliable “crowd pleaser” Gregor Gysi. While the left had not specifically ruled out a coalition with the SPD and the Greens, the SPD had rejected this option, though declaring after the election that it reconsidered. Still, the limited extent of the overlap between the SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen on the one hand and the Die Linke on issues of foreign policy was becoming increasingly apparent. A left alliance (SPD, B90/Die Grünen, Die Linke) was not ruled out by the various parties prior to the 2017 federal elections. It was, however, rendered politically impossible entirely apart from the arithmetic considerations. Anti-capitalism once again dominated the election manifesto for Die Linke, this time with hedonistic overtones. The party was to increase in the 2017 Bundestag election slightly, growing from 8.6 to 9.2 percent over 2013. Dietmar Bartsch and Sahra Wagenknecht continued as the party’s parliamentary group floor leaders as they had since 2015. For the first time, the electoral patterns across the two parts of Germany diverged sharply; The Left’s gains in the western federal states

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(1.8 percentage points) were offset by sharp losses in the new eastern states (a decline of 4.9 percentage points). The AfD managed to break into the post-communist electorate in the east which was characterized by much lower party identification. None the less, Die Linke was helped by higher degrees of the unpopularity of multiculturalism in the eastern states. In the run-up to the 2021 federal election, Die Linke did not fare well. On the one hand, the party could not agree on its campaign strategy. Hardliners and reformers were divided. On the other hand, there were massive personal disputes. The new party leadership was led by East German Susanne Hennig-Wellsow seeking to lead the party into the federal government, and West German Janine Wissler who preferred a more fundamentalist course. This divisiveness of these two at the top of the party carried over to the two top election candidates of Die Linke. Parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch who preferred a “neutral” position and party chairman Janine Wissler. In the election manifesto, the party not only called for an increase in the monthly wage to 13 euros, a reduction in working hours to 30 h a week and a minimum pension of 1200 euros a month, but also a waiver of foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr, whose budget Die Linke proposed to cut ten percent annually. The party’s campaign was weak and the election result of 4.9 percent was a disaster. By gaining only 10.4 percent in the east it fell short of the first all-German federal election. In the west, the party recorded 3.7 percent of the vote. Although Die Linke did not overcome the five percent threshold, the party still gained entry to the Bundestag by securing three direct mandate victories. This success was possible only because Gregor Gysi ran again and repeated his unbroken streak of winning elections which he had recorded since 1990. Overall, Die Linke had by 2017 succeeded in establishing an institutionalized presence within federal elections, although with some drawbacks. This accomplishment was due to its successes in the western states of Germany. As a result, the party now relies far less on cultivating the East–West antagonism than was the case two decades ago. The social reforms that had become necessary under Gerhard Schröder worked to the benefit of the post-communist parties. The formation of the WASG and the subsequent merger with the PDS to form the Die Linke must be seen against this background (Vollmer, 2013). Today, the left by no means exclusively represents the old milieu based on resentment toward the West. Indeed, western electoral results for the party compared to the

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first 15 years of German reunification speak for themselves. However, approval of Die Linke is weakening somewhat in the east. And, the party’s 2017 results from the federal elections were disappointing due to the rise of the AfD which has assumed the former role of the PDS and Die Linke as a protest party. The toxic issue of “refugees has dominated election campaigns since 2015 and fueled Die Linke’s losses. Indeed, the party had gotten on the “wrong” side of the issue in the eyes of many eastern voters, as Die Linke views immigration as an enrichment, rather than a threat. Looking further at the matter, we can see that the reasons for the relative successes of the PDS and Die Linke were and are diverse in nature. Fundamentally, in the wake of a profoundly challenging transformation from dictatorship to constitutional democracy a number of citizens assumed a sense of connection to the previous system, be it out of political conviction or because of the loss of their privileges. For this clientele, communism was good in itself, only “deformed” in practice; one’s own economic situation plays less of a role in the attachment to the regime. However, the PDS was not a monolithic body of voters. Among its relatively heterogeneous base were voters motivated out of disappointment over the course of unification. Some within this segmented PDS were unable to gain a foothold economically due to the enormous norm changes which they encountered, reinforced by their belief that this challenge was attributed to the “flattening” impact of the West. Others within this heterogeneous base of the PDS saw themselves as “secondclass people” and viewed their lives as devalued within the new democratic system. This perception of loss and disappointment, in combination with Western arrogance further inflamed a sense of assault on the esteem and self-respect eastern Germans. In the new federal states, symptoms of an increase in party disaffection were more visible than in the western states. These included lower voter turnout, declining electoral support for the mainstream parties combined with gains for smaller parties and political visions outside of the established political life, and growth of radical political expressions among some political parties which were recognizable even before the mass immigration began to significantly impact the German political landscape during the autumn of 2015 (Lorenz, 2011). The accelerating decline in the number of party members became yet another indicator of the disaffection crisis in the West. Ironically, dissatisfaction with the largest ruling party often extended a shadow of disaffection embracing as well

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the primary opposition party. Three empirical examples underscore this proposition. First, turnout in Saxony-Anhalt state elections in 2006 was only 44.4 percent; in 2016 the AfD and Die Linke together received more votes (40.6 percent) than the CDU and SPD combined (40.4 percent). Second, in Saxony, the PDS and NPD held more than a third of the mandate constituencies between 2004 and 2009. And third, in the 2019 Thuringian state elections, the CDU and SPD together won only 29.9 percent of the vote, while Die Linke and AfD together captured 54.4 percent of the vote. Indeed, right-wing populism has also served to enhance not only weaken, the post-communist parties which feature espouse traditional “anti-fascism” as one of at the core values of their ideologies. Initially, the PDS drew support in the West from young voters who were more likely to hold anti-establishment views and who were attracted to the legacies of the SED as the preferred militant and anti-capitalist alternatives. However, the PDS was isolated in the west before merging with the WASG. The union offered new oxygen to the post-communist parties. The WASG served to cushion the cultural estrangement of the PDS with those in the west seeking a more anti-establishment alternative in their voting choice. That legacy played a significant role in allowing the post-communist successor parties to the SED to overcome the five percent hurdle in seven out of ten old federal states (excluding Berlin). However, support for Die Linke has waned in recent years. At the end of 2021, it is represented in all eastern state parliaments, but only in four western state legislative assemblies (Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Saarland).

Reasons for the Establishment of the Party Die Linke As evidenced by empirical studies, the more highly educated PDS electorate was in no way economically worse off than the electorate as a whole (Schoen & Falter, 2009). Many voters within their ranks enjoyed socially privileged status in the GDR and had lost that social standing with unification in 1989. While objectively these voters have seen their personal condition on the whole improved materially, their subjective perception is quite the opposite. Although voters did not attribute high levels of problem-solving skills to the party (with the exception of the issue of “social justice”), successors to the SED continue to be well received as a kind of “home party” for those displaced by unification. However, the

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salience of this attitudinal position is fading in importance as a comparison of the electoral results in the East and in the West reveal. Driven largely by widespread criticism of the SPD’s “Hartz IV” legislation, the electorate of the “post-communist” party has expanded in both the East and West. This has been accompanied by a socio-structural change. The population of voters with a rather low level of education rose steadily thereby overrepresenting workers and the unemployed within the ranks of the PDS. While the former PDS had not been able to attract “modernization losers” in years past, these voters now are disproportionately represented among the electoral base of the SED successor parties. Die Linke is no longer a milieu party as was once the PDS. Within the east expressions of are less prevalent and to the extent present they are combined with a greater willingness to adapt. Today, the voting and opinion climate in Germany has changed. Obviously, Die Linke in eastern Germany is often regarded as a “normal party,” benefiting as well in the West due to its identification and union with the WASG and its new name. It at least is no longer perceived as an acute threat to democracy, regardless of its weakened electoral base, overall. Rather it is viewed by many as a party offering strong voice and deep commitment to social justice. The complex history of the PDS, to Die Linkspartei, and Die Linke is, on the whole, a history of success and adaptability regardless of the decline in the electorate in recent years. The boldest optimist would not have expected this in 1990 looking out into the future of German politics. However, the price paid for the party’s media acceptance and recognition of its “normality” by its electoral competitors was the disenchantment of many within the rank and file of the party. In those states in which Die Linke was part of the government (Table 6.2), it was decisively “punished” in the subsequent elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (2002), Berlin (2006), and Brandenburg (2014). The electoral success shown in the 2019 Thuringian elections poses something of a paradox. The proponents of a constitutionally executed “exclusion” of the PDS or Die Linke served to deplete the strength and resolve of the SED’s successor parties. On the other hand, as seen from Table 6.2, ironically those who advocated on behalf of the hard left’s inclusion in the German political discourse inadvertently served to weaken the post-communist parties’ identification and attachment of some voters. Thuringia, however, is a different story. The party as a senior governing coalition partner under the leadership of Bodo Ramelow was able to increase its vote share in

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Table 6.2 Participation of the PDS and the party Die Linke to state governments or tolerance by them Senior-Partner Thuringia Junior-Partner Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Berlin Brandenburg Bremen Partner in Minority Government Saxony-Anhalt Berlin North Rhine-Westphalia

since 2014 1998–2006; since 2021 2002–2011; since 2016 2009–2019 since 2019 1994–2002 2001–2002 2010–2012

2019 from 28.2 to 31.0 percent. This allowed Die Linke to hold onto the office of Minister President in the state—albeit now within a minority government. Grand coalitions in 2005, 2013, and 2017 of the CDU/CSU-SPD at the federal level of government have been formed as a direct result of the electoral success of Die Linke. And, in some instances they indirectly inspired a different alliance than would have been the case without them. For example, without the entry of Die Linke in the 2008 elections in Hamburg, a red-green coalition would have been formed, rather than the black-green (CDU–Die Grünen) coalition which actually ensued. In this respect, the party system has been impacted in many ways by Die Linke making the formation of a government none the easier in many cases. Die Linke still contains within its ranks voices of extremism directed toward the broader environment of German politics (Jesse & Lang, 2012). Thus, the legitimacy and political viability of the party must be approached and undertaken by political opponents and the general citizenry with both composure and self-confidence. Only then can the German democracy harness the challenge of the post-communist legacy voiced within the east rather than hope solely for traditional loyalty within the broader German political discourse. This also applies equally to the hard-right edge of the German party system currently secured by the AfD. There are not only differences between the two parties, but also profound analogies, as noted by Jesse (2017).

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The history of the post-communist party legacy from the PDS to Die Linke is not only the history of electoral success, but also the history of its broader integration into the German political discourse. What was virtually ruled out in 1990 as a possibility, namely, the institutionalization of the party and its acceptance as a legitimate voice in political, journalistic, and academic circles, has become largely the reality of German post-unification politics. What Thorsten Holzhauser has shown in his standard work for the first 15 years of the party is even more true for the party’s second 15 years. Simply put, integration into German politics is well-advanced at all levels. Probably nothing makes this as clear as the inclusion of the party in state governments (Table 6.2). In 1994, a redgreen coalition was accepted in Saxony-Anhalt; in 1998 the first coalition including the SPD was formed at the state level in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; this was also the case in Berlin in 2002, the former hot spot of the Cold War. While the party broke away from Marxist-Leninist dogmas, it embraced democratic political competition. However, when after the federal election in 2005 neither black-yellow (CDU/CSU-FDP) nor redgreen (SPD–Die Grünen) coalition enjoyed a parliamentary majority, the SPD was not yet ready or indeed willing to move into a governing federal coalition with the post-communist successors of the SED. The price for the increased institutionalization within the mainstream of German party politics was a massive loss of votes when the post-communists entered government as in in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin, and Brandenburg. As we have seen, only in Thuringia up until 2021 under the aegis of Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, has this link between losses suffered after entering coalition government failed to materialize to the detriment of Die Linke. In the western states of Germany, the PDS only achieved its breakthrough with the “Hartz” reforms of the SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which led to the creation of the WASG. Indeed, Die Linke emerged as a political force in 2007 through the merger with the WASG. Meanwhile, the party’s integration into the political system has strengthened during the last 15 years, even though it has not “de-radicalized” despite its union with the WASG. Of course, importantly, it did not have the negative image of the SED to burden it any longer. With the victory of liberal democracy, not only communism but also anti-communism became a thing of the past as did the exclusion of the PDS. Its point of view became acceptable within the broader discourse of German politics, at least in the east parts of the unified Germany.

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This has served the PDS and eventually Die Linke well. Indeed, it is an important fact of German politics that despite the historical victory over National Socialism, anti-fascism did not become obsolete, In fact, it was quite to the contrary (Jesse, 2021). Thus, Die Linke is the direct beneficiary of these realities. Simply put, the party is no longer an “ugly step-child” within the German party system. Despite this, the links to the past persist. The two new chairmen of the party elected in March 2021, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow from the east and Janine Wissler from the west, by no means represent the moderate tendency in the party, a fact which the public is certainly not sufficiently aware (Breier, 2021; Wehner, 2021). However established Die Linke may be, it is not static; it confronts pressure for further adaption and evolution. Indeed, it continues to attract demands from among those who embrace the spirit of social justice upon which the post-communist legacy has thrived. Among these voices is that of Sahra Wagenknecht, who was once the leading member at the Communist Platform and has since resigned her position as parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag (2015–2019). She is a dedicated and tenacious source of criticism of the party’s lifestyle. Wagenknecht openly denounces the identity orientation within the ranks of the party articulating what she sees as Die Linke’s position toward minorities (Wagenknecht, 2021), demanding that social justice is more important than a left-liberal cultural battle. Her argument is that such identity politics will weaken the parties’ resilience and denude its dedication to core ideological values. Despite such fierce criticisms, Die Linke sustained its first place on the North Rhine-Westphalian state party list for the federal election in April 2021. However, Wagenknecht is still isolated within the party as a whole.

Conclusion History is yet to be written. Nobody can foresee the future. This is certainly true with respect to the future development of Die Linke. At a time when the popular parties are losing more and more votes (Koss, 2021), there is enough space and potential for such a force that sees itself as thoroughly anti-fascist even if the signs of crisis are unmistakable. The post-communist party has become part of the “establishment” itself (Holzhauser, 2019, p. 419). While this applies more to the new federal states than to the traditional West German states, one finds that even in the case of Bremen Die Linke still (as of 2021) represented in the government since 2019.

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The dilemma of post-communism is, however, obvious. To the extent that it is integrated into the system, it loses protestors and left-wing voters alike. At the same time, reservations about such a party are receding. Die Linke is becoming more and more of an established place within the milieu of German political culture where previously it was rejected. Indeed, one cannot miss a profound paradox. If the PDS was once unable to expand strongly because of its aggressive protest character, today its successor party is prevented from achieving greater success precisely because of its integration into the political system. Die Linke is confronted by the challenge of walking a tightrope. It must balance the strategic requirement of gaining social acceptance while at the same time remaining the voice of radical expression within the German political discourse. In the run-up to the federal election in 2021, there was speculation about the formation of a red–green–red government. The SPD and the Greens did not specifically rule out such an alliance. Nonetheless, they had great reservations about such a coalition— not least because of the foreign policy ideas of Die Linke. The party’s officials favored a closer alliance with Russia than to the USA. Because of the poor performance, this form of coalition was ruled out as a mathematically feasible coalition option. As of late 2021, Die Linke has always been and remains in the opposition on the federal level since German unification, albeit no longer as marginalized as it was at the beginning of the Berlin Republic. This was underscored dramatically when following the elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, held on the same day in September 2021 as the federal elections, Die Linke again entered the ruling coalitions of these two states.

Literature Borchert, K., Steinke, V., & Wuttke C. (Eds.) (1994). „Für unser Land“ . Eine Aufrufaktion im letzten Jahr der DDR, Frankfurt a. M. Breier, Z. (2021). Jung, weiblich – und nichts dazugelernt. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11. März, 18. Falter, J. W. (1992). Wahlen 1990. Die demokratische Legitimation für die deutsche Einheit mit großen Überraschungen. In E. Jesse, and A. Mitter (Eds.), Die Gestaltung der deutschen Einheit (pp. 163–188). Geschichte – Politik – Gesellschaft, Düsseldorf 1992. Falter, J. W., & Klein, M. (1994). Die Wähler der PDS bei der Bundestagswahl 1994. Zwischen Ideologie, Nostalgie Und Protest, in: Aus Politik Und Zeitgeschichte, B, 51–52, 22–34.

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Grosser, D. (1998). Das Wagnis der Währungs-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialunion. Politische Zwänge im Konflikt mit ökonomischen Regeln, Stuttgart. Hilmer, R. (2010). Bundestagswahl 2009: Ein Wechsel auf Raten. Zeitschrift Für Parlamentsfragen, 41(1), 147–180. Hirschman, A. O. (1992). Abwanderung, Widerspruch und das Schicksal der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Ein Essay Zur Konzeptionellen Geschichte, in: Leviathan, 20(3), 330–350. Holzhauser, T. (2014). „Niemals mit der PDS“? Zum Umgang mit der SEDNachfolgepartei zwischen Ausgrenzungs- und Integrationsstrategie (1990– 1998). Vierteljahrshefte Für Zeitgeschichte, 62(2), 285–308. Holzhauser, T. (2019). Die „Nachfolgepartei“ . Die Integration der PDS in das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1990–2005, Berlin/Boston. Jesse, E. (2014). Die Linke als dritte Kraft? Personal, Organisation, Programmatik, Koalitionsstrategie, Wahlergebnis. In Ders., & R. Sturm (Eds.), Bilanz der Bundestagswahl 2013 (pp. 231–254). Voraussetzungen, Ergebnisse, Folgen, Baden-Baden. Jesse, E. (2017). Nach der Bundestagswahl 2017: AfD und Die Linke – Wieviel Populismus steckt in ihnen? Politische Studien, 68(6), 41–51. Jesse, E. (2018). Das Abschneiden der Postkommunisten bei den Wahlen seit 1990. Nach acht Bundestagswahlen, fünf Europawahlen und mehr als über 100 Landtagswahlen im vereinigten Deutschland. In L. Haarmann, R. Meyer, J. Reuschenbach (Eds.), Von der Bonner zur Berliner Republik. Politik im Spiegel praktischer Wissenschaft. Festschrift für Tilman Mayer zum 65 (pp. 425– 441). Geburtstag, Baden-Baden. Jesse, E. (2021). Antifaschismus – gestern und heute. Totalitarismus Und Demokratie, 18, 87–117. Jesse, E., & Lang, J. P. (2012). DIE LINKE – eine gescheiterte Partei? München 2012. Jesse, E., & Schröder, R. (2020). Am Anfang war das Geld. Cicero, 17 (4), 72– 80. Koss, M. (2021). Demokratie ohne Mehrheit. Die Volksparteien von gestern und der Parlamentarismus von morgen. Kowalczuk, I.-S. (2019). Die Übernahme. Wie Ostdeutschland Teil der Bundesrepublik wurde. Kuhn, E. (1992). Der Tag der Entscheidung. Leipzig, 9. Oktober 1989, Berlin 1992. Lorenz, A. (Ed.) (2011). Ostdeutschland und die Sozialwissenschaften. Bilanz und Perspektiven 20 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung, Opladen. Neugebauer, G., & Richard Stöss, R. (1999). Nach der Bundestagswahl 1998: Die PDS in stabiler Seitenlage. In O. Niedermayer (Ed.), Die Parteien nach der Bundestagswahl 1998 (pp. 119–140), Opladen.

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Schoen, H., & Falter, J. W. (2009). Die Linkspartei und ihre Wähler. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B, 51–52, 33–40. Vollmer, A. M. (2013). Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative (WASG). Entstehung, Geschichte und Bilanz, Baden-Baden. Wagenknecht, S. (2021). Die Selbstgerechten. Mein Gegenprogramm – für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt, Frankfurt a. M. Wehner, M. (2021). Kämpfen um ein bisschen Macht. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26. Februar, 3.

CHAPTER 7

Alliance 90/The Greens: A Left Party with a Centrist Appeal in Coalition Politics Niko Switek

Introduction The major theme of this volume stipulates that there has been a generational shift in German politics 30 years after reunification. In a way, the party Alliance 90/The Greens make a convincing case to substantiate this assumption. The party is slightly older than the 30 years generational time span invoked by the editors of this volume, with its roots firmly grounded in the West German federal republic of the 1970s and 1980s. Fueled by novel post-materialist attitudes in the electorate the party attracted a broad range of activists and movements: students,

The author would like to thank Sabine Lang, Morgan Wack and Nicholas Wittstock for their helpful comments. N. Switek (B) University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_7

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pacifists, feminists, environmentalists and representatives of the new left (Mende, 2011; Raschke, 1993). The party’s focus on the Bonn republic was on full display in the federal election in 1990, when the party all but ignored the issue of reunification („Alle reden von Deutschland. Wir reden vom Wetter“). Despite the merger with the East German Alliance 90 the Greens struggled to attract voters in the new states, and as a shadow of reunification, the party is still significantly stronger in the old Bundesländer. On the federal level, the Greens established themselves as a small, single-digit party in the Berlin Republic, and as a natural ally and a junior partner of the Social Democrats (Lees, 2000). However, since the last federal election in 2017 the position of the Greens has changed significantly: They surpassed the Social Democratic Party in two state elections in 2018 and in the European elections in 2019. In 2020 the party polled close to the Christian Democrats, and in March 2021 they defended their position as strongest party in BadenWürttemberg (securing Winfried Kretschmann another term as the only Green minister president). As of the time of writing the Greens are a member of ten state governments. The continuous double-digit results in public opinion surveys in the lead-up to the federal election in 2021 exerted pressure to nominate a Kanzlerkandidatin/Kanzlerkandidat (chancellor candidate) for the first time. This novel situation for the Greens was complicated by the collective leadership structures. Other than in 2013 and 2017 there were no calls for an intraparty direct vote on this, hinting at the high popularity of the leadership duo Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck. Nonetheless, this remained a delicate decision and the eventual nomination of Baerbock disturbed the equilibrium between the formally equal chair positions. Ultimately, the Greens failed to realize the potential indicated by the polls. However, with 14.8 percent they achieved their strongest result to date, which helped them to enter the government as part of a novel coalition with the Social Democrats and the Liberals (so-called traffic-light coalition). This contribution examines the influential position the German Greens find themselves in as we discuss a potential new party-life stage in the generational cycle of German politics. Is this a temporary surge caused by the weakness of the Social Democrats in combination with a renewed and globally rising salience of environmental issues and climate change? Or, does this indicate a long-term transformation of the German party system, implying a changing of the guard on the left? This analysis probes the reasons for this elevation of the Greens to previously unknown heights.

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Why are Alliance 90/The Greens in such an accentuated position 30 years after reunification? The analysis proceeds in four parts: First, the focus rests on the party in the electorate. The election results of the party over time are traced, examining differences between state, federal and European level as well as horizontally between the old and new states (Bundesländer) to include the legacy of German unification. Second, the article traces the programmatic evolution of the party with a look at the most recent program that was ratified by a party congress in the fall of 2020. Third, the organizational dimension is inspected. The chapter will consider on the one hand the role of the dual party leadership of Baerbock and Habeck and on the other hand the performance of the Green parliamentary group in the federal parliament (Bundestag ). The group (Fraktion) has often been described as an engine for the moderation and normalization of the originally radical outsider (Boyer & Heidemeyer, 2008; Switek, 2015). This chapter assesses how the group acts as an opposition against the various coalition governments. Finally, returning to the aforementioned extensive involvement of the Greens in coalition governments on state level, the article inspects the coalition strategy and the conditions for future coalition negotiations. The conclusion sketches the potential future path for the Greens.

Electoral Results The Green Party in West Germany experienced its first electoral success at the local level in the late 1970s. The proclaimed grassroots ideology informed its foundational process in which the new party organized itself from the bottom up. Yet, the first significant result that garnered widespread attention was the 3.2 percent achieved in the European elections 1979 (even before the official founding of the national party). The federal election in 1980 was a setback with the Greens receiving only 1.5 percent of the vote, though this was quickly forgotten once they entered the Bundestag in the next federal election in 1983, securing 5.6 percent of the votes. Subsequently, their results have fluctuated between 6 and 8 percent. One outlier is the 1990 election, where the already mentioned campaign led to a result below the electoral threshold (only a small group of German Green politicians from the new Bundesländer were represented in parliament), and the election in 2009, where the party reached a double-digit result (10.7 percent). The longitudinal perspective highlights

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the exceptional status of the Greens in the most recent federal election in 2021 where the party won nearly 15 percent of the vote. Yet, before 2021 the trajectory of the Green Party has shown substantial variation across elections (see Fig. 7.1). Before entering the Bundestag in 1983 the Greens had already secured representation in several states (Bundesländer). After unification, in 1990 the Greens achieved positive results above the electoral threshold of five percent in all eastern states except Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There was a decisive downturn in the following years, when the party missed the threshold in almost all elections in the new Bundesländer. Following another turnaround in 2009 the Greens are now typically represented in eastern state parliaments. While these were crucial gains, the Greens’ results remain barely above the 5 percent threshold. One reason for this is that the cleavage between materialistic and post-materialistic values is less pronounced here (Eith & Mielke, 2017; Probst, 2013).

Fig. 7.1 Election Results of The Greens and Alliance 90/The Greens (1978– 2020) (Source Author’s illustration with data from https://de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Liste_der_Wahlergebnisse_und_Regierungsbeteiligungen_von_B%C3%BCn dnis_90/Die_Gr%C3%BCnen [September 2021])

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In West Germany the mobilization through new social movements and anti-nuclear protests created a strong loyalty to the Greens; the party benefited from the bonds the voters and members had developed in the foundational period of the 1970s and 1980s, which remained stable even as these groups aged (Klein, 2009). There was a slight slump after the participation in the federal governing coalition from 1998 to 2005, when the apparent limitations of what could be achieved as a junior partner in government dampened the enthusiasm of party members. However, the party recovered, most visibly with its first-ever result above 15 percent in Bremen in 2007. Just four years later, the Greens scored above 15 percent in four states (Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bremen, Berlin). This trend has continued, and since 2014 the Greens have reproduced strong results. The impressive result of 24.2 percent in Baden-Württemberg in 2011 made Winfried Kretschmann the first-ever Green minister president. His sustained popularity propelled the regional party to a sensational 30.3 percent in 2016, which they even improved to 32.6 percent in 2021. Because of its grassroots ideology and orientation toward local politics, the Greens initially positioned themselves as skeptical of European integration. However, they soon reversed course and embraced the integration process. In part this was based on a realization that problems of pollution and climate change must be addressed on the transnational level. This reversal paid off as results in European elections in Germany saw higher returns than in federal elections. Of course, this is also a consequence of the second-order phenomenon where voters are more open to experiment with their vote and prefer smaller or non-established parties (Kaeding & Switek, 2015). In European elections, the German Greens have scored two-digit results since 1994 and in 2019 they surpassed the 20 percent mark relegating the Social Democrats to third place. The election results demonstrate that Alliance 90/The Greens are a party of Europe and the states of the former West Germany. Despite the recognition of the merger with the East German Alliance 90 in the party’s name, the process of stabilization in the new Bundesländer proved arduous and successful only on a precarious level. This variation is one reason why their indisputable regional strongholds for quite some time have not produced a sustained strength at the national level. However, the impressive gains in 2021 indicate an increased prominence of the party within the German party system and point to a new phase of German politics.

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Programmatic Evolution The mere description of electoral results obscures the various motivations voters balance when casting their vote for a political party. Among other factors the policy platform of a political party plays a major role in that decision (Korte, 2017). The early Green Party offered a radically alternative vision; a strong repudiation of the established political parties was an explicit part of the program (Mende, 2011). The first basic program contained a wealth of unusual proposals and a socialist melody (van Hüllen, 1990). Over time the electoral manifestos became less radical (Bräuninger & Debus, 2012; Probst, 2018). The second basic program Die Zukunft ist Grün (The Future is Green) adopted in 2002 summarized the shift in the direction of the center of the party system (Switek, 2015, pp. 107–116). The fact that the Greens at that time coalesced with the Social Democratic Party in the federal government accounted for a further toning down of radical positions. The program painted the party as focused on reform and incremental change (Probst, 2018). Acceptance of a representative political system and a free-market economy replaced any revolutionary or socialist rhetoric. The founding principle of strict pacifism was superseded by the acceptance of military interventions depending on the specific circumstances. Basic programs define the overall realm of a party’s policy space, which is narrowed down in the more specific electoral programs and which typically exhibit greater variation (Bräuninger & Debus, 2012). For the Green Party, election manifestos would at times feature pronounced calls for higher taxation and more redistribution to push for social justice and to address social inequalities. For instance, when the head of the parliamentary group, Jürgen Trittin, became one of the leading candidates for the federal election in 2013, the electoral platform veered to the (socioeconomic) left (Wagschal & König, 2015). In comparison the program presented for the election in 2017 was more moderate and centrist, ultimately offering a base to conduct coalition talks with the center-right Christian Democrats and Liberals. The party adopted its third basic program in 2020 via digital party congress required due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Corona pandemic. The process was organized by party chairs Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, who enjoy widespread support in the Green Party and whose popularity extends beyond the party itself (Campus et al., 2021). They both belong to the pragmatic and centrist faction (Realos )

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which is rather unusual for the party (see the next section). The initial draft prepared by the executive committee was widely circulated in the party and the whole process took more than two years, conforming with the demands of the membership for participation. The basic program of 2020 does not significantly deviate from the positions defined in 2002 but rather incorporates developments that have taken place since then, such as an acknowledgment of the advent of digital technologies. While the Greens originally voiced criticism of the existing structures of the political system, the 2020 program defends the idea of a liberal democracy which is considered under attack from within Germany by authoritarian tendencies and populist challengers. The Greens now describe themselves as proponents of the rule of law and representative democracy. Calls for direct democratic elements as a corrective to parliamentary structures, a longtime signature issue for the grassroots party, are subdued. In place of referendums the party now calls for citizen assemblies, which would allow randomly selected citizens to comment on legislative proposals or start initiatives. There are new ecological movements (e.g., Fridays For Futures) that challenge the position of the Greens as vanguards of climate policies and accuse them of not being ambitious enough in their plans to combat climate change. Yet, the sections of the basic program focused on environmental policies do not read that differently when compared to 2002. The former document called for the reduction of carbon emissions by 80 percent until 2050; the new program raises the bar and calls for climate neutrality well before 2050 but avoids giving specific numbers. An interesting development concerns the label of alternative politics, which was ascribed to the party and embraced by activists as a distinction from the established actors (Poguntke, 1993). The party was supportive of alternative lifestyles and non-mainstream worldviews which induced a subtle skepticism toward science and technology. With the increased pressure derived from scientific models estimating drastic consequences of climate change, it has become increasingly difficult to align the alternative positions with mainstream scientific knowledge. In the field of digital technologies, these transformations have worked well. The Greens ascribe them as a potential for a more efficient and economic use of resources and

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energy. “Digital” has at times even advanced to the status of a buzzword with the word stem appearing nearly 90 times in the basic program.1 However, there are other policy fields where reform causes challenges for the Greens. The party leadership provoked a debate about genetically modified organisms and their potential to address droughts and famines as one potential answer to climate change (Hartung et al., 2020). So far, the consensus in the party has been that genetic engineering represents illegitimate encroachment on nature, tampering with the natural recovery capacities of the environment itself and threatening unforeseeable consequences. Opening this up for discussion touched on the environmentalist core identity and sparked an intensive intraparty debate (Hartung et al., 2020). Ultimately the new program reflects the original critical stance and calls for reforms of the agrarian sector to incorporate more organic and sustainable models without resorting to genetically modified crops. The only concession is a nod to the advances of gene technology in the fields of medicine and biotechnology (e.g., recognizing the importance of vaccines to defeat the Corona pandemic). While this is the dominant use of climate change as a policy platform for the Greens, they have also skillfully woven the environmental issue in general into the broader austerity debate and thereby positioned the party as a responsible fiscal and social player in Germany and Europe (“Wir stehen zu langfristig nachhaltigen Staatsfinanzen und zu gesetzlichen Regeln für die Begrenzung der Kreditaufnahme”). The idea of sustainability is not only applied to environmental policies but to the fiscal realm as well. Thus, just as the party argues the public must change its behavior to reduce carbon emissions in order to ensure a livable planet for future generations, the public must also balance state budgets now to prevent future generations from being impoverished and confined by massive state debt. As a consequence of their strong electoral results and their extensive participation in governments on the state level, the Greens now face similar challenges as the two catch-all-parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, which must balance the need to present a profiled platform with their

1 This had ramifications for the party organization as well. Learning from the shortlived Pirate Party and their experiments with new methods of online deliberation (i.e., liquid feedback and liquid democracy; Thuermer, 2021) the Greens pushed their own tools for collaboration and organizing party congresses. Because of the Corona pandemic the party congress for the ratification of the basic program itself was organized digitally.

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broad electoral appeal (Kirchheimer, 1966). Their new formalized status threatens to disappoint core supporters by diluting the party’s platform. Yet, as basic programs tend to have a more long-term and philosophical character, it is easier to sidestep contentious issues by resorting to vague and ambivalent language. Under these conditions, it is rather surprising that the election manifesto presented in March 2021 took a sharp left turn. It called for the suspension of balanced budgets to allow for certain public investments; stipulates a wealth tax and an increase of the top income tax rate, and it advocated for a reform of the Hartz-laws, a very symbolic set of labor reforms that the Greens themselves had implemented as part of their SPD-Green government. This resembles a distinct leftward stance on socioeconomic issues and deviates from the centrist catch-all approach of the new basic program of 2020. Considering the Greens’ elevated position, this could correspond to an aggressive strategy of the party to claim the leadership of the left spectrum and challenge the SPD and the Left (Die Linke) in questions of social justice. The concurrency of an influential and prominent leadership in a party combined with a lingering skepticism toward its own elites in the process of defining long-term policy positions was a unique situation for the German Greens. The pragmatic and reformist basic program, on the one hand, and the left election platform, on the other, resemble the difficult balancing act the party and its leadership pursued. This does not, however, change the fact that the party is anchored robustly in the center of the German party system. One visible consequence of this was the willingness to engage in coalition talks with the CDU/CSU and FDP after the election 2017, which indicated the ability of the Greens traverse the cleavage between the center-left and center-right camp (even if the talks ultimately proved unsuccessful). Similarly, there was no discernible intraparty resistance against preliminary talks and negotiations about an SPD-led traffic-light coalition after the federal election 2021. While there is no precedent for this model on federal level, this coalition has been realized in the Länder. At the same time, it builds on a stable foundation of tried and tested SPD-Green cooperation. The apparent eagerness of all three parties (SPD, Greens and FDP) to realize this experiment led to efficient and discreet negotiations. The final coalition agreement documents that it was easier to find common grounds on socio-cultural issues. The FDP successfully defended their diverging preferences on socioeconomic issues, convincing SPD and the Greens to reject higher taxation and a modification of debt-brake rules. As a consequence the Greens emphasized

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their focus on environmental and ecological issues even more. Two of the five ministries (the Federal ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection) are headed by Green Party members are directly responsible for the issues most central to the Greens.

Organizational Evolution The label of alternative politics was meant to describe the policy platform of the Green Party at the time of its foundation, but it also applied to the character of the party organization. The Greens identified themselves as an “anti-party” party (Anti-Parteien Partei). Emerging from the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the party understood itself as a movement party and experimented with novel organizational instruments (Poguntke, 1993; Raschke, 1993). The activists involved in the early days feared that in setting up a regular party they would inadvertently converge with the established parties they strongly criticized. The different instruments (e.g., rotation of mandates, separation of party office and public mandate, collective leadership, salary caps, women quotas) were meant to preserve important links to the movement and to circumvent the establishment of a detached party elite. The innovations soon came under pressure, when the Greens were confronted with the realities and constraints of the political system at large. The history of the Greens therefore corresponds to a history of organizational reforms characterized by the party incrementally discarding specific particularities and always accompanied by extensive intraparty debates. With the intentional weakening of the party organization, the formulation of party strategy rested heavily on an informal power-sharing agreement in which the parliamentary groups (on national and subnational level) and informal factions dominated the ineffective formal executive committee. The collective leadership has typically represented the two major wings in the party (centrist and pragmatic Realos/Reformer and the more uncompromising and hardline Fundis/Linke) serving to undermine a complementary partnership and a productive division of labor, neither condition typically serving as a guiding motive for the delegates on party congresses in selecting candidates (Campus et al., 2021). A major push for organizational reforms played out parallel to the participation in the federal government in 1998–2005. These reforms

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corrected certain formal deficiencies and laid a groundwork for more effectively steering the party. Yet, during their governing coalition, the party was dominated by the green ministers and their networks as well as by the policy compromises made with the senior coalition partner SPD. An indication of the growing power of the party leadership establishment is the longer tenures of the chairpersons, which allow the party leaders to institutionalize authority over the course of time (Richter, 2005). While the popular chair Claudia Roth had to step down because the party struggled with relaxing the rule that parliamentarians should not be part of the executive committee, she was nonetheless re-elected after a compromise was fashioned. She subsequently held that office for nearly 10 years. Together with Reinhard Bütikofer the team exhibited a productive complement to each other, assigning separately to each other the two distinct roles of emotional leader, on the one hand, and organizer, on the other (Campus et al., 2021; Richter, 2005). A more divisive and confrontational style was seen in the duo leadership of Simone Peter and Cem Özdemir. Tensions between the two were fueled by the imbalance between the two of their respective visibility and popularity (Campus et al., 2021). In 2018 there was a significant change when delegates ignored the informal rule that the dual leadership should represent the two major factions. Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck both belong to the Realo/Reformer faction and have thus far exhibited a high degree of mutual support (Unfried, 2020). The polarization between the party wings is by now less pronounced as they resemble networks more than stable ideological factions. Furthermore, a surge in new members has softened factional politics. The left wing of the party is more critical of coalitions with other parties all opposed to centralization of the party organization and skeptical of achieving radical change by parliamentary means. The Realos/Reformer group, on the other hand, argue that radical changes must involve an instrumental parliamentary strategy, as well as extra-parliamentary action, and believe a strong and influential role of party leadership is useful for strategically realizing the party’s goals (Doherty, 1992). Habeck earned new political credit from rank-and-file critical party base when he stepped down from his position as minister in Schleswig– Holstein in 2018 to assume the role as party chair, thereby conforming to the party’s important norm of separating political offices. His authority also rests on the fact that his prominence and popularity clearly extend beyond the party itself. However, over time, the unequal visibility and

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popularity of Habeck and Baerbock began to narrow. For example, media analysis confirmed that most recently co-chair Baerbock is mentioned nearly as often as Habeck in newspapers (Campus et al., 2021). In addition, both chairs are more visible than the otherwise influential and prominent leaders of the parliamentary group (Campus et al., 2021). This fosters a stability from which the chairpersons have built a working arrangement that attenuates aspects of competition. However, with the federal elections in the fall 2021, the team had to settle on a front runner for the party. This was more pressing and sensitive in 2021 than in the past because of the very real possibility of the Greens emerging as the strongest party in a coalition government. By informal agreement this would have delivered to the party the right to nominate a chancellor. However, the party rank-and-file accepted the convention that Baerbock and Habeck make such a choice themselves thereby underscoring the unusually strong and influential role of these two party leaders. While Habeck seemed to be the likely choice given his government experience in state level government, the nomination of Baerbock aligned with the feminist roots of the party and the importance of gender equality for the party’s platform. Baerbock became a member of the Greens in 2005 and was elected to the Bundestag in 2013 (and re-elected in 2017). Not surprisingly, her relatively short political career elicited criticism from other parties and the media, and proved to be a weakness moving forward, especially as SPD leading candidate Olaf Scholz centered his campaign on stability and continuity, presenting himself as the legitimate heir to outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel. Extant research on political parties makes it clear that in understanding a party’s behavior as a collective actor necessitates the need to consider the logic of different “faces” within the party (Katz & Mair, 1993). In addition to the Green Party leadership, the parliamentary group (i.e., the party in public office) had a decisive influence on the trajectory of the Green Party. Formerly, this group (Fraktion) was an agent of change pushing moderation and normalization (Boyer & Heidemayer, 2008). The Greens parliamentary members came to appreciate earnest legislative work which at least served to focus public attention on their agenda. This tempered the party organization and promoted de-radicalization within the party. An important indicator of parliamentary behavior are roll-call votes which record the positions of parliamentarians on key votes in the Bundestag (Bergmann et al., 2016; Sieberer et al., 2020). These data can be effectively employed to measure individual characteristics, as well as

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assess the degree of coherence and homogeneity within parties (Poole & Rosenthal, 1997). In the Bundestag , roll-call votes are called only in contested matters. As a result, they are more often requested by the opposition and constitute only about 5 percent of the votes (Bergmann et al., 2016). With an interest in the evolution of the German Greens over time, this data can be used to gauge the voting behavior of the party in public office. This allows one to identify and trace changes to the strategy of the party. The data set offered by Bergmann et al. (2018) includes votes up to 2013. For the purposes of the present analysis, the official Bundestag website has been tapped to collect and supplement these data for the legislative period from 2013 to 2017.2 This analysis focuses on a subset of all roll-call votes that includes initiatives originating with the government in order to assess how the Green members of parliament positioned themselves in relation to government (see Fig. 7.2). Figure 7.2 plots the voting behavior of Green members of parliament for four legislative periods: 1994–1998, 2005–2009, 2009–2013 and 2013–2017. The upper black bars sum up the “yes” votes from Green parliamentarians for each roll-call vote on a government initiative, the lower gray bars depict the number of “no” votes. The percentages in the figure give an account of the proportion of all roll-call votes within a given legislative period receiving from the Greens either an approval (more “yes” votes than “no” votes) or a rejection (more “no” votes than “yes” votes). For instance, during the period 1994–1998 only 7.5 percent of the 67 roll-call votes originating from the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition government received support from the Green parliamentary group. An overwhelming majority of 91 percent of the proposals were rejected.

2 For the purpose of this analysis the first legislative period after reunification (1990– 1994) is excluded from our analysis because the small group of eight representatives for eastern Germany was less representative of the party as a whole. Furthermore, when taking into account the logic of parliamentary systems where the government rests on the parties making up the coalition in the Bundestag, there is no need to include these data for that period of time from 1998 to 2005. The party typically supports government proposals coming from their own coalition. True to their alternative style of politics there were some exceptions, the most prominent regarding the use of military force, where a small group of Greens parliamentarians voted against its own government (Biermann, 2004, pp. 614–615).

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Fig. 7.2 Roll-Call Votes in the Bundestag of the Green Parliamentary Group on Government Initiatives (1994–2017) (Note Roll-call votes are a subset of all votes taken in the Bundestag. The percentages in the figure reflect the percentage of cases where there were more “yes” than “no” votes, or more “no” votes more than “yes” votes [Rounding to a 100 percent where equal number of “yes” and “no” votes or abstentions was recorded.]; Source Author’s illustration based on data from Bergmann et al. [2018] and author’s coding from data computed from bundestag.de web site as part of Jungjohann and Switek [2019])

However, these data do not afford information regarding the overall outcome of the vote, but rather merely reports the votes of the Greens. In general, Fig. 7.2 accurately reflects the logic of group discipline in a parliamentary system. The Greens MPs cast very similar votes (even though they are in the opposition). The numbers demonstrate a high group coherence which was stable over time (i.e., the black and gray bars for each vote typically cover the full group size). However, concerning the behavior toward government initiatives, we do see variation over time. As already mentioned, during the period of 1994–1998 the Green group overwhelming rejected proposals of the CDU/CSU-FDP government.

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The few exceptions concerned the budget of the federal chancellery (BT 13/504, 13/527) or the unusual instances where the FDP (without its coalition partner CDU/CSU) produced a motion to refute initiatives at the state level in Bavaria which conflicted with existing policy compromises on abortion (BT 13/4879). This changed during the legislative period 2005–2009 which saw the Greens approving 21.7 percent of the initiatives of the governing grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD. During the next legislative period (2009–2013) governed by a centerright CDU/CSU-FDP coalition Green support climbed to 30.9 percent. Most of these proposals concerned the fallout of the Euro-crisis where the Greens with their pro-European integration stance approved measures to assist Greece and to establish up institutions to stabilize the single currency (e.g., ESFS, ESM). A second notable decision was the reinstatement of the decision to phase out nuclear energy, which chancellor Merkel proposed after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011. The Green Party fiercely debated whether this remake of the original redgreen deal should receive the party’s blessing, but ultimately voted in favor of moving forward with the goal (Switek, 2012). Finally, in the legislative period from 2013 to 2017 the Greens approved 49.5 percent of the roll-call votes initiated by the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition government. Interestingly, the biggest share of these were for military missions (e.g., Mali, South Sudan, Kosovo, Lebanon) where the Greens routinely supported the extension of the deployment mandates. While we saw in the previous section of this chapter that there are some back-and-forth movements regarding the Green election manifestos, the data in Fig. 7.2 reveal that the behavior of the Green Party is consistent with the trajectory of the basic programs. Since 1994 there has been a continuous decrease of a fundamental opposition and an increasing willingness to support government initiatives. This substantiates the desire of the Green Party to be part of a federal government.

Coalition Strategy The willingness to pursue government participation is especially apparent at the subnational level. At the time of the federal election in September 2021, the Greens were a member of 10 state governments. Their selfdescription as an “anti-party” and alternative politics party in their first government participations during the 1980s were controversial, but the party eventually came to terms with the SPD-Green coalition model

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(Lees, 2000). There was a brief phase after reunification where the Greens exhibited an openness for coalition experiments (see Fig. 7.3). This was mainly a phenomenon in the new Bundesländer where the parties were a bit detached from traditional conflicts in the West German party system. This proved short-lived and parallel to the SPD-Green federal coalition there was a renewed emphasis on joining coalitions with the Social Democrats. This strategy promised more political reward and leverage to the Greens as it generally enhanced the leverage of the party as a viable player amassing votes within the Bundesrat (German second legislative chamber) crucial for ratification of federal legislative initiatives. The record of government participations (see Fig. 7.3) over time indicates that the end of the SPD-Green federal government in 2005 signified an endpoint of a process of loss of power in the states. In this period, the Greens engaged in a realignment of their coalition strategy.

Fig. 7.3 Government Participation of Greens (State and federal level) (Source Author’s own illustration with data from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ der_Wahlergebnisse_und_Regierungsbeteiligungen_von_B%C3%BCndnis_90/ Die_Gr%C3%BCnen [September 2021])

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Since 2008 the number of coalition governments rose again, this time new coalition models (i.e., other than SPD-Green) were a large share of these new governing partnerships. This is a consequence of the overall rising fragmentation of the German party systems fueled the establishment of the Left Party and the AfD, as well as the weakness of the SPD. Two party majorities (except for a grand coalition) are less likely (Gross & Niendorf, 2017). Nevertheless, all parties have had to deal with these changing circumstances and the Greens exhibited a surprisingly high degree of flexibility. This reorientation, which started with a CDU-Green coalition in Hamburg in 2008, aligns more generally with the core elements of coalition theory (Linhart, 2013). Not surprisingly, failing to win majorities for the established Red-Green model were the strong motivations for coalition experiments (Gross & Niendorf, 2017). Yet, somewhat surprising was the openness shown for coalitions across camp lines that elevated the Greens into the strategic position of multi-coalition capability. With this position they resemble the SPD, who are also able to work together with all parties in the party system (except for the far-right, right-populist AfD). The Greens govern with the SPD and the Left, but they are also willing to enter coalitions with the SPD and the FDP. Furthermore, in coalescing with the Christian Democrats, at times in a three-party alliance with the FDP, they act as a bridge between the left and the right camp. While all this is logical given the goal of achieving mathematical majorities, the question remains how this strategy conforms with the second major factor of coalition theory: ensuring a sufficient programmatic overlap of coalition partners as a basis for a shared agenda. Two answers stand out. One focuses on the programmatic variance of the regional branches which is a prominent condition more pronounced for the Greens stemming from its original grassroots principle. Another possible answer is suggested from the analyses of the new coalition models which show that the Greens were successful in achieving far-reaching concessions from the other parties especially pronounced during the period of for coalitions with CDU/CSU-and FDP (Switek, 2015). On the one hand, there seems to be a bonus for crossing the camp lines. On the other hand, the delegations from the Green Party strategically employed their party base in the negotiations, making the argument that they need adequate concessions to convince the final party congress to validate the new coalition. This argument became even more valid as the

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Greens started to hold intraparty direct votes about coalition decisions, again in line with their grassroots origin. A closer look at the agreements shows that gaining intraparty acceptance was not only based on policy goals. In addition, the delegations had to construct some overarching form of mission statements to legitimize unorthodox constellations (Switek, 2015). These statements are somewhat, but not fully detached from actual policies and embed the concrete policy agreements into a broader theme. For example, with the SPD and the Left party, this typically corresponded to egalitarian ideas which shifted demands of a more integrated education system toward the center. With the Christian Democrats, these themes were based on ideas of ecology and sustainability. For example, in Baden-Württemberg the CDU and Greens shared similar ideas about how to organize agriculture (i.e., repudiation of genetically modified crops). The strength of these links would rest on the two factions in the Greens that would promote the shared visions. Thus, the factional balance of power in a specific regional branch typically helps to explain the outcome. An essential element indispensable to understanding how the Greens navigated their way toward a more flexible posture within the German party system during recent years is the crucial role played by particular central figures who advocated for the realization of new coalition models (Switek, 2015). With his centrist and pragmatic attitude, Winfried Kretschmann enjoyed popularity beyond the Green Party that has served-well his ascent into the office of Minister President in BadenWürttemberg. His authority has been essential in leading the party into a coalition with the Christian Democrats in 2015, having already established a base of trust through the preliminary talks he headed in 2006. There are similar patterns with the Green figureheads Christa Goetsch in Hamburg and Tarek Al-Wazir in Hesse. Al-Wazir, in particular, was one of the important architects of extending the spectrum of coalition options for the party. This was not simply a coincidental evolution but the product of a carefully constructed strategy. Al-Wazir was one of the sponsors of a motion on a national party congress calling for the willingness to engage with all parties. The formula for this was summarized as “Inhalte vor Macht ” (“policy before power”), which seems self-evident but was an important phrase to deflect intraparty and external criticism of arbitrariness and which was somewhat substantiated by the share of Green Party goals articulated within the coalition agreements. At the same time, the strategy incorporated a balanced approach which allowed for left-leaning

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and camp-crossing coalitions. In this way, both factions could in principle support this strategy. With the increasing number of new models (see Fig. 7.3) and proclivity to embrace normalcy, the flexibility of the Green Party became less controversial within its ranks. It has, however, led to the emergence of a new informal body in the party which involves the meeting of representatives of the executive before Bundesrat sessions (so-called GKoordination; Jungjohann, 2018). The idea is to coordinate the strategy of the party across different levels. However, it has become an effective platform to deliberate and take important decisions. The meetings are dominated by an executive perspective and potentially challenge the authority of the national party leadership (who are also in attendance). There is a mix of horizontal and vertical coordination parallel to existing party structures which specifically extends to the exchange of ideas about coalition models and partners. While the Greens have so far successfully managed to extend flexibility in coalition management within the west, it has proven more challenging in the east. Given the strong electoral results of the AfD, the Greens were compelled to prop up grand coalitions that no longer commanded a majority in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt. In the latter state the coalition partners resorted to an uncommon agree-to-disagree clause in the coalition agreement dealing with migration policy, thereby signaling the difficulty of a “forced-marriage” coalition (Bowler et al., 2016). Because of the different policy competences of the state level, new coalition models cannot simply be transferred to national level. However, the flexibility on state level facilitates an openness of the party base and builds trust between protagonists (Downs, 1998). One consequence of this strategy was the coalitions talks after the federal election in 2017 where the Greens negotiated with the CDU/CSU and FDP about forming a government (Faas & Klingelhöfer, 2019). Even if the talks failed, it allowed FDP and Greens to familiarize themselves with each other and thereby gain a better appreciation of each other’s sensibilities. Clearly, the two parties have learned from the process in 2017 and employed this knowledge to improve the negotiations in 2021. For instance, it was Greens and Liberals which in a preliminary decision turned to the SPD instead of the CDU/CSU. The central position of the Greens for coalition building is a core tenet of a new phase of German politics. The party finds itself as a bridge

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between the two camps and can facilitate majorities in both directions. While this might connote a stretch for the first-hour activists, the party grew its membership significantly in the last decade built on a foundation of new members who have been socialized from the beginning with this flexibility. Following their grassroots legacy the Greens in 2021 held an intraparty direct vote about the coalition agreement and a distinct majority of 86 percent gave the coalition their approval.

Conclusion The Green Party was founded in West Germany and was shaped by the politics of the Bonn republic. This explains the Green election campaign in 1990 which reflected tone-deafness toward the issue of German unification, that enjoyed a high saliency in the electorate, and accordingly was the main topic for the other parties. Despite the fact that Alliance 90/The Greens are the only German party that acknowledges reunification through the reference to former East German Alliance 90 in its name, the party had a hard time gaining traction in the new Bundesländer in a unified Germany. The difficulties with the transformation of East Germany toward a market economy and high unemployment meant an emphasis on materialistic issues that did not align with the post-materialist foundation of the Greens. Quality of life issues as environmental protection, sustainability or legal rights were not as relevant. Until today East Germans are underrepresented in the Green Party membership and the electorate. The Greens have enjoyed a growing electoral strength among the new states, which can no longer be considered a diaspora. However, their strength is concentrated in the larger cities and among younger votes within the east where the urban–rural divide is more pronounced than in the western states. The coalition strategy of the Greens which has seen a major reorientation after the end of the red-green coalition on federal level in 2005 has had a strong impact on the course of German reunification. The opportunity for new coalition models was helpful in the new Bundesländer where the party systems diverged from the structure of party competition prevalent in the old West German Republic. Initially, this was particularly evident in the case of the PDS/Left party and the extraordinary strength of the AfD. The relevance of the left faction in the Green Party facilitated to create majorities with the SPD and The Left, for example, in Thuringia and Berlin. However, at the same time the willingness to cross

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the partisan cleavages made it possible to support formerly grand coalitions in Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Therefore, the Greens prospects rest more on their role as a small party that helps to build coalitions to resolve difficult situations and less on their attractiveness in the electorate. Currently, they are in government in three of the five states in eastern Germany. Nevertheless, the role of the party in government might in the long-run elevate their overall position and make them more appealing to a broader segment of the electorate. In 2021, the Greens find themselves in an unusually influential position in German politics. The party has enjoyed a strong performance at the federal, state and European levels of politics, most recently documented with the 2021 general election results. With a pragmatic leadership that has facilitated a centrist orientation, the party aims at and attracts voters beyond the classical base. There still exist policy tensions within the party regarding ecological-environmentalist issues but the party’s basic policy platforms create a bridge for the Greens leading to the pragmatic center of the party system. Since unification their confrontational style of oppositional politics in the Bundestag has slowly but steadily given way to a more cooperative approach. This pursuit of an incremental and steady strategy of engaging in new coalition models has set the stage for the Greens to join a novel coalition government with SPD and FDP. The Greens incorporate several of the changes German politics has experienced since unification and they seem to be poised to inhabit a central position during the next decade. Taken together, these developments speak to a comprehensive transformation of the party system.

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Bräuninger, T., & Debus, M. (2012). Parteienwettbewerb in den deutschen Bundesländern. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Campus, D., Switek, N., & Valbruzzi, M. (2021). Collective leadership and divided power in West European Parties. Palgrave Macmillan. Doherty, B. (1992). The fundi-realo controversy: An analysis of four European green parties. Environmental Politics, 1(1), 95–120. Downs, W. M. (1998). Coalition government, subnational style: Multiparty politics in Europe’s regional parliaments. Ohio State University Press. Eith, U., & Mielke, G. (2017). Gesellschaftlicher Strukturwandel und soziale Verankerung der Parteien. In E. Wiesendahl (Ed.), Parteien und soziale Ungleichheit (pp. 39–61). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Faas, T., & Klingelhöfer, T. (2019). The more things change, the more they stay the same? The German federal election of 2017 and its consequences. West European Politics, 42(4), 914–926. Gross, M., & Niendorf, T. (2017). Determinanten der Bildung nicht-etablierter Koalitionen in den deutschen Bundesländern, 1990–2016. Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 11(3), 365–390. Hartung, U., Müller, J., & Tosun, J. (2020). Parteipositionierung zu umstrittenen Technologien. TATuP – Zeitschrift Für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie Und Praxis, 29(3), 43–49. van Hüllen, R. (1990). Ideologie und Machtkampf bei den Grünen: Untersuchung zur programmatischen und innerorganisatorischen Entwicklung einer deutschen “Bewegungspartei.” Bonn: Bouvier. Jungjohann, A. (2018). Grün regieren. Eine Analyse der Regierungspraxis von Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (No. 44). Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Retrieved from Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/ gruen-regieren_3.aufl_web.pdf?dimension1=division_demo [August 2021] Jungjohann, A., & Switek, N. (2019). Große Koalition, kleine Opposition. Oppositionsstrategien zwischen konstruktiver Mitarbeit und Blockadehaltung. In Die Bundestagswahl 2017. Analysen der Wahl-, Parteien-, Kommunikationsund Regierungsforschung. Springer VS. Kaeding, M., & Switek, N. (Eds.). (2015). Die Europawahl 2014: Spitzenkandidaten, Protestparteien, Nichtwähler. Springer VS. Katz, R. S., & Mair, P. (1993). The evolution of party organizations in Europe: The three faces of party organization. American Review of Politics, 14, 593– 617. Kirchheimer, O. (1966). The transformation of Western European Party Systems. In J. La Palombara & M. Weiner (Eds.), Political parties and political development (pp. 177–200). Princeton.

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Klein, M. (2009). Die Entwicklung der grünen Wählerschaft im Laufe dreier Jahrzehnte – eine empirische APK-Analyse. In H. Kaspar, H. Schoen, S. Schumann, & J. R. Winkler (Eds.), Politik – Wissenschaft – Medien (pp. 391–401). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Korte, K.-R. (2017). Wahlen in Deutschland. Grundsätze, Verfahren und Analysen. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. Lees, C. (2000). The Red-Green coalition in Germany: Politics, personalities and power. Manchester University Press. Linhart, E. (2013). Does an appropriate coalition theory exist for Germany? An overview of recent office- and policy-oriented coalition theories. German Politics, 22(3), 288–313. Mende, S. (2011). “Nicht rechts, nicht links, sondern vorn”: Eine Geschichte der Gründungsgrünen. Oldenbourg. Poguntke, T. (1993). Alternative politics: The German Green Party. Edinburgh University Press. Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (1997). Congress: A political-economic history of roll call voting. Oxford University Press. Probst, L. (2013). Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (GRÜNE). In O. Niedermayer (Ed.), Handbuch Parteienforschung (pp. 509–540). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Probst, L. (2018). Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. In F. Decker & V. Neu (Eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Parteien (pp. 203–2018). Springer VS. Raschke, J. (1993). Die Grünen: Wie sie wurden, was sie sind. Bund-Verlag. Richter, S. (2005). Führung ohne Macht? Die Sprecher und Vorsitzenden der Grünen. In D. Forkmann & M. Schlieben (Eds.), Die Parteivorsitzenden in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–2005 (pp. 169–214). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Sieberer, U., Saalfeld, T., Ohmura, T., Bergmann, H., & Bailer, S. (2020). Roll-call votes in the German Bundestag: A new dataset, 1949–2013. British Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 1137–1145. Switek, N. (2012). Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: Zur Entscheidungsmacht grüner Bundesparteitage. Zeitschrift Für Politikwissenschaft (Sonderband 2012) (pp. 121–154). Switek, N. (2015). Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Koalitionsentscheidungen in den Ländern. Nomos. Thuermer, G. (2021). Is There Such a Thing as a Web-Native Party? Use and Role of Online Participation Tools in the Green and Pirate Parties in Germany. In O. Barberà, G. Sandri, G. P. Correa & J. Rodríguez-Teruel (Eds.), Digital parties. The challenges of online organisation and participation (pp. 227–244). Springer.

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Unfried, P. (2020, December 8). Können die Grünen Leadership? Taz FUTURZWEI . Retrieved from https://taz.de/Zum-Bundesparteitag-2020/! 172022/ [August 2021] Wagschal, U., & König, P. (2015). Die Links-Rechts-Positionierung der Parteien bei den Bundestagswahlen 2005 bis 2013: Eine empirische Analyse anhand des Wahl-O-Mat. In K.-R. Korte (Ed.), Die Bundestagswahl 2013 (pp. 185– 210). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

CHAPTER 8

The Right-Wing Populist Disruption in the Berlin Republic. Opportunity Structures and Success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Florian Hartleb

The Old Assumption: Germany as Exception in Europe The often cited populist Zeitgeist (or spirit of the age) (Mudde, 2004) points out that a new political style or even ideology has entered, or even shaken, mainstream politics in Western European (party) Democracies. For a long time, Germany seemed to be an exception in Europe, apparently immune against this phenomenon. Different to all its neighboring countries, from the Netherlands via Austria to Poland, there seemed to be no ground for right-wing populist parties due to two main obstacles. First,

F. Hartleb (B) Catholic University Eichstätt, Eichstätt, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_8

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because populism in Germany must operate in a historically encumbered environment, the media has developed a fear of contact with it which prevents any unconstrained debate and constantly exposes the right-wing parties to the risk of being linked with National Socialism. And, second, because of the stigmatization that would follow and thereby prevent the parties’ from establishing themselves as a political force. Thirdly, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), later the Left, has much in common with the populist party type. It has mobilized with anti-elite protest gestures, charismatic leadership with figures such as Gregor Gysi and later Oskar Lafontaine, the pursuit of social protectionism. In Eastern Germany, the party has presented itself a pragmatic force, addressing to the losers of the unification process while cultivating some nostalgic elements (Decker & Hartleb, 2007). In the former Federal Republic, there was absolutely no lack of ability to mobilize for the typical right-wing populist subjects—from immigration policy to fighting criminality right through to criticism of the European Union (EU). Moreover, the comparatively high level of affluence and prosperity of the extended global economy appears not to block right-populist parties, as cases in Scandinavia demonstrate. However, this was either neutralized or absorbed by their own position by mainstream parties in the past to such an extent, that little room remained for potential challengers. This looked differently only at the beginning of the Bundesrepublik when the national-conservative Deutsche Partei (DP) became a coalition partner in 1949 under the first chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Later, the breakthrough did not give rise to any far-right parties in the German state with its seats of power in Bonn. We can only recall and think back to individual election results for the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) during the 1960s and the Republikaner (Republicans) at the end of the 1980s. In many cases, the Republikaner under their party leader Franz Schönhuber came to be considered the fifth party (Leggewie, 1993), which proved to be a fallacy or deception. Their shadowy existence continued seamlessly and without any break at the federal level in the new Berlin Republic. On the federal level, German unity, which in some way the Republikaner invoked time and again, remained ineffective for a long time. Nationalistic or patriotic voices faded away or fell on deaf ears. In addition, the established parties discovered solutions such as the “Asylum compromise” (“Asylkompromiss ”) at the beginning of the 1990’s, in order to blight any possible opportunity structures. It was as if the party was seen

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by those in the east as stranger within their land, while major parties, and the CDU in particular, were able to gain a solid foothold. Helmut Kohl was celebrated as the “Chancellor of Unity” and in Kurt Biedenkopf and Bernhard Vogel, two powerful and skilled Western imports, became popular federal State Presidents in Saxony and Thuringia, respectively. At the same time, there was a transformation of the German State Party (or Staatspartei) which articulated further social concerns and attracted protest votes from the left (Hartleb, 2004). At the federal state level right-populist parties achieved individual successes. For example, the Schill Party enjoyed short-term success in 2001 in the City State of Hamburg by exploiting the issue of “law and order” (the one and only case of a populist right party participating in government in Germany; Hartleb, 2004). In addition the right-wing extremist DVU’s (or German People’s Union) gained representation in the state assembly of Saxony-Anhalt in 1998, and later the NPD in the state parliaments of Saxony in 2004 and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2006. Such successes, however, pass like waves through the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The record for in the former FRG for these parties at the national level was unimpressive overall: No far-right party succeeded and prevailed. The supposed attempt of the FDP politician Jürgen W. Möllemann to lead the Free Democratic Party Germany (FDP) down a right-wing populist path during elections to the German parliament in 2002 fell short of early expectations (Möllemann, 2003).

Disruption: The Rise of the AfD The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, founded in 2013, shattered this pattern. The AfD distinguished itself from the existing political parties and became a key player in institutional politics faster than any other party in German history. It was elected to the German Parliament and all state legislatures, a “systematic shock and potential critical juncture in the development of the German party system” “in the heart of Europe” (Lees, 2018, p. 295). Apparently disruptive politics were the order of the day, as was the application of business-strategy principles to political parties. The obvious question these new challengers pose is whether or not they represent only protest votes, or can be sustained through campaigns on issues articulating broader tensions, needs or changes within society? In this sense, three factors variously affect the different

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types of new parties. Lucardie (2000) offers the following organizational summary: a. [First] “Prophetic” parties which articulate a new ideology. In Germany, the 1968 Revolution left deep scars and trails, as postmaterialistic values were adopted, such as emancipation and equality, ecology and pacifism. It is plain to see nowadays, that the rather left-wing, liberal subjects of opposing racism and gender have not only been revitalized, but have gained a large lobby and voice. This includes an “anti-status quo” ideology (Taguieff, 2002, pp. 47 and 103). b. [Second] “Purifiers” wishing to “clean” the system of corruption within the establishment and the established parties. Citizens today express widespread skepticism about political parties as state institutions (with polemic use of the words such as “particracy” (“partitocrazia” ) or partocracy (“Parteienstaat ”), and the process of representative democracy based on political parties. In the history of the old and new Federal Republic of Germany, a few scandals concerning donations caused a stir fueling the “purifiers,” as well as controversies such as the face masks affair of 2021, from which some parliamentary delegates have profited. c. [Third] “Prolocutors” representing interests neglected by established parties, drawing on the gaps of representation in the political system which are the gateways for the new radical right-wing populism (Patzelt, 2018). The hypothesis of this chapter is that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is not just a party of nay-sayers (Betz, 2001, p. 398). Rather, its hostility to foreigners (xenophobia) fulfills the criteria which Herbert Kitschelt (1997, pp. 49–63) noted as distinct for right-populist parties. This serves as the core of its “winning formula.” Simultaneously, the party turned from a single-issue party to a nativist party. The radicalization process it underwent can be partly explained by its exclusionary stance from the establishment as well as the rise of the so-called Flügel (wing) which represents at least 40 percent of the party1. This wing merely triggered the party’s classification as right-wing extremist because of the observation by the German Federal Office for the Protection of

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the Constitution (BfV) and its official classification as a threat to democracy, determining for the orientation of the party in popular culture. The intelligence services were able to reach this decision themselves via a conglomerate of social media postings and tweets by individuals. Björn Höcke was the representative protagonist serving to assist this classification in the eyes of the intelligence services. these. A former high school teacher of history and sports, a leader of the Thuringia AfD and a proponent of a more robust right-wing stance within the party, Höcke has established strong links to the intellectual circles of German New Right nationalism and has openly called for ending the “cult of guilt” (CBN news, 2016) around the holocaust. Instead, from Höcke’s point of view, Germany needs to take a more “positive” attitude toward its history (Lang, 2018). The other main protagonist, Andreas Kalbitz, in Brandenburg, was excluded from the party when it was discovered he had concealed his past espousal of far-right positions (Hartleb, 2020).

Why the Establishment of a Right-Wing Populist Party is (not) Astonishing? The AfD arose from neo-liberal political movements. The party’s initial policy focus was very clear: the Euro.1 In 2013, the AfD was what one would consider a single-issue party. It was only months before the 2013 elections and the party program was relatively narrow. Before the immigration and refugee crisis of 2015, it was widely expected that the AfD would suffer a similar fate as radical parties of the past (Decker & Ruhose, 2021, p. 133).2 The short history of the AfD has been marked by internal struggles of competing wings and splinter groups, as well as ongoing disputes over leadership. From the very start the party was torn between two competing wings. The first was made up of those loyal to the founder, Bernd Lucke. This faction was primarily in favor of Germany’s exit from the eurozone. A second wing was a nationalist wing formed

1 The AfD’s radicalization was demonstrated in 2021 it suddenly demanding Germany leave the EU (“Dexit”) before the imminent German parliamentary elections. 2 The General Secretary of the CDU at that time, Peter Tauber said in 2014, the AfD would still be elected to one or two state legislatures and would then disappear from the political landscape (Tauber, 2014). The renowned researcher on populism Cas Mudde likewise judged that the AfD would “implode and would disappear as a relevant political power” (Mudde, 2004).

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around Frauke Petry, Marcus Pretzell, Alexander Gauland, Björn Höcke and others, who wore down Lucke with their nationalist and xenophobic attitudes and persistent threat to party loyalty. Eventually, within the nationalist wing (Flügel ) Petry and Pretzell were isolated and driven out. With each internal leadership conflict the AfD moved further to the right (Jesse, 2019, p. 114), but has also broadened its agenda as a nativist party. In the summer of 2015, the AfD nevertheless seemed to become an insignificant factor falling below the five percent threshold in nationwide surveys. At regular intervals, the investigative media reinforced these prognoses by exposing the internal mud-slinging, scandals and power struggles.3 Observers often saw the rise of right-populist parties to be necessarily attached to a charismatic figure à la Jörg Haider in Austria and thereby overestimated staffing as a factor as a detriment to the overall impact of the AfD (Hartleb, 2007). The party’s first chairman Bernd Lucke, a professor of economics, has rather a professorial and technocratic manner and effect. This has underscored the AfD, as something of an anomaly as it lacks a personality common to a “charismatic party” (Pedahzur & Brichta, 2002), nor is it oriented toward an singular leader relying instead on a shared leadership structure. Regardless, Lucke himself is no longer within the party. The AfD campaigned primarily on an anti-immigration and antiIslamic message in the run-up to the 2017 federal election. At first glance the establishment of the AfD was surprising, as if in some way federalism had been stipulated as a stumbling block for the establishment of a populist right party in Germany. Additionally, the formal jurisdictions and distributions of tasks between the federal system and the states impeded the success of right-wing populism at the federal level. For instance, education in Germany is the responsibility of individual federal states thereby offering a significant challenge as platform from which a coherent and coordinated impact on managing the impact of foreign immigration and refuges into the republic. From an organizational perspective, it is difficult to form a new political party. Founding a new party requires confronting a high level of bureaucracy and competitive barriers. Among other things, such as party funding and political foundations, electoral

3 For example, a few months after Baden-Württemberg’s state legislative election in May 2016, a second AfD faction was formed. Furthermore, the AfD lost its coalition status in Lower Saxony in 2000.

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registration must be approved by the Federal Election Commission which is manned by representatives of established parties (Köhler, 2006). Far from just attracting disgruntled voters from other parties, the AfD was able to mobilize a significant number of previous non-voters. The electoral success of the AfD can thus be seen in part as the result of mobilizing individuals who have previously been disaffected by the lack of a political “voice” in the party system. At the same time, centrist and leftwing voters were also more likely to cast a ballot due to centrifugal party system brought about by the emergence of a new party on the far right. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether the rise of the AfD will lead to a long-term shift to the right in German politics. In general, AfD voters are less attached to the party and vote for it less out of conviction than voters for other parties (Hoerner & Hobolt, 2017). However, in 2021 the party has increased its base in some regions in Eastern Germany. It won the elections in Saxony and Thuringia with 24.6 and 24 percent, respectively—despite the party lost in total (10.3 percent, down from 12.6 percent between 2017 and 2021). Of importance, we note that by winning seats in the Bundestag for a second consecutive election, the AfD now enjoys access to crucial resources, such as political grants from which it may draw when conducting election campaigns. The AfD is not a marginal party but rather within the mainstream of German party politics thriving on ethnic tensions from which it formulate its particular narrative about the interactable differences between their definition of “us” and “them” characterizing their notion of a people’s (ethnic) community (“Volksgemeinschaft ” [Havertz, 2021]). We can a pattern across state parliaments toward a pragmatism transcending mutually exclusive ideological ties (Gisbers & Peters, 2020). Yet, at the same time, it is hard to detect a homogeneous core (Maier, 2020, p. 637). Additionally, its negative communication style offers the impression of the party as being one devoted to radical parliamentary manners (Maurer & Jost, 2020, p. 489). The majority of the AfD members of the Bundestag did not belong to any party before joining the AfD, nor do they have political or institutional experiences within their second generation of members. In other words, membership of the AfD provided most of the elected representatives with their first access to a political mandate (Rütters, 2020, p. 621).

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The Grounds for Disruption: Germany’s Two Populist Moments in the Berlin Republic: Sarrazin Debate and Refugee Crisis Germany had its “populist moment” (Goodwyn, 1976) in the year 2010, when the Berlin’s former Senator of Finance Thilo Sarrazin published his book Germany Abolishes Itself , which became the most successful nonfictional book in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The social scientist René Cuperus from the Netherlands had already recognized a “right populist dam breaking” (Cuperus, 2011, p. 165) in 2001. The book, which had been marketed in advance by the tabloid press on a large scale, contains provocative subjects on integration policy toward foreigners and refugees into German culture and society. Through a combination of declining birth rates and a growing underclass of immigrants from predominantly Moslem countries, Germany was increasingly endangering itself. Sarrazin, a political of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) who has the bearing of a figure educated classically in the humanities with a ministerial career, immediately referred to two taboos which he thought fundamental to understanding the peril Germany faced, specifically the debate about social pressures and rising frustrations growing from non-western migrants linked to challenges of associated with education and vocational training (Sarrazin, 2010, p. 9). In Sarrazin’s assessment, those in physical labor and manual work were simply not suited for mental or administrative work, thus most nonwestern immigrants risked being a permanent underclass within Germany (Sarrazin, 2010, p. 55). The SPD which has unsuccessfully tried to disassociate itself from Sarrazin, thus that the overwhelming political correctness in the “Berlin Republic” now offers new outlets for voices of political and social taboo. The debate on immigration and cultural underclass associated with Muslim and non-western immigrants was all the more exacerbated by the rising tide of refugees across Europe. In opposition to further Eurozone bailouts by liberal-conservative economists, the AfD has moved further toward the radical right. The party campaigned primarily on an anti-immigration and anti-Islam message in the run-up to the 2017 election. The AfD website features pictures of German towns and cities with the slogan: “It’s about us, our culture, our home, our Germany.” The party has used more explicit and controversial slogans and posters too, including those proclaiming, “Get your country back!” Others have called

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for “bikinis instead of burkas” referring to the full-body covering some Muslim women wear, and “Islam does not fit our cuisine” on a poster depicting a piglet, referring to Islam’s dietary prohibition of pork. The national-conservative faction’s victory in the internal power struggle against the economic liberal faction had delivered conclusive results. While the major political parties were essentially not opposed to the Merkel government’s open immigration and refugee policies, the AfD’s obvious opposition had considerable appeal not only for voters who were already hostile to foreigners but also for ordinary voters who were concerned that the government’s immigration and refugee policies might be “naive” (Hambauer & Mays, 2018). The AfD became the major protest option against the “refugee-welcome” euphoria in the autumn and winter of 2015 (after chancellor Angela Merkel announced the openness with the phrase “Wir schaffen das”—“We can do this”). The German state permitted about one million refugees from Syria and Iraq to enter Germany, in many cases without a passport. The AfD depicted this as a source of long-term alienation across society, despite German government measures both at a national and European level to cope with the challenge. The CDU campaign slogan “Uns geht es so gut wie nie zuvor” (“We’re doing better than ever”) was not widely convincing. The grand coalition formed by the CDU and SPD in 2013 proved to be to the detriment of both parties.4 Due to the CDU plotting a middle course not only with the migration policy but also in terms of gender and gay rights, a segment of Germany’s conservative voter-base has inevitably decamped further to the right. The AfD website has featured pictures of German towns and cities with the slogan: “It’s about us, our culture, our home, our Germany.” The party has used more explicit and controversial slogans and posters too, including those proclaiming numerous terrorist attacks were carried out by people who traveled to Germany as refugees in 2015, as in the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016. This AfD narrative found an unintended ally in the form of a report of over 1900 pages produced by a fact-finding committee of the German Parliament uncovered the failings associated with the federal government’s refugee policies in 2015 (Deutscher Bundestag, 2021).

4 Experiences in Austria show, that a single large coalition fuels the establishment of an extreme right party. The NPD which at that time had German nationalistic leanings also profited in Germany during the 1960s from such a Grand Coalition.

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Not a New League East, but a New Advocate of “Second-Class-Citizen” In Eastern Germany, where some see clear evidence of chronical disaffection due to the pace and circumstances of systemic change, the potential for a party or movement from the right is probably higher than average. Long before the electoral breakthrough of AfD, far-right parties entered eastern German regional legislatures, even though they failed to establish a permanent presence. These included the German People’s Union (DVU) in Brandenburg (1999–2008) and Saxony-Anhalt (1998–2002); and the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (2006–2016); and Saxony (2004– 2014). More prominently, the social movement group PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident), often regarded as a harbinger of AfD success, originated in Dresden (Vorländer et al., 2018). In the winter of 2014–2015, months before the onset of the “refugee crisis,” PEGIDA mobilized up to 20,000 supporters, far more than just the usual suspects. Despite positive factors such as economic growth and a high quality of infrastructure and high levels of educational attainment, parts of society still feel a sense of alienation. In Eastern Germany, the AfD is highly successful, despite their links to the radical right. The AfD cannot be regarded as a “Lega East” (following the model of the Northern League in Italy) playing the card of separatism. Nonetheless, the typical AfD voter milieus are quantitatively much more strongly represented in Eastern than in Western Germany. The AfD is primarily a party of the modernization-skeptical milieus in Eastern Germany (Vehrkamp, 2019). Elements of nativist and populist ideas explain electoral support for the AfD in both parts of the country, but nativism appears to be more relevant in the east (Pesthy et al., 2021). In Saxony, a country which was dominated by the CDU after 1990, the AfD became the strongest force in national elections with 27 percent of the vote. It indicates that Germany nearly two decades after unification, has two different electorates and the largest protest potential in Eastern Germany (Pesthy et al., 2021). The effects of AfD strength are particularly noticeable at the subnational level, where it strongly limits the government coalition options for other parties. After the regional elections of 2019, three-party majority governments were formed in Brandenburg and Saxony, while a threeparty minority government was formed in Thuringia (and was sustained in the 2021 general elections despite the best efforts of the CDU opposition.

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The AfD Addressed to the Feeling to Be Second-Class-Citizen The AfD attempted to join in the tradition of the GDR’s civil rights movement during election campaigning in the east. Election posters proclaimed “We are the people!” (“Wir sind das Volk!”), which was clearly the most important slogan of the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Some civil liberty campaigners at that time were frustrated by the unification process and in the meantime even adopted a position close to the AfD. This may explain why in Dresden, with a Moslem share of the population of only 0.4 percent, the anti-Islamic civilian movement Pegida was temporarily able to mobilize citizens from the middle classes or strata. While in Western Germany 55 percent find Moslems threatening, during the height of the refugee crisis 66 percent of eastern Germans and 78 percent of Saxons expressed the same belief (Bertelsmann-Stiftung, 2015). Likewise in 2020 and 2021 the AfD helped fuel the so-called Coronavirus denial thereby amplifying their criticism directed toward the German government. On the other hand, the pandemic has exposed deep divisions between hardliners and party moderates such as Jörg Meuthen who was frustrated by the results of the 2021 general elections and who announced his decision not to seek re-election as co-party chairman after a press conference with Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla (both “Spitzenkandiaten” for the elections in 2021). Meuthen, a professor by vocation and a member of the European Parliament, resisted the AfD’s decision to endorse “Drexit” within its party program at the party congress April 2021. Meuthen is a unique loss for the party because his departure denies the party of a valuable charismatic resource within the party’s leadership ranks generally essential to the success of populist parties (Hartleb, 2007) (Table 8.1). Table 8.1 Positive response to the statement ‘Eastern Germans are second-class citizens’ (in 2019)5

Country

AfD-Voter %

All %

Brandenburg Saxony Thuringia

77 78 86

59 66 86

5 Infratest dimap survey for Brandenburg; https://wahl.tagesschau.de/wahlen/201909-01-LT-DE-BB/index.shtml; Saxony; https://wahl.tagesschau.de/wahlen/2019-09-01LT-DE-SN/umfrage-ostdeutschland.shtml; and Thuringia; https://wahl.tagesschau.de/ wahlen/2019-10-27-LT-DE-TH/index.shtml (all accessed 5 July 2021).

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In the person of Tino Chrupalla who was re-elected to his seat in via direct mandate in Saxony, the AfD has built up a network through the “Querdenker” (“lateral thinker”) movement—an anti-vaccination group. The toxic mélange of anti-vaccine passions combined with extremist political expressions led to demonstrations in December 2021 ended in violence against the police and some telegram groups when revelations emerged about an “anti-vaxxer murder plot” against Michael Kretschmer, Saxony’s prime minister. At the start of the new (20th) Bundestag, 22 out of 82 parliamentarians were forced to sit on the tribune after they refused to comply with a vaccination mandate for Bundestag members. This only serves to underscore once again the impression that the AfD is a bold outsider within the political establishment, an action with a long tradition of counterstrategy against outside parties in the German national legislature (Schäfer & Hartleb, 2022). The AfD has proved to be particularly effective at fueling its popularity through superior on-line and social media communication strategies. These proved to be even more important and consequential during the pandemic. The party leaders have blamed traditional media for presenting them in a negative light and obscuring their intentions. Using social media as an alternative ecosystem, the AfD reached a part of the German population that felt disenchanted with conventional communication channels (Serrano et al., 2019). Indeed, the AfD supporters used hashtag #Wahlbetrug (“election fraud”) throughout the last week of campaigning. In their elections, the AfD also addressed the Russian-German community. They printed their flyers in Russian (also in Polish) to achieve Maximum affect with these voters. The AfD has estimated that about a third of its support comes from Russian-speaking voters, several million of whom have settled in Germany since the 1990s and now make up as much as 5 percent of the population. Markus Frohnmaier, who for many years acted as Chairman of the youth organization and who was then elected to the German Parliament, was depicted within internal documents as a Russian agent (Der Spiegel, 2019). In the AfD itself, there is even a strong pro-Russian lobby, which was noticeable through numerous visits to the Crimea. In Eastern Germany, the AfD has entered a rivalry with Die Linke to mobilize anti-Western, specifically anti-American attitudes (Olsen, 2018).

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Limits to Disruption From the evidence surveyed above it seems clear that the AfD is now part and parcel of the German political landscape in strict opposition to other political forces. In other words, it is the AfD against all others or vice versa. The party strives to sustain is status as a provocateur (as an internal strategical paper for the election campaign revealed) including targeted attacks against the German tradition of “coping with the past” (“Vergangenheitsbewältigung ”). The established parties have regularly fallen into the populist trap within traditional media by affording the AfD disproportionate attention dramatically labeling it as a “shame on Germany,” “as new Nazis” or for “attacking the voters.” It attracts those within East Germany skeptical of modernization, such that the AfD could assume the mantel of successor to the PDS (later The Left) as a political force mobilizing frustration toward the modus vivendi of the unification process and cultivating political and cultural nostalgia. The aspect of social care-taking (so-called Kümmererpartei) plays an important role here. The AfD’s as well as the party’s pro-Russian stance. In states such as Saxony and Thuringia, the party is a much more visible part of the society than it is in western Germany. And, the AfD has become a rival to the Left party as the results in 2021 confirm. The AfD’s composition going forward is unclear. They have long moved away from being, the “Party of Professors,” as it was labeled in its early years. Through the blood-letting of “moderate” staff, and the German Bundestag parliamentary elections of 2021, nothing indicates that the AfD has become a moderate element within the German party system nor a party willing to surrender their role a representative of fundamental opposition to the political establishment. Jörg Meuthen is just the latest example of a party activist dispensed by the party’s internal hardliners. The AfD represents a “business model” with conspiracy theories systematically discrediting trust in the establishment’s political decisions. Indeed, it has contributed to the erosion of the esteem of German public and legal bodies delivering long-term damages through the AfD’s repeated claims of a “liars press.” And, this is not likely to change after the Coronavirus crisis during which the AfD was a robust and effective advocate of the vaccine skeptics. The Damocles sword of the German intelligence services hangs over the party (Hartleb, 2020) threatening

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banishment though this seems ultimately unlikely based on past precedent of the German court. In the public debate, the AfD is perceived as the darker side of the German Berlin Republic which has forcefully and relentlessly turned the consensus model of the Bonn and Berlin Republics upside down. The AfD is not likely to win dramatic power at a state or federal level but will remain structurally anchored within the east, something in line with the [party’s performance there in 2021] Bundestag elections. It will nonetheless hold a powerful role as the veto player in eastern Germany compelling other parties take note (Decker & Ruhose, 2021, p. 135). The latest debates about gender, racism and the general moral conditions of Germany are likely to be dramatically exposed to even sharper divisions during the new era of a post-Merkel SPD, FDP, Green governing coalition. This may serve to ensure that no further room remains for a radical right-populist party emerging as “Prolocutors” within the east. Indeed the accompanying consequences of an immigrant society facing pressures from increased immigration will ensure this outcome. However, it is important to note the AfD energizes and inspires a palpable nostalgic moment across Germany for imagined simpler times of the former Bonn Republic as well as a German Democratic Republic (GDR). In addition, the tie to the west, at one time the central branding nub of the Federal Republic of Germany, has lost significantly lost much of its appeal. A few enduring foundations of the Bonn Republic, such as coming to terms with the past, the European Union and the integration power of an immigration country serve to challenge the AfD for some time to come. And, so the disruption to the party system engendered by the inherent anti-system threat of the AfD and its ability to counter the other mainstream parties has not yet run its course. A new East–West divide may be a plausible scenario which has been further institutionalized as a result of the 2021 federal elections. The AfD could remain as a permanent feature in Eastern Germany (with the focus of specific rural regions in South Saxony and South Thuringia); yet, it could also disappear in some Western “Länder” (as the result in 2021 already has indicated). This leads to a deeper reflection about some late frustrations and dissolution with the German unification process especially in certain regions. The more the feeling of being second-class-citizen persists within the east, the more the door is open for populism. In this sense, the AfD could follow the example of the PDS and become a permanent feature in Eastern Germany and the Bundestag. The strategy of ostracizing and isolating the

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AfD employed by the established parties in the federal legislative chamber makes it much less likely that the AfD will follow the normalization route toward coalition membership at the state and federal level. In any case, the AfD will be in historical annals interpreted as a negative post-syndrome of the German unification process and a symbol of radicalization, especially in Saxony and Thuringia. This is likely to be further assumed in light of the pandemic which has sparked the rise of voices depicting the state and federal governments as autocratic powers draining the oxygen of popular democracy from the German republic, in effect serving to legitimatize the coarser edges of the AfD’s political impact. Under the light of the war from Russia in 2022 the close ties of the AfD could also be questioned.

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in Die Deutschen Landtage. Zeitschrift Für Parlamentsfragen, 51(3), 622– 638. Maurer, M., & Jost, P. (2020). Das Ende der Debattenkultur? Wie Die AfD Negativität Und Inzivilität in Den Bundestag Trägt Und Wie Die Anderen Parteien Darauf Reagieren. Zeitschrift Für Politik, 67 (4), 473–490. Medina Serrano, J. C. et al. (2019). The Rise of Germany’s AfD: A Social Media Analysis. 10th International Conference on Social Media and Society. Möllemann, J. (2003). Klartext. Für Deutschland. Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government & Opposition, 39(3), 541–263. Olsen, J. (2018). The left party and the AfD. German Politics and Society, 36(1), 70–83. Patzelt, W. J. (2018). Mängel in der Responsivität oder Störungen in der Kommunikation? Deutschlands Repräsentationslücke Und Die AfD. Zeitschrift Für Parlamentsfragen, 49, 885–895. Pedahzur, A., & Brichta, A. (2002). The Institutionalization of extreme rightwing charismatic parties: A paradox? Party Politics, 8(1), 31–49. Pesthy, M., Mader, M., & Schoen, H. (2021). Why is the AfD so successful in Eastern Germany? An analysis of the ideational foundations of the AfD vote in the 2017 federal election. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 62, 69–91. Rütters, P. (2020). Die AfD in den Parlamenten—die zweite Runde. Zeitschrift Für Parlamentsfragen, 51(3), 597–621. Sarrazin, T. (2010). Deutschland schafft sich ab. Deutsche Verlags Anstalt. Schäfer, M., & Hartleb, F. (2022). Searching for the philosopher’s stone. Counter-strategies against populism. In M. Oswald (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Populism (pp. 665–685). Palgrave Macmillan. Taguieff, P.-A. (2002). L’illusion populiste. Éditions Berg International. Tauber, P. (2014, September 6). AfD wird den Weg der Piraten gehen. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/tau ber-afd-wird-den-weg-der-piraten-gehen-13138473.html. Accessed on 4 July 2021. Vehrkamp, Robert (2019, March): A conflict line through Germany or a new East-West divide? Policy Paper. Bertelsmann-Stiftung. https://www.bertel smann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/GrauePublikationen/ ZD_Einwurf_3_2019_EN.pdf. Accessed on 4 July 2021. Vorländer, H., et al. (2018). PEGIDA and New Right-wing Populism in Germany. Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 9

The Reluctant Modernizer: Gender Equality in Unified Germany Sabine Lang

Introduction In 2021, Angela Merkel stepped down as the leader of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) after 16 years as German chancellor, signaling she would not stand again for another term of office. Her departure marked the longest post-war tenure of a woman in a political leadership position in Europe. Having a powerful woman chancellor suggested to many observers that Germany was on an upward track to gender equality in politics, the economy, and society. And indeed, under Merkel’s leadership and during different coalition governments, Germany saw a substantial rise in women’s labor market participation, increased investment in child- and elderly care, as well as heightened

S. Lang (B) University of Washington, Seattle, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_9

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attention to women’s participation in public administration and political office (Ahrens et al., 2022; Davidson-Schmich, 2016; Lang, 2017; Mushaben, 2017; Henninger & von Wahl, 2014). Thirty years after unification, Germany appears to have shed its traditional image as a stronghold for male-breadwinner orientation and conservative-masculinist values. As European and global indices for measuring achievements in gender equality highlight, however, some legacies of German gendered society are not easy to undo. In 2019, Germany ranked 12th in the European Unions’ Gender Equality Index (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2019). This is the same rank that it held in 2005, when Merkel became chancellor. As Germany has increased its score, so have other EU countries—leaving Germany below the EU average, measured as aggregates of indicators in the areas of work, money, knowledge, time, power, and health. This “below average” gender performance appears to be primarily due to “regressions in the domains of knowledge and time” (EIGE, 2019, p. 1), with a particularly stark gender gap in the areas of education and care. The 2020 Global Gender Gap Index ranked Germany 103 of 153 countries in educational attainment overall (World Economic Forum, 2020, p. 12), despite a decline in the secondary education gender gap. But still, in 2019, about 41 percent of women students enrolled in tertiary education fields of humanities, art, health and welfare, and education—compared to only 17 percent of men. These decisions by women signal pathways into professional careers that offer less pay, albeit more flexibility and part-time options, than the career paths chosen by the vast majority of men. Women also still do the heavy lifting in care and housework, with 72 percent of women cooking and maintaining family for at least one hour a day versus 29 percent of men (EIGE, 2019, p. 2).1 Thus, the project of transforming a longstanding conservative gender regime is far from being completed. The year 2020 marked not only thirty years of German unification and Merkel’s announcement to not opt for a 5th term, it will also be remembered as a year of multiple crises with gendered impact. As COVID-19 ravaged human lives across the globe, it challenged professional care workers—the majority of them being women—, and it reprivatized gender relations, in the process threatening to reformat divisions of labor and re-traditionalize women’s roles in caring for children and the sick 1 This particular gender gap will most likely appear to have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/21.

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(Kohlrausch & Zucco, 2020). The year 2020 will also be recalled as the year in which for the first time a German Land government (Thuringia) was on the verge of governing with support of the right-wing reactionary Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). If not for a massive public outcry and protests from other parties, this AfD-tolerated government would have signaled a “Dammbruch” (a breaking dam) in German parties’ insistence on not cooperating with the AfD, a party notorious for its anti-gender mobilizations. Also, in 2020, Angela Merkel’s heir-apparent Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, after winning the race for CDU leadership against three male rivals, decided to step down as party leader following a failed attempt to foster unity among the post-Merkel fractions within the CDU. While COVID-19, the threat of an AfD-tolerated Land government and what it might signal to other Länder, and the failed attempt to secure continuous female leadership in the CDU negatively impacted the German gender equality balance, these crises might also have had some unintended positive effects in renewing public awareness of how fragile advances in the gender arena are. COVID-19 brought the question of gendered care back into public debate. Right-wing threats against women and the AfD’s marketing of anti-gender ideology might have, in effect, led democratic German parties to renew their commitment to addressing gender inequalities. And Kramp-Karrenbauer’s goodbye present to her party was an initiative to introduce a 50 percent quota in the CDU’s nominations for mandates and offices. Assessing gender politics in Germany three decades after unification thus presents a mixed landscape of achievements, continuing challenges, and the threat of backsliding. This chapter identifies three periods of German post-unification gender politics in which different political challenges informed particular initiatives and outcomes in the gender equality arena. Thematically, these demarcate three phases of (1) East–West consolidation, (2) Domestic and EU-level economic and social investment pressures, and (3) dual-track mobilizations for parity and equality. To be clear, I offer this periodization for systematic reasons only. None of the primary challenges of these three periods have been completely resolved. Put together, per my argument, they serve as pillars of Germany’s post-unification gender equality architecture. The first period, in the 1990s, saw an emphasis on unifying East and West, leading to gender-friendly policies that were influenced more strongly by the GDR legacy than has been previously acknowledged

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(Lang, 2017). During the second period from 2000 to about 2015— starting with the Schröder government and since 2005 under Merkel’s leadership—Germany increasingly shed its traditional image of a malebreadwinner society by way of investing in women as workers (Ahrens & Scheele, 2022). In this social investment era, Social Democrats made a focus on women palatable to their CDU coalition partner with policy initiatives aimed at de-gendering education, advancing women in careers, and flanking these human capital investments with an increased focus on childcare and care policies more generally. Substantive changes also resulted from EU-level pressures to remedy longstanding non-compliance with several EU gender directives, leading to the adoption of the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG) in 2006.2 The third phase, starting roughly with Merkel’s 2015 “Wir schaffen das ” refugee leadership and her 4th tenure, saw increasing mobilizations for gender parity in political representation and in higher management in the business sector while continuing direct and indirect investments in women’s labor market participation. The 2016 Corporate Board Quota Law and the 2017 Pay Transparency Act, as well as two Land-level Parity Laws in Thuringia and Brandenburg were signature legislative initiatives of this period, promoted by networks of women parliamentarians, women in business and parity activists in NGOs and the media. At the same time, concerns about re-traditionalization of gender relations during the pandemic were on the rise, and the Corporate Board Quota Law in particular faced criticism for its middle- and upper-middle-class orientation that in effect sidelined intersectional and economic inequalities. This chapter will address each of these periods in turn, with a focus on central gender policies, main actors, and outcomes for gender equality. I will summarize the argument with an outlook on the future of gender equality in Germany after the Merkel era.

2 The AGG in fact implements four EU Directives: the 2000 Racial Equality Directive, the 2000 Employment Equality Directive, the 2002 Employment Gender Equality Directive, and the 2004 Gender Equality Directive for goods and services.

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The 1990s: Unifying Two Gendered States The task of unifying two very differently gendered states strengthened women’s equality demands that—until then—had lacked political commitment in West Germany.3 On the one side of the former iron curtain, women had—albeit primarily as a result of economic needs and not out of parity concerns—been fully integrated into the workforce, had operated cranes, driven lorries, and achieved university degrees on a similar scale and across a similar spectrum of academic fields and employment sectors as men. Comprehensive childcare and special arrangement for students with children flanked a system in which fulltime work was the norm for women. On the other side of the Wall, in the FRG, the stay-at-home wife and mother norm had been slowly eroding since the 1980s (Ferree, 2012). Here, women encountered a deeply gendered labor market and a state that de facto de-incentivized women combining employment and motherhood by providing half-day childcare at most and offering tax breaks to families where one partner—most commonly the wife—earned little or nothing.4 After the fall of the wall, feminists from both sides argued intensely about the implications of the two gender regimes for women’s equality. Some saw the major difference between western women’s dependence on their husbands and eastern women’s dependence on the state along a private–public dimension, arguing that the FRG nurtured private patriarchy while the GDR relied on public patriarchy (Ferree, 1996). In contrast, East German feminist researchers argued that GDR women had shed neither public nor private patriarchy: While fully participating in the labor market, they were also shouldering the majority of housework and remained primary caregivers, thus carrying a triple burden (Dölling, 1991). In 1989, employment rates for women in the GDR were at 89 percent, compared to 55 percent in the FRG (Limbach, 1993, p. 7). Whereas East German women had been granted full constitutional and reproductive rights, West German activists around the time of unification

3 Data from this section is drawn from Lang (2017). 4 The so-called Ehegatten-Splitting (spousal income splitting) is still in effect in 2021,

allowing spouses to combine taxable income and thus offering incentives for women to have little or no income. The tax break gets higher with the magnitude of the difference in income between spouses.

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had only barely begun to see the state as an ally in their claims to gender equality. Unification provided the setting in which gender relations were debated and negotiated between East and West and where, contradicting the trope of West German hegemony, Eastern women’s voice and footprints were stronger than we might have seen initially (Lang, 2017). These debates took place across a broad scope of issues ranging from constitutional gender equality and the state’s active role in guaranteeing it, to women’s employment, childcare, and abortion rights. I have argued elsewhere that western feminists have long underestimated the impact of East German voices and policy legacies on post-unification debates and policy results (Lang, 2017). Without the inclusion of East German experiences and their resonance in public and parliamentary discourse, gender equality policy reforms in the 1990s would most certainly not have gained the same traction. The first and arguably the most central discursive space that opened up with unification concerned the reform of Article 3, Sect. 2 of the German Basic Law, stating in pre-unification text that “men and women are equal.” West German feminist scholars and activists had long argued that Art. 3(2) needed a more activist commitment from the state to work toward equality, instead of an apodictic claim that lacked evidence in women’s lives (“…are equal”). Revising Art. 3(2) signaled that the unifying process could potentially harbor the promise of a new gender contract (Gerhard, 1991). As parliament and citizens overwhelmingly opted for GDR accession under Art. 23 of the Basic Law instead of constituting a new unified German state under Art. 146, demands for inclusion of East Germans’ lived experiences in the unity project grew louder, and women’s experiences received particular attention. These demands were taken up in Art. 31 of the 1990 Unification Treaty, stating it to be “the task of the all-German legislator to develop further the legislation on equal rights for men and women” (Unification Treaty, 1990; para. 31). Considerable feminist mobilization from activists in the old and new Länder led to institutional uptake. The Joint Constitutional Assembly,5 which between 1991 and 1993 worked on several constitutional reform projects, indicated a willingness to reform Art. 3(2) and consulted extensively with legal scholars and gender advocates. Evidence 5 The Joint Constitutional Assembly consisted of members of both chambers of the German legislative, Bundestag and Bundesrat.

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that this was perceived to be a pressing issue was revealed when over 50 percent of all the submissions to the Assembly by citizens and civil society groups concerned gender equality. Nearly 100.000 women joined a public campaign demanding reform (Limbach, 1993, pp. 30–36). Angela Merkel, then Secretary for Family and Women in Helmut Kohl’s cabinet, had earlier supported the joint effort of the CDU Women’s Union and the Social Democrats in their attempt to achieve a stronger positive action commitment that read “In order to remedy existing inequalities, measures to advance women are possible” (Limbach, 1993, p. 15). This, however, turned out to be too radical to pass. In 1994, the Bundestag found a compromise, amending Art. 3(2) of the Basic Law with a two thirds majority to declare that “the state supports the actual achievement of equal rights for women and men and works toward the elimination of existing disadvantages.”6 Despite many activists at the time perceiving the compromise as a defeat, it turned out to be a door opener for substantial affirmative action policies over the following years. In effect, the Basic Law reform contributed to further hollowing out Germany’s traditional gender regime with its “equal but different” ideology and engrained social, economic, and political practices (MacRae, 2006). The 1990s also saw a substantial increase in the German gender equality machinery, amounting to one of the densest women’s policy infrastructures in Europe. Approximately 1900 gender or women’s equality officers organized in associations ranging from communal and local district officers to those in universities or hospitals to form dense networks of activists oriented toward policy intervention. Building on this continuously salient infrastructure (BMFSFJ, 2020), women’s networks lobbied fervently for reconciliation measures for family and employment. In 1996, Germany adopted historic legislation, granting the right to part-time, roughly four-hour, childcare for every pre-school child three years and older. As in the case of reforming the constitutional equality provision, without the legacies of East German reconciliation policies, this turn in unified Germany would have arguably taken much longer (see also Lang, 2017). It was the above-cited Art. 31 of the Unification Treaty that served as the backdrop for this momentum, stating that “in 6 Gesetz zur Änderung des Grundgesetzes 1994, BGBL I 3146. Artikel 3 (1) Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich. (2) Männer und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt. Der Staat fördert die tatsächliche Durchsetzung der Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Männern und wirkt auf die Beseitigung bestehender Nachteile hin.

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view of different legal and institutional starting positions with regard to the employment of mothers and fathers, it shall be the task of the allGerman legislature to shape the legal situation in such a way as to allow a reconciliation of family and work life” (Unification Treaty, 1990, para. 31). A few months before the Wall fell then family Minister Ursula Lehr had been criticized by members of her own party for “socialist meandering” toward the GDR when she presented her CDU colleagues with an initiative to increase childcare facilities for two-year-olds. (Galaktionow, 2014). Seven years later, public discourse surrounding the so-called raven mothers pushing their children out of the home and into childcare had largely disappeared. When Germany unified, 80 percent of East German children under six were fulltime in public childcare facilities, compared to only 21 percent of West German children. For children under 3 years, the discrepancy was even more striking: 62 percent of GDR children under three went to day care, but only 6 percent of West German children (Ostner et al., 2003, p. 14). Over the decade from 1990 to the millennium’s end, options for full-day care actually decreased in both the new and old Länder. This was largely an unintended effect of the 1996 law, as many Kindergartens converted fulltime day care slots into two halftime slots. In the new Länder, fulltime day care for children four to six years old decreased from 80 to 56 percent by 1999 (Ostner et. al., 2003, p. 14). Even though the policy initiative lacked expediency and implementation scrutiny, it did, over time, positively impact women’s ability to gain fulltime employment. The EU’s Barcelona Objectives7 in 2003 emphasized the centrality of childcare for women’s equality, paving the way for a second phase in German gender equality policies that focused on investing in women’s human capital from education to employment.

7 With the European Council meeting in Barcelona in 2002 and the passing of the Barcelona Objectives in 2003, the EU affirmed the necessity of member states providing accessible and affordable high-quality childcare to enable “women, and men, with caring responsibilities, to participate in the labour market” (European Commission, 2018, p. 1).

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The New Millennium: Investment in Women’s Human Capital The second phase in post-unification German gender equality can be labeled the “economic and social investment” period. During the first 15 years of the new millennium, consecutive governments focused on women’s education and labor market participation, as well as on support structures for women’s employment. Pressure mounted on Germany due to the EU’s Lisbon Strategy (2000) that targeted member states with reaching a 60 percent women’s employment rate by 2010. Adding momentum were the above-cited Barcelona Objectives of 2003, setting a standard for member states to offer high quality and affordable childcare for 90 percent of children between ages three and six as well as for 33 percent of children under the age of three. Gender-specific economic and social investment policy originated with the Social Democrats and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Hartz reforms. These reforms relied on an “activation” model of labor market policy and intended to raise employment, lower reliance on state benefits, and in the process activate groups that had been “distant” from labor market activity, namely women. The results of this “activation” for gender equality were ambiguous. As women’s employment increased, so did their reliance on part-time work, solidifying Germany’s position as one of the EU members with the highest share of women’s part-time employment. The Hartz reforms, moreover, resulted in an increase in the number of so-called Mini-jobs from 3.8 million in 1999 to 5.1 million in 2004—two thirds of mini-jobbers being women (Hobler et al., 2020). Merkel’s first government, and in particular her family minister Ursula von der Leyen, initiated “paradigmatic changes” in family policy to allow for infrastructure supporting women’s employment (Henninger & von Wahl, 2014, p. 386). In response to the Barcelona targets, the German Kinderförderungsgesetz (Kifög) in 2007 stipulated that 35 percent of children under three be guaranteed a crèche-place by 2013 (Sharma & Steiner, 2008).8 Generous parental allowance and so-called daddy months for fathers complemented the family modernization message with a clear focus on labor market participation. Given the historically conservative 8 This goal was ambitious and was not reached in 2013. The so-called care quota for children under 3 years crossed the 35 per cent threshold only in 2020 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2020).

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and male-breadwinner-oriented German gender regime, these policies were revolutionary in their modernizing intent (Clemens, 2009), and even more so since they were implemented by CDU/CSU led government coalitions. Economic, social, and political considerations intersected for Merkel’s governments: in addition to the “economic and social” investment paradigm, CDU and CSU needed to increase their appeal to urban and younger women voters (Henninger & von Wahl, 2014, p. 389; Och, 2018). Within Merkel’s party and in the CSU, this push to modernize gender relations did meet with some resistance. In order to appease more traditionalist constituencies, a heavily debated childcare subsidy for parents who do not put their child in childcare at 15 months was passed in 2013—infamously referred to as a “Herd-Prämie”, a stove bonus.9 As unified Germany charted its modernization course in gender equality, considerable differences remained between women in the old and new Länder. Life course decisions by women two decades after unification still looked harrowingly different between the former East and West (Bauer & Dähner, 2010). Whereas for women in the new Länder fulltime employment remained the norm, for women in the old Länder it was still the exception, especially during the family phase, when men as sole family breadwinners were still the norm (Bauer & Dähner, 2010). Among all employed women, those employed fulltime made up 52 percent in the new Länder and only 22 percent in the old Länder in 2008 (Bauer & Dähner, 2010, p. 13). Overall, in 2010 and five years into Merkel’s tenure, the employment rate of women with children in Germany was 18 percent lower than that of women without children (European Commission, 2013, p. 22), and this gap only narrowed during the next decade because more women took up part-time employment. In 2019, the German employment rate of people aged 20–64 was 76 percent for women and 84 percent for men (EIGE, 2019), with a gender pay gap of 20 percent. Here, again, new and old Länder expose different legacies, with the former posting a gender pay gap of only about 8 percent, the latter pf 23 percent (Ahrens & Scheele, 2022). Thus, as the economic and social investment paradigm upended the traditional male-breadwinner model, Germany in fact transitioned into a modernized breadwinner model (Botsch, 2015; Mantl, 2012). While it allows

9 The law was overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2015.

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for women to pursue education and careers independently, albeit at lower pay, than men, it incentivizes part-time work for women during the socalled family phase and invisibly cements the notion that men remain the main breadwinners over the life course. Beyond the focus on women’s employment and increased childcare, this second phase of post-unification gender equality policy also exposed rising polarization toward social modernization agendas. Increasing awareness and publicizing of sexual harassment and violence led to the creation of the hashtag #Aufschrei in 2013, foreshadowing the global #MeToo mobilizations of 2017 and onwards. Yet as these initiatives created awareness of lingering masculinist ideologies, they were also met with rising opposition. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) rendered public voice and a certain legitimacy to a massive spell of targeted misogynist anti-gender mobilizations. In 2015, the party launched a campaign to deride quota laws, followed by initiatives to abolish gender studies and gender-sensitive language. In addition to Euroscepticism and Islamophobia, the AfD created discursive space in German political culture for antifeminist mobilizations. Their presence in the Bundestag and in media contributed toward spikes in sexist personal attacks in the very chamber that is set to uphold the Basic Law (Der Spiegel, 2021). The AfD continues to undermine the tenets of German democratic culture by propagandizing anti-gender sentiments. In sum, compared to other EU member states, during this economic and social investment phase Germany’s performance on gender equality remained “mediocre” (Botsch, 2015). Pathbreaking policies upended the traditional breadwinner model, but only to replace it with an adaptive modernized version that cue women during family phase periods into part-time work. Limited effects of the #MeToo movement and the parallel rise of right-wing anti-gender rhetoric underscored the depth of cultural conservatism in German gender relations. As social investment in gender equality continued to facilitate progressive reforms, such as the pathbreaking law in 2018 that legalized the notion of a “third gender” by allowing for gender-neutral documentation at birth (von Wahl, 2019), polarization around the so-called “culture wars” of feminism increased.

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Dual-Track Gender Policy: Parity and Equality A third phase of the German gender equality regime, starting in about 2015, is characterized by a dual-track approach to advancing women: During this phase, several new laws provided stronger gender equality safeguards in economy and society—evidenced for an example by the 2017 Marriage Equality Act. Germany also saw increasing mobilizations for parity and a somewhat unexpected turn by CDU and CSU leadership to condone using quotas to achieve gender equality (Ahrens & Lang, 2022; Lang, 2018). Three sets of laws since 2015 have signaled what might be the end of the slow pace toward gender equality on the labor market, as CDU leadership under Merkel has come to acknowledge the trap of part-time employment for women in the modernized breadwinner model. After Merkel had resisted using quotas in the business sector for much of her tenure, she finally conceded that without regulations, the number of women in the corporate sector would not increase. The 2015 Corporate Board Gender Quota Act10 tackled “vertical segregation” in the German business sector by stipulating a compulsory 30 percent quota for the underrepresented sex in publicly traded companies or those subject to co-determination (Ahrens & Scheele, 2022). Even though the law only applies to 105 companies as of 2021, it has shown that within five years, women increased their share on these companies’ boards to more than 35 percent, up from 21 percent in 2015 (Ahrens & Scheele, 2022). The Corporate Quota Law, moreover, led to a 2021 revision that now includes quotas for executive boards, with a minimum requirement of one woman among every three executive board members (Briscoe, 2021). The 2017 Pay Transparency Act11 grants employees in companies with more than 200 workers the right to access comparative wage data, thereby providing instruments to address substantial gendered wage inequities. Finally, the 2019 Temporary Part-Time Act12 allows workers in companies with more than 45 employees to temporarily reduce their working hours for one to five years with a guarantee to return to their original hours. This CDU/SPD coalition project is geared toward preventing either women 10 Gesetz für die gleichberechtigte Teilhabe von Frauen und Männern an Führungspositionen. 11 Gesetz zur Förderung der Transparenz von Entgeltstrukturen. 12 Gesetz zur Weiterentwicklung des Teilzeitrechts—Einführung einer Brückenteilzeit.

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or men being stuck in part-time work after a family phase. Taken together, these laws signal a renewed government investment in using Art. 3 (2) to actively promote gender equality. These laws also increased the call for parity, defined as equal representation of women across social, cultural, political, and economic sectors. Parity initiatives, as well as advocating for the use of quotas to advance women professionally, have become contagious, spreading from politics to the media sector, to theater companies, movie production, and leadership in the medical profession. In 2020, under the Hashtag #Ichwill, actress and gender lobbyist Maria Furtwängler rallied high-profile German women leaders to demand a quota “in all socially relevant areas” to increase the number of women, particularly in leadership positions.13 Parity initiatives have also gained particular traction in politics amidst concerns about backsliding in women’s representation (Abels & Cress, 2019). Between 2013 and 2017, women’s share in the Bundestag declined from 36.3 to 30.9 percent. And even though it climbed again to 34.8% after the 2021 election, there appears to be an invisible glass ceiling for descriptive representation of women at about one-third of electoral bodies. A similar trend occurred on the Land level. Between 2009 and 2019, parliamentary representation of women declined in eight German Bundesländer. On average, women in Land level parliaments constitute 29.9 percent of members, ranging from a low 24.5 percent in BadenWürttemberg to 40 percent in Bremen in 2019 (BMBFSJ, 2020, p. 8). Even though the majority of German parties employ some form of voluntary quotas for electoral list composition, these are neither sufficient nor a good fit with German electoral systems. Both the federal and most Land level elections employ a mixed-member proportional system in which directly elected candidates feature centrally in parliamentary composition (Ahrens et al., 2020; Lang & Ahrens, 2020). Even compulsory zippers for list candidacies, however, are highly contentious. Two 2019 Landlevel Parity Laws in Thuringia and Brandenburg, requiring gender parity on party candidate lists, were declared unconstitutional by respective Länder Constitutional Courts. As of October 2020, parties in another ten German Bundesländer had announced legislative parity initiatives (EAF, 2020). Amidst pressure on the Electoral Reform Commission, led by 13 See Swaantje M. & Manon P. (2020, October). Weil wir es können und weil wir es wollen. FAZ . Access at https://www.faz.net/aktuell/stil/trends-nischen/prominentein-ichwill-kamapagne-fuer-mehr-teilhabe-von-frauen-17004681.html.

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Wolfgang Schäuble, a decision on if and how to include parity concerns in a future electoral system was handed off to the SPD/Green/Liberal coalition government. Thus, in combination with quota debates reaching wider public audiences and recognition, mobilization for altering the German gender equality regime has picked up pace across economic and political sectors. It appears that gender equality initiatives running on the dual track of parity and equality might be the strategy for the near future, with even some center-right CDU and CSU sections starting to embrace Merkel’s modernization course. While it is unclear if the CDU will adopt a 50 percent quota for list candidacies at their next party convention, it can hardly remain deaf to their former Chancellor, who, in 2020, explicitly set parity as the main gender equality goal.

Conclusion: Gender Equality in the Post-Merkel Era I have argued in this chapter that three phases of gender politics in postunification Germany support a modernization narrative that encompasses substantial achievements as well as continuous challenges, but also harbors serious threats of backsliding. Legacies of the post-unification era, and in particular the GDR standard of combining fulltime employment for women with comprehensive childcare, bolstered the social and economic investment approach in women early in this millennium. This led to the acknowledgment of dual parity and equality concerns across a wider spectrum of society and parties than ever before. As Germany’s global gender equality image remains “mediocre” and headlines such as “Why does Germany make so little room for working moms?”14 still abound in 2021, Germany’s path from a modernized breadwinner model to a more gender equal society remains rocky. Combined parliamentary and civil society mobilizations have in recent years generated new momentum for a gender equal and gender-sensitive twenty-first-century gender regime. During most of Angela Merkel’s four tenures as German chancellor, she “led from behind” in gender equality matters, perfecting a style of passive facilitation behind the scenes rather than actively engaging in

14 Access at https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0923/Why-does-Ger many-make-so-little-room-for-working-moms 2/6/2021.

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claims-making on behalf of women (Ahrens et al., 2022). It was primarily her Social Democratic coalition partner that put labor market investment and quota initiatives for women on the political agenda. Only during her 4th tenure period did Merkel abandon her longstanding cautious selfdistancing from feminism, declaring parity to be the goal for the future and gender quotas to be an apparently necessary mechanism to achieve it. At the same time, the presence of a right-wing reactionary party in the Bundestag has altered the climate for gender parity and threatens to lead to more public acceptance of sexist and misogynist displays. In a 2021 survey of women parliamentarians in the Bundestag, 61 percent identified current social developments as indicating a backlash for women and their freedoms (Der Spiegel, 2021). 69 percent receive misogynist hate mail and half of the respondents had to involve the parliamentary administration or the police to address security concerns (Der Spiegel, 2021). The presence of the AfD in parliaments of Bund, Länder, and districts legitimizes anti-gender speech and defames gender equality policy; its presence in media and social networks adds to fears of potential backsliding. Rising resistance against parity initiatives on the federal and Land levels also indicate that the era of modernizing German gender policy “from behind” (Ahrens et al., 2022) could have run its course. Accomplishments, however, are difficult to scale back. Germany, moreover, needs women’s participation in the economy and politics for the massive demographic and social challenges ahead. But whether successful parity initiatives will lead to a stronger gender equality focus within Germany’s modernized male-breadwinner society remains an open question.

Literature Abels, G., & Cress, A. (2019). Vom Kampf ums Frauenwahlrecht zur Parité: Politische Repräsentation von Frauen Gestern und Heute. Zeitschrift Für Parlamentsfragen, 50 Ahrens, P., Ayoub, P., & Lang, S. (2022). Leading from behind. Angela Merkel’s transformation in regard to gender politics. German Politics, 31(1), 1–19. Ahrens, P., Chmilewski, K., Lang, S., & Sauer, B. (2020). Gender equality in politics: Implementing party quotas in Germany and Austria. Springer. Ahrens, P., & Lang, S. (2022). Angela Merkel and the CDU quota curse.German Politics, 31(1), 40–58. Ahrens, P. & Scheele, A. (2022). Game-changers for Gender Equality on Germany’s Labour Market? Corporate Board Quotas, Pay Transparency and Temporary Part-Time Work. German Politics, 31(1), 157–176.

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Bauer, U., & Dähner, S. (2010). Das volle Leben! Frauenkarrieren in Ostdeutschland. Frauen Machen Neue Länder. Retrieved from https://www.frauenmac henneuelaender.de/documents/5728034/5974486/fmnl_studie_lang2010. pdf/05920b0f-4bf6-429d-a759-096f4af1f651 BMFSFJ—Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend. (2020). 4. Atlas zur Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern in Deutschland. Access at https://www.bmfsfj.de/blob/160308/73cf50519fdd0b72be8bc e59a041079b/4--atlas-zur-gleichstellung-von-frauen-und-maennern-in-deu tschland-broschuere-data.pdf Botsch, E. (2015). The policy on gender equality in Germany. European Parliament. Retrieved from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etu des/IDAN/2015/510025/IPOL_IDA(2015)510025_EN.pdf Briscoe, A. (2021, January 11). Germany drafts law introducing quota for women on executive boards. Jurist. Retrieved from https://www.jurist.org/news/ 2021/01/germany-moves-towards-quota-for-women-company-boards/ Clemens, C. (2009). Modernisation or disorientation? Policy change in Merkel’s CDU. German Politics, 18(2), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/096440 00902870859 Davidson-Schmich, L. K. (2016). Gender quotas and democratic participation: Recruiting candidates for elective offices in Germany. University of Michigan Press. Der Spiegel. (2021, February 12). Frauenfeindlichkeit im Bundestag durch AfD gestiegen. Spiegel Politik. Access at https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutsc hland/bundestag-frauenfeindlichkeit-durch-afd-gestiegen-a-4c8c425c-6b084ac5-b049-61ad65d1240c Dölling, I. (1991). Between hope and helplessness: Women in the GDR after the “turning point.” Feminist Review, 39(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr. 1991.36 EAF – Europäische Akademie für Frauen. (2020). Gesetzesinitiativen in den Bundesländern. Frauen Macht Politik. Retrieved from https://www.frauenmacht-politik.de/gesetzesinitiativen-in-den-bundeslaendern/ European Institute for Gender Equality. (2019). Gender Equality Index 2019: Germany. Access at https://eige.europa.eu/publications/gender-equalityindex-2019-germany European Commission. (2013). Barcelona Objectives: The development of childcare facilities for young children in Europe with a view to sustainable and inclusive growth. Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved from https:// ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/130531_barcelona_en_0.pdf European Commission. (2018). Barcelona Objectives on the development of childcare facilities for young children with a view to increase female labour participation, strike a work-life balance for working parents and bring about

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sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe (the “Barcelona objectives”). European Union. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/bcn_ objectives-report2018_web_en.pdf Ferree, M. M. (1996). Sociological perspectives on gender in Germany. Women in German Yearbook, 12, 27–38. Ferree, M. M. (2012). Varieties of feminism: German gender politics in global perspective. Stanford University Press. Galaktionow, B. (2014, November 10). Kinderkrippen vor und nach dem Mauerfall. Vom Schreckensbild zum Zukunftsmodell. Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved from http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/kinderkrippen-vor-undnach-dem-mauerfall-vom-schreckensbild-zum-zukunftsmodell-1.2213149 Gerhard, U. (1991). Einleitung. Feministische Studien, 9(s1), 3–6. https://doi. org/10.1515/fs-1991-s102 Henninger, A., & von Wahl, A. (2014). Grand coalition and multi-party competition: Explaining slowing reforms in gender policy in Germany (2009– 2013). German Politics, 23(4), 386–399. https://doi.org/10.1080/096 44008.2014.984695 Henninger, A., & von Wahl, A. (2018). This train has left the station: The German gender equality regime on Course towards a social democratic model (2013–2017). German Politics, 28(3), 462–481. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09644008.2018.1551484 Hobler, D., Pfahl, S., & Schubert, L. (2020). Minijobs als einzige Erwerbstätigkeit 2004—2019. WSI Gender Daten Portal. Access at https://www. wsi.de/data/wsi_gdp_2020-09-14_EA-Verhältnis-03 Kohlrausch, B., & Zucco, A. (2020, November 24). Was bedeutet die Corona Pandemie für die Gleichstellung zwischen Mann und Frau? WSI Blog-Serie zu den Folgen der Pandemie. Access at https://www.wsi.de/de/blog-17857was-bedeutet-die-corona-pandemie-fur-die-gleichstellung-zwischen-mannund-frau-28569.htm Lang, S. (2017). Gender equality in post-unification Germany: Between GDR legacies and EU-Level pressures. German Politics, 26(4), 556–573. https:// doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2017.1365842 Lang, S. (2018). Gender quotas in Germany: Diffusion, derailment, and the quest for parity democracy. In E. Lépinard & R. M. Rubio (Eds.), Transforming gender citizenship: The irresistible rise of gender quotas in Europe (pp. 279–307). Cambridge University Press. Lang, S., & Ahrens, P. (2020). Paritätsgesetz oder Wahlrechtsreform? Warum Deutschland beides braucht. In S. Berghahn & U. Schultz (Eds.), Rechtshandbuch für Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragte. Dashöfer. Limbach, J. (1993). Frauenrechte im Grundgesetz des geeinten Deutschland. In M. Eckertz-Höfer, (Ed.), Nomos.

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MacRae, H. (2006). Rescaling gender relations: The influence of European directives on the German gender regime. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 13(4), 522–550. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/ jxl009 Mantl, E. (2012). Modernisiertes Ernährermodell : Teilzeit für die Frau, Vollzeit für den Mann. Zukunftsfähiger Trend für eine gelingende Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie? Kompetenzebüro für Familie, Demografie und Gleichstellung. Access at https://www.elisabeth-mantl.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/ 12/Teilzeit_Fakten_und_Zahlen.pdf Mushaben, J. M. (2017). Becoming madam chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin republic. Cambridge University Press. Och, M. (2018). Conservative feminists? An exploration of feminist arguments in parliamentary debates of the bundestag1. Parliamentary Affairs, 72(2), 353–378. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsy016 Ostner, I., Reif M., Schmitt, C., & Turba H. (2003). Family policies in Germany. Access at https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10. 1.1.632.3350&rep=rep1&type=pdf Sharma, M. R., & Steiner, M. (2008). Dossier: Ausweitung der Kinderbetreuung – Kosten, Nutzen, Foinanzierung. BMFSFJ. Access at https://www. bmfsfj.de/blob/93556/e71785b2ad4b70362cb956de7011ae88/dossier-aus bau-der-kinderbetreuung-data.pdf Statistisches Bundesamt. (2020). Betreuungsquote der unter 3-jährigen Kinder auf 35,0% gestiegen. Access at https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemit teilungen/2020/09/PD20_380_225.html;jsessionid=25D0494733EB9F0 8581A21859206FF45.internet741 Unification Treaty (August 31, 1990). BHDI . Retrieved from http://germanhis torydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=550 von Wahl, A. (2019). From object to subject: Intersex activism and the rise and fall of the gender binary in Germany. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxz044 World Economic Forum. (2020). Global gender gap report 2020. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf

CHAPTER 10

The Götterdämmerung of the Nation Brand: German Identity After 30 years of Unification Felix Philipp Lutz

Introduction: Why Germany Is a Brand? Governments around the world increasingly cultivate their country’s image. There are obvious reasons for this. Nation branding means applying corporate branding techniques to countries to attract tourists and foreign investments, increase trade relations with other countries, forge alliances in international organizations and attract the best minds to bolster the workforce. Governments employ advertising agencies and public relations firms to propagate a specific, attractive, conflict-free and appealing image of their own country abroad. They project an image that serves very specific purposes. The range of such activities can be described by terms such as advertising, marketing, branding, image work, public

F. P. Lutz (B) Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_10

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relations and propaganda. The transitions between legitimate public relations of a government and the targeted dissemination of falsehoods are fluid. The easiest way to recognize such lies and propaganda, however, is to see how great the difference is between the content conveyed and the tangible everyday reality of people or the government’s policies in a country. Many countries actively roll out their propaganda machine to embellish their regimes and thus try to manipulate their image worldwide and improve their reputation. In this context, public and private interests overlap in different areas. Liberal, democratic governments in countries where freedom of expression, movement and economic freedom are guaranteed, cooperate with private actors, even abroad, in order to gain diplomatic and economic advantages. Authoritarian states do not grant citizens these freedoms but also rely on communicative measures to influence public opinion in other countries. In this process, facts are often distorted, completely suppressed or denied. Such propaganda constructs Potemkin villages, projecting beautiful landscapes inhabited by happy locals and tourists simulating a reality limited only to certain geographical areas and social groups. Brands are actively shaped by various stakeholders, forming the subjective image of a product—in this case, a country. Stakeholders include business enterprises, federal states and regions, individuals and, of course, the government and its personnel. The nation brand of Germany is thus composed as the sum of positive and negative subjective facts, opinions and experiences that people relate to Germany. By focusing on the political and social sphere (rather than FDI and market shares), this paper shows how the term “brand” can be used synonymously with the term identity. Then, very different policy areas and output areas of the economic and political system in Germany can be described and analyzed. Current approaches and studies under the heading of nation branding, however, focus on economic aspects and neglect real living conditions, freedoms and developmental opportunities available to people (Anholt, 2018; De Chernatony, 2015; Dinnie, 2015). As far as reputation or ease of doing business are not endangered, investors are served well, and the indicators are useful for propaganda purposes. However, they ignore important factors such as attitudes and values of the people and the state of the political culture. China as an example illustrates this well: It explains why China can be ranked 8th among the 100 soft power nations in the Global Soft Power Index in 2021. “We define soft power as a nation’s

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ability to influence the preferences and behaviours of various actors in the international arena (States, Corporations, Communities, Publics, etc.) through attraction or persuasion rather than coercion” (Brand Finance, 2021). The term soft power in the Brand Finance Report, therefore is confusing. The study does not answer the question of how many countries and their citizens would actually follow China voluntarily and out of conviction in implementing Chinas strategic power ambitions, or how many people would like to live under the oppressive regime. After all, one central characteristic of soft power is the attractiveness of a country to potential immigrants as Brand Finance itself defines it. Joseph Nye’s definition of soft power shows that American soft power is based on the attractiveness of its culture and its value-based policies, rather than on economic criteria such as favorable tax rates and investment opportunities (Nye, 2004). According to Simon Anholt (2018), Germany reaches the peak of its soft power, whenever America does not take first place. In Germany, relative to other countries, there is consistency between values such as freedom, justice and equality with people’s current living conditions. Germany’s economic success, social peace and social security radiate far beyond its borders and ensure that many migrants from different countries cite Europe, but especially Germany, as an immigration destination. This essay does not focus on economic, tourism- or FDI-oriented nation branding approaches, nor does it offer an analysis of strategies of authoritarian states. Rather, it summarizes and offers an overview of the political-cultural development of Germany across the thirty years since reunification. I am therefore using “brand” as a lens of investigation because it allows very different fields of politics to be combined and explored under one concept. At the same time, it allows an important element of psychological brand research to illuminate the emotional component of politics. The following evaluation of Germany from a brand point of view after reunification takes a twofold approach. First, I will sketch out some elements of Germany’s image by looking at clichés, evaluations, judgments and overall impressions about Germany from outside. How do people from other nations view Germany? What are the most obvious and ubiquitous clichés? What then follows is an overview of opinions, attitudes and policy elements with regard to Germans and Germany that relate to the political system, their democratic values, satisfaction with policies

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and their private life. The paper carefully looks at specific areas of political culture that define the Berlin Republic thirty years after unification. Among the themes and areas scrutinized are the historical consciousness of Germans, anti-Semitism and right-wing orientations, foreign policy orientations and the debate on Germany and immigration. This overall approach allows for general overview and evaluation of different elements that forge the German brand.

The Constitution of the Brand: Trust A brand is that which denotes a product, service or company. A brand uses a symbol, colors, cues, music, stories and other elements to specifically characterize the object and differentiate it from other products or services in the same category. A brand delivers promise of consistency in a product, quality or service, any time, any place it is sold. “A brand is a set of associations linked to a name, mark, or symbol associated with a product or service” (Calkins, 2005, p. 1). A brand can be many things: a product, a service, a person, a soccer club or even a place and also a country or region. A brand is the sum of shared opinions and impressions and what benefit it has for people or one’s own group. A brand is as much about buyer trust as it is about the promise of brand performance. Any brand is meant to create loyalty to the product in order to meet sales expectations. Brands have become more than just a name, symbol or sign representing a specific product or service. A brand firmly anchored in the consciousness, or on the shopping list of consumers, exists because trust is bestowed by the buyer upon the product. Trust as the basic and most important feature of a brand is developed over time, sometimes over generations of users and buyers. What we call trust has a neurobiological correlate within our body. Trust correlates—among others things—with the neurotransmitter oxytocin responsible for that cozy feeling, and other behaviors like cooperating and bonding. Citizens’ trust in the brand Germany means that basic expectations of the community, of governments and parliaments, of institutions and public officials are continually fulfilled. Trust is extended to all institutions, functioning procedures, officials who act in a predictable manner and also in the infrastructure of a country. A railroad bridge must be safe; citizens assume this in their everyday lives. But trust is engendered and expected in shared values that determine people’s self-image and become the basis for expected actions and reactions in everyday life.

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Luhmann (2009) sees trust as a mechanism to reduce social complexity and thereby make people capable of acting in their environment. From the point of view of the concept of the brand, trust stands as an advance payment and consideration of the citizen in the always same expected performance of the product. In terms of the state, this means that citizens give their consent in the form of political participation, willingness to pay taxes, etc., as long as the state institutions fulfill their performance promise. This idea of state value comprises a wide range of elements. These include: The personal security of citizens, guaranteed by the police internally and the army externally; economic and cultural freedom; freedom of expression and of the press; and freedom of movement and settlement. The value proposition of the German brand can be gleaned from the Basic Law, the programs of the political parties, the government programs of each federal government since 1949, the countless statements of politicians and, among other things, also the case law and the justifications of the Federal Constitutional Court and other judicial bodies.

Overview: The Subjective German Brand Image Every brand is constituted by facts and opinions, clichés, prejudices, assumptions and experiences. In addition, these are influenced by peer groups, the observer’s own milieu and cultural environment, the generally prevailing “zeitgeist” and many other factors. This multiplicity of influences means that the origin of a brand and its constitution cannot be clearly established. In the case of Germany as a brand, this is further complicated by the fact that Germany’s Nazi-history always plays a special role. The brand Germany will forever be associated with the Holocaust and World War II started by the Nazi regime. Nazi soldiers dressed in gray or black uniforms have become symbols and global iconographic archetypes of evil. The range of topics that are included in the “Brand Image Germany” and thus constitute the brand’s core in the eyes of the people of many countries is therefore correspondingly broad. Specific characteristics and virtues are attributed to Germany and its people by citizens of other nations. These include the myth of German Engineering, which imputes that Germans are particularly competent in technical fields. A very important component of this category is German car manufacturing. Germany is the only country in the world where

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there is no general speed limit on the superhighways (Autobahn), and German carmakers use this to promote their cars as “autobahn-proof”. The German government has turned Germany’s highways into a brand of its own by introducing an Autobahn GmbH setup specifically to look after the highways. This image of technology also includes mechanical engineering in general and goods such as the German Leopard tank. Made in Germany as a brand has been cultivated as a sign of quality for more than 100 years and is supposed to stand for high technical competence, quality and reliability. German music, philosophy and literature are important factors in the world’s perception of Germany. Composers such as Richard Wagner, Beethoven and Bach have become global cultural assets and even brands of their own that stand for Germany through their worldwide presence. Wagner is a special case because of his anti-Semitism and the fact that Hitler and many Nazis embraced and extolled his music. Still Wagner—because of his music—appears mostly in a positive light in the perceptions of his contemporary audiences. Positive prejudices about Germans continue to include the assumption that Germans are well educated and cultivated. It follows that the former US President Barack Obama cited Germany’s dual education system as a role model for America in his election campaign in 2012. The idea of the German genius is at the heart of American and foreign admiration (Watson, 2010). Famous and infamous people play a considerable role in Germany’s image. Angela Merkel was often seen as the guiding figure of Western democracies, especially after America abandoned its claim to moral leadership under Donald Trump’s administration (Pew Research Center, 2020). However, Adolf Hitler also remains a prominent German who stands worldwide as the incarnation of evil and for the crimes of Nazi Germany. Famous musicians, scientists such as Albert Einstein, Humboldt, Leibniz, philosophers such as Kant and Hegel among many others are partly more or less known abroad, all contribute to the overall image—in a positive or negative way—of the country at home and abroad. The attribution of specific competencies and character traits of a country and its people is a common phenomenon. Germans are generally considered abroad to be hardworking, reliable, reserved, technically oriented and overall rather boring. Germans see themselves as dutiful, disciplined, orderly, hardworking, parsimonious, clean and responsible (Köcher, 2009). American elites’ view of Germans likewise emphasizes these virtues. In a qualitative survey of German and American

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foreign policy elites conducted by the author of this essay from 2009 to 2018, questions were asked about prejudices and stereotypes. Americans believed that certain assumptions about Germans and their character trades relating to discipline, diligence, reliability and efficiency play a positive role in foreign policy. On the negative side American elites were not sure whether Germans can be trusted in case of another economic crisis. They also attributed socialist tendencies and an “Untertanenmentalitaet ” to the Germans. The overall image of the Germans remained—at least in the United States—a positive one (Lutz, 2014). Another important factor in the formation of a country’s image is the perception of the policies of the respective government. Policy contents of different governments combine to form a real or even apparent pattern. Germany’s environmental policy, social policy, foreign policy and economic policy, develop a life of their own and thereby shape external perceptions. In America, after the financial crisis of 2008–2009, Germany was often portrayed as a role model because of its economic policies, low unemployment and minimal impact on financial institutions. In various campaign speeches, as noted above, then-President Barack Obama had repeatedly presented Germany as a role model for the United States, especially in social policy areas related to the German dual education system, health policy and universal health insurance and environmental policy. However, a country’s history and people’s own experiences are particularly important for its image. Thus, Germany’s image will always be inextricably linked with National Socialism and the Holocaust. Positive assessments of Germany’s coming to terms with the past are certainly also part of this. For each individual American, Frenchman, Englishman or Pole, the sum of these elements contributes to a specifically subjective image of Germany, which, depending on the observer’s level of knowledge and experience, will have either much or little to do with the actual reality in the country. The classification into these categories and the description of the brand image of Germany based on this classification often has nothing to do with the everyday life of people in Germany.

Trust and Democracy For decades, the US government conducted surveys in Germany to gauge the democratic attitudes of Germans. These surveys date back to World War II, when Americans in the Opinion Survey Section OSS surveyed captured German soldiers to determine how prevalent Nazi

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racist ideology was among younger Germans. America had long distrusted the Germans, fearing a fair-weather German democracy that would collapse in the face of economic difficulties or other crises. This distrust persists among a few American leaders to this day (Lutz, 2014). Trust is the basic prerequisite for the functioning of groups, organizations, companies and states. Trust is the emotional core of any brand. Social trust forms the foundation for political trust. High political trust among the populace can be inferred to mean high general trust. People who trust other people do not necessarily show trust in political institutions, but conversely, there is a positive correlation between trust in the Bundestag and the federal government and trust in people (Decker et al., 2019, p. 28). Voters’ dissatisfaction and growing distrust of those in power and of democratic institutions cannot be equated solely with undemocratic attitudes or an anti-system stance. It only becomes worrisome when they cross a certain system-critical threshold (Decker et al., 2019, p. 5). This threshold is far from being reached in Germany. 58.9 percent of Germans said in 2019 that most people can be trusted, while 41.1 percent tend not to trust (Decker et al., 2019, p. 27). People with higher levels of education and middle to higher incomes and who classify themselves as middle class, show higher trust rates than others. Especially voters and supporters of the right-wing political party AfD express the lowest trust of all groups in other people, supporters of the Green party the highest with 75.9 percent. People of lower social status and income also show little trust in political processes and outcomes. This includes more than 70 percent of those who classify themselves as working class or lower class and 67 percent of people with low incomes. The differences between East and West Germans are clear and translate into democratic orientations. In West Germany, just under half of citizens are satisfied with democracy. In eastern Germany, on the other hand, it is only slightly more than one-third. This striking gap between East and West has remained almost unchanged since reunification (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2019). Amid this general dissatisfaction with democracy and political participation opportunities, however, the overwhelming majority of Germans are in favor of the current political system and against forms of authoritarian government. Only 1.3 percent of Germans would give comprehensive decision-making rights and governmental power to a single person. On the other hand, 82 percent are in favor of a model of government with elected members of parliament and regular referendums (Decker et al., 2019, p. 37).

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At the same time, the general life satisfaction in all federal states was higher than ever in 2019 (Datenreport, 2021). The satisfaction with life of people in a country derives from the abilities of individuals to implement their plans and desires against the background of conditions set by the community. Laws, the availability of resources, living conditions such as equality, behavioral security, educational and distributive justice and much more, have an impact on the opportunities to shape everyday life. Across the party landscape, Germany aims to ensure as much social equality and equality of opportunity as possible. This is also partly enshrined in the Basic Law. Germans strongly favor the engagement of the government in the social well-being. In America, many would describe such an attitude as socialist. Germans in East and West were more satisfied in 2019 than at any other time after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. Immediately after the collapse of the GDR, life satisfaction there was very low due to the dramatic changes in living conditions but rose significantly after 1991. East Germans felt colonialized and citizens of second rank in unified Germany. Except for a renewed dip in 2004, the curve of life satisfaction paralleled one of the West Germans and in 2019 stood at a value of 7.5 on a scale of 1–10. Germans in the West were at just under 7.8 at the same time (Datenreport, 2021). The consequences of climate change and the protection of the environment are the most worrying issues for Germans in the East and West, and both topics have risen significantly in importance on the German agenda since 2018 (Datenreport, 2021, p. 414). Currently, this—aside from the impact of some minor scandals regarding respiratory masks in the German Bundestag—is leading to an all-time high in approval ratings and voting support for the Green party. For the first time since the party was founded in the 1980s, the Greens led the Christian Democratic Union in several opinion polls. This in itself is indicative of a profound change in Germany and symptomatic of both demographic change and the spread of new political issues and liberal political and social values. The effect of the COVID pandemic is very hard to determine yet. There will be losers and people who will feel being left behind even more so after the Lockdown is over. At this time one can only speculate about whether there will be long-lasting effects or new trends. Germany and the German government received the highest ratings from its own people and from the people of other countries for its handling of the pandemic during the first wave

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in 2020 (Pew Research Center, 2020). By 2021, however, people were uneasy about being restricted and thus deprived of their freedoms and it is yet to be seen, who will receive blame or praise after the pandemic.

Historical Consciousness and Anti-semitism Dealing with the National Socialist past is a significant component of German identity and thus of Germany’s brand. Even 30 years after reunification and 76 years after the end of Nazi rule, Germany is still scrutinized internationally and especially by countries that suffered under Nazi aggression. Several issues remain controversial and alarming to many: electoral support for right-wing parties, intolerant attitudes toward foreigners and other nations, eternally smoldering anti-Semitism, and at a fundamental level the dedication of Germans to democracy and its place in their everyday life. In Germany, there is still a strong interest in history decades after the end of the Nazi era. In 2020, 18 percent of Germans said they had a very strong interest and 49 percent a strong interest in history. The figures regarding interest in National Socialism were almost identical, with East Germans showing slightly more interest than West Germans. 64 percent of West Germans and 75 percent of East Germans said they would like to know more about the history of National Socialism, with generally younger and more highly educated people showing higher numbers than average (Die ZEIT, 2020). Many public and private television stations are continually broadcasting documentaries about the history of National Socialism, World War II and the Holocaust. Thus, there is no lack of easily accessible media information on the topic. Nevertheless, in a survey conducted by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen in July 2020, an astonishing 28 percent of Germans were in favor of closing the book on the study of National Socialism. A quarter said they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust. 47 percent thought “most” Germans at the time were either “not that much” or “not at all” to blame for the extermination of the Jews. And 81 percent of those surveyed said that most Germans knew nothing or nothing at all about the Holocaust (FAZ, 08.05.2021). Thirty years earlier, however, a clear majority of West Germans expressed their preference for closing the book on the Nazi past ending the discourse about guilt and remembering. Among AfD voters, 56 percent believe there is too much commemoration and remembrance

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is particularly high. Most supporters of the other political parties represented in the Bundestag agree with the statement that commemoration or remembrance of the Holocaust is at just the right level in Germany. In 2020, 58 percent of Germans agreed with the following statement: “Germans bear no more responsibility for National Socialism, for dictatorship, for wars and crimes than other countries do” (Die ZEIT, 2020). Significantly, 84 percent of AfD voters strongly agreed with this statement. At the same time, 68 percent believe that Germany has come to terms with its Nazi past very well and could serve as a model for other countries (Die ZEIT, 2020). In June 2018, then AfD Leader Alexander Gauland caused outrage with a statement on the Nazi era: “Hitler and the Nazis are just a small potato in over 1,000 years of successful German history”. Gauland later described his statement as “misinterpretable and thus politically unwise”. But this statement represents a part of the population that no longer wants to hear about the Holocaust. The AfD is strong primarily in eastern Germany. At the time of the reunification of the two German states, political values and cultures were each determined by four decades of contrasting political education, socialization patterns and experiences. Except for a small window of time after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the people of the GDR had not experienced free elections, freedom of expression, freedom of movement or economic freedoms over a period of more than half a century. The ideological work of the communist regime together with the self-understanding of East Germany as an antifascist state became a formative element in the political and historical memory of East Germans. National Socialism was not considered to be their responsibility (Lutz, 2000). The wish for an end to the preoccupation with the Third Reich is therefore not new. However, more research is needed. It would be important to gain more confirmation in our data measuring what Germans actually know about the Holocaust, its causes, the Second World War and the Nazi past. In view of a growing proportion of the population with a migration background in Germany and according to some sporadic surveys that have found relatively large gaps in historical knowledge among schoolchildren and younger people, this is a significant desideratum of research that should be addressed. Anti-Semitism on the one hand and a pronounced special political responsibility for the state of Israel on the other, are the two sides of this special aspect of the German brand. Attitudes toward anti-Semitism are particularly important for German democracy . Immediately after the

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end of World War II, in 1946, 37 percent of Germans in the US occupation zone denied “… that extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was not necessary for the security of Germans ” (Merritt & Merritt, 1970, p. 31). Anti-Semitism has persisted in Germany in various forms through reunification to the present day and has been growing in strength again for several years. The anti-Semitism shaped by the generations who experienced National Socialism, which was still to be found in our surveys in 1988–1991 (Lutz, 2000; SINUS-Studie, 1981), has partly dissipated demographically. However, anti-Semitism has sprouted anew in other forms. Anti-Semitism is no longer limited to the political fringes of German society. Decker et al. argue that the current anti-Semitism, racism, neo-NS ideology and other problematic attitudes are the result of an authoritarian dynamic in the center of society (Decker & Brähler, 2020). Although the prevalence of overtly far-right attitudes has been reduced, they have been reinforced, especially in the anti-modern and authoritarian milieus with radical attitudes. Apparently, the polarization of society has intensified and anti-Semitism is one common identifying characteristic among these milieus and across class boundaries (Decker & Brähler, 2020, p. 25). What anti-Semitism and other authoritarian and radical attitudes mean to those among the broad middle of German society is shown by the following figures (Decker & Brähler, 2020, pp. 35–39, translation by the author). Among the German population as a whole, 10.3 percent agree with the statement that “Even today, the influence of the Jews is too great”; this compares to 12.3 percent of those East Germans alone who express such belief. Asked if “The Jews work more evil tricks than other people to get what they want”, 7.5 percent of German society as a whole agree, compared to 11.1 percent of East Germans, only. To the statement that “There is just something special and peculiar about the Jews and they don’t quite fit in with us”, 5.6 percent of Germans as a whole affirm their agreement, a belief shared by 8.7 percent of East Germans only. And, finally, when asked “Without the extermination of the Jews, Hitler would be considered a great statesman today”, 6.2 percent of Germans as a whole agree, compared to 9.5 percent of those in agreement among East Germans. These comparative proportions show a clear difference between East and West Germans. The reasons for these differences are manifold and not easy to describe. The level of education, the social situation coming

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with individual heritage, income and occupation as well as social security play an important role, but ultimately do not explain the differences. Because Germany, as a de facto immigration country, has for many years taken in people of the Muslim faith from other states, anti-Semitism in Germany has developed a new variant. Currently, this is particularly evident in the large number of participants at anti-Israel demonstrations protesting Israeli actions in the conflict with Hamas in May 2021. In an interview on Israeli television, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “We now also have new phenomena in that we have refugees or people of Arab origin who are again bringing another form of anti-Semitism into the country” (Berliner Morgenpost, May 19, 2021). The task in particular for Germany is to address people with a migration background and educationally disadvantaged groups with educational programs on the Holocaust and National Socialism. Since the early 2000s, young Muslims have increasingly appeared as anti-Semitic perpetrators in Germany. This strikes at the core of Germany’s raison d’état, as can be seen in the current way politicians react to anti-Israel demonstrations in Germany. Part of Germany’s raison d’état and thus part of its brand essence is the assumption of a special political responsibility toward Israel. This became clear during the Bundestag debate concerning the conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in May 2021. In a Bundestag debate attended by Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, politicians demanded that Germany contribute both to a de-escalation of the conflict and at the same time also fight the flare-up of anti-Semitism in Germany. Germany’s special responsibility for the State of Israel dates back into West Germany’s history. This complex sense of encumbrance toward Israel is a source of conflicted sentiments for many in Germany because of Israel’s rapid and stunning victory in the Six-Day War and subsequent seizure of territory later condemned by the United Nations. Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War was to some undoubtedly significant degree aided by secret and probably illegal arms deliveries to Israel between 1958 and 1962 when then Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss supplied the Israeli Defense Force with US-made helicopters and other advanced weapons worth hundreds of millions of then “Deutsche Mark” without the knowledge or consent of the German parliament, or public.

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German Unification and European Integration Three Decades Later German unity and European integration are Siamese twins; one is inseparable from the other. Despite all the quarrels and disputes and remaining economic and social differences, all Germans view reunification positively overall. The peaceful revolution has become part of the brand essence of Germany, a positively evaluated historical event on which democracy can build. It is remarkable that there were no demonstrations in favor of reunification in West Germany during the process of reunification. Not even in November or December 1989, when it was far from clear how comprehensive or successful the reunification project would turn out. Immediately after the unification in 1990 and the accession of the five newly created federal states of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia to the Federal Republic a sense of loss was common among many in the east who now faced the consequences of loss for all security and personal habits organizing the stability of their daily life. Yet the end of the socialist SED party dictatorship was generally welcomed. For East Germans, the unification process was an entirely different experience compared to West Germans; many had to come to terms with the loss of their jobs, the loss of former security, status and, above all, an uncertain future (Lutz, 2000). Nevertheless, the reunification of the two German states was never seriously questioned—not in the East and neither in the West. For many years, there has been repeated talk of a “wall” in the minds of Germans. This is supposed to describe the fundamental differences in social and political attitudes. The term wall tends to imply a deep rift or even a conflict between two parties. The data, however, do not support a conflict, but rather differences based on different socialization patterns, life experiences and, above all, different life situations. There is no wall in the minds pitting East and West Germans against each other. The differences between a blue collar worker and a software programmer living in any big German city are much greater than between two Germans from East and West in similar life situations. A closer look reveals that many of the differences in attitudes tend to exist between different income and education levels, which also exist in a similar pattern in the West. The AfD, which in many of its protagonists’ programmatic expressions and statements reveals extreme right-wing and nationalist attitudes, is represented in all German state parliaments. In the eastern federal states

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however, the party is much stronger: In Saxony, the AfD recently received 27.5 percent of the vote, in Saxony-Anhalt 24.3 percent, in Brandenburg and Thuringia over 23 percent each, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 20.8 percent and even in Berlin 14.2 percent. In the West, the AfD achieved its best result with 13.1 percent in Hesse. This dissatisfaction is also evident in the election of the Left Party. The Left Party was elected primarily in the eastern German states, reaching 31 percent in Thuringia. This means that in Thuringia—including the votes for the AfD—there is a majority of well over 50 percent of voters who opted for parties that reject the current political system and policies, at least to a considerable extent. The differences in the state elections between East and West are also reflected in the federal elections. The Left Party and the AfD are mainly voted for by East Germans. The main reasons for these dramatically high numbers are dissatisfaction with the consequences of reunification. Many East Germans still feel disadvantaged compared to the West, for example in terms of wages, pensions and economic opportunities. In addition, there are fears about one’s own future, a perceived inequality and, above all, the feeling of not being noticed or sufficiently respected. Thus, emotional motives play a significant role in East–West differences, which are also reflected in the distribution of seats in the German Bundestag. German unity and European integration are inseparable in the understanding of Germans and Europeans alike (Wolff-Poweska, 2003). The Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the new Euro currency at the time was accepted by many as the price to pay for German unity. Still, more than two-thirds of Germans show positive attitudes toward the European Union. In early 2019, 74 percent thought Germany’s membership in the EU was a good thing, and 69 percent were convinced that the economic integration of Europe had strengthened Germany’s economy (Pew Research Center, 2019). Germans have thus shed the Euroskepticism they have repeatedly shown in polls over the past 50 years and have recognized the realities and advantages of European integration. After all, at many stages in the European integration process, there was no majority among the German population—especially in the West, even during the division of Germany—in favor of certain steps toward enlargement and particularly eastward enlargement (Köcher, 2009). German European policy was a top-down elite project, which in retrospect, however, turned out to be successful and far-sighted, and in the end also convinced the majority of Germans. In a 2019 survey, the Pew Research Center found

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that a majority of people in countries formerly belonging to the former Eastern Bloc also have a positive view of the changes that occurred thirty years ago, with the collapse of the communist regimes and the reunification of Germany at the center (Pew Research Center, 2019). Germany is economically most interconnected with and dependent on the European Union. While China is now the largest market in the world for certain products such as automobiles, Germany’s trade with Poland and the Czech Republic alone is larger than that with China. Trade with the European Union member states is seven times higher than that with China. After Brexit, Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, which regularly leads to criticism of German European policy and the EU by anti-EU critics. Overall, however, from a strategic but also from a financial perspective, the benefits of membership and contribution payments are understood to be irreplaceable. Germany’s economic model is dependent on a functioning European Union. The generation of Helmut Kohl and former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher turned their dream of a peaceful Europe into reality, and even after Brexit there is no majority in Germany that would question the EU. The branding of Germany as a European country together with its foreign policy of reticence thus laid ground for its success before and especially after reunification.

Foreign Policy: The Anti-War Brand Germany Germany’s foreign policy is a core element of its brand description, oscillating between loyalty to the alliance, restraint up to the Paris-BerlinMoscow “axis” of skepticism in 2003 in the face of the US-led war in Iraq, and the much-touted notion of a transatlantic community of values. In this context, the lessons learned and the consequences drawn from the German invasion of Europe in World War II and the Holocaust constitute the foundations of Germany’s foreign policy after 1945. “Never again” was the common and standardized answer in large qualitative surveys taken from 1988 to 1992 in East and West Germany (Lutz, 2000) when interviewees of the war generation in Germany were talking about war. These generations with their experiences of burning cities, starvation and expulsion were the last keepers of existential memories that forged and dominated the self-understanding in the post-war years in West Germany. Relations between states are shaped by their history, by their respective interests, by evolved cooperation, but above all by the mutual self-images

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and images of others that are disseminated and prevalent about the other. The historically and emotionally shaped brand image of Germany is thus an important factor both at the level of direct working relations between states, between their diplomats, politicians and business people, but also from a higher-level perspective, which encompasses citizens’ opinions and prejudices about each other. The reunification of Germany had triggered and revived old fears in neighboring countries. Questions about loyalty to the NATO alliance, European orientation or whether the now larger united Germany would continue to play a cooperative role in the European concert dominated the press and discussions in Europe (Handl, 2003). But the Germans had learned their lesson. At no time after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, its accession to NATO in 1955 and the achievement of unity in 1990, were the cornerstones of Germany’s foreign policy orientation and the convictions of its—foremost made up by West Germans—foreign policy elite seriously questioned. The foreign policy brand core looked as follows: The broadest possible multilateralism was to support the culture of German military restraint in foreign policy, thus enabling the model of wealth generation through trade in sophisticated technical goods and the processing of raw materials. For decades, Germany’s large current account surpluses were also a point of criticism by its economic partners, who had repeatedly called for economic stimulus programs in Germany boosting import demand. However, the culture of reticence slowly eroded. When in 1999, then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green party sent the German Air Force into an armed conflict under NATO command in former Yugoslavia for the first time since 1945, it was a signal that a fundamental change had taken place in Germany. Ever since German unification, the country actively took part in several combat missions with German soldiers, the longest in Afghanistan, where German troops arrived in January 2002 and exited during the summer of 2021 alongside America. Over the past thirty years, the reunified Germany has participated in a large number of military support operations under European, UN and NATO command. In many cases with very small deployments, the German armed forces were notoriously underfunded and suffered from large capability gaps. The capability gaps were and are paralleled by refusal on the part of German politicians who faced an electorate that was by majority stably opposed to military deployments of the Bundeswehr. The willingness to engage more robustly in security-related assignments abroad, however, has been on the rise since 2014 (Berlin Pulse, 2019; Bunde et al., 2020).

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The game changer was the Russian war against the Ukraine in 2014—still leaving Germany’s engagement within the bounds of its multilateralism and policy of restraint. If 2014 could be called a game changer, then the brutal military attack of Russia against Ukraine in spring 2022 truly can be marked as a “Zeitenwende”—a turning point in history. The overall consequences in geopolitics, security and economic wealth distribution in Europe and also in the world are not yet foreseeable. Germany is thoroughly, at all levels—culturally and economically— shaped and defined by America. Thirty years after most American soldiers left, the brand Germany is deeply Americanized through music, social media, American consumer brands, American consumerism, movies and products—computers and software. Even the German economic start-up culture is emulating the successful American model. In youth subcultures, the main language of music is still English, American “gangsta-rap” has even arrived in the milieus of young immigrants and young people in general in Germany. There are now many German companies of the infamous former “Deutschland AG” run by Americans, and in many companies board reports and presentations are now written only in English. Many Germans still look at the United States as their special friend and big brother in a positive way, while Americans tend to look at Germany as “Germany embedded in Europe”. As long as there are no serious problems, Germany is not on the radar screen of the US foreign policy establishment (Lutz, 2014). At the same time, Germany has a very deep-seated psychological problem with its American role model. Despite NATO guaranteeing Germany’s security with US nuclear weapons and troop deployments to Europe even after the end of the Cold War, Germans tend to see France as the most important security partner (Köcher, 2009; Pew Research Center, 2021). This may be plausible for geopolitical reasons. More difficult to explain are empirical data on Germans’ loyalty to the alliance. A majority of 63 percent of Germans in 2019 believed that the Americans would militarily defend a NATO member state. In the same year, however, only 12 percent of Germans said that their country should take sides with America if a conflict arose between Russia and the United States. Seven percent of Germans would side with Russia and 70 percent would prefer to remain neutral (Bunde et al., 2020). Though this survey had been carried out during the Trump administration’s erratic foreign policy moves and Trump’s constant hammering of Germans over burden sharing, these

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data confirm a deeply rooted portion of distrust or uneasiness of the German public with its American ally. This distrust is also evident in the elite survey of German and American foreign policy decision-makers mentioned above. In contrast to the past, Germans no longer see America as a role model in many areas. They doubt America’s long-term success and willingness to cooperate in the future. In general, American unilateralism and competitive attitudes were expected by many Germans in the foreign policy milieu years ago—albeit not as radical nor as personalized as during the Trump years.

Emotions, Politics and the German Brand The most neglected factor in the evaluation of political statements and political behavior, up to and including voting behavior, is the emotional basis and motives of people (Lutz, 2015). Analysts now believe that emotions play a much larger role in politics than was assumed (Schaal & Heidenreich, 2013). Economic liberalism in the tradition of Adam Smith assumes rationally thinking and predominantly economically motivated actors in political action. Emotions tend to play no or only a subordinate role in the classification of interests (Schaal & Heidenreich, 2013, p. 4). Even the German constitutional state does not actually expect any emotional attachment from its citizens. Outside of sports events, flagwaving Germans are still a suspect species. However, so-called “constitutional patriotism” (Sternberger, 1990) is hoped for, which is supposed to be related above all to the Basic Law and thus to the legislative framework of coexistence and its predictable procedures (this debate of the 1980s is described in Lutz, 2000, pp. 272ff.). Constitutional patriotism feeds on satisfaction with democracy and rejection of affluent chauvinism, and generally involves a positive attachment to the current political system as it provides loyalty and support. Beyond the purely material evaluation of the system, constitutional patriotism includes an emotional component. System loyalty (Lepsius, 1995) is based on trust toward actors and institutions. Especially in times of strong change and great uncertainty, such as during the COVID pandemic, trust as a fundamental emotion can stabilize the political system. This kind of trust is generally subject to fluctuations, as can be seen from the data shown above, but has clearly declined in Germany in recent years (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2019). The COVID crisis, which seems to be part of a general crisis of confidence,

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contributes to this and has further emotionalized the society. Images of stacked coffins, of lonely old people isolated behind panes of glass in nursing homes, applauding citizens, and national mourning ceremonies for the dead visualize and shape the experience of the pandemic through a new iconography. The pandemic has additionally exacerbated a problem that has been causing people to turn away from and lose confidence in politics for many years: The perception of loss of control and the feeling of a lack of social recognition lead to dwindling system loyalty and a loss of trust in politics and make those affected additionally susceptible to conspiracy theories (Heitmeyer, 2020). After all, 52 percent of Germans agreed with the statement in 2019: “I worry about people like me losing the respect and dignity I once enjoyed in this country” (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2020). Perception and the evaluation of system output is heavily influenced by affects end emotional states of people. This can be expected to be amplified by social media channels flooded with conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns by foreign governments aimed to undermine or discredit other states’ democratic institutions.

Conclusion The foundation of Germany’s brand essence and identity continues to rest on the knowledge about and responsible handling of the Nazi past and the Holocaust. In many areas, a policy pointing to the future can build on this foundation of the historical awareness of Germans. This applies to European integration, the alliance policy in NATO, the security and peace policy that enables international engagement. The foundations for all of these policies are anchored in the historical consciousness of all Germans 30 years after reunification. The generations who experienced the Third Reich have left the public arenas of politics and culture and thus no longer provide personal information about the past. The voices of those victimized in the Third Reich will be missing. Despite different attitudes and opinions concerning history and other topics in East and West Germany, the dominance of the Holocaust and the Second World War for Germany’s self-image will not change. And the history of the SED-dictatorship will be kept alive by thousands of its victims, who are young enough to still be active in all echelons of society. The multilateralism, which embeds Germany in a global network of alliances and treaties, lies at the heart of Germany’s foreign policy interests and activities. Germany, together with France, founded an “Alliance for

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Multilateralism” in April 2019, as a counterweight to President Trump’s unilateral policies at the time. Over the past 30 years, Germany has often been criticized for settling comfortably on the broad back of the United States and NATO. Germany has contributed too little—especially militarily in hardware and in terms of security policy—to defending the idea of the West. This debate on transatlantic burden sharing goes back to the Cold War period and has its justification today, even according to German security policy experts (Bunde et al., 2020). After reunification, Germans still believed in peace dividends and a better world in which Russia would be a strategic partner and the Western democracies would provide a role model. However, reality took a different turn, with both Russia and China evolving as strategic opponents rather than partners. The foreign policy framework is changing in such a way that Germany will only be able to play an active role in the world economy through a much stronger commitment to strategic security—both militarily and economically. The military invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February of 2022 and the raging debate about Germany’s energy dependency on Russian gas and oil and whether German money keeps the Putin-regime in Moscow financially afloat are drastic signs of German foreign policy failures and problems. Nevertheless, the German foreign policy of restraint, its economic and social successes and what is more the personality and policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel helped catapult the country into the first rank in the Global Soft Power Index 2021, while America descended to the sixth place during the Trump administration. The Global Soft Power Index is a problematic tool because it is putting too much weight on economic data. Nonetheless, it is precisely in this niche that Germany has built up its success story and, even after reunification, has settled into this model despite lofty commitments to assume greater political and security responsibility. True, the country has taken on significantly more responsibility. For example as of June 2021 in Afghanistan, Germany provided the second-largest troop contingent after the Americans, and in Mali in the Sahel, Germany is providing security alongside France. But all this will not satisfy the allies in the long run. Thirty years after reunification, Germany will eventually have to embrace its economic power in Europe and in the World. And in face of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022 one can observe the demise of the anti-war brand Germany and its freerider-approach.

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Germany is in the midst of a historic demographic transformation. This change features two dimensions: First, the baby boomer generation is retiring and, by sheer size alone, will place a heavy burden on the social system. In addition, many skilled workers will be lost because of their age and retirement—who cannot be replaced due to the much smaller successor generations. Second, demographic trends and the influx of foreigners will dramatically increase the proportion of people with a migration background in Germany, and this will significantly change the cultural, political and religious makeup in the country. Germany’s self-image and identity will change. Increasingly, policy content originating from the political fringes and the newly emerging milieus will be carried into the center of society. This development has been discernible since the late 1960s and has supported the spread of anti-Semitic and radical, even chauvinistic attitudes in the middle of society. The reunification of Germany itself was certainly not the cause of this, but the structural differences between East and West Germany contributed to the spread of problematic attitudes. Since unification, Germany, which likes to describe itself as an open society, has experienced both the liberalization of wide areas of life and the solidification of extreme and radical patterns of attitudes that one thought would disappear over time. Germany’s brand will not be destroyed, but it will be repositioned. It will be changed and rebuilt. It will unfold completely new aspects, partly through the very own cultural mechanisms that make up the nation. This process will continue despite the white lies through which the German majority society constantly reassures itself, lies that have not been fundamentally challenged by any of the previous German federal governments. These include the legend that Germany is not a country of immigration, the myth of German engineering, the myth being that the Germans are best in technology. They also include the emphasis on secondary virtues such as diligence, discipline and punctuality and they are further being exposed through the over-bureaucratization of the country, which is demonstrated in the poor performance in handling the second and third waves of the COVID pandemic and the anti-COVID vaccination campaign. The question must now be: Has “Brand Germany” delivered the promised performance until now and will it be able to deliver it in the foreseeable future? Is it plausible or justified to speak of a twilight of the gods—Götterdämmerung—for the brand Germany? In view of

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the inevitable changes imminent for Germany, the answer to this question must be an unequivocal yes. At the core of Germany’s change are demographics, which bring together several parallel developments. The confluence of these developments will present policymakers with challenges in the next twenty years that have not yet been on the agenda or yet entered the public’s consciousness, but which will have all the more radical repercussions on culture and the economy. The concept of the German nation-state is still important for the brand and for people’s sense of identity. It provides orientation and “Heimat”, two core emotional elements for the well-being of people. The brand Germany delivers identity and security in the middle of Europe. Challenged by new global demands such as cyber-security policy and climate change, however, the nation-state in its current condition in the long run is proving either incompetent or under-resourced. Germany’s approach of emulating a big “Switzerland” is no longer viable.

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fact-tank/2020/10/02/confidence-in-merkel-is-at-all-time-high-in-severalcountries-during-her-last-full-year-in-office/ Pew Research Center. (2021). Fast facts about global views of Merkel and Biden ahead of White House meeting. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/ 2021/07/14/fast-facts-about-global-views-of-merkel-and-biden-ahead-ofwhite-house-meeting/ Schaal, G., & Heidenreich, F. (2013). Zur Rolle von Emotionen in der Demokratie. In Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament, 63. Jahrgang 32–33 (pp. 3–11). SINUS-Studie. (1981). 5 Millionen Deutsche: „Wir sollten wieder einen Führer haben...“ Die SINUS-Studie über rechtsextremistische Einstellungen bei den Deutschen. Rowohlt. Sternberger, D. (1990). Verfassungspatriotismus. In Sternberger & Schriften, Bd. X. Verfassungspatriotismus (pp. 3–16). Watson, P. (2010). The German genius: Europe’s third renaissance, the second scientific revolution, and the twentieth century. Harper. Wolff-Poweska, A. (2003). The Berlin Republic from a polish perspective: The end of the German question. In D. Dettke (Ed.), The spirit of the Berlin Republic (pp. 180–193). Berghahn Books.

CHAPTER 11

“Germany Is a Disaster Now”: US Perspectives on the Berlin Republic Over the Course of Time Daniela Wawra

Introduction What has been the dominant perception of Germany in the US after the “German unification and [meanwhile, more than!] a decade of changes” (Gellner & Robertson, 2003)? This central question will be addressed in this paper, mainly from the perspectives of US presidents as expressed in their speeches. The research corpus thus includes speeches from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump. The main research questions to be addressed are in which contexts the presidents refer to Germany in what ways and what stance the presidents take toward the country and its inhabitants. The results of the analysis of the speeches of each president will then be compared. This allows for an answer to the question of

D. Wawra (B) University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_11

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how the view of Germany has changed or remained the same since the foundation of the Berlin Republic. Finally, the perspective will be broadened by including survey data on current views of the US population on Germany. The methods used are content as well as corpus analysis, the latter involving particularly Key Word in Context concordance.

The Berlin Republic from the Perspective of US Presidents Five US presidents have served since the rise of the Berlin Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall: George H.W. Bush (1989–1993), Bill Clinton (1993–2001), George W. Bush (2001–2009), Barack Obama (2009–2017) and Donald Trump (2017–2021). A research corpus of their speeches was compiled from The Grammar Lab (2020) by extracting the data from the Corpus of Presidential Speeches. As this archive does not provide Trump’s speeches during his presidency, only prior speeches from his election campaign in 2016, his presidential speeches were compiled from the collection of the Miller Center (2020). The research corpus comprises 184 speeches (698,955 words) altogether.1 An automated Key Word in Context (KWIC) concordance analysis was run on the corpus with the lexemes GERMAN, BERLIN,2 (BERLIN) WALL, (BRANDENBURG) GATE and the names of the German Chancellors during the period of investigation, i.e., HELMUT, KOHL, GERHARD, SCHRÖDER, ANGELA and MERKEL. All hits were extracted and interpreted in their respective contexts. The lexemes WALL and GATE were counted only if they referred to the Berlin Wall (not to Wall Street, for instance) and the Brandenburg Gate, respectively. This procedure should ensure that at least the major, if not all, instances of a reference to Germany have been covered. The analysis was done with the help of the corpus analysis software AntConc (Laurence, 2019). The following quantitative and qualitative analysis thus focuses on the presidents’ references to Germany in their speeches. 1 Only the speeches that were held during the respective presidency are included in the research corpus. The Grammar Lab archive (2020) contains one speech each of George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama that were held before the start of their terms. They are not part of the research corpus. 2 Once, Berlin in Pennsylvania was referred to (Obama 023). This instance was not counted, of course.

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George H.W. Bush (1989–1993) In the subcorpus of 22 presidential speeches by George H.W. Bush (55,440 words), the lexeme GERMAN occurs 16 times, BERLIN WALL five times, BERLIN two times, the (Berlin) WALL three times, i.e., a reference to Germany is made 26 times altogether. In what follows, all instances will be categorized and discussed in detail. In his Commencement Address at Texas A&M University, May 12, 1989 (004),3 George H.W. Bush evokes the “Berlin airlift” to remind the audience of how the allies under US leadership prevailed over their enemies, “tyranny and conflict”, and brought “democracy and freedom” to Germany. In the State of the Union Address, January 31, 1990 (006), the fall of the Berlin Wall is presented as a confirmation of US foreign policy, with the central goal of spreading its core value—freedom. The united Germany is seen as part of a growing federation based on freedom, with the USA at its center: And one year ago, Erich Honecker of East Germany claimed history as his guide, and he predicted the Berlin Wall would last another hundred years. And, today, less than one year later, it’s the Wall that’s history. Remarkable events—events that fulfill the long-held hopes of the American people; events that validate the longstanding goals of American policy, a policy based on a single, shining principle: the cause of freedom. America, not just the nation but an idea, alive in the minds of people everywhere. As this new world takes shape, America stands at the center of a widening circle of freedom—today, tomorrow, and into the next century.

Germany’s (and Europe’s) reunification and freedom are repeatedly set in the context of a successful American foreign policy, as the following speech excerpts demonstrate: The end of the Cold War has been a victory for all humanity. A year and a half ago, in Germany, I said that our goal was a Europe whole and free. Tonight, Germany is united. Europe has become whole and free, and America’s leadership was instrumental in making it possible. (State of the Union Address on January 29, 1991, 013)

3 The number in this and the following citations indicates the relevant text file of the subcorpus of the speeches of each president as archived in the Grammar Lab (2020) corpus of presidential speeches. Here, e.g., it is bush_speeches_004.txt.

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Just pause for a moment to reflect on what we’ve done. Germany is united, and a slab of the Berlin Wall sits right outside this Astrodome. You don’t hear much about this good news because the media also tends to focus only on the bad. When the Berlin Wall fell, I half expected to see a headline, ‘Wall Falls, Three Border Guards Lose Jobs.’ And underneath, it probably says, ‘Clinton Blames Bush.’ You don’t hear a lot about progress in America. So, let me tell you about some good things we’ve done together. (Republican National Convention on August 20, 1992, 017)

In the State of the Union Address on January 28, 1992 (018), Germany is referred to in the historical context of the Cold War and as a former war opponent. The speech portrays the US as a powerful and courageous nation. So again, Germany is referred to with the intent of praising the achievements of US foreign policy: For the Cold War didn’t end; it was won. And, I think of those who won it, in places like Korea and Vietnam. (…) What a group we’ve put forth, for generations now, from the ones who wrote “Kilroy was here” on the walls of the German stalags to those who left signs in the Iraqi desert that said, “I saw Elvis.” What a group of kids we’ve sent out into the world. And, there’s another to be singled out, though it may seem inelegant, and I mean a mass of people called the American taxpayer.

In his Remarks at Texas A&M University on December 15, 1992 (021), Germany is described as a friend and, once more, the US is described as the nation that, through its leadership and ideals, helped to tear down the Berlin Wall and create a united Germany. Albeit, in this excerpt, Germany is conceded a more active role in the process. In addition, the US support of Germany is described as an act that is in the USA’s own best interest. Germany is seen as part of the countries that share and should defend common values—under US leadership. And when our German friends took their hammers to tear down that wall, we encouraged a united Germany, safely within the NATO alliance. They looked to America, and we did not look away. In short, by helping others, we help ourselves. (…) Some will dismiss this vision as no more than a dream. I ask them to consider the last 4 years when a dozen dreams were made real: The Berlin Wall demolished and Germany united (…). Each of these once seemed a dream. Today they’re concrete realities, brought about by a common cause: the patient and judicious application of American

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leadership, American power, and perhaps most of all, American moral force. It seems like ages ago that the people of Germany tore down that wall. But it’s been only 3 years, (…). And in this brief time, we’ve embarked on a new course through uncharted waters. The United States and its friends, old and new, have begun to define the post-cold-war reality. (…) And those challenges must be met with collective action, led by the United States, to protect and promote our political, economic, and security values.

In George H.W. Bush’s Address to the United Nations, October 1, 1990 (010), Berlin is cited as the place, where the Cold War and, with it, the old world order and division ended: We are hopeful that the machinery of the United Nations will no longer be frozen by the divisions that plagued us during the cold war, that at last—long last—we can build new bridges and tear down old walls, that at long last we will be able to build a new world based on an event for which we have all hoped: an end to the cold war. Two days from now, the world will be watching when the cold war is formally buried in Berlin.

When George H.W. Bush speaks of tearing “down old walls”, he literally refers to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but at the same time uses it metaphorically to indicate the overcoming of obstacles and division. In his Remarks on the Signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, July 26, 1990 (007), this rhetoric is evident as well: The fall of the Berlin Wall stands for the possibility of overcoming barriers, dependence and discrimination on the way to freedom: Last year, we celebrated a victory of international freedom. Even the strongest person couldn’t scale the Berlin Wall to gain the elusive promise of independence that lay just beyond. And so, together we rejoiced when that barrier fell. And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has for too many generations separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as this barrier falls for claiming together, we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not tolerate discrimination in America.

References to Germany in George H.W. Bush’s Speech at the Republican National Convention on August 20, 1992 (017) compare US and German economic achievements:

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The question is: Who do you trust to make change work for you? (…) My opponent says America is a nation in decline. Of our economy, he says we are somewhere on the list beneath Germany, heading south toward Sri Lanka. Well, don’t let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially somebody running for President. Maybe he hasn’t heard that we are still the world’s largest economy. No other nation sells more outside its borders. The Germans, the British, the Japanese can’t touch the productivity of you, the American worker and the American farmer.

This excerpt shows that Germany is respected and seen as a major competitor in the economic sector. On October 11, 1992, in a debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot (019), George H.W. Bush demands that Germany should increase its defense budget and thereby relieve the US financially: Right now, we spend about $300 billion a year on defense. The Japanese spend around $30 billion in Asia. The Germans spend around $30 billion in Europe. For example, Germany will spend a trillion dollars building infrastructure over the next 10 years. It’s kind of easy to do if you only have to pick up a $30 billion tab to defend your country. The European Community is in a position to pay a lot more than they have in the past. I agree with the President, when they couldn’t, we should have; now that they can, they should. (…) So, it I think is (sic!) very important for us to let them assume more and more of the burden and for us to bring that money back here and rebuild our infrastructure.

In the further course of the debate, George H.W. Bush continues to compare the US to Germany with regard to its finances. Germany is portrayed as being ahead of the US in terms of returns on treasuries and as being a model in terms of health care management: We have a $4 trillion debt (…). We have a 4-percent gap between what we pay for treasuries and what Germany pays for 1- to 5-year treasuries. That gap is going to close because the Arabs, the Japanese, and folks in this country are going to start buying German treasuries because they can get more money. (…) I’ve got a plan to control health care costs. (…) But keep in mind, we are spending 30 percent more on health care than any country in the world, any other country. Yet, we have 35 million people uninsured. We have no preventive and primary care. (…) I say if Germany can cover everybody

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and keep costs under inflation, if Hawaii can cover 98 percent of their people at lower health care costs than the rest of us, if Rochester, New York, can do it with two-thirds of the cost of the rest of us, America can do it, too. I’m tired of being told we can’t. I say we can. We can do better, and we must.

As the analysis of the subcorpus of George H.W. Bush’s presidential speeches shows, the major theme in relation to Germany is the fall of the Berlin Wall. The historic event is repeatedly cited as proof of the success of American foreign policy, as justification of its leadership and the prevalence of its ideals, above all, freedom. With the help of references to the historical events in Germany, the USA is presented as the defender of democracy and freedom, who brings unity. The fall of the Berlin Wall is introduced as a narrative which shows that barriers can be overcome, that the US can deal with major challenges successfully and that it pursues just causes. The narrative is thus evoked in contexts, where difficult tasks lie ahead to encourage optimism and a “can do” attitude as well as to justify actions morally. The evocation of the fall of the Berlin Wall also reminds of George H.W. Bush’s contribution to this historic event and shines a favorable light on his presidency. The comparisons to Germany in economic and financial contexts in the speeches indicate that it is respected in these fields and seen as a major competitor. The only negative light that is shed on Germany is with regard to the criticism that it does not contribute a fair amount to its defense and should therefore increase its budget. Bill Clinton (1993–2001) The subcorpus comprising 39 presidential speeches (144,580 words) of Bill Clinton contains the lexeme GERMAN five times, BERLIN ten times, the (Berlin) WALL four times, the BERLIN WALL twice, BRANDENBURG GATE, BRANDENBURG (gate), (Brandenburg) GATE once each, also Chancellor Kohl is addressed once. Altogether, there are 25 references to Germany. These will be analyzed in the following paragraphs. Clinton continues to use the narrative of the fall of the Berlin Wall that was established by his predecessor. In his Address on Health Care Reform, on September 22, 1993 (008) he argues that, as unrealistic as it may seem to realize health care reform in the US, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and above all the enabling role of the US in this event, gives hope that it can become a reality nevertheless:

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You know, in spite of all the work we’ve done together and all the progress we’ve made, there’s still a lot of people who say it would be an outright miracle if we passed health care reform. But my fellow Americans, in a time of change you have to have miracles. And miracles do happen. (...) We’ve seen the walls crumble in Berlin and South Africa.

Also, like in George H.W. Bush’s speeches, references to Germany are made repeatedly to emphasize the successful foreign policy of the US and its leading role in spreading freedom around the world. In his Remarks at the US National Cemetery, June 6, 1994 (012), Germany is cited as the former war opponent that caused many deaths on the American side but meanwhile has become a close ally. Clinton emphasizes that it owes its newly found freedom to the US: Well, millions of our GI’s did return home from that war to build up our nations and enjoy life’s sweet pleasures. But on this field, there are 9,386 who did not: 33 pairs of brothers, a father and his son, 11 men from tiny Bedford, Virginia, and Corporal Frank Elliot, killed near these bluffs by a German shell on D-Day. (…) At this place, let us honor all the Americans who lost their lives in World War II. (…) Fifty years later, what a different world we live in. Germany, Japan, and Italy, liberated by our victory, now stand among our closest allies and the staunchest defenders of freedom.

The Address on Race Relations, October 16, 1995 (018), contains a reference to Nazi Germany, which represents tyranny and evokes America’s successful fight against it and its good judgment then. This is once more transferred to a current context, here the fight against racism and discrimination: My fellow Americans, I want to begin by telling you that I am hopeful about America. (…) I was reminded of what Winston Churchill said about the United States when President Roosevelt was trying to pass the Lend-Lease Act so that we could help Britain in their war against Nazi Germany before we, ourselves, were involved. (…) it was unclear whether the Congress would permit us to help Britain, who at that time was the only bulwark against tyranny in Europe. And Winston Churchill said, “I have great confidence in the judgment and the common sense of the American people and their leaders. (…)”.

In his Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, July 12, 1994 (014), Clinton emphasizes the unification of the country (“united Germany”) and the

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freedom that it gained through the fall of the Wall (e.g., “Citizens of free Berlin”, “Berlin is free”). Leipzig, where the peaceful protests against the communist regime took place, is also mentioned in this context. In contrast to the other speeches that have been analyzed so far, the success of the unification of East and West Germany is attributed to the Germans (explicitly to the “Berliners” as a pars pro toto) in this speech, not the US: Berliners, you have won your long struggle. You have proved that no wall can forever contain the mighty power of freedom. (…) Half a century has passed since Berlin was first divided, 33 years since the Wall went up. In that time, one-half of this city lived encircled and the other half enslaved. But one force endured, your courage.

However, it has to be taken into account that this is the only speech in the research corpus that is addressed to Germans and not US-Americans. Clinton portrays the US as a reliable partner and friend to Germany, i.e., a symmetrical relationship is constructed, which the president emphasizes by addressing his audience in German: “Amerika steht an ihrer Seite, jetzt und fuer immer. America is on your side now and forever” (014). Clinton defines and redefines the Brandenburg Gate in this speech as having developed from a symbol of “conquest” and “tyranny” to the symbol of a “gateway” to unity, “peace”, “freedom” and “progress”: For over two centuries in every age, that gate has been a symbol of the time. Sometimes it has been a monument to conquest and a tower of tyranny. But in our own time, you, courageous Berliners, have again made the Brandenburg what its builders meant it to be, a gateway. Now, together, we can walk through that gateway to our destiny, to a Europe united, united in peace, united in freedom, united in progress for the first time in history.

In the State of the Union Address, January 27, 2000 (037), Clinton refers to the fall of the Berlin Wall as the historic event that marks the beginning of the increasing spread of democracy around the world, which should be supported by the US: “This is interesting: From Nigeria to Indonesia, more people got the right to choose their leaders in 1999 than in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. We’ve got to stand by these democracies (…)”.

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Berlin is mentioned in the Remarks to the People of Rwanda, March 25, 1998 (032), as the site where allegedly the decision was made by the Europeans to divide Africa. Because Berlin experienced decades of national division, by explicitly mentioning a link to German division reinforces and underscores the message that Africa had also been unlawfully divided. This is the only negative reference to Germany. The US positions itself on the side of Rwanda: “As you pointed out, Rwanda was a single nation before the European powers met in Berlin to carve up Africa. America stands with you, and will continue helping the people of Rwanda to rebuild their lives and society”. Although Clinton’s term of office was twice as long as his predecessor’s George H.W. Bush’s, the number of references to Germany is almost the same (26 [Bush]: 25 [Clinton]). In addition, the subcorpus of Clinton’s presidential speeches contains his speech in Berlin, which naturally includes the most references to Germany in one speech so far. This finding can be explained by considering that the fall of the Berlin Wall happened during George H.W. Bush’s presidency and was thus more present during his term of office. The analysis of Clinton’s speeches shows that he continues Bush’s rhetoric with regard to the fall of the Berlin Wall: Its fall is cited to demonstrate that the US has achieved the seemingly impossible in the past. The message is that it can be done again. This decisive event continues to be used rhetorically to strengthen US citizens’ self-confidence when difficult tasks lie ahead. So, on the one hand, references to Germany in Clinton’s speeches continue to mainly fulfill the function of demonstrating the successful foreign policy of the US: They evoke US victory over tyranny and division, the prevalence of freedom and democracy, unity and cooperation, as well as America’s leading role in enabling this process. On the other hand, more symmetric US-German relations are constructed in Clinton’s speeches when he expresses his respect for Germans’ courage in the fight for reunification and when he does not speak of a US leadership but partnership with Germany. In addition, the Brandenburg Gate is introduced as a symbol that has developed from representing “conquest” and “tyranny” to becoming a symbol of a “gateway” to unity, “peace”, “freedom” and “progress” (014). Germany is cited in a negative context with regard to World War II; however, it is at the same time called one of the “closest allies” (012) since the end of the war. This leaves one negative mention in the context of the division of Africa by European nations.

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George W. Bush (2001–2009) George W. Bush’s subcorpus of 39 presidential speeches (107,737 words) contains the lexemes GERMAN (seven times), BERLIN (five times), BERLIN WALL and BRANDENBURG GATE (once each), so altogether 14 references to Germany are made. The qualitative analysis reveals the following: In his Address on the US Response to the Attacks of September 11, September 21, 2001 (006), Bush thanks all countries that have demonstrated their solidarity and empathy for the US after the terror of 9/11. Germany is among the first countries he mentions, after the United Kingdom and France, which demonstrates the closeness between the countries: And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

In the Graduation Speech at West Point, June 1, 2002 (009), George W. Bush refers to Germany as a former war opponent and now ally: Officers graduating that year helped fulfill that mission, defeating Japan and Germany, and then reconstructing those nations as allies. West Point graduates of the 1940s saw the rise of a deadly new challenge—the challenge of imperial communism—and opposed it from Korea to Berlin, to Vietnam, and in the Cold War, from beginning to end. And, as the sun set on their struggle, many of those West Point officers lived to see a world transformed. (…) The history of the last century, in particular, was dominated by a series of destructive national rivalries that left battlefields and graveyards across the Earth. Germany fought France, the Axis fought the Allies, and then the East fought the West, in proxy wars and tense standoffs, against a backdrop of nuclear Armageddon.

In the Remarks on Freedom in Iraq and Middle East, November 6, 2003 (016), Germany is again referred to as a former threat and now an ally:

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(…) Americans have amply displayed our willingness to sacrifice for liberty. The sacrifices of Americans have not always been recognized or appreciated, yet they have been worthwhile. Because we and our allies were steadfast, Germany and Japan are democratic nations that no longer threaten the world.

In both speeches, George W. Bush emphasizes the decisive role of the US in spreading democracy around the world. George W. Bush also uses Germany as an example to point out that— despite doubts—democracy succeeded there and consequently will also prevail in other countries if they work on it: Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. (…) Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are, and I quote, “most uncertain at best”—he made that claim in 1957. (…) Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are “ready” for democracy—as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches cooperation, the free exchange of ideas, and the peaceful resolution of differences.

The same kind of reference to Germany can be found in the Remarks on National Security and the War Effort, July 17, 2004 (020). Despite earlier skepticism, democratic values have prevailed in Germany: The way to a peaceful future can be found in the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. Dignity requires the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, equal justice, religious tolerance. No nation owns these principles. No nation is exempt from them. Sixty years ago, few would have predicted the triumph of these values in Germany and Japan. (…) Yet, Americans are not surprised. We know that the demands of human dignity are written in every heart. (…) America has acted on these hopes throughout our history.

In the Remarks at the Republican National Convention, September 2, 2004 (022), Germany is cited as the country that once did not seem on the path to democracy and freedom, “stability and peace”. Yet, under America’s guidance, liberty prevailed over “tyranny and terror”. The US has attributed a special and leading role in the spread of freedom around the world, its payoff being more security:

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I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. (…) national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. (…) America will be more secure and the world more peaceful. America has done this kind of work before— and there have always been doubters. In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to Allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times, “Germany is—a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. (…)”. Fortunately, we had a resolute president named Truman, who, with the American people, persevered, knowing that a new democracy at the center of Europe would lead to stability and peace. And because that generation of Americans held firm in the cause of liberty, we live in a better and safer world today. (…) We were honoured to aid the rise of democracy in Germany and Japan and Nicaragua and Central Europe and the Baltics— and that noble story goes on. I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century.

Apart from thanking Germany for its empathy after 9/11, George W. Bush mentions Germany only in historical contexts. A continuity can be observed with regard to the German narrative of his predecessors: Germany is cited as an example that demonstrates that the seemingly impossible is possible. The negative references to Germany as a former war opponent that seemed to be a lost cause to democracy and liberty are turned into positive ones: With the help or under the guidance of the USA, their good values (i.e., democracy, liberty, peace, progress and dignity) won in the end over the “other side”, where tyranny and terror dominated. Like his father (cf. George H.W. Bush (021)), George W. Bush also states that the support of countries on their way to freedom and democracy makes the US “more secure” (022). Thus, America’s cause is not portrayed as being completely altruistic. It is not surprising that George W. Bush emphasizes this, considering that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened during his presidency and left the nation with deep scars and the feeling of vulnerability. It also has to be noted that all citations of Germany occur in the speeches of George W. Bush’s first term of office, none can be found in the speech corpus of his second term. This could be an indicator that the narrative of the fall of the Berlin Wall is starting to fade with the growing time distance to the actual event.

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Barack Obama (2009–2017) In former president Obama’s subcorpus of 49 speeches (197,231 words), GERMANY is cited nine times, BERLIN once, the (Berlin) WALL two times and the BERLIN WALL once; there are thus 13 references to Germany. In the Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, February 24, 2009 (006), Obama refers to Germany as a competitor who has surpassed the US in the solar energy business: We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy-efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. (…) Well, I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders, and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

In the State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010 (009), Germany is mentioned as being ahead of the USA in promoting “math and science”, advancing their infrastructure and in investing “in clean energy”: From the day I took office, I’ve been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious; such an effort would be too contentious. (…) How long should America put its future on hold? You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting. These nations are—they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

In the State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012 (029), Germany is mentioned as a major competitor in the alternative energy business: “I will not walk away from workers like Bryan. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here”.

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In the same speech (029), Berlin is used as a pars pro toto for the German government to underline that the USA is held in high esteem there: Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.

Germany is seen as a role model in the field of technical education and pre-vocational training in the State of the Union Address, February 13, 2013 (034): Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges. So those German kids, they’re ready for a job when they graduate high school. They’ve been trained for the jobs that are there. Now at schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools and City University of New York and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in computers or engineering. We need to give every American student opportunities like this.

In his Speech on Economic Mobility, December 4, 2013, (041), Obama mentions Germany as a “wealthy ally” that provides better chances of upward mobility for its inhabitants: The problem is that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years. (…) In fact, statistics show (…) that it is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies (sic!)— countries like Canada or Germany or France. They have greater mobility than we do, not less.

In the News Conference on Congressional Gridlock, February 9, 2010 (013), Obama cites Germany as one of the allies in the crisis with Iran regarding an agreement on uranium enrichment:

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Iran—we got the news today that they’re (…) trying to enhance this uranium even more. Obviously Secretary Gates today in Paris was quoted as saying basically the dialogue seems to be over and now the question is sanctions. Where are we on sanctions? (…) Well, it’s moving along fairly quickly. But what’s clear is, is that they have not said yes to an agreement that Russia, China, Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States all said was a good deal, and that the director of the IAEA said was the right thing to do and that Iran should accept.

In his Speech on American Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa, May 19, 2011 (022), funds that were created to support Eastern European countries after “the fall of the Berlin Wall” are mentioned as a blueprint for the support of North African countries: “(…) we’re working with Congress to create Enterprise Funds to invest in Tunisia and Egypt. And, these will be modeled on funds that supported the transitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall”. In his speech Acceptance of Nobel Peace Prize, December 10, 2009 (010), Obama refers to Germany as one of the countries the USA has brought “peace and prosperity” to, as well as freedom. This is not seen as an altruistic deed, but as one that is in the “self-interest” of the USA: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest—because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

In the same speech (010), Obama refers to the fall of the Berlin Wall that ended the Cold War. He propagates that the “dismantling” of the Berlin Wall marks the beginning of growing unity and prosperity as well as “liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law”. In the State of the Union Address, January 25, 2011 (023), the (Berlin) Wall is referred to in relation to the separation between East and West that was overcome:

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Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation. It will also require us to approach that world with a new level of engagement in our foreign affairs. Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders, so can new threats and new challenges. No single wall separates East and West. No one rival superpower is aligned against us.

The Germans are cited in the Remarks on Immigration Reform, January 29, 2013 (033), as one group of immigrants that fled their country because they were persecuted and have now become a part of US society: It’s really important for us to remember our history. Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. (…) The Irish who left behind a land of famine. The Germans who fled persecution. The Scandinavians who arrived eager to pioneer out west. The Polish. The Russians. The Italians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The West Indians. (…) All those folks, before they were “us,” they were “them.”

In contrast to his three predecessors, Obama refers to Germany most commonly in current contexts. He still cites the Berlin Wall though and continues to use it to demonstrate the successful foreign policy of the US and its claim to leadership, despite the historic event being further in the past. As with Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Obama frames America’s foreign policy goals as being directed toward the advancement of democracy and freedom which has been in its own best “self-interest” (010). However, Obama does not refer to the event quite as often as the previous presidents. Furthermore, the narrative is no longer employed as a vehicle for encouragement in the face of difficult tasks, as it was previously. Unlike his predecessors, Obama speaks not only of the fall but also of the “dismantling” of the wall. “Dismantling” implies a longer process, a less sudden, forceful and aggressive way of undoing something. This could be due to the longer time interval since the actual event that makes it seem less spontaneous and more planned. The end of the Wall marks—as in the speeches of the Bushes and Clinton—more unity and freedom. New aspects are its association with more prosperity, “self-determination”, “equality, and the rule of law” (010). These are all developments that could not yet be foreseen shortly after the fall of the Wall. The financial aids that were granted to Eastern countries afterward are cited as a blueprint for the support

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of North African countries in their development. As in some of George H.W. Bush’s speeches, Germany is seen as a competitor and a role model. It is seen as a competitor and role model in the new energy sector as well as a role model concerning education in science and technology, prevocational training and the development of infrastructure. In general, it is characterized as an ally and a country that holds the USA in high esteem. Germans are mentioned in a historical context as one group of immigrants that are now part of the USA. Donald Trump (2017–2021) The subcorpus comprises 35 speeches of president Trump (193,967 words), starting on January 20, 2017 with his Inaugural Address and ending August 8, 20204 with a Press Conference on Executive Orders (Miller Center, 2020). Germany is referred to 15 times, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is mentioned four times. Altogether, there are thus 19 references relating to Germany. In his Address to Joint Session of Congress, February 28, 2017, Trump refers to Germany in relation to European countries that have suffered from terrorist attacks. The wider context is his demand for a stricter immigration policy: According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. We have seen the attacks at home (…). We have seen the attacks in France, in Belgium, in Germany and all over the world. It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur. Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values.

Implicitly, the statement criticizes Germany’s and the EU’s immigration policy. During his first election campaign, Trump repeatedly presented the German Chancellor as a negative example of a head of state in relation to her migration policy. At a campaign event as a Republican presidential candidate, September 6, 2016 (The Grammar Lab, 2020), for example, Trump criticizes Angela Merkel as follows and even declares 4 This is the latest speech the archive contains.

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his opponent, Hillary Clinton, unfavorably as the threat of the “Merkel of the United States”: It’s a total disaster on top of which you have the migration which is destroying Europe. Look at Merkel. (…) I mean, how could—what, she’s supposed to be popular? Germany is a disaster now. (…) Millions of people go into Germany. The crime is unbelievable. The problems they’re having is unbelievable and Hillary Clinton wants to be the Merkel of the United States, OK? (2016-09-06-A)

In the Address at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 25, 2018, Germany is criticized for risking dependence on Russian energy supply by cooperating in the Nord Stream 2 project: Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states, such as Poland, for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.

In the Press Conference, September 25, 2019, during the UN General Assembly, Germany is cited as one of many countries with which Trump has met during his visit to the UN. However, he mentions many more countries whose representatives he conferred before mentioning Germany. This could be read as reflecting the president’s priorities. Of the European countries Trump does mention, Poland and the United Kingdom precede the mention of Germany. This could be interpreted as reflecting the president’s perception that unlike Poland, Germany and France are not major allies of the US within the European Union: The meetings I had on a bilat, or close, were pretty staggering. I think we set a new record, but you’ll have to check that out. The—we met very, very—for pretty extended periods of time, either two and two, one on one, or just about at that level with Pakistan, Poland, New Zealand, Singapore, Egypt, South Korea, United Kingdom, India, Iraq, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, France, (…).

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In the Statement on Iran, January 8, 2020, Germany is among the countries that the president urges to cancel their nuclear deal (JCPOA)5 with Iran and to cooperate with the US6 : The very defective JCPOA expires shortly anyway, and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorism. The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China to recognize this reality. They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal—or JCPOA—and we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place.

In Trump’s Remarks after His Acquittal [of two impeachment charges], February 6, 2020, Germany is criticized for not investing enough in its defense but instead relying on US support: But I told Mike. I said, “Mike, we’re giving them money, and, you know, you’re always torn about that because we have our country to build, we have our cities to build and our roads to fix. But we’re giving them money. Tell me, why isn’t Germany paying money? Why isn’t France? Why isn’t United Kingdom paying money? Why aren’t they paying money? Why are we paying them money?” (…) I said—I asked that question: “How much is Germany paying? Why isn’t Germany paying?” Why is the United States always the sucker? Because we’re a bunch of suckers.

In the Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 13, 2020, Germany is said to be one of the countries that supposedly need ventilators that the US is claimed to be able to provide: You know we’re going to have stockpiles, including state stockpiles if they want to work out some kind of an arrangement with us. But we’re also going to help other countries, whether it’s Italy, or Spain, or other—France is having a big problem. They all desperately need—Germany too—they need ventilators. So, we’re going to have a lot of ventilators. We have a lot—you heard the numbers—we have a lot coming next week.

5 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 6 When Obama refers to the crisis with Iran regarding uranium enrichment (013),

Germany is positioned on the side of the USA.

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In the Task Force Briefing on the Coronavirus Pandemic, April 23, 2020, Germany is portrayed as a country with a good reputation in research to testify that the efforts of US research institutions to fight the Coronavirus are respected around the world. Trump puts the US alongside Germany as one of the countries that are most successful in fighting COVID-19. So again, he uses Germany’s good reputation to put in a favorable light the US government during his leadership. As Germany is commonly associated with accuracy, this also helps to promote confidence in the figures that the US government publishes on the Corona virus emergency: U.S. trials of the COVID-19 have been going on and have been approved in the United States, Germany, UK, and China. That’s big news. And we’re—a lot of trials are going on. We have a lot of great, brilliant minds working on this, both from the standpoint of vaccine and therapeutics. (…) And, you know, when they talk about different tests and different things, we’re also a bigger nation than most. And so, when they look at statistics—because, statistically, we’re doing phenomenally, in terms of mortality, in terms of all of the different elements that you can judge. When you look, Germany and ourselves are doing very well. We are very accurate in the reporting of numbers. In fact, I’ll go a step further. (…) We’re very, very—highly accurate.

In a Campaign Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 20, 2020, Trump refers to Germany in the context of the pandemic. In this case, Germany is used for comparison and cited as a country that has a good crisis management, while the US is even better: We saved hundreds of thousands of lives and all we do is get hit on like we’re terrible. And what we’ve done with the ventilators and with the medical equipment. And with testing, you know, testing is a double-edged sword. We’ve tested now 25 million people. It’s probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany’s done a lot. South Korea has done a lot. (…)

Germany is criticized in the same speech for not paying enough for its defense. In this excerpt, Trump also mentions his “German heritage”, which serves to emphasize his moral integrity and the objective justification of his demands of Germany:

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When I get foreign nations to pay us billions and billions of dollars, nobody wants to talk about that. When I take soldiers out of countries because they’re not treating us properly, Germany is an example. I mean I have a German heritage like some of you. I said, “Let’s get it down from $50,000 to $25,000 because they’re delinquent. For many years they’re delinquent. They haven’t been paying what they’re supposed to be paying. They’re paying 1% instead of 2% and 2% is a very low number,” (…).

In addition, Germany is criticized for its energy policy because it cooperates with Russia in the Nord Stream 2 project. This is used as an argument for the withdrawal of US financial support for Germany’s defense in response to German cooperation with Russia: Remember this, we’re supposed to protect Germany from Russia, but Germany is paying Russia, billions of dollars for energy coming from a brand-new pipeline. So, they pay the country we’re supposed to protect them from, they pay billions of dollars to that country. We’re supposed to protect them. Excuse me, how does that work?

Finally, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is mentioned several times in the speech. Trump refers to her in the context of his frequent criticism of Germany’s insufficient military spending. He repeatedly cites the Chancellor by her first name to demonstrate his close personal relationship with her. This reflects positively on him as she is held in high regard among many Americans and political leaders worldwide. Trump also praises her as “nice” and, more importantly, as being a “good negotiator”. This makes him look better in that he dares to oppose such a skillful politician in the first place. Additionally, he puts himself hierarchically above the German Chancellor by judging her. Trump renders the following mock conversation with Merkel in his speech where he emphasizes his dominant position while portraying her as a school girl that has to be corrected: And they say, yes, we think by 2030, maybe 2032, we could get current. I said, “No, Angela, please. Don’t say that Angela. It’s true. You know who I’m talking about.” By the way, very nice woman. Very good negotiator. I said, “Angela, that’s a long time,” this was in 2019. She said 2032. I said, “No Angela, that’s not working.” But I said, because now they want to get cared (sic!), but I said, “Well, what about the last 25 years? All the money you owe us?” Everybody forgot about that. They forget about all

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the money that wasn’t paid. I said, “What about the trillion dollars that you really owe?” So, we’re negotiating let’s see, but in the meantime, we’re reducing our troops.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump predominantly criticizes Germany for its immigration, energy and foreign policy as well as for not contributing enough to its defense, at the expense of the USA. The latter is an issue that was first introduced by George H.W. Bush. Germany is only respected for its management of COVID-19. In contrast to the speeches of the other presidents, the Berlin Wall narrative does not appear at all in the corpus of Trump’s speeches. He exclusively refers to Germany in current contexts.

Discussion and Outlook In the research corpus, altogether 97 references to Germany occur, in the form of direct references to the country, its capital, its inhabitants, its chancellors, (the fall of) the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate. Most of these references can be found in George H.W. Bush’s speeches (26). This can be explained by the fact that the fall of the Berlin Wall as a historic event occurred during his presidency. When taking into account the fact that Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama served two terms as US presidents compared to only one term for George H.W. Bush, the number of references to Germany drops significantly with 25 references in Clinton’s, 14 references in George W. Bush’s and 13 references in Obama’s speeches. Within our sample of Trump’s four years as president, the number of references increases (19). The actual number of references can only be an indicator of the currency of political issues binding Germany and the US and their relationship in general. The count also depends upon the presidents’ rhetoric: For example, Trump refers to the German Chancellor several times by “Angela” in the same speech (see above) to make a point, thereby increasing the number of references to Germany in the Trump subcorpus of presidential speeches. The major points of interest of the analysis are the dominant topics in the speeches which refer to US-German relations, their contexts and the attitudes that the presidents express toward Germany. Based on the preceding analysis, it can be summarized that in the speeches of the first four presidents (from George H.W. Bush to Obama), Germany is predominantly seen in a positive light. George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush refer to Germany

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mostly in the historical context of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Obama’s, and even more so Trump’s speeches, current policy issues dominate references to Germany. The frequent mention of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the speeches of the first three presidents are to be expected when one considers that “German unification must be rightfully viewed as one of the most successful examples of political and economic transformation (…) in the modern era” (Gellner & Robertson, 2003, p. 2). In the presidential speeches, this decisive event is used to demonstrate the success of US foreign policy and as encouragement that the US can master major current challenges in any policy field. George H.W. Bush establishes this narrative in his speeches and his successors— apart from Trump—continue to use it. George H.W. Bush’s speeches also reveal respect for Germany’s economic and financial achievements. The only criticism by George H. W. Bush of Germany is directed at German defense spending in the context of NATO. Clinton continues to use the “Berlin Wall narrative” in order to demonstrate the capacity of American foreign policy. The few times that Germany is referred to in a negative sense is within the historical context of the Second World War and the Nazi period. The Bushes and Obama also connect Germany to the strategy of supporting and advancing freedom and democracy as a pillar of US national security. Obama adds to the “Berlin Wall narrative” as an epochal event inspiring prosperity, “self-determination”, “equality and the rule of law” (010). As in some of George H.W. Bush’s speeches, Germany is seen as a competitor but also as a role model. This is particularly evident with respect to the new energy sector, education in science and technology, pre-vocational training and the development of infrastructure. Furthermore, Germany is characterized as an ally and a country that holds the USA in high esteem. Germans are also mentioned in a historical context as one group of immigrants that continue to contribute as an important part of the USA. The few instances where Germany is criticized are in relation to its defense spending. This topic was articulated in George H.W. Bush’s speeches and was also a prominent point of criticism in Trump’s speeches. The only US president who predominantly criticizes Germany is Trump. Apart from defense, his criticism extends to the policy fields of immigration, energy and foreign affairs. However, respect for Germany is implicitly expressed in relation to its management of the pandemic. Given the fact that during the presidencies of Obama and Trump the Berlin Wall narrative has been less evident than in comparison to their predecessors,

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we may conclude that the Berlin Wall is no longer a primary symbolic reference for Germany. In this regard in Ash (2014) the fall of the Berlin Wall is characterized as “a kind of master metaphor (or meta-metaphor) of our age”, used especially by western politicians, not just to represent, but to predict, the forward march of freedom. “The Wall is gone,” intoned a recently inaugurated President George W. Bush on 1 May 2001, conjuring a sunlit international landscape. (This was, needless to say, before 9/11)

And indeed, the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a recurring theme with this tenor in the speeches of the US presidents—apart from Trump. As Leuenberger (2006, pp. 30–31) observes with regard to psychologists, the analysis has also shown that US presidents “have used the Berlin Wall to construct (…) narratives that speak to the psychology of individuals, society, and culture”. Nonetheless, the use of the Berlin Wall theme by the presidents corresponds to Leuenberger’s observation that “the Berlin Wall has become a symbol of national oppression”—in contrast to “most national monuments that are symbols of national pride” such as the Statue of Liberty (Leuenberger, 2006, pp. 20–21). Therefore, it is the fall of the Wall that is positively connotated in the speeches. The Wall’s fall is used as “an opportunity to proclaim the ‘triumph of capitalism’ and/or the ‘death of socialism’” (Fulbrook, 1992, p. 4). This use of the fall of the Berlin Wall is prominent in the presidents’ speeches as well. In addition, they emphasize that it happened under US leadership and demonstrated the USA’s successful and just foreign policy. This fits well into the concept of “American exceptionalism”, “the idea that the United States has a unique history giving it a distinctive identity and purpose in the world” (van Engen, 2020, p. 7): Americans tend to view the nation and its foreign policy in exceptional terms, with a history and a future unlike those of any other country. In recent decades, the United States has been seen as the “leader of the free world” and “the world’s sole superpower”. (Sachs, 2018, p. 5)

American exceptionalism is evoked by the presidents’ narrative of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its use also in other current political contexts is further proof that:

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Material objects can clearly be used to envisage and categorize social as well as personal troubles. Evocative objects like the “Barbie doll,” “Columbine High School,” and the “Berlin Wall” are among the most useful resources in the claims-making tool-kit. (Leuenberger, 2006, p. 32)

We see that the presidents use this potential of the Berlin Wall as an “[evocative] object”. The narrative of its fall that is employed in their speeches can be categorized in a wider media context as a “global iconic event []” (Sonnevend, 2016, p. 20). “Global iconic events” are characterized by “resemblance, salience, and sacredness”, i.e., they resemble certain aspects of the original event, but they come to represent something larger. They express the mythical in the modern, communicating messages like loss, destruction, division, and freedom. [They] (…) are also salient: they are exceptional. These events are major social dramas with lasting presence on the world stage. Finally, iconic also expresses sacredness: people want to touch and worship the “myth”, making the event’s story contagious in the transnational space as these events get recycled in new narratives and replicated in contemporary social performances. (Sonnevend, 2016, p. 21)

Broadening the perspective to the American public, it can be observed that the actual historical event had a profound impact. According to the Pew Research Center (Kohut, 2014), 82% of the public paid close attention to news about the opening of the Berlin Wall between East and West Germany. And, as many as 50% paid very close attention to this story, according to an early November 1989 nationwide survey conducted by Gallup/Times Mirror. This is one of the highest levels of closely following a foreign story not directly involving the U.S. in all of the news interest measures taken by Center for the People & the Press before or since.

Among the things that Americans expected most from the fall of the Wall was an improvement of economic well-being (71 percent) and an increase of freedom (88 percent) in Eastern Europe (Kohut, 2014). This is consistent with proclamations that can be found in the presidents’ speeches. A look at the current views of US-Americans toward Germany as documented by PEW in 2019 reveals 75 percent of US respondents said German-US relations were good (Poushter & Mordecai, 2020). This

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is an increase of seven percent compared to 2017. 17 percent of respondents thought that the relations between the two countries were “bad”. This is a decline of five percent in comparison to 2018 and even eight percent with regard to the year 2017. In contrast to their presidents, fewer Americans are of the opinion that their European allies should spend more on their national defense: In 2019, 50 percent said that the spending should stay the same, 35 percent were in favor of European countries increasing their budgets and nine percent said they should spend less on defense. (In 2017, it was still 45 percent of US-American respondents that said European countries should spend more money on their defense.) When Americans were asked who “the most or second-most important partner” was for the country’s foreign policy, Germany was ranked fifth (after the UK [36 percent], China [23 percent], Canada [20 percent] and Israel [15 percent]) with 13 percent in 2019. 69 percent of US respondents wish for more cooperation with Germany. This predominantly positive attitude of Americans toward Germany is not reciprocated by Germans. In 2019, 64 percent of the German respondents said that “relations today between the US and Germany” were bad, while 34 percent considered them to be good (Poushter & Mordecai, 2020). The future will show if the Biden administration can contribute to improving this mostly negative attitude toward the US and whether a better balance in US-German relations can be restored in the long run.

Literature Ash, T. (2014, November 6). The fall of the Berlin Wall: What it meant to be there. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2014/nov/06/-sp-fall-berlin-wall-what-it-meant-to-be-there Fulbrook, M. (1992). The two Germanies: 1945–1990. MacMillan. Gellner, W., & Robertson, J. (2003). The Berlin republic: German unification and a decade of changes. In W. Gellner & J. Robertson (Eds.), The Berlin republic (pp. 1–2). Frank Cass. Kohut, A. (2014, November 3). Berlin Wall’s fall marked the end of the Cold War for the American public. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/03/ber lin-walls-fall-marked-the-end-of-the-cold-war-for-the-american-public/ Laurence, A. (2019). AntConc (Version 3.5.8) [Computer Software]. Waseda University. Retrieved from: https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software Leuenberger, C. (2006). Constructions of the Berlin Wall: How material culture is used in psychological theory. Social Problems, 53(1), 18–37.

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Miller Center. (2020). Presidential speeches. Retrieved from: https://millercenter. org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches Poushter, J., & Mordecai, M. (2020, November 5). Americans and Germans differ in their views of each other and the world. Differences especially stark on defense spending and security issues. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/03/09/americ ans-and-germans-differ-in-their-views-of-each-other-and-the-world/ Sachs, J. D. (2018). A new foreign policy: Beyond American exceptionalism. Columbia University Press. Sonnevend, J. (2016). Stories without borders: The Berlin Wall and the making of a global iconic event. Oxford University Press. The Grammar Lab. (2020). Corpus of presidential speeches. Retrieved from: http://www.thegrammarlab.com/?nor-portfolio=corpus-of-presidential-spe eches-cops-and-a-clintontrump-corpus Van Engen, A. C. (2020). City on the hill. Yale University Press.

CHAPTER 12

The Changing Faces of Germany’s Social Market Economy Roland Sturm

Ordo-Liberal Beginnings After the Second World War West German policy-makers had a choice. They could join the ranks of Western nations, such as France or Britain, who had a preference for Keynesian economic steering (Stewart, 1979, p. 188) or alternatively opt for a free market. The latter at first seemed to be the more challenging strategy, because of the need to rebuild the economy on the one hand and the alternative model of a stateled economy in East Germany with alleged workers’ control. The then German Economics Minister, Ludwig Erhard, advocated a new economic departure which left behind the planning of the Marshall funding of the immediate post-war years. He threw his weight behind a form of capitalism which accepted the rules developed by economists at the

R. Sturm (B) University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_12

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University of Freiburg who published in the journal ‘Ordo.’ Ordoliberalism has since then always been the fallback position of Conservative parties in government. Unexpected events, such as German unification, the 2007/2008 worldwide financial crisis, and probably the Corona crisis, too, forced (or will force) political decision-makers to rethink their spending strategies. After each crisis politics returned to ‘normal’—which is in the German case, the social market economy. The social market economy started as a ‘market economy’ with social add-ons. These were necessary to avoid severe social hardship in postwar (West) Germany, for example, with regard to food supplies or the housing sector. Alfred Müller-Armack, junior minister in Ludwig Erhard’s economics ministry, coined the term ‘social market economy’ for this ad hoc state interventionism to provide social policies where markets failed or did not exist. The core of the market economy remained, however, firmly attached to the principles of economic competition as defined by the Freiburg economist Walter Eucken (1990), for example. These principles are: (1) the price as self-regulating mechanism for the economy, (2) monetary stability, (3) open markets, (4) private property, (5) freedom to enter into contracts, (6) liability, (7) steady, and (8) reliable government economic policies. Eucken, just as Erhard, saw the market economy endangered by monopolies, a tax policy that does not redistribute wealth to the low-income groups, external effects (ecological risks), and low wages (Eucken already mentions minimal wages as a recipe in this context. Germany introduced minimal wages not until 2015!). Germany’s ordo-liberal beginnings explain why the country against the wishes of industry was already by 1958 a very efficient Cartel Office (Ortwein, 1998). German competition legislation became a model for European (EEC) competition rules (Sturm, 1996). Though in the last few decades the German Cartel Office’s standing as source of relevant ideas in competition control on the European level has suffered because of the growing influence of consumer welfare as a yardstick for competition control, ordo-liberalism remained a relevant reference point for the German Cartel Office. This implies, per se, a critical view of monopolies notwithstanding the importance of the consumer friendly ‘rule of reason’ for merger control. European competition rules take precedence and force the German Cartel office to rely more on an ex post evaluation of markets, and the complaints of competitors instead of an ex ante intervention to protect an orderly competition.

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The first decades of Germany’s social market economy profited from the opportunities provided by the emerging European market and the traditional strengths of German industry: especially a coal-based energy sector which provided resources for steel-making. In addition the chemical industry and machine-building (especially the manufacturing of cars) provided jobs and contributed to annual GDP growth rates of eight percent. With the jobs came consumer confidence and an increase in domestic demand. The economic miracle of the late fifties and sixties of the past century left the social market economy unrivaled. Social reforms did not follow a certain pattern or ideology. They were above all meant to mobilize voters for the ruling Conservative-liberal coalition under the first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. These reforms made the market economy more ‘social.’ In 1957, for example, the coalition government initiated a law, which led to much higher pensions. The amount payed out to individuals as pensions was no longer stable and low, but increased automatically with rising wage levels. Germany developed over time into a country of affluent pensioners, though the persistence of a section of lowwage earners and therefore low-income pensioners remained a problem till today.

The Road to State Intervention An economic mini-crisis in the late sixties, the first time access of the Social Democrat to power and the oil price crisis in the seventies of the past century led to a fundamental reinterpretation of the social market economy. An all-party consensus developed which trusted Keynesian demand management to deliver full employment, low inflation, and economic growth. The government used its spending powers and accepted budget deficits to create economic stimuli on the one hand and to redistribute wealth on the other. Both strategies were at the time praised as the ‘new social’ of the social market economy. Since the 1970s Germany sees itself as a welfare state. The argument that this new welfare state implies comparable living conditions in the whole of Germany (and this included after unification also differences between the poorer former communist East and the richer capitalist West) took hold. Since then, social policies have become an integral part of the social market economy. In the following decades, expenditures for defense were surpassed by spending on social issues. Social transfers became the most expensive, fastest growing and most popular part of the annual budget. Promises

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of social transfers remained the most important tool at election time, when parties wanted to make a difference. The demand for a convergence of living conditions in the whole of Germany even challenges German federalism. Federalism implies subnational autonomy. But, whenever, subnational pluralism develops there are always advocates for more equality of policy outcomes. The problem with this strategy of spending to overcome economic difficulties was, however, to be found in the golden rule of Keynesianism could not be realized: the debt amassed in times of crises when economic growth sets in was not working. Public debt grew not least because in the 1970s the stimulus policy was not discontinued and social policies were more important than ever before. One such example is the effort to cope with the economic and social consequences of the 1974 oil price crisis. The crisis shed light on the fact that certain sectors of German industry were no longer competitive. The result was an unemployment rate that resisted all efforts of governments to substitute private demand. Government largesse created inflation, which forced the Bundesbank (federal bank) to raise interest rates. Higher interest rates were, on the one hand, a strong incentive for industry to modernize and to become more competitive, on the other hand, however, this meant further job losses and implied more spending on social policies. The seventies of the last century ended with a debt crisis that overshadowed the 1980 federal elections. In 1980 public debt was five times higher than in 1970. Spending increased especially in the mid-1970s when Chancellor Helmut Schmidt tried to restart with additional financial instruments not only the German economy, but also the world economy. Though there was support by US-President Jimmy Carter this kind of economic steering did not produce positive results. As a consequence Keynesianism was widely perceived as a dead-end street because it did not deliver full employment, low inflation, and reliable growth rates. Instead, governments had become used to public debt with little hope to reduce the overall debt burden. Political steering of the economy had failed in the eyes of most economists and large parts of Germany’s political class. President Ronald Reagan’s statement that the state was not the solution, but the problem, found support in German politics. The Liberal Party left the coalition with the Social Democrats under Helmut Schmidt and formed a new coalition government with the Christian Democrats. Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats were much more willing to trust markets and even, to some (limited) extent, criticized the largesse of the welfare state. It has

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to be stressed, however, that the Christian Democrats always had a left wing that interpreted the social market economy as duty to put in place additional social policies. A new social conflict was identified. This was said to discriminate marginalized groups such as the disabled or the part of the labor force that could not rely on strong trade unions. The left wing of the Christian Democrats were willing to accept market friendly policies only if there social policies agenda was respected. Germany’s social market economy was therefore ready to depart from Keynesianism, but it never came close to questioning the ‘social’ as characteristic of her economic policy.

Half-Hearted Supply-Side Policies In the early 1980s the solution seemed to be to follow the international trend of strengthening the supply-side of the economy. Germany’s newly elected Conservative-Liberal coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1983 was much less radical in this respect than the governments of Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, or Brian Mulroney in Canada. German federalism, a very cautious strategy of tax reform to avoid cut-backs of the welfare state, and the social policy wing of the Conservatives managed to avoid a radical break with the Social Democratic past of the seventies. The social market economy was made compatible with supply-side strategies and later in the 1980s, especially after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, with an ecological rhetoric. The market element of the social market economy was strengthened not by cut-backs of the welfare state but by weakening the role of the state in the private sector. Industrial property was privatized and to a certain degree the service sector was deregulated. The National Post Office was divided into its banking branch, its telecom branch, and its postal branch, which nowadays is a logistics service. The railway service was de jure privatized and also split into several branches though until today no buyer for the railway could be found and all railway shares are held by the transport ministry. Deregulation of water supply failed. Electricity and gas, however, which had been under private control before, were now much more deregulated. Regulatory offices for the grid industries came into existence.

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To strengthen the supply side of the economy corporate taxes were lowered. German governments did not trust b’s assumption of selffinancing tax-cuts. To close holes in public sector income caused by the reduction of direct taxation, governments raised the levels of indirect taxation (VAT). In contrast to the ideology of radical supply siders, the monopoly position of the trade unions did not come under attack, although since then a growing number of companies have opted for firmlevel negotiations with union representatives and have left the employers’ associations, which traditionally negotiate wages on branch levels. Social policies of the eighties tended to increase the cost of labor, not to reduce it. Still, outside observers noticed above all the relative economic success of what had become the ‘Modell Deutschland,’ variously labeled ‘Rhineland,’ coordinated,’ ‘managed,’ or ‘stakeholder capitalism.’ This model had the following characteristics: First, an ‘enabling’ or ‘facilitating’ state created and/or sustained infrastructures of non-market cooperation in areas like finance, labour markets and welfare, which supported the efficient, long-term functioning of the market economy. Second, a powerful independent central bank – the Bundesbank – served to discipline the collective bargaining of strong employer and trade union organisations, thereby securing both price stability (and avoiding disruptive patterns of ‘boom and bust’) and low unit labour costs (thus ensuring a competitive export sector). Third, the incorporation of employees into corporate governance through codetermination and works councils ensured social peace in the workplace. Finally, a technologically sophisticated, export-oriented manufacturing sector, backed by a tough backbone of small and mediumsized firms (Mittelstand), exercised comparative institutional advantage in producing high-quality, technologically advanced products for world markets. (Dyson & Padgett, 2005, p. 116)

German Unification---The Economy Becomes Politics German unification forced political decision-makers for the first time to put into writing their interpretation of the market economy. In the first chapter of the 1990 treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) that created a currency, an economic, and a social union of both German

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states, the social market economy was defined by the following characteristics: private property, competition, market prices, and the freedom of movement for labor, finance, goods and services (Table 12.1). In practical terms German unification meant an economic about-turn. All lessons of supply-side economics were set aside. Budget rules were ignored. The new rule was, you spend what you need to modernize the East German economy, above all the private and public infrastructure, and to build a welfare state in the East after the West German model. Table 12.1 Economic performance since German unification Year

Unemployment (in %)

Public debt (in % of GDP)

Change of average income in %

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

7.3 8.5 9.8 10.6 10.4 11.5 12.7 12.3 11.7 10.7 10.3 10.8 11.6 11.7 13.0 12.0 10.1 8.7 9.1 8.6 7.9 7.6 7.7 7.3 7.1 6.8 6.3 5.8

30.0 32.6 35.1 37.9 44.6 47.1 49.2 50.3 51.6 52.3 52.2 53.8 56.5 58.8 60.9 62.3 62.2 62.7 66.2 59.9 74.9 75.0 72.3 69.6 66.3 63.6 60.3 56.6

– 6.1 3.8 3.7 3.9 2.5 1.7 2.4 2.8 2.4 2.5 3.2 3.0 2.2 1.9 1.7 2.4 2.5 1.1 2.8 2.6 2.7 1.7 2.1 2.0 2.5 1.7 2.8

Source Heilemann and Kaufhold (2020, pp. 392–395)

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This was not only an economic decision, but also a political one. Better living conditions in the East were, of course, popular with East German voters. In addition, there was the hope that improved living conditions would stop the migration of East Germans to West Germany. Unemployment in the East German states in the years from German unity to the worldwide financial crisis remained higher than in Germany as a whole, and contributed to demands for increased fiscal transfers (see Table 12.2). The assumption was, however, that a considerable part of the billions spend on East Germany would come back into the coffers of the Ministry of Finance that now controlled the assets (state owned industries, etc.) of the former GDR. The Ministry created an office (Treuhandanstalt) for the sale (privatization), restructuring, or closing of companies. The results of the activities of the Treuhand were for several reasons disappointing. Large-scale job losses could not be avoided, the income created by asset sales was much less than expected (the Treuhand finished its work with a huge deficit), and above all, even today, many East Germans see the Treuhand as a kind of colonial power that recklessly destroyed the East German economy. Some felt that all the talk about a new social market Table 12.2 Unemployment rates in the East German states, 1994–2009 Year

Mecklenburg-West Pomerania

Brandenburg

Saxony-Anhalt

Thuringia

Saxony

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

16.2 15.3 16.8 18.9 19.2 18.2 17.8 18.3 18.6 20.1 20.4 20.3 19.0 16.5 14.1 13.5

14.5 13.4 15.2 17.6 17.6 17.4 17.0 17.4 17.5 18.8 18.7 18.2 17.0 14.9 13.0 12.3

16.7 15.7 17.7 20.3 20.4 20.3 20.2 19.7 19.6 20.5 20.3 20.2 18.3 16.0 14.0 13.6

15.6 14.1 15.6 17.8 17.1 15.4 15.4 15.3 15.9 16.7 16.7 17.1 15.6 13.2 11.2 11.4

14.8 13.6 14.9 17.1 17.5 17.2 17.0 17.5 17.8 17.9 17.8 18.3 17.0 14.7 12.8

Source Deutscher Bundestag (2010, p. 15)

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economy had no match in real life, and that what they saw was the logic of capitalism as expected (Christ & Neubauer, 1991).

Social Market Eclecticism and Globalization The East German voters had rescued the Conservative government of Helmut Kohl at the 1994 and 1998 general elections. In 1998, however, for the first time a Social Democratic-Green coalition came into power. Green environmentalism had already been accepted by all German parties. It was therefore not surprising that the Greens tried to introduce some ecological steering mechanisms into the social market economy though with very limited success. Recycling was strengthened. A tax reform, for example, increased the price of petrol. The promise was made that the extra income would be used to finance old-age pensions, a social policy preference of the Social Democrats. The paradox this legislation provokes is obvious: If the consumer drives less (buys less petrol), this is good for the environment, but bad for the financing of old-age pensions. The greatest worry of the Social Democrats were, however, the five million unemployed. One faction of the German Social Democrats under the leadership of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder decided to follow the interpretation of capitalism that the ‘Third way’ of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the US-President Bill Clinton offered. The interpretation of the social market economy in Germany reintroduced supplyside thinking and combined it with (Keynesian) spending programs and above all an internationalization of the German economy. Two reforms were at the heart of the new orientation of the social market economy. One was a strategy of ‘workfare,’ or, the so-called Hartz reforms. They were developed outside the federal government by the human resources executive at the motor company Volkswagen AG (VW). Twenty percent of Volkswagen’s shares are owned by the state of Lower Saxony, where Gerhard Schröder was Prime Minister before he became Chancellor. The Hartz reforms were meant to reintroduce those sections of the labor force into the labor market that were able to work, but were currently without a job. The Hartz reforms continue to provoke criticism on the political Left. They were anathema to many East Germans and the trade unions. And, they were the smallest common denominator for a new party Die Linke (the Left). It was formed by Social

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Democrats and union members (who in opposition to the Hartz reforms had come together under the label of ‘Labur and Social Justice’), on the one hand, and the East German successor party of the Communists, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), on the other. It accepted the social market economy but stressed above all the social (socialist) element of the concept. Factions of the party have advocated anti-capitalist policies throughout the party’s existence (Vollmer, 2013). The second reform buried the ‘Modell Deutschland’: or, the model requiring industry to have a close relationship with the banking sector and workers’ councils integrated the workforce into the decision-making process, especially in Germany’s big industries. The Social DemocraticGreen government opened the German economy to globalization. It allowed a tax free sale of shares of industrial companies held by the banks. This was a significant move because the big German companies used to rely on domestic banking. Not only did the big three banks (Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Dresdner Bank) hold the great majority of shares of the most important German companies, they also financed their investment projects. The close relationship of banks and industry made it possible that industry could engage in long-term planning. With the shares of German industry now on the international market, the short-termism of quarterly reports on the achievements of companies was introduced. German companies diversified their sources of investment financing and the banks used their income from asset sales to speculate at the stock exchange. It was not by accident that German banks, and especially the Deutsche Bank, were so prominently involved the 2007/2008 subprime crisis. Co-ordinating institutions of German capitalism were, in general, losing importance: Associations played ‘a lesser role in financial markets, collective bargaining and training. Likewise, network-based forms of governance (bank and cross-ownership of shares in joint-stock companies) have also weakened substantially’ (Jackson & Sorge, 2012, p. 1146). The greater reliance on the market and the need to control expenditures has also changed the role of the state as entrepreneur. After unification on the local and regional level were most of the investment decisions are made public private partnerships became an important instrument to uphold public infrastructures. To the present day this instrument is an option for decision-makers who hope to profit from efficiency gains and above all see the chance to start projects even if at the moment there is a lack of resources (Winkelmann, 2012).

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In 1992 the Maastricht treaty also contributed to a fundamental reconfiguration of the social market economy. Germany agreed to give up her national currency, the German Mark (DM), and to ‘Europeanize’ the Bundesbank. With the introduction of the Euro Germany lost full control of her currency and one anchor of her economic dominance in Europe. The countries which shared the new common currency promised financial stability via EU’s convergence (of economic strength) criteria promise which from start was not realistic. As it turned out, the Bundesbank model evaporated over time. Though the European Central Bank is situated in Germany (Frankfurt), the ECB became much more politicized in its decision-making process than the Bundesbank was ever before. Its interpretation of the European treaties also sets her very much apart from the Bundesbank tradition. The Bundesbank was a fierce inflation fighter that confronted German governments to defend the stability of the DM. The ECB tried to moderate monetary policy and with her interest rate decisions supports above all weaker economies in Europe. This resulted in Germany losing its access to economic support by the policies of her national bank that tried to tailor its decisions to German needs. With the Euro currency Germany now avoids transaction costs in trade. Whether this was a price worth paying paid is the essence of political arguments that focus on the benefits of European integration.

The Financial Crisis and Its Aftermath With the end of the ‘Modell Deutschland’ the social market economy was criticized for being a replica of the neoliberal model. The financial crisis of 2007/2008 provoked, however, a new round of state interventionism in the economy. To protect the banking sector, the Commerzbank (one of the three traditional big banks with Deutsche and Dresdner) was partly nationalized, and banks were bailed out. The Europeanization of the German economy since the introduction of the Euro forced the German government to participate in new European efforts to support countries, such as Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and Spain, to avoid a Euro crisis. One instrument was a balanced budget requirement (fiscal pact) in the constitutions of the Euro countries, including Germany. This requirement has been binding from 2016 for the federal government and from 2020 for the German states (Länder). In times of crisis the executives on every level of government can ignore spending limits, as was done in the Coronavirus crisis. The balanced budget clause in the constitution was

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seen as a return to Ludwig Erhard’s budgetary prudence of the 1960s. Where the German government saw a useful ordo-liberal rule at work, the Southern countries in the EU could only see a German dictate behind EU interventions that was ready to sacrifice the social dimension of their welfare states. German economic recovery after the financial crisis was rapid and the rising tax income allowed new commitments to social expenditures. The social market economy now meant that about half of the federal budget were transfer payments to subsidize lower income groups, the health sector, or families. The bulk of education and internal security expenditures is shouldered by the Länder. Challenged by the French President Emmanuel Macron’s European agenda, Germany’s economics minister, Peter Altmeier, showed his readiness to overcome the passive role of the state in industrial development that a social market economy in normal times implies. He published a paper on a new industrial policy, which argues in favor of state-led innovation policies with the aim of creating global European champions that have the ability to challenge Chinese and American competitors (Sturm, 2019). According to the Kiel institute German subsidization of its industry was 187.8 billion Euro in 2018 (FAZ, 6.9.2019: 19). After thirty years of German unification economists still see an East– West divide in Germany. No one questions the social market economy. The living conditions in East Germany have improved considerably since German unification. The East German states suffer from an aging and shrinking population. This implies that their share of tax income gets smaller, but social standards, such as support for the unemployed or pensioners remain in place and adds to social expenditures. In addition, companies in the East German states continue to fall behind in their productivity primarily because after unification no global player moved its headquarters from West to East Germany. Of importance, as well, is also that innovative and internationally competitive small and mediumsized firms are rare in East Germany, whereas in West Germany they are contributing massively to the success of industry. East Germany may be on its way to a more interesting place for industry worldwide as exemplified by the new branch of Tesla in Brandenburg. Additionally, the housing industry has become a prominent and positive development for the East. Here East Germans are a bit more content with the changes they experienced (for details on the East–West divide see DIW, 2020).

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The Coronavirus Rewrote the Social Market Economy The Corona pandemic and especially the lockdowns connected with the pandemic led to an unprecedented spending spree to combat negative effects on jobs and health in general. On July 3rd the government announced a e130bn stimulus package. This follows a 123bn supplementary budget passed in March 2020. Benefit rises and cuts to value-added tax aim to boost consumption. In its dimensions the Coronavirus crisis was comparable only to German unification, when on a smaller scale all budgetary rules were set aside. At first there was also barely any evaluation or planning of public spending. Markets broke down, international trade became much more complicated, and the general perception among the public was a comeback of the state economy. The open question is and was, however, would political intervention into the economy outlast the crisis? And, was there a danger of a ‘Zombification’ of the German economy: an economy with important branches of commerce and industry that were artificially kept alive by permanent state subsidies? The German government organized a wide range of furlough schemes to reduce wage bills, state-backed loans to provide liquidity and laws or other measures to prevent bankruptcies. The car industry, for example, was kept alive in full without having to answer important questions, for example with regard to the Diesel emissions scandal or its inability to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. Some companies, for example in tourism and aviation, would have even wanted the state becoming an industrial partner. The inclination to bring the state back in the social market economy had been growing from the 2000s. In 2007 the federal government held shares in 150 companies and had a stake in many others. The federal budget draws valuable income dividends paid by Telecom, German railway (which is the share-holder of 91 transport and logistics companies), and the Post office. On the local level, electricity markets have enjoyed a noticeable resurgence under new political control (FAZ, 5.8. 2015: 17). The Coronavirus emergency shed additional light on a traditional dilemma of Germany’s social market economy. Decision-makers tend to support markets in general but find plenty of special cases of market failure

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that justify political intervention. Most recently politics has taken issue with the speed by which markets overcome their dependency on fossil fuels, organized digitalization of public education, or found a Corona vaccine. State intervention in the past led to support of outdated industries and was unable to cope with the consequences. Examples of this are nuclear power (though the end of nuclear power has been agreed, no deposit for nuclear waste has been identified yet) and the coal industry (though the end of coal mining has been agreed, there are only vague ideas were the jobs lost could in future be found). The tendency to see the market as the problem and state interventionism as a solution has become more popular in the EU, especially since the UK has exited the European Union. France has re-invented a form of economic planning and encourages Germany to invest more in joint European efforts of industrial policy (Stiftung Marktwirtschaft, 2020a). A reinterpretation of the social market economy has found influential voices, as noted by The Economist (13.7. 2020: 16): Older economists schooled in rule-based ‘ordo-liberalism’ have partly yielded to a younger set, often educated abroad, with a grounding in empirical economics and views that sit squarely in the international mainstream. Between 2010 and 2015 the share of German economists who told a survey that fiscal policy could help stabilize economies doubled.

The long-term consequences of more state (expenditures) and less markets will lead to an increase in public debt (instead of 59.8 percent of GDP 2019 to about 80.0 percent of GDP 2020, Stiftung Marktwirtschaft, 2020a, 2020b) and additional deficits in subsequent years growing prominently from demographic change and industrial restructuring (the greening of the German economy) which will accelerate the rise of expenditures. German companies pay higher taxes than their competitors abroad, and the number of well-trained employees continues to shrink. Thus, Germany needs the influx of an educated workforce from abroad. Coronavirus emergency means that the level of social expenditures that the pandemic triggered can only be upheld when retirement age and other unpopular measures are extended.

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Conclusion: The Social Market economy---A Flexible Concept The social market economy is still the reference point for German politics. Neither German unification nor economic crises have changed that. It is the ‘unwritten’ German economic constitution. Its interpretations over time have shown a great amount of flexibility. Though the social market economy’s ordo-liberal beginnings always shine through, today it is possible to justify a very significant role of the state in the German economy. The liberalization of the markets in the newly united Germany has today come under political pressure, just as the goal of balanced budgets. Neo-Keynesian thought became dominant in the 1970s and was brought back after the subprime crisis of 2007 and the Corina virus crisis. German party programs routinely praise the advantages of a social and ecological market economy when it comes to its implementation, views diverge. But as a consensus creating formula it unites Germany East and West.

Literature Christ, P., & Neubauer, R. (1991). Kolonie im eigenen Land. Die Treuhand, Bonn und die Wirtschaftskatastrophe der fünf neuen Länder. Rowolth. Deutscher Bundestag. (2010). Die Lage auf dem ostdeutschen Arbeitsmarkt 20 Jahre nach der Einheit. Drucksache 17/3093 vom 30.8.2010. DIW. (2020). Wochenbericht 39. DIW. Dyson, K., & Padgett, S. (2005). Introduction: Global, Rhineland or hybrid capitalism. German Politics, 2(14), 115–124. Eucken, W. (1990). Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik (6th ed.). J.C.B. Mohr. Heilemann, U., & Kaufhold, M. (2020). Wirtschaftspolitische Chronik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–2019. UVK Verlag. Jackson, G., & Sorge, A. (2012). The trajectory of institutional change in Germany, 1979–2009. Journal of European Public Policy, 19(8), 1146–1167. Ortwein, E. (1998). Das Bundeskartellamt. Eine Politische Ökonomie deutscher Wettbewerbspolitik. Nomos. Stewart, M. (1979). Keynes and After (2nd ed.). Penguin. Stiftung Marktwirtschaft. (2020a). Nachhaltigkeit im Schatten der Corona Pandemie. Argumente zu Marktwirtschaft und Politik 152. Stiftung Marktwirtschaft. (2020b). Kein Rückzug in die Festung Europa! Stiftung Marktwirtschaft.

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Sturm, R. (1996). The German Cartel office in a hostile environment. In G. B. Doern & S. Wilks (Eds.), Comparative Competition policy: National institutions in a global market (pp. 185–224). Clarendon Press. Sturm, R. (2019). Industriepolitik als (neue) Strategie der Wirtschaftspolitik. Gesellschaft –Wirtschaft – Politik, 4(68), 503–510. Vollmer, A. M. (2013). Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative (WASG). Nomos. Winkelmann, T. (2012). Public Private Partnership: Auf der Suche nach Substanz. Nomos.

CHAPTER 13

European Divergences: Germany, France, and Italy in Global Economic Governance Stefan A. Schirm

Introduction1 European Union (EU) member countries’ policy positions often differ in issue areas that had been designated to manifest joint European positions. This has been repeatedly the case since the 1960s as well as after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Thus, divergences among EU states also characterize some European integration initiatives that were created after German re-unification. These more novel integration steps recently show divergences of German positions from those of other EU members and, in consequence, an increasing contestation of German positions by other EU members. Examples for such European divergences reach from the 1 This chapter is a substantially revised, shortened, and updated version of Schirm, Stefan A. (2018a): The domestic politics of European preferences towards global economic governance, in: New Global Studies 12(3), 303–324.

S. A. Schirm (B) Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_13

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European Monetary Union (EMU) to joint European action in global economic governance. While the reasons for divergence among member states regarding crisis management in the EMU has been widely studied (for instance Hall, 2012; Schild, 2013; Schirm, 2018b), policy divergence among European member states of the Group of the 20 largest economies (G20) requires further research. In the G20 debates after the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, the European member states France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom differed over public debt to stimulate growth and over the governance of global trade imbalances. These debates express differences in material interests, such as competitiveness and solvency, as well as ideational divergences regarding the role of the government in steering the economy through deficit spending. The frequent divergences of European positions in the G20 seem puzzling in light of European integration and the specific decision in the European Council on an ‘agreed language’ in the G20. The German government’s role in this regard merits special scrutiny. Since the 1950s, Germany had acquired the reputation of frequently driving European integration by adjusting its policy positions to other EU members in order to achieve a compromise. This role of European ‘Musterschüler’ has to be seen in the context of German isolation after the Second World War and its subsequent re-integration into the community of states. European integration was perceived in Germany as laying at the center of Germany’s own interest (Loth, 1994). This holds true also for the first two decades after German unification in 1990. The strategy has been characteristic of all German governments from Chancellors Adenauer and Brandt over Schmidt and Kohl to Schröder. Under Chancellor Merkel, however, the German government several times chose to act unilaterally without seeking a European compromise or consensus beforehand. At the same time, the Merkel governments maintained a very pro-European rhetoric in stark contrast to some of their actual policies that were enacted without integrating them into European agreements. Prominent examples for Merkel’s national-unilateral course are the dramatic change of Germany’s (nuclear) energy policy (‘Energiewende’), the unilateral opening of Germany’s borders for unlimited immigration, and Germany’s stance in the Eurozone crisis. While the former two policy areas continue to structurally shape Germany without being embedded in a common European course until today, the latter policy field was embedded in European agreements by imposing the German government’s priority for austerity on the debtor countries such as Italy and

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Greece in exchange for German (and other countries’) financial help. This imposition was often criticized as dividing Europe further and did not lead to any lasting solution of the Eurozone crisis since the recipient countries were not willing or able to enact the demanded reforms. The consequences of this EMU course led to sufferings for German taxpayers and savers (low interest rates) as well as for the majority of the population of debtor countries (budget cuts, recession), while the financial sector was pleased and political grandstanding was enabled. The positions of European members of the G20 also represent an instance for policy divergence among EU states and for Germany acting without European compromise or consensus. The article will show that the German government’s preferences differed from the positions of France and Italy (for the UK see Schirm, 2018a). Specifically, the article analyzes the reasons for European divergences in the G20 between 2009 and 2014, this is, regarding the issues of public debt and trade imbalances which dominated G20 debates in the five years after the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008. Since these issues directly affect important sectors (trade) as well as voters in general (public debt), the article looks at explanations stemming from domestic societal demands and not at the influence of elite networks which may have been crucial in other cases of German act-alone policies such as energy and migration. The article aims at explaining the persistent divergences of EU member state positions in the G20 by employing the ‘societal approach’. It conceptualizes the impact of domestic ideas and interests on governments and asks under which conditions either ideas or interests prevail in shaping governmental preferences. Following the domestic politics perspective of the societal approach seems appropriate, because the integration theories of neofunctionalism, institutionalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism show shortcomings in explaining divergences among EU members. Neofunctionalism (Jensen, 2013) explains common action and new institutions as functional spill-overs from previous integration. Niemann and Ioannou (2015), for instance, argue that the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) can be interpreted as a functional and political spill-over of the Eurozone crisis. The institutional weaknesses of the EMU would have triggered spill-over effects, which led to deeper integration. However, ‘neofunctionalism’s strength in explaining the dynamics of integration is a weakness when it comes to the limits’ (Ioannou et al., 2015, p. 165) of joint action. Thus, neofunctionalism is not well suited to explain the divergences among EU member states in the G20 in face

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of common challenges and the commitment on an ‘agreed language’ mentioned above. In addition, with its focus on spill-overs and institutions, neofunctionalism encounters difficulties in explaining the enduring central role of member states for the stop-and-goes of European cooperation in global governance, while the EU Commission (also a member in the G20) played a secondary role (Moschella & Quaglia, 2016). Institutionalism (Pollack, 2005, pp. 362–364) and historical institutionalism as theories of European integration focus on the influence of common European rules and institutions as well as on path-dependent behavioral patterns and socialization in explaining preferences of governmental actors. Institutionalism is a powerful theory concerning the impact of European institutions, rules and transnational elites on governments, but (like neofunctionalism) encounters its limits when enduring differences among governmental preferences despite common institutions and joint commitments have to be explained. Therefore, institutionalism seems not appropriate regarding the puzzle of this paper. Liberal intergovernmentalism argues that interdependencies among nations lead domestic interest groups to demand integration which is then achieved in grand bargains between governments on the European level (Moravcsik, 1993). The ‘liberal’ domestic politics side of liberal intergovernmentalism, however, only focusses on material interests and does not include societal ideas into the analysis. Therefore, it cannot explain ideational divergences regarding the virtues of deficit-spending versus fiscal restraint in the G20. Moravcsik (1999, p. 171) acknowledges this point when stating: ‘I fail explicitly to consider, except in passing, explanations based on economic policy ideas’. By conceptualizing the conditions under which either societal ideas or material interests prevail in shaping governmental preferences, the societal approach complements Moravcsik’s focus on domestic interests. In sum, the major integration theories make important contributions to the understanding of European integration, but cannot fully explain the specific puzzle of this article on the diverging positions of EU members in the G20. Rather, ideational and material domestic level factors, which are (mostly) neglected by integration theories, seem promising and necessary for the explanation of the variation of governmental preferences in cross-country comparison. According to Krotz and Schild (2013, p. 181), this holds true also regarding the two core drivers of European integration: ‘The structures of their economies, the relative

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sectoral competitiveness, and the differences in economic thought more often than not placed France and Germany in opposite camps’. Thus, this article argues that explaining the divergence of European positions requires a comparative analysis of the domestic politics of governmental preference formation. For this endeavor, the societal approach will be applied and the hypothesis will be examined that the divergences of European governments’ preferences correlate with domestic material interests and societal ideas. The article proceeds in three steps. First, the societal approach will be presented, its variables defined, and hypotheses developed. Second, the case studies on divergence in the G20 regarding public debt and global imbalances comparatively analyze whether the differing positions of the chosen European member states correspond to societal ideas or material interests and under which conditions either ideas or interests prevailed. The cases provide exemplary evidence for a correlation between societal ideas and interests on the one hand and governmental positions on the other hand. Third, the conclusion compares the two case studies and aggregates their empirical and theoretical implications.

Theoretical Framework: The Societal Approach The societal approach (Schirm, 2009, 2016, 2020) rests on theories of domestic politics and liberal theories of IR and IPE focusing on interest groups (Milner, 1997; Moravcsik, 1997), ideas (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993; Hall, 1997), and institutions (Fioretos, 2001) as independent variables for the explanation of governmental preferences as the dependent variable. The societal approach has partially integrated and developed these theories further and is innovative in conceptualizing the conditions for the prevalence of either value-based ideas or material interests in shaping governmental positions. It assumes that governments wish to remain in office and that opposition politicians seek governmental office. Therefore, both tend to be responsive toward societal demands in democratic political systems. Societal influences on governmental preferences can be found in societal interests and ideas: Interests are conceived as material considerations of economic sectors (and of voters as general societal interests) whose cost–benefit calculations can change rapidly according to changing circumstances such as economic crises, competitiveness, and new global, regional as well as national policies. Sectoral interests can diverge, for example, regarding the desire for

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protection from competition versus the demand for liberalization. General societal interests will not be considered here because the issues at stake either directly affect sectoral interests (trade) and or do not offer variation in cross-country comparison (public debt). Ideas are defined as value-based fundamental societal expectations of voters about appropriate governmental positions. Societal ideas express themselves as attitudes on appropriate governance, which can be empirically evidenced in public opinion polls. Regarding the topic of this article, societal ideas refer to the appropriate role of governmental policies in steering the economy. The societal approach conceptualizes ideas as societal expectations to explain governmental preferences and does not focus on the causes of ideas (such as historical events or ideational epistemic communities) nor on elite ideas. Ideas and interests can interact with one another and can mutually constitute each other. Their analytical separation serves the purpose of identifying sui generis characteristics of the two variables. In its complete version, the societal approach also includes domestic institutions as an independent variable for the explanation of governmental preferences (Schirm, 2016, pp. 68–69). Domestic institutions, however, will not be considered here, since ideas and interests seem better suited to explain European divergence regarding the puzzle on policy coordination in the G20. First, the specific issues at stake did not mirror domestic institutional settings which the governments might have been inclined to defended on the international level. Second, the G20 does not aim at the international institutionalization of global governance, but rather attempts at issue specific coordination of its members’ policies. Ideas and interests can reinforce each other, but they can also differ and compete in shaping governmental positions. Regarding the puzzle of the article, ideas about appropriate policies apparently shape European divergences on public debt, while material interests seem to dominate the controversies regarding trade imbalances (see case studies). This raises the question on the conditions for the relative prevalence of either ideas or interests, a question not conceptualized by other theories of domestic politics. According to the societal approach, ideas will prevail in shaping governmental preferences, if the issue at stake does not directly affect sectoral cost–benefit calculations of specific interest groups, but instead involves voters’ value-based ideas about the fundamental role of the government in steering the economy (Hypothesis 1). Conversely, material interests will predominantly influence governmental preferences,

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if the issue at stake directly inflicts costs or benefits on specific and well-organized economic groups and does not primarily touch the fundamental role of the government in steering the economy (Hypothesis 2). Furthermore, the societal approach argues that the government’s capacity to compromise in intergovernmental negotiations tends to be higher, if divergences are material (interest-driven) in nature, than if they are shaped by contrasting value-based expectations (idea-driven) (Hypothesis 3). This is because a divergence in interests seems more accessible to compromise via a partition of costs and benefits than do ideational differences, which require a new consensus on societal expectations (Schirm, 2009, p. 505; 2020). In its complete version, the societal approach considers the plurality of ideas and interests in societies by conceptualizing de facto ‘alignments’ of certain ideas with specific interests, which work in parallel by trying to shape governmental preferences in the same direction, for instance, in favor of trade liberalization versus protectionism (Schirm, 2020, p. 408). In sum, the societal approach offers a domestic politics explanation of the persistent divergence among European G20 member states’ positions toward global economic governance. Thus, it also offers a theoretically guided analysis of the reasons for the German government’s divergence from French and Italian positions in the G20 debates. Operationalization. In order to examine the relevance of the two domestic variables, the ideational and interest-related indicators have to be identified. If governmental positions correspond to these indicators on ideas and interests, and if they diverge in cross-country comparison, then a plausible domestic politics explanation of divergence among EU members can be offered. Regarding interests, evidence might be found in statements of business associations on their expectations visà-vis the management of the global economy in the G20. In addition, data on economic competitiveness can indicate structural interests as well. Regarding ideas, it seems plausible to investigate ideas as public attitudes toward the role of the government in steering the economy. Ideas with possible relevance might be found in expectations about the appropriateness of public debt, that is, deficit spending versus fiscal restraint. These attitudes can be evidenced through opinion polls, e.g., of the Eurobarometer. Three disclaimers apply to the following comparative analysis. First, given the length restrictions for this chapter, the evidence will be exemplifying in nature. A complete test of the arguments is not possible here.

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Second, the focus on societal ideas and interests does not imply that other variables such as power, rules, and coalitions might not have influenced positions in the G20. Rather, the argument brought forward here is that governmental preferences cannot be comprehensively understood without considering societal influences. Third, the article’s aim is not to engage in more detail with the debate on integration theories or EU’s global influence, but rather to explain the empirical puzzle with the societal variables. Thus, the article will methodologically focus on the correlation of evidence for the two independent variables with evidence for the dependent variable (government statements, documents). Exemplifying hypotheses via the statements of politicians can provide only plausibility, not proof. A public statement by the government underlining its positions with material interests or ideas does not necessarily provide the real reasoning behind the government’s preference. However, public statements give evidence for what the government considers acceptable to the voters and therefore legitimate. In order to secure this link between governmental preferences and societal ideas and interests, the empirical evidence on governmental preferences focuses on quotes from politicians of the responsible ministries and from heads of government who—based on the standard assumption of self-interest to remain in office—will position themselves on patterns acceptable and thus legitimate in the eye of voters. The comments of ministerial experts are not considered because they do not ultimately decide. Think tank experts are also not considered since they are often dependent on funding by lobby groups or governments. Both expert-groups are not accountable to voters. Case study selection. Concerning country selection, the article includes three of the four EU states that are members of the G20, namely, France, Germany, and Italy (the United Kingdom is not analyzed). Since the article aims at comparing the societal foundations of governmental preferences of European countries, the EU Commission is not considered. The weak and clearly secondary role of the EU Commission in the G20 debates (Moschella & Quaglia, 2016) is an additional reason for not including it. In other areas such as EU external trade negotiations, the EU Commission plays a crucial role. The investigation covers the period from 2009 to 2014. In 2008, the global economic crisis erupted and the G20 started to convene on the ‘leaders level’ of heads of state and government.

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The two cases—public debt and trade imbalances—were selected for analysis for three reasons. First, they represented the core issues on the G20 agenda 2009–2014 with potentially far-reaching effects on the global economy as well as on the national economic policies. Second, they belong to the most controversial and enduring issues debated in the G20. Other issues such as financial market regulation and currency manipulation were debated in a less controversial or shorter manner. Third, the areas involved proposals which potentially affected material interests as well as societal ideas. Referring to public debt and stimulus, the G20 debate focused on the role of politics in steering the economy and might therefore predominantly follow societal ideas. Concerning global trade imbalances, the controversies directly imply cost–benefit considerations for the export sector as well as for firms threatened by imports and might thus primarily follow material interests. Hence, the case selection offers variation regarding the possible bearing of ideas and interests.

EU Member States’ Preference Formation in the G20 In 2009, the G20 members officially designated the group as ‘the premier forum for international economic cooperation’ (OECD, 2016). Research on the G20 has focused on the legitimacy and efficiency of the new body (Kirton, 2013; Luckhurst, 2012). Concerning legitimacy, the literature has emphasized, for instance, the enlarged participation of countries and the improved representation of the world population in the G20, as compared to the previous steering committee for the world economy, the G7. Regarding efficiency, the G20 was credited with limiting protectionism in reaction to the global economic crisis, improving mutual understanding on economic policy issues, and strengthening international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, critics have called it a ‘talking shop’ (The Economist, 2009), which has failed to fulfill its steering function due to divergent positions of member states on many issues. Research on the European participation in global economic governance and in the G20 has focused mainly on the international negotiations as main level of analysis and has examined, for example, the question whether the cohesiveness of EU member states’ positions is a necessary condition for the EU’s influence in the G20 (Moschella & Quaglia, 2016).

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In order to enhance the European integration and international influence, EU members of the G20 decided in the European Council that they would act jointly and speak with an ‘agreed language’ in the G20 (Hodson, 2011: 9; Wouters et al., 2010, p. 15). Despite this commitment, however, European G20 members diverged on crucial issues (see below). The reasons for EU member states’ divergences, however, have been neglected by research: why did European members of the G20 show persistent divergence despite previous commitments to unity? Specifically, why did Germany’s positions differ from other EU members instead of fulfilling the commitment to an ‘agreed language’? This question points to an empirical as well as theoretical puzzle since mainstream integration theories would rather suggest convergence than divergence: Why didn’t European member countries of the G20 pursue a neofunctionalistinstitutionalist logic in following the mutual commitments in the European Council to integrate their positions into an ‘agreed language’? Why didn’t interdependence, domestic interest group demands for cooperation, and the distribution of power shape governmental positions according to liberal intergovernmentalism? Instead, did governmental positions in the G20 correlate with differing societal ideas and interests relevant in the domestic politics of the EU member states?

The Role of Ideas in Public Debt and Economic Stimulus Prompted by the eruption of the global financial crisis, the G20 leaders gathered in 2008 and agreed to cushion the crisis-induced recessions with national economic stimulus programs. These stimulus packages are largely held to have successfully prevented a further deterioration of the economic downturn and beggar-thy-neighbor policies in many countries. Since 2010, however, some G20 members, such as Germany, increasingly advocated ending stimulus programs financed by deficit spending while other members, including the United States and France, demanded deficit spending to be continued and expanded. On the one hand, countries favoring fiscal restraint argue that deficit spending would be structurally unsustainable and could trigger inflationary pressures. On the other hand, G20 members advocating a continuation of deficit spending argue that fiscal restraint would endanger the prospects for growth. The three European G20 members under scrutiny here have largely positioned themselves on differing sides of the debate. While Germany

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demanded an ‘exit’ to deficit spending, France and Italy were in most instances in favor of continuing stimulus programs. Exemplary quotes from government politicians demonstrate these positions: Germany. Chancellor Merkel demanded before the G20 Seoul summit in 2010 that members ‘talk more in the G20 framework about the exit strategy from our various crisis programs. We must switch to a phase of budget consolidation, as we are doing in Germany’ (Merkel, 2010). Already in 2009, the German Finance Minister Steinbrück (2009) had urged G20 members to seek an ‘exit-strategy’ from debtfueled big spending. The German demand for fiscal restraint and its resistance against deficit spending was frequently reaffirmed regarding Europe by Chancellor Merkel (Wagstyl & Politi, 2014). Finance Minister Schäuble emphasized his government’s opposition to debt-fueled growth and demanded strict budget controls at the G20 meeting in Australia (Schäuble, 2014). France. In contrast to the German position, President Sarkozy emphasized the need for a national stimulus program in 2009 (Gauthier-Villars, 2009). In 2012, President Hollande underlined the aim ‘to do more to stimulate growth and not just focus on reducing deficits’ (Palmer, 2012). Opposing Germany at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg 2013, Presidents Hollande and Obama stressed that ‘budgetary orthodoxy must not destroy growth’ (Faujas, 2013). In 2014 President Hollande and the US Secretary of Finance Jack Lew stated that G20 must give full priority again this year to growth, employment, and reducing global imbalances (Hollande, 2014). At the G20 finance ministers meeting in 2014 in Cairns, the policy divergence continued: ‘France and Italy are pushing for fiscal stimulus while Germany is an advocate of budgetary restraint’ (Smyth, 2014). Italy. Also opposing the German demand for an exit to deficit spending, Prime Minister Mario Monti gave growth enhancement priority over budget consolidation and said at the G20 Summit in Los Cabos 2012 ‘Growth was the theme of my speech at the G20’ (Monti, 2012). Already in 2011, Prime Minister Berlusconi ‘had been expected to come to the G20 summit in Cannes with a specific austerity package. But (…) he arrived empty-handed’ (Wintour & Elliot, 2011). In 2014, Prime Minister Renzi made clear that job creation and growth, rather than austerity will be the focus of his government (BBC, 2014). These differing positions toward the exit from or prolongation of debt-fueled stimulus programs correspond to differences in ideational

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societal expectations in cross-country comparison. In the years relevant for governmental preference formation, public concerns over ‘governmental debt’ as one of ‘the two most important issues facing your country in the moment’ varied between 32 percent (2010), 34 percent (2011), 34 percent (2012), 23 percent (2013) approval for this statement in Germany on the one hand, and 8 percent (2010), 8 percent (2011), 16 percent (2012), 13 percent (2013) in France, and 12 percent (2010), 8 percent (2011), 14 percent (2012), 11 percent (2013) in Italy on the other hand (Eurobarometer, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013). Even though Germany had by far the lowest public debt level of the three countries, German citizens were considerably more concerned about this issue compared to French and Italian citizens. These numbers on ideas as attitudes offer clear comparative evidence for very different degrees of societal acceptance for public debt, and thus for stimulus programed financed by deficit spending. The strong concern in Germany mirror ordoliberalism, a theory advocating rules-based and fiscal restraintoriented economic policies which is widely shared by the German public. Since the differences in societal attitudes in cross-country comparison correspond to the differences between the respective governmental positions, societal ideas offer a plausible explanation for divergent preferences of the European G20 members. Regarding sectoral interests, the analysis maintains that material economic interests cannot explain the divergences of governmental positions vis-à-vis public debt and stimulus. This is because economic actors in all countries would benefit from stimulus programs. Furthermore, no sector is specifically affected since stimulus programs are distributed mainly in a diffuse way and not via sector. Thus, variation in the dependent variable (governmental positions) cannot be explained by interests since this independent variable plausibly does not offer variation. Overall, the case of public debt and stimulus tentatively supports the hypothesis that ideas on appropriate economic policies prevail in shaping governmental positions when fundamental questions on the role of the state in steering the economy are concerned and sectoral interests are affected in a diffuse manner (Hypothesis 1). The different governmental positions clearly corresponded to domestic societal ideas. Ideational divergences dominated the controversies in the G20 and no common position was reached. As such, this finding indicates support for the hypothesis that intergovernmental compromise is more difficult to achieve in cases of ideational differences than in cases of diverging material interests.

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The Role of Interests in Global Trade Imbalances In 2010, trade imbalances as a threat to the stability of the world economy became a core issue in the G20 when US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner demanded a cap on trade surpluses and deficits which exceed four percent of a country’s GDP (Sharma, 2014). With this initiative, Geithner was targeting the large export surpluses in China and Germany in hopes of reducing the competitive pressures facing US industry. Geithner’s proposal was rejected by the surplus countries in the G20. The European G20 members differed regarding global trade imbalances. While the German government strictly opposed caps and identified the competitive problems of trade deficit countries as the main problem (see quotes), the French and Italian governments supported the US proposal in stressing the need to reduce trade imbalances via multilateral agreements. Exemplary quotes demonstrate these positions: Germany. German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble emphasized that ‘the German export successes are not the result of some sort of currency manipulation, but of the increased competitiveness of companies. It is the American growth model, on the other hand, which is in a deep crisis’ (Schäuble, 2010). Chancellor Merkel supported the German export sector in the G20 debates by stating: ‘we have clearly paid attention that export surpluses as expression of good competitiveness must never be banned’ (Merkel, 2011). Until his last year as finance minister, Schäuble (2017) defended the German export surplus as the result of competitiveness and rejected regulative measures as a reaction to the high US trade deficit. France. President Sarkozy emphasized that ‘the International Monetary Fund’s mandate should be expanded to measure, monitor and enforce new rules on global economic imbalances’ (Sarkozy, 2011). Along the same lines and opposed to the position of the German government, President Hollande supported political regulation for the purpose of ‘…reducing global imbalances. There must be greater coordination between the major economies’ policies in the governance bodies: at the IMF, the World Bank, the G8 and the G20’ (Hollande, 2013). Italy. Giulio Tremonti, Minister of the Economy and Finance stated: ‘The steady increase in global imbalances threatens the sustainability of the global recovery and risks to exacerbate financial volatility’ (Tremonti, 2011). Prime Minister Mario Monti was quoted in The Guardian in 2012 saying that the crisis ‘had its origins in imbalances in other countries

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(Wintour, 2012). During his tenure 2014–2016, Prime Minister Renzi repeatedly criticized Germany for its ‘excessive trade surplus’ (Renzi, 2016). Ultimately, Italy and France supported the political regulation of imbalances initiated by the US treasury secretary, while the German government stressed the virtues of free trade. These positions of the governments clearly correlated with differences in competitiveness, that is, in the economic interests of domestic sectors. In contrast to Germany, the French and Italian trade balances were either considerably negative (France) or in some years negative, in others slightly positive (Italy). In the years 2010–2013, France showed a negative yearly balance between −87 and −123 billion Dollars and Italy between −41 and +38 billion Dollars, while Germany ran a surplus of between +205 and +262 billion Dollars (World Trade Organization, 2015). These numbers indicate severe import pressure on the French domestic industry and a mixed picture for Italian industry. For the two countries, the numbers imply a weak competitiveness of a large part of domestic economy, which would benefit from new agreements limiting exports from surplus countries such as Germany and China. Conversely, caps on exports would be costly for German exporters. In addition to the correlation between governmental preferences and competitiveness, anecdotal evidence also shows that governmental positions were consistent with those of important domestic business associations. In the case of Germany, the president of the chamber for industry and trade DIHK, Hans Heinrich Driftmann (2010), warned that everyone would lose from new restrictions on trade and that ‘the best solution for economies with weak exports is anyway to work on their competitiveness’. Regarding France, for instance, the French Ambassador to the UK emphasized his government’s responsiveness to sectoral demands by emphasizing the goal to ‘reduce excessive imbalances’ and by openly stating that the government acts in ‘close coordination’ with the French business association MEDEF vis-à-vis the G20 (Emié, 2011). The Italian government’s preference in the G20 corresponded to the position of Italy’s industrialists association CONFINDUSTRIA, which criticized the trade imbalances induced by the German export surplus: ‘Confindustria report bills Germany’s surplus as ‘unsustainable’’ (Fotina, 2015).

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Overall, the positions of the three European governments in the G20 were consistent with the relative competitiveness of the respective domestic economy and with the positions of major business associations. Therefore, the case of global imbalances confirms the hypothesis that governmental positions correspond to material interests, when policy issues directly affect the cost–benefit calculations of economic sectors, in this case the export sector and the firms threatened by import competition (Hypothesis 2). In cross-country comparison, the divergent positions of European G20 members correlated with divergent domestic material interests which inhibited the governments from finding an ‘agreed language’ on global imbalances and placed Germany on solitary grounds. In 2011, the G20 compromised on ‘indicative guidelines’ to be monitored regarding trade imbalances as well as private and public debt, fiscal deficits, private savings, and capital flows (Atkins & Peel, 2011). Thus, the G20 compromise included monitoring trade imbalances as demanded, for instance, by France and the United States, and sovereign debt as prioritized by Germany. Hence, a moderate agreement was found, tentatively supporting the societal approach’s hypothesis (Hypothesis 3) that intergovernmental agreements seem easier to achieve if divergences are interest-related and not dominated by ideas as in the previous case.

Conclusion This chapter aimed at explaining the persistent divergence among the EU members Germany, France, and Italy concerning core G20 debates, despite commitments to joint European action. In addition, the chapter attempted to contribute to theory building by showing the relevancy of the societal approach for a comparative explanation of the domestic ideational and interest-related foundations of governmental preferences toward global economic governance. Especially, it aimed at demonstrating under which conditions either societal ideas or material interests prevailed in shaping governmental positions. Thus, the chapter contributes to this book by analyzing the societal sources of German foreign economic policy positions after re-unification in comparison with the domestic preference formation in other EU member states. The findings in the case studies evidenced that governmental positions corresponded to different societal ideas and interests in cross-country comparison. Thus, a domestic politics approach proved fruitful for

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explaining the puzzle and a necessary complement to mainstream integration theories. Supporting the hypotheses of the societal approach, the case studies demonstrated that in the first case, societal ideas informed governmental positions on stimulus programs and public debt, since this issue related to the fundamental role of the government in steering the economy and affected sectoral economic interests only diffusely (Hypothesis 1). Conversely, in the second case on global trade imbalances, material interests shaped governmental positions, since the issue directly affected the cost–benefit calculations of the export sector (Germany) and of firms suffering from competitive problems (France, Italy) (Hypothesis 2). In addition, the cases also provided preliminary insights, which tentatively support the argument that international agreements are easier to achieve if material interests (and not ideas) prevail in shaping governmental positions (Hypothesis 3). The theoretical implications of the findings indicate the need to conceptually more strongly include the domestic sources of governmental preferences into traditional theories. Regarding the analysis of European countries’ positions and the explanatory power of integration theories, the article showed the value of considering societal ideas and interests. Thus, complementing neofunctionalism, institutionalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism with the domestic politics focus of the societal approach promises to enrich future research on the reasons for convergence and divergence among EU members and thus for success and failure of European integration and global economic governance. Regarding Germany’s international relations, the findings demonstrate that the German government followed domestic material interests and ideational concerns as the other two EU members. The examined cases indicate that the German government behaved like other governments in representing the interests of important lobby groups and/or large parts of voters in order to remain in office. Thus, despite a pro-European rhetoric, the Merkel governments did not pursue a European compromise or consensus, but positioned themselves unilaterally. In light of the other instances for acting alone such as in the fields of energy and migration, the Merkel course seems to have departed from the longterm German strategy of always embedding German foreign (economic) policy in a common European stance. Thus, in the decades after German re-unification, the Merkel governments partly weakened the traditional German strategy of always acting in conjunction with EU member countries. In December 2021, first statements of the new ‘Ampel’-coalition

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government indicate a continuation of national primacy regarding energy and migration policies while austerity goals for German and Eurozone debt might be eased. Thus, the discrepancy between pro-European rhetoric and missing willingness to compromise to achieve a common European ground is likely to continue in certain policy areas.

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Monti, M. (2012, June 16). G20 Summit in Los Cabos. In A. Moravcsik (1993). Preferences and power in the European Community: A liberal intergovernmentalist approach. Journal of Common Market Studies, 31, 473–524. Moravcsik, A. (1997). Taking preferences seriously: A liberal theory of international politics. International Organization, 51, 513–553. Moravcsik, A. (1999). The choice for Europe—Current commentary and future research. Journal of European Public Policy, 6, 168–179. Moschella, M., & Quaglia, L. (2016). To agree or not to agree? Explaining the cohesiveness of the European Union in the Group of Twenty. Journal of European Public Policy, 23, 906–924. Niemann, A., & Ioannou, D. (2015). European economic integration in times of crisis: A case of neofunctionalism? Journal of European Public Policy, 22, 196–218. OECD. (2016). G20—The OECD and G20. Retrieved from https://www.oecd. org/g20/summits/pittsburgh/ Palmer, R. (2012, June 11). Canada to tell G20 austerity and growth possible. Reuters. Pollack, M. A. (2005). Theorizing the European Union: International organization, domestic polity, or experiment in new governance? Annual Review of Political Science, 8, 357–398. Renzi, M. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.dw.com/en/italian-pm-renzi-las hes-out-at-german-trade-surplus/a-36114853 Sarkozy, N. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/ 27/us-davos-sarkozy-imf-idUSTRE70Q3AF20110127 Schäuble, W. (2010, November 8). The US has lived on borrowed money for too long. Interview in Der Spiegel. Schäuble, W. (2014). Retrieved from https://de.reuters.com/article/g20-aus tralia/g20-says-nearing-growth-goal-but-more-needed-from-europe-idINKB N0HG04X20140921 Schäuble, W. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.dw.com/en/schäuble-def ends-exports-as-us-german-trade-gap-widens/a-37843038 Schild, J. (2013). Leadership in hard times: Germany, France, and the management of the Eurozone crisis. German Politics and Society, 31, 24–47. Schirm, S. A. (2009). Ideas and interests in global financial governance: Comparing German and US preference formation. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22, 501–521. Schirm, S. A. (2016). Domestic ideas, institutions, or interests? Explaining governmental preferences towards global economic governance. International Political Science Review, 37 , 66–80. Schirm, S. A. (2018a). The domestic politics of European preferences towards global economic governance. New Global Studies, 12, 303–324.

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Schirm, S. A. (2018b). Societal foundations of governmental preference formation in the Eurozone crisis. European Politics and Society, 19, 63–78. Schirm, S. A. (2020). Refining domestic politics theories of IPE: A societal approach to governmental preferences. Politics, 40, 396–412. Sharma, S. D. (2014). The global economic imbalances: The dangers of not rebalancing. New Global Studies, 8, 153–176. Smyth, J. (2014). US urges EU to do more to stimulate its economy. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4137a208-416011e4-b98f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Qtq1jnk8) Steinbrück, P. (2009, June 12). G8: Ende der expansiven Geldpolitik? Handelsblatt. Retrieved from www.handelsblatt.com/politik/nachrichten/g8-endeder-expansiven-geldpolitik;2353324 The Economist. (2009, March 12). The G20. Talking shop on Thames. Tremonti, G. (2011, April 16). International monetary and financial committee of the IMF . Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/external/spring/2011/ imfc/statement/eng/ita.pdf Wagstyl, S., & Politi, J. (2014, October 16). Merkel defends fiscal rules as Paris and Rome put growth first. Financial Times. Wintour, P. (2012, June 19). G20 to endorse growth plan and urge more financial integration in Europe. The Guardian. Wintour, P., & Elliot, L. (2011, November 4). G20 leaders press Italy to accept IMF checks on cuts programme. The Guardian. World Trade Organization. (2015). Total Merchandise trade. stat.wto.org/ Wouters, J., Sterkx, S., & Corthaut, T. (2010). The international financial crisis, global financial governance, and the European Union. Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies.

CHAPTER 14

France, Germany, and European Security: “Building Castles in the Sky”? Michael Meimeth and Peter Schmidt

Great Ideas, Modest Reality, Open Questions Promoting and strengthening the European Union as a balancing pole in world politics have always been a crucial element in the Franco-German discourse on Europe since the very beginnings of European Integration. This has already been pointed out by Jean Monnet, one of Europe Founding Fathers, in his famous memorandum of May 4, 1950, where he stated that the European Community should develop into a “force d´équlibre” in world politics in order to strengthen international cooperation. Monnet’s vision of Europe’s future as an international actor has been

M. Meimeth (B) Meimeth Stiftungs-Und Projektberatung, Merzig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] P. Schmidt University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_14

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widely shared by Konrad Adenauer, who envisioned Europe to become a “third force” between the Soviet Union and the US (Link, 2007). Today’s wording is quite similar. In November 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “European Army” to play a role in the big power game (Macron, 2018). German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, was much more cautious by saying one should work on the vision for a European army which, however, should not represent an army against NATO but as an “effective complement to NATO” (Merkel, 2018). In this perspective, the question of how Europe should be organized and what role Europe should play in world politics is both an old and a new one. Since its formation, the European Community (later European Union) has had to endure the stigma of being an economic giant and at the same time a dwarf on the world stage. This discrepancy was repeatedly criticized by many member states even at a very early stage of the European unification process. In response to the US decision on Oct. 24/25, 1973, during the Yom Kippur War to call for a worldwide military alert for American strategic forces, former French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert stated that Europe had been degraded to the status of a non-entity (Meimeth, 1990, p. 41). However, the numerous initiatives were aimed at developing Europe into a more effective actor at the international level were “blocked” in the political as well as security arena by the global bipolar structure. During the Cold War, due to a permanent long-term Soviet threat, for France the “European” option has been only a theoretical one while for Germany it hasn’t been an option at all since (West) Germany’s own security aimed first and foremost at the protection of its own territory and that of Western Europe by a forward defense structure from military threat. Germany’s security policy was for a long time synonymous with the Atlantic Alliance’s policy. Hence, Germany was simply not in the position to even contemplate a facsimile of France’s avowedly national and European security ambitions. The end of the Cold War has brought more varied and less direct threats to Europe’s and unified Germany’s security. Instead of having an integrating effect, the changed nature of security risks fostered the differentiations to security matters among member states of the Atlantic Alliance. It was against this background that, beginning in the early 1990s the development of a defense dimension of the European Union evolved gradually.

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In this regard, during this period, major steps have been undertaken starting with the Petersburg Declaration of May 1992 which declared the Western European Union (WEU) as the defense component of the collective defense of the European Union and the declaration of Saint Malo by the United Kingdom and France of 1998, opening up the path to EU-owned military structures. Later on, through the coordinated efforts of France and Germany, the Treaty of Lisbon catalyzed a number of institutional changes in order to strengthen the foreign policy and security cohesion of the EU within the framework of the European Council decision-making. Central to this is the role of the heads of state which meet at least four times a year and retain ultimate decisionmaking and political responsibility over security matters. In addition, a dual post of the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission has been created, along with the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS) and its Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), the EU Military Staff, and the Crisis Management and Planning Directorate (CMPD). These latter institutions play a central role in EU civilian and military missions which serve to bring capacity Europe’s international strategic profile. Today, the European Union directs 17 missions and operations with about 5000 people, though with a strong emphasis on the civilian side (11 missions). Military operations specialize in military training and the prevention of conflicts not on enforcement. Aside the institutional changes at the EU level, Germany and France have been able to agree on the Franco-German Brigade (already established 1987) and the Eurocorps, a command structure which is able to run operations with about 65,000 ground troops.1 With the exception of the French-German Brigade and the Staff of the Multinational Command Support Brigade (MNCS Bde), national contributions remain under national command in peacetime. Germany, however, insisted on subordinating the Eurocorps not only to the EU but also to NATO.

1 Headquarters established in May 1992, activated in October 1993 and declared oper-

ational in 1995: Eurocorps is a unique multinational headquarters (other NATO Rapid Deployable Corps being only national, bi-national or tri-national). From the start as a French-German Corps, the doors were open for other nations with the same rights as the founding nations. Between 1993 and 1996, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg joined the headquarters.

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A major breakthrough on the conceptional level came with the publication of the European Security Strategy (ESS) in December 2003. Since then, the ESS has been the pivotal document for European security policy systematically articulating the EU’s role in the world (European Council, 2003). The document asserts “the increasing convergence of European interests” as something self-evident and regards it as inevitable that the EU plays the role of a global actor. The Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2008) declared confidently that the EU had been playing since 2003 an increasingly important role in crisis and conflict resolution. By drawing on a unique range of instruments, the EU “contributes to a more secure world” (European Council, 2008, p. 2). This vision of the EU is highly ambitious. The EU strives to “build human security, by reducing poverty and inequality, promoting good governance and human rights, assisting development, and addressing the root causes of conflict and insecurity”(European Council, 2008, p. 2). In this regard, these two basic documents represented a “well-written description of EU’s role concept as a civilian force” in world politics (Maull, 2005, p. 792). Nevertheless, the highly praised European Security Strategy (European Council, 2003) as well as the Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2008) raised more questions than both of these documents could answer. It remains unclear whether this broader concept of security should be regarded as the least common denominator to bind member states, a result of a lack of resources to implement a more effective foreign policy based on military capacity, or whether a security strategy should be pursued through a durable consensus based upon a well-founded common security policy. In other words, it is not yet clear if the current foreign policy of the EU is committed to the principle of civilian power with a clear vision of foreign and security policy, or merely an admission that the EU lacks the military capacity to integrate into the Union’s strategic global vision (Kirste & Maull, 1999). It also remains unclear whether the EU should pursue idealistic-normative goals, as described above, or whether it should exert more effort to stabilize the geopolitical environment. Neither the European Security Strategy nor the Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy offers much insight into how these competing objectives can be combined into an integrated strategy. The European Union’s Global Strategy—(EUGS)— removed some of these ambiguities and produced a definition of vital

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European interests in terms of five strategic priorities. These include (1) the security of the Union, (2) state and societal resilience to the EU’s East and South, (3) an integrated approach to conflicts, (4) cooperative regional orders, and (5) global governance for the twenty-first century (European External Action Service, 2016, p. 9). In this regard, the EUGS represents “Realpolitik with European characteristics” (Biscop, 2016). Although the Global Strategy can be read as a substantial enhancement of the two preceding documents of 2003 and 2008, it is still uncertain whether the EU member states feel ownership of the EUGS. The document underscores the fact that agreement on global strategic security goals among EU member states is still not fully developed. This becomes clear in regard to the decisive conceptional question, whether the EU should be based on a global strategy of multipolarity, or rather on the idea of a multilateral and rule-based international order. Another unresolved issue closely related is whether Europe’s current and future role in the world should be that of a civilian power or that of a great power in the traditional sense (Maull, 1997). When it comes to the more operational aspects of EU’s security and defense dimension, it is one of the strange features of the current debate that no concrete response is given on how to integrate the Eurocorps, the Franco-German Brigade, and the EU Battle Groups into the overall defense strategy of EU in a coherent structure. Obviously, the EU’s defense dimension is today and for the foreseeable future incoherent. In addition, there is no institutional solution in sight for the effective political guidance of a “European Army.” Improvement with some promise of reasonable success, for example, a seat for the EU on the UN’s Security Council, seems unlikely within the foreseeable future. This is also the case for qualified majority in foreign policy matters at the level of Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, or the establishment of some sort of directorate, institutional changes which would significantly enhance EU’s decision-making capacity (Schmidt, 2019). In sum, despite regardless additional efforts to strengthen a “common strategic culture,”the national approaches remain dominate and an effective political structure able to implement EU security policy remains absent.2

2 See Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) programme of 2017. Twenty-five member states agreed to work together on (now numbering 47) projects on a legally binding basis to jointly arrive at a coherent and comprehensive spectrum of defense

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By and large these are the crucial, yet unresolved questions. Since France and Germany have an important milieu-shaping capacity in Europe, the Franco-German partnership assumes a powerful leadership role in shaping the debate on Europe’s future global role and common foreign, security and defense policies (Krotz & Schild, 2015, p. 6).

Europe’s Role in World Politics: Diverging Concepts in France and Germany France’s perception of Europe’s role in world politics and how Europe’s security should be embedded in the transatlantic relations after the end of the East–West conflict is hallmarked by a remarkable clarity and continuity. French political leaders continuously repeat that NATO and therefore US involvement will continue to be vital for European security in future. However, since the early 1990s Paris has expressed reservations about the existing transatlantic security structure, concerned that NATO should never jeopardize the development of Europe’s strategic autonomy, including an independent European security and defense policy (Macron, 2019). Paris has repeatedly explained that the goal of an independent security and defense policy should be based upon the logic of the European integration process. The Economic and Monetary Union must necessarily continue to be the torso equipped with extensive competencies in security and defense policy. Accordingly, former French president Jacques Chirac stated in a speech held at the Institute of Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN) in May 2000 that Europe could only be perceived as a community of values and as a world power if it was prepared to defend its values and interests also with military means (Meimeth, 2003, p. 23). Today’s official French wording is quite similar, as shown by Macron’s assertion that a strong and political Europe is “the only way to impress our values, our common voice, to prevent the Chinese-American duopoly, the dislocation, the return of hostile regional powers” (Macron, 2020). Behind these words lies France’s vision of a multipolar world which has been a continued leitmotif throughout the years of the Fifth Republic (Holm, 2009, p. 15).

capabilities. However, the programme is clearly member-state driven and does not follow a coherent approach (Permanent Structured Cooperation, 2021).

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In its classic Gaullist version as applied during the Cold War, the term multipolarity described a world order that would be free of any dominance by any superpower. Multipolarity had to lead to a “third way” which meant “a strong Europe and a strong France in Europe and in the world that could counterbalance the two superpowers – the USSR and the US” (Holm, 2009, p. 15). With the end of the Cold War, this approach has served to express opposition to unipolar world order in which the USA assumes the role of a “hyperpuissance” and as a means to overcome American unilateralism. In this perspective, French Foreign Minister de Villepin in a speech to the London Institute for Strategic Studies asserted that in order “to be truly stable, this new world must be based on a number of regional poles” (De Villepin, 2003, p. 6). Since the Obama administration took office in 2009, the strong unilateral moment in US foreign and security policy enforced the French perception of the US as an unpredictable, unreliable, and even erratic international actor. The turning point in French foreign policy establishment’s perception of the US came in August 2013 when President Obama did not deliver on his promise to retaliate in the event Syria’s President Assad used chemical weapons against his own population. When Obama failed to follow through, the French foreign policy establishment realized that it could no longer count on the US as a reliable ally (Nougayrède, 2017, p. 5). Therefore, President Donald Trump’s open disregard for NATO only served to reinforce concerns by French political leaders. This concern is now viewed across Europe which increasingly sees itself “squeezed between the US and China as they start to dominate the twenty-first century” (Grant, 2020, p. 5). Hence, President Macron pointed out there is an urgent need for Europe to continue to develop its own strategic independence and autonomy (Macron, 2020). As Holm has pointed out, it is important to note that it has never been “an ideological driven concept but a geopolitical concept that referred to the distribution of power in the system!” (Holm, 2009, p. 15). German politics avoids such a clear and unambiguous approach. Unlike Paris, Berlin concentrates on medium-term goals to strengthen European security and defense policy. From the German perspective, strengthening European independence is seen as a complement to NATO and US involvement in Europe. From a German point of view, it would be inconceivable to confront a major international security crisis without NATO or US support (Kramp-Karrenbauer, 2020).

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Although Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schröder did welcome the French concept of “Europe-puissance” for the area of European foreign, security, and defense policies in his speech addressing the French National Assembly on November 30, 1999, this has never become a leitmotif for Germany (Schröder, 1999). It was Schröder himself who shortly after his Paris speech notably stated that Germany, along with its partners, would commit itself to a cooperative world order which would involve, above all, a close transatlantic partnership (Schröder, 2003, p. 15). Whether the break between US and Germany over the 2003 Iraq War was a turning point in Germany’s security policy remains debatable since Germany’s transatlantic orientation has not changed in the years since. On the contrary, current German Defence Minister Annegret KrampKarrenbauer has stated that “Illusions of European strategic autonomy must come to an end: Europe will not be able to replace America’s role as a security provider” (Kramp-Karrenbauer, 2020). From this perspective, it is easily justifiable to argue that Germany is prepared to accept even a non-balanced USA, as long as the latter is prepared to integrate itself in multilateral structures and does not “move away from the traditional support of European integration and NATO” (Dettke, 2018, p. 170). Consequently, the German concept aims at a promoting and preserving a cooperative multilateral international order which is based on rules and principles designed to restrict the use of force (Maull, 2002). Whether this cooperative multilateralism is realized in a unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar international system is of rather secondary importance. The strong German preference for a rule-based international order has its primary origin in Germany’s devotion to banishing their historical demons. However, its conceptual basis can be also found in the idea of “Civilian Power” which has been first outlined in the early 1970’s by François Duchêne with regard to Europe’s future role as an international actor. He referred to the European Community as an example of a new stage of political civilisation which “would have a chance to demonstrate the influence by a large political cooperative formed to exert essentially civilian forms of power” (Duchêne, 1973, p. 19). Since the European Union can be seen as a “civilian group of countries with long history of economic power and relatively short on armed forces,” it has a fundamental interest in “domesticating” or “civilizing” relations between states (Duche  ne, 1973, p. 19). The common core goals defending “Civilian Powers” strategy include (1) constraining the use of

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force through cooperation, (2) strengthening the rule of law through multilateral cooperation, integration, and partial transfer of sovereignty, and (3) promoting democracy and human rights within and between states (Harnisch & Maull, 2001). A normatively superior international actor which must behave as a “force of good” in international relations is largely welcomed by the German and European political establishment. Central elements of the “Civilian Power” concept can be found in various speeches of EU officials and official EU documents, as noted above. However, the fundamental problem of the “Civilian Power” concept in the context of the FrancoGerman strategic thinking is very clear. The German framework largely eschews concepts of multipolarity, strategic autonomy of Europe and the traditional elements of power politics. This clearly does not correspond with the prevailing French vision of a multipolar world order in which the European Union is to be transformed into an autonomous strategic actor. Realizing this goal would require a strong, like-minded German–French core. However, it is highly unlikely that Germany would be prepared to accept such a strategy to counterbalance US power and threaten European-Atlantic cooperation.

Further Bumps on the Road to a New International Role for the EU Sharply diverging strategic visions of military power in international relations have always been a major stumbling block in Franco-German security cooperation. Since the late 1980s, France has been primarily focused on national and territorial defense, as well as on the protection of its widespread global interests, especially in Africa. France has always considered itself a regional power with geopolitical aspirations (Kolodziej, 1974). On the other hand, for Germany, NATO was the exclusive strategic framework serving its national interests in the framework of the forward defense approach. Germany had no geopolitical aspirations. Since the beginning of the 1970s, the nuclear forces represented the core of France’s defense strategy indicating a different approach. Central to this strategy were the Pluton and Hadès short-range nuclear missile systems. The missiles symbolized for Germany the big difference between Germany’s preference for a national security posture that would remain within the framework of NATO, whereas France’s strategic focus

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lay in Europe on the defense of France. Neither missile system could reach beyond Germany and no consultation mechanism was installed, neither with Germany nor with NATO, something contradicting German interests strongly.3 The basic assumptions behind French nuclear strategy did not change after 1989 and the decommissioning of the pre-strategic missiles. “With regard to the concept. France considers that deterrence applies to any threat to its vital interests, regardless of the adversary and the means employed” (Tertrais, 2020, p. 26). The fundamental differences separating German and French perspectives on strategic security persisted. France’s nuclear forces have always symbolized French national autonomy and sovereignty and its objective to play the leading role in Europe’s security policy. Because this position implicitly challenged US power within NATO, France withdrew from the integrated military command structure of NATO in 1966. Nevertheless, in order to maintain some political cohesion, France’s special nuclear power status was acknowledged and accepted within the broader European security structure. In 1974, NATO formally noted in the Declaration on Atlantic Relations the French contribution was necessary “…to the overall strengthening of the deterrence of the Alliance…to make the necessary contribution to maintain the common defense [of NATO] at a level capable of deterring and if necessary, repelling all actions directed against the independence and territorial integrity of the members of the Alliance” (Declaration on Atlantic Relations, 1974). With the end of the Cold War, France has gradually “denuclearized” its defense strategy. Although still important, nuclear weapons are no longer considered as “the alpha and omega of international power” (Meimeth, 1993). This shift in French strategy has softened tension in Franco-German security dialogue in the nuclear field, but brought the differences in regard to the conventional forces to the forefront. Soon after the end of the Cold War French decision makers realized that conventional forces served as a tool for managing international crises, and not merely as a deterrent to defend its borders. The decision in February 1996 to implement a new structure of the armed forces and

3 The Ministry of Defense decided not to deploy Hadès though it still retained Pluton in an operational role. After the decommissioning of these missiles, French basic deterrence strategy did not change.

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to equip the French military with global power projection was the first concrete step in implementing this new approach (Meimeth, 2003, p. 26). France’s overall active policy of stabilization and crisis prevention demonstrates that it has the resolve to live up to the security and defense challenges of the global age. Today, more than 30,000 troops are deployed overseas in a national as well international framework (French Armed Forces, 2020). The downside of this extensive military engagement, however, is that it overstretches France’s financial and military resources compelling the French to secure new security partnerships. President Sarkozy’s decision to resurrect France’s membership within NATO’s integrated military command and the maintenance of a special relationship with the United Kingdom grew out of this need for new partners. Nevertheless, France’s ambition was to represent a European power with a worldwide outreach. In this framework, the military continued to play a major role by managing regional conflicts and stability operations. One example was the French-British military intervention in Libya 2011 to unseat Muammar al-Gaddafi in support of the so-called Arab Spring.4 A second example is France’s decision to use its nuclear force as tool to deter terrorist regional powers. French President Chirac explained that the “…flexibility and reactivity … would enable us to exercise our response directly against centers of power and its capacity to act” (Declaration on Atlantic Relations, 1974). In contrast to French policy, reunified Germany remained committed to its military power firmly within European and Atlantic security frameworks. At the same time, European concerns about Germany’s new power status following unification eased considerably. This strategy was made all the more feasible with the lowering of tensions between the former Cold War blocs in the years following the fall of the “Iron Curtain.” Consequently, in contrast to France, Germany’s contribution to the military crisis response within the framework of the European security and defense policy remained modest at most. While the budget restrictions certainly influenced German security objectives political convictions toward Europe and NATO were Germany’s primary motivations. Over an extensive period of time those politically responsible in Germany were 4 This operation was an example for the limits of France’s capabilities. The US suppressed Libyan air defenses and coordinated the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya. Later on, the command was taken over by NATO.

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strictly opposed to a development and restructuring of German armed forces as the French had done it, arguing that a collective defense assumed a fundamental priority over crisis management and conflict prevention missions. However, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US changed the very essence of political and military attitudes in Berlin. Moreover, the unipolar moment defined by US global dominance made it clear to Berlin that Europe as a whole would likely during future global conflicts. This became all the more obvious during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. America’s unilateral strategy was opposed by France and Germany. Germany warmed to the French perspective on multipolarity coordination and integrating security strategy within military affairs. Nonetheless, Germany never fully abandoned its preference for US leadership and NATO leadership, holding true to its position that European security should not undermine the capacity of North American alliance coordination. Taken together, these changes had a catalytic effect, accelerating plans to reform the Bundeswehr. The future duties of the Bundeswehr were revealed in the German White Paper of 2006 which explained that “International conflict prevention and crisis management, including the fight against international terrorism, are the tasks more likely to arise in the foreseeable future” (Federal Ministry of Defence, Government, 2006, p. 56). And, with regard to the institutional framing of military operations the German White Paper on Defense of 2016 introduced Berlin’s change toward the French security strategy. The Bundeswehr would not only be available for multilateral military operations within the framework of NATO, the EU and the UN, but also for other ad hoc coalitions (Federal Government, 2016, p. 81). However, Germany’s opposition to President Macron’s European Intervention Initiative of January 2019 clearly indicates there remain different perspectives on the institutional framing for joint military operations on either side of the Rhine. Macron’s vision was that a number of like-minded member states come together quickly within decision-making structure to execute rapid and flexible military operations. However, the vision was not in alignment with Berlin’s core principles. The German approach valued an EU defense and security architecture and saw in France’s vision a threat to the integrity of an integrated European

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defense framework. Consequently, this special defense and security “club” garnered only a small secretariat in Paris (Schmidt, 2019). Aside from these issues concerning the institutional framing of joint military operations, German policy-makers are faced with another fundamental challenge. Since unified Germany has declared that its territorial integrity will not be existentially threatened in the foreseeable future and “the new types of risks cannot (…) be countered by solely or predominantly using military means” (Federal Ministry of Defence, White Paper, 2006, p. 54) thenceforth unified Germany’s role as reliable partner in NATO and the EU has been used as the crucial argument to justify German involvement in collective military crisis management. In this perspective, for supporters of an unlimited German participation raises the fundamental question of the future orientation of Germany’s foreign and security policy. As a result, Germany has repeatedly cautioned that such fundamental considerations concerning the deployment of German troops are not sufficient. German involvement in military missions must always be the result of extensive security on a case by case basis and should always fulfill the demands of German interests. It is no secret that these interests are also shaped by domestic constellations and conflict-lines as well as by the strategic culture in Germany. For these reasons, Berlin continues to navigate a policy course aligning global and regional conflict rather than being drawn into military commitments (Miskimmon, 2009). Yet, as the German contemporary historian Karl Dietrich Bracher stated a few years ago, such a position also risks the danger of “negating our European and Atlantic convictions not to pursue German unilateral actions” (Meimeth & Göler, 2011, p. 198). Whether this apparent discrepancy between imposing national interest priorities when considering international military missions rather than unconditionally submitting to integrated transatlantic and European military priorities can be resolved within the context of contemporary domestic German politics remains to be seen. Involvement of German troops in multinational missions was eased to a large extent by German public support and less upon security obligations within the framework of NATO and the EU. The impact of domestic considerations on German security policy can be seen in the type of military missions in which Germany was engaged, as well as in the concrete contributions of German troops.5 Whenever 5 See Atlantik-Brücke (2019) where 50.7 percent wanted under no circumstances a stronger engagement by the Bundeswehr abroad, 29.2 percent voted in favor.

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the Bundeswehr joins a multilateral military operation, there are extensive domestic caveats and complicated and strict rules of engagement for the Bundeswehr. This sharply contrasts with the French strategy to deploy robust military force posture abroad. Such restrictions decrease the Bundeswehr’s ability to cooperate effectively with the allies in multilateral military operations. Therefore, German security policy risks contributing to the diminishment of European multilateral security structures, even though these are the very resources Germany so urgently needs for its own security. This reality raises the question of what impact these German–French uncertainties on the potential EU strategic military identity has. And, how are these open questions to be managed if not fully resolved with within the structure and trans-national culture of the EU?

Building “Castles in the Sky”: France, Germany, and European Union’s Search for International Actor Identity The key European documents are both curiously precise and vague when it comes to identifying problems, risks, and international challenges. They were precise because the dangers and risks with which Europe will be threatened by now and in future are described extensively. These threats include horizontal and vertical proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorist networks, organized crime and drug trafficking, dramatic population growth, migration, pandemics, and environmental destruction, depletion of natural resources, rising poverty and famine, as well as instability caused by nation-state instability. Vague, because these dangers and risks are not aligned with clear geographical boundaries, nor are different states within Europe clearly classified as more or less important within the broader European defense framework. This contradiction between the purported ubiquity of risks and external threats and scope of existing capabilities has yet to be reconciled by French and German positions on central questions concerning foreign and security policy. It is therefore inevitable that the French-German uncertainty in this area will be deferred to the European level. A similar challenge applies to German–French strategic relations within the context of the European vision of the global power structure. On the one hand, the European view of the global power structure is seen as multipolar, shaped by the growing impact and influence of China, India,

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and Brazil, with Europe in this newly emerging structure being one of the central leading powers. On the other hand, the European Security Strategy of 2003, as well as the Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy of 2008 express a clear rejection of a “great power” philosophy preferring cooperative world order rather than one shaped solely by a balance of power (Link, 2006, p. 81). The clashing French and German views on whether Europe should strive to act as a great power in a multipolar world or as a civilian power in a cooperative multilateral international system drives much of the strategic discussion at the European level. It is hardly surprising that the European Union’s responses to international crisis are irresolute and often extremely hesitant or absent. Against this background, the European Union should be understood to be caught in a “progress trap.” On the one hand, they are pressed to free itself from its self-inflicted inability to act and pursue the path of its emancipation in world politics by pursuing its strategic objectives as a state power. On the other hand, they cannot escape the restrictions imposed upon the EU driven in large part by the French and German competing visions of the global strategic perspective. There is no enduring agreement among member states of the EU about the proper international role Europe. An indisputable fact is that neither Germany nor France see an alternative to multilateral security cooperation in Europe with a gradual transfer of sovereignty rights to EU level. However, France favors a European strategy based on achieving some semblance of a great power international actor, while Germany remains committed to a cooperative multilateral approach which should be extended step-by-step to the global level by shaping a cooperative multilateral international architecture. Germany and France are in broad agreement about the nature of the threats in foreign and security policy. The decisive factor defining their differences is their respective attachment to new risks confronting their respective security interests and the consequences these risks portend. These differing risk assessments can be quite distinct. Differing geographically security interests (e.g., Africa) and fundamental views on the legitimacy of military power remain the two most prominent strategic differences separating France and Germany and their respective approach to the international security system. On the surface, France and Germany are in agreement within the language of official documents which articulate their commitments to a Europe serving as a go-to international actor to diffuse and stabilize military crises with a management system within the context of the European security framework. Yet, Berlin and Paris

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have not resolved what ratio should define the balance between military and non-military elements in such a strategy, nor have they found consensus on differing security priorities. In addition, several indicators speak to the fact that they have yet to come to a common Franco-German or European agreement on how a commitment to military tolls and resources within the global security structure squares with the EU’s “uncontrolled permeation of foreign policy by a democratic public, which not only impedes a consistent perspective by democratic governments, it may even make it virtually impossible” (Meimeth, 1995, p. 169). It is not a revelation to state that modern European publics, including German and French, focus more on domestic issues (especially economic and social welfare issues), all things being equal. Which, therefore, make robust and efficacious international crisis management within a European security structure challenging. Is there a way out of this “progress trap” for Europe? Such a complex course of policy change would require more agreement over which common goals should ideally guide EU foreign and security policies. France and Germany cannot escape the disproportionate importance in their very broad but crucial objective. The European Security Strategy and the Implementation Report merely broached the issues and have the character of prescription compromises (European Council, 2003). Ambiguities are rendered all the more vague in the context of Europe’s competing visions of its self-image. Conflicting identities institutionalize the disparity in assessments of risk and appropriate tools for EU security policy. This gap in perspectives is reinforced by EU member states— especially Germany and France—to see themselves on the global stage as a civilian power or as a classic military power-actor. Blending or balancing these two visions within the European security framework is impossible without French and German agreement. And, given the legal decision-making structures and procedures within the current EU treaty structure which binds the EU’s foreign and security policy strategies to the complexities of unanimity voting rules within the Council, it is hard to imagine how France would be able to move Europe past the centripetal force pulling Europe toward a common ground resting upon civilian power preferences for Europe within the global community. These are not simple policy differences of interests but rather structural antipodes deeply rooted in French and German security policies which have been even reinforced by the end of the Cold War and German unification. Since then, it has become more and more difficult

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for German security policy to uncritically accept security concepts and strategies already pre-formulated by Germany’s most privileged partner in Europe. Consequently, since the early 1990’s unified Germany has been confronted with the urgent and often painful task to review its traditional policy of “instinctive Europeanisation.” Both in the sense that Germany must contribute to the formulation and implementation of a common European security perspective and at the same time it has to consider developing its own distinctive national concepts and approaches. These challenging tasks require clarification and leadership particularly at the Franco-German level. Otherwise, the highly praised Franco-German discourse on Europe’s strategic autonomy will remain nothing more than building “castles in the sky”!

Literature Atlantik-Brücke. (2019). Vertrauen in der Krise: Landkarten geopolitischer Chancen und Risiken. https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/wp-content/upl oads/AtlantikBrueckeUmfrage2019.pdf Biscop, S. (2016, June). The EU global strategy: Realpolitik with European characteristics (Policy Brief No. 75). Egmont Security Policy. http://aei.pitt.edu/ 86895/ Dettke, D. (2018). The 2003 Iraq war as a turning point in German-American relations: Political leadership and alliance cohesion. German Politics, 2, 158– 173. De Villepin, D. (2003, March 27). International Institute for Strategic Studies. Duche  ne, F. (1973). The European community and the uncertainties of interdependence. In M. Kohnstamm & W. Hager (Eds.), A nation writ large (pp. 1–21). Macmillan. European Council. (2003). A secure Europe in a better world. European Security Strategy. https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-15895-2003INIT/en/pdf European Council. (2008). Report on the implementation of the European security strategy—Providing security in a changing world. https://www.consilium.eur opa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/reports/104630.pdf European External Action Service. (2016). Shared vision, common action: A stronger Europe. A Global Strategy for European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy. https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/docs/top_stories/pdf/eugs_review_ web.pdf Federal Ministry of Defence. (2006). White paper: On German security policy and the future of the Bundeswehr. https://issat.dcaf.ch/content/download/ 17423/203638/version/2/file/Germany_White_Paper_2006.pdf

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Federal Ministry of Defence. (2016). White paper: On german security policy and the future of the Bundeswehr. https://issat.dcaf.ch/download/111704/202 7268/2016%20White%20Paper.pdf French Armed Forces. (2020). Update April 2020. https://fraceintheus.org/ IMG/pdf/FAFU/FAFU_003.pdf Grant, C. (2020). Can France and Germany steer Europe to success? (Annual Report 2019) (pp. 3–11). Center for European Studies. Harnisch, S., & Maull, H. W. (2001). Introduction. In S. Harnisch & H. W. Maull (Eds.), Germany as a civilian power (pp. 1–10). Manchester University Press. Holm, U. (2009). Sarkozysm: New European and foreign policy into old French bottles? (DIIS Working Paper No. 30). Kirste, K., & Maull, H. W. (1999). Zivilmacht und Rollentheorie. Zeitschrift Für Internationale Beziehungen, 3, 283–312. Kolodziej, E. A. (1974). French international policy under de Gaulle and Pompidou: The politics of grandeur. Cornell University Press. Kramp-Karrenbauer, A. (2020, November 20). Europe still needs America: No matter who is in the White House, we are together. Politico. https://www. politico.eu/article/europe-still-needs-america/ Krotz, U., & Schild, J. (2015). Shaping Europe: France, Germany and embedded bilateralism from the Elysée treaty to twenty-first century politics. Oxford University Press. Link, W. (2006). Auf dem Weg zu einem neuen Europa. Nomos. Link, W. (2007, August 1). Europa als Gegenmacht. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/die-gegenwart-1/eur opa-europa-als-gegenmacht-1462347.html Macron, E. (2018, November 7). Macron calls for a “true European Army” to defend against Russia, US, China. EURACTIV . https://www.euractiv.com/ section/defence-and-security/news/macron-calls-for-european-army-to-def end-against-russia-us-china/ Macron, E. (2019, November 7). France’s Macron decries NATO ‘brain death’ ahead of anniversary. EURACTV . https://www.euractiv.com/section/def ence-and-security/news/frances-macron-decries-nato-brain-death-ahead-ofanniversary/ Macron, E. (2020, November 16). The Macron doctrine: A conversation with the French president. Le Grand Continent. https://geopolitique.eu/en/mac ron-grand-continent/ Maull, H. W. (1997). Europa als Weltmacht? Perspektiven für die gemeinsam Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik. In T. Jäger & M. Piepenschneider (Eds.), Europa 2000 (pp. 81–95). Leske & Budrich. Maull, H. W. (2002). “Zivilmacht Europa” bleibt Projekt. Blätter Für Deutsche Und Internationale Politik, 12, 1467–1478.

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Maull, H. W. (2005). Europe and the new balance of global order. International Affairs, 81, 775–799. Meimeth, M. (1990). Frankreichs Entspannungspolitik der 70er Jahre: zwischen Status quo und friedlichem Wandel. Nomos. Meimeth, M. (1993). Frankreichs Sicherheitspolitik nach dem Ende des Ost-WestKonflikts. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Meimeth, M. (1995). Diskussionsbericht. In H. Jäckel (Ed.), Ist das Prinzip der Nichtintervention überholt? (pp. 163–169). Nomos. Meimeth, M. (2003). Deutsche und französische Perspektiven einer gemeinsamen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik: Offene Fragen und verdeckte Widersprüche. Aus Politik Und Zeitgeschichte, 3–4, 21–30. Meimeth, M., & Göler, D. (2011). Europe’s role in World politics: Diverging concepts in France and Germany. Ritsuemeikan Law Journal: International Edition, 28, 191–201. Merkel, A. (2018). Merkel joins Macron in calling for EU army to complement NATO. Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/angela-merkel-emm anuel-macron-eu-army-to-complement-nato/ Miskimmon, A. (2009). Falling into line? Kosovo and the course of German foreign policy. International Affairs, 3, 561–573. NATO. (1974). Declaration on Atlantic relations: Issued by the North Atlantic Council (The Ottawa Declaration). https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/ official_texts_26901.htm Nougayrède, N. (2017). France’s gamble: As America retreats, Macron steps up. Foreign Affairs, 96, 2–8. Permanent Structured Cooperation. (2021). Member states driven. https:// pesco.europa.eu. Schmidt, P. (2019). La conception allemande de la défense européenne: Revue Défense et Stratégie, 44. Automne, 2019, 33–50. Schröder, G. (1999, December 1). Europe Puissance als gemeinsames Ziel. Die Verantwortung für Deutschland und Frankreich für die Zukunft Europas. Rede des deutschen Bundeskanzlers vor der Französischen Nationalversammlung in Paris am 30.11.1999. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8. Schröder, G. (2003, September 1). Für eine kooperative Weltordnung. Interview mit Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder. Internationale Politik. https://internati onalepolitik.de/de/fuer-eine-kooperative-weltordnung Tertrais, B. (2020). French nuclear deterrence policy, forces, and future: A handbook. Recherches & Documents Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/pub lications/recherches-et-documents/2020/202004.pdf

CHAPTER 15

Frozen in Trump’s Headlights—Germany’s Astounding Foreign Policy of Obstinacy Katharina McLarren and Bernhard Stahl

Introduction In retrospect, US-German relations during the Cold War look like a long fleuve tranquille with only minor irritations such as the missile crisis in the 1980s. After the fall of the iron curtain, though, it was Germany’s alleged new assertiveness which set the agenda for many publications examining the role of the enlarged, united Germany (e.g., Duffield, 1998; Katzenstein, 1997; Markovits & Reich, 1997). Yet, despite minor changes in some issue areas, most analysts came to the conclusion that German

K. McLarren (B) Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] B. Stahl University of Passau, Passau, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0_15

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foreign policy was and continues to be characterized by an ongoing continuity (Harnisch & Maull, 2001). Subsequently, in the 2000s, the scientific focus shifted to the USA as a driver for change, notably the G. W. Bush administration and the Iraq war. Even the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” was interpreted as an indicator that change in the transatlantic partnership originates from the Potomac rather than from the Rhine. When Donald Trump entered the White House, this forecast fully materialized: Transatlantic relations in general and US-German relations in particular were severely put under strain. During his 2016 election campaign and into his first weeks in office, Trump openly criticized partners and allies (Merkel, NATO-allies), questioned long-term alliances (e.g., NATO, alliances with Japan and South Korea), and deliberately provoked other states (e.g., a phone call with Taiwan despite its One-China-Policy). In terms of transatlantic relations, Trump made it clear that he preferred negotiating with individual states rather than with the EU, arguing this would be more advantageous for his ‘deal-making’ strategy. He consequently appeared to welcome or even promote a division of the EU (Stewart et al., 2017). Trump’s slogan “America First” promulgated nationalist-protectionist foreign and economic policies, though his goal to ‘Make America Great Again’ indicated that the focus would mainly be on domestic politics. Typical for autocratically-minded leaders such as Putin and Erdo˘gan, Trump appeared to seamlessly join the ranks of nostalgic nations striving for bygone size and might. However, steering the focus to domestic issues also meant giving up the US claim of being the leader of the free world. Was this then still the USA that Germany had relied upon for decades as its transnational friend? sFollowing Trump’s election in 2016, the verbal reactions in Germany ranged from “shock” as expressed by then defense minister Von der Leyen (FAZ, 2016) to it being described as “a f***ing nightmare” by a member of the opposition party of the Greens (ZEIT, 2016). Such rhetoric, we argue, indicates a significant shift in the bilateral relations between Germany and the USA and accordingly we would thus expect an equally clear change in foreign policy behavior. Our research question in this study is therefore: How did Germany react to the Trump administration’s degradation of the transatlantic relationship? Our thesis holds that despite the harsh German rhetoric, the overall foreign policy behavior remains unchanged vis-à-vis the USA. In other words, the most drastic US foreign policy change since WWII is met by staunch continuity on the German side—a continuity that has culminated in obstinacy.

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We assume that the relations between Germany and the USA can be classified as a friendship with a high degree of internalization in the sense intended by Wendt, based on interdependence, common fate, homogeneity, and self-restraint (Wendt, 1999). Those classifications are discussed in more detail later on. We also assume that the US foreign policy under Trump indicates a shift not merely toward a more isolationist, but even a nationalist one (Dück et al., 2020). To better understand Germany’s puzzling behavior, we briefly review GermanUS relations prior to and since German unification before examining Germany’s reactions to two cases of US foreign policy change, namely the toughening stance via China’s human rights violations and announcing the reduction of US troops in Germany. Our analysis is founded on Wendt’s theoretical approach to friendship in international politics to show whether and, if so, how the degree of friendship internalization and collective identity formation has changed. In a final discussion, we then offer thoughts on how to assess Germany’s behavior, raising the question whether we are seeing German reluctance or even an inability to deal with a US foreign policy change and a possible rift in the transnational friendship.

Understanding Friendship in International Politics---Brief Theoretical and Methodological Overview “Friends may of course have a falling out, but their expectation up front is that the relationship will continue” (Wendt, 1999, p. 299). As a social constructivist, Wendt believes that the structure of the international system and the behavior of the actors constitute each other. And, while he accedes that the structure—such as a violence-laden anarchy—can have a great impact on actors in the short-term, he posits that actors can change the structure in the middle- and long-term and shape a friendly world. “Structural change occurs when actors redefine who they are and what they want” (Wendt, 1999, p. 336). Based on this observation, Wendt conceives three structural ideal types, what he terms cultures of anarchy (cf. Wendt, 1999, pp. 251–255). Depending on which role identity is the dominant one—enemy, rival, or friend—he speaks of an anarchy as understood by Hobbes, Locke, or Kant. For brevity’s sake, we will only briefly

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outline his ideas on friendship in the Kantian form of anarchy, rather than all three cultures of anarchy. Friendship is described as a role structure within which states expect each other to observe two simple rules: (1) disputes will be settled without war or the threat of war (the rule of non-violence); and (2) they will fight as a team if the security of any one is threatened by a third party (the rule of mutual aid). (Wendt, 1999, pp. 298–299)

Structures can change and thus friendship is not something static, but dynamic in the sense that the degree of internalization can increase but also dwindle. According to Wendt, social constructions of identity and interest form the foundations of change from one culture of anarchy to another, but also from one degree of internalization to the next. This is what he identifies as social learning and the interplay between states is decisive for a “collective identity formation” (Wendt, 1999, p. 343). For such a change to occur, identities must be reciprocally learned and mirrored. During this interplay the actors engage in a process of role-taking and alter-casting, i.e., assuming certain roles themselves and thereby compelling the other to also take on a role. Under certain circumstances, the respective role identities can change and a collective identity can be formed, i.e., friendship can evolve. Wendt lists a total of four master variables necessary to the formation of collective identity. The first one, self-restraint, is understood as an “enabling” cause and is always necessary. In addition, only one of the following three “active or efficient” causes (variables) suffice: interdependence, common fate, or homogeneity. We may summarize these three latter variables as constructed by Wendt. The first variable, selfrestraint, is vital because it pertains to the actors’ sense of individuality being upheld, despite identifying with another. In other words, the fear of being “engulfed” (Wendt, 1999, p. 357) must be overcome by building trust, which is demonstrated for example by reciprocal compliance or selfbinding measures. Self-restraint therefore means the Alter constraining itself in order for the Other not to feel pressured, but rather to be able to identify with the Alter. This self-restraint must be given in order for one or more of the other three variables to be enabled. While an increased interdependence—the second variable—can also lead to an increase in vulnerability, it can equally result in trust-building and overcoming the fear of being exploited.

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Unlike interdependence, a common fate, the third variable, “is constituted by a third party which defines the first two as a group” (Wendt, 1999, p. 349). A common fate can lead to a collective identity formation if there is a repetition of verbal and non-verbal communication which “will undermine egoistic identities and internalize the cooperative relationship in collective identities” (Wendt, 1999, p. 352). Finally, the fourth variable, homogeneity, refers to how similar the units that potentially form a collective identity are, particularly regarding the regime type, if we assume that we are only analyzing states. All three of these active causes leading to a collective identity formation are not possible without the initial variable of self-restraint as the survival of the individual actor may not be threatened in any sense. The degree of internalization or collective identity increases with the number of active causes. In analytical terms, we understand Wendt’s collective identity formation, i.e., the interplay of role-taking and alter-casting, as a type of friendship spiral, with states continuously taking steps forward or backward in their verbal and non-verbal communication. This results in a strengthening or weakening of the degree of friendship. To better understand whether and how the transatlantic friendship changed during the Trump administration, as a first step, we conducted a simple phenomenological behavioral analysis, examining US actions and Germany’s reactions in two cases that we have established as indicating a shift in US foreign policy behavior. In the behavioral analysis, states are considered to be unitary actors (individual members of government or capitals are only mentioned for semantic reasons). The analysis is limited to a phenomenological external perspective, ignoring domestic aspects. And finally, possible motives behind the actions are also excluded, but would deserve future research (Stahl, 2006, p. 139). For the sake of economy (and the argument), in a second step and based on the behavioral analysis, we then study two of the four master variables—namely self-restraint and common fate—to determine how the behavior reflects a change in the collective identity of the transatlantic friendship.

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German-US Transatlantic Friendship Before and After Unification Germany and the USA share a “close and vital relationship as friends, trading partners, and allies sharing common institutions” (Department of State, 2019). This is also described as a “close friendship based on historical ties, shared experiences, values and interests” (Federal Foreign Office, 2020). Arguably all four of Wendt’s master variables (indicated in parentheses) have shaped this friendship, particularly during the Cold War but also since Germany’s unification: Western Europe had experienced the liberation by US troops and from the perspective of the West, the Cold War was marked by the threat of the Soviet Union replacing that of the fascist-authoritarian expansion (self-restraint, homogeneity, common fate, interdependence). As a result of occupation and partition, Germany was a special case; Adenauer succeeded in linking the fear of Communism with the project of western integration so that re-arming and joining NATO could be pursued despite particularly strong pacifist and neutral movements in German society in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nevertheless, during the course of the Cold War, the USA’s strategic agenda vis-à-vis the Communist threat (mutual assured destruction, containment, domino theory, proxy wars, covert actions, tolerance toward dictatorships that were anti-Communist) was not supported unconditionally by many allies. This was expressed for example in the vehement anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in France and the country’s withdrawal from NATO’s military structure or demonstrations in the Netherlands and West Germany in reaction to NATO’s Double Track Decision. In Germany, the social liberal government succeeded in turning its Ostpolitik, its policy of détente and rapprochement into a transatlantic project, which was institutionalized in the form of the Helsinki Process (later OSCE) (common fate, homogeneity, interdependence). The 1990s were marked by a reaffirmation of the transatlantic relations, particularly between Germany and the US. The George H. W. Bush administration believed that the unified Federal Republic should take on the key role of a “partner in leadership” in this new world order, assuming leadership of the old continent as well as global responsibility (self-restraint). The German government, despite massive peace demonstrations at home, supported the USA—albeit it only financially—during the Gulf War 1990/91. This was also the decade when NATO’s role was jointly redefined by the West to be able to tackle “new threats”.

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The first litmus test presented itself with the collapse of Yugoslavia. The Kohl-Genscher government decided to unilaterally recognize Slovenia and Croatia in late 1991, diverging from the agreement reached with the partners in the European Community. This fostered fears of a new German assertiveness in the USA but also in France, the UK, and Italy. However, with the Kosovo War 1998/1999 these differences appeared to be evened out, with all important allies—including Germany—taking part in NATO-led air attacks, despite there being no UN Security Council mandate for the operation (homogeneity, common fate). The transatlantic alliance experienced a further demonstration of solidarity when the attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in the activation of NATO’s Article 5 (common fate, interdependence). Yet the lessons learned from the Kosovo War differed greatly within the transatlantic community, with the US administration now believing that “the mission should determine the coalition” (Sloan, 2006, p. 12) irrespective of a Security Council mandate, while other countries—most prominently France and Germany—insisted all the more vehemently on international legitimation. As a consequence, the USA not only pursued a “unilateral path to Kabul” (Sloan, 2006, p. 12), with the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) following two years later, it also plowed on with its course when it invaded Iraq in 2003. The German government agreed to join ISAF (common fate). However, its unequivocal positioning against the Iraq War as early as October 2002 as well as France’s announcing a veto in the Security Council, led to what was termed a “poisoned relationship” (Szabo, 2004, p. 1). The Iraq War thus represented “the gravest crisis in transatlantic relations” (Lindberg, 2005), arguably because the USA thus demonstrated a lack of self-restraint, the one crucial cause of friendship. In the following years, this crisis appears to have been left in the past, at least rhetorically, with Chancellor Merkel vowing to continue to take up George H. W. Bush’s offer of a partnership in leadership during her inaugural visit to the White House to meet with President George W. Bush (Merkel, 2006). Both Merkel and President Obama continued to reiterate the German-US friendship, with Merkel addressing Congress in late 2009 as only the second German chancellor apart from Adenauer to do so (Bundesregierung, 2009; Obama, 2014). The NSA Affair and the diverging policies on Libya and later the Ukraine indicate that while the friendship was upheld through an ongoing role-taking and alter-casting,

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the degree of internalization may have waned (Lucke & Stahl, 2018). The following two cases shall help us better understand to what extent this role-taking and alter-casting changed during the Trump administration, and how Germany reacted.

Two Cases of German-US Friendship Under Trump The cases presented here are examples of major US foreign policy shifts, be it in the short- or long-term. They were selected as they reflect US policies which Germany would be expected to react to regardless of the degree of its friendship with the USA, since these policies involve protecting human rights and preventing mass atrocities and directly affect Germany in the case of the reduction of US troops. The cases are also examples of the USA demonstrating little to no self-restraint or sense of common fate toward its traditional friends, in particular Germany. This goes hand in hand with a change in the role-taking and alter-casting between the two countries, as is indicated below. In each case, the shift in US policy is briefly outlined before examining Germany’s reaction. We then discuss how to assess the German-US friendship. Condemning Human Rights Abuses in China While the relations between the USA and the People’s Republic of China has experienced its ups and downs, the oscillation peaked during President Trump’s term in office, with foreign policy actions reaching from a trade deal to a trade war, leading former Secretary of Commerce Ross to state “For the next 24 hours I would say US-China relations are at a high point” (The Guardian, 2017) after President Trump and President Xi Jinping signed a trade agreement in 2017. A more enduring policy shift, however, is the decision to condemn human rights abuses against the Uyghurs committed by China. The UN and human rights NGOs have and continue to create awareness for the human rights abuses of the Uyghurs for almost a decade (Amnesty International, 2018; Human Rights Watch, 2009). In June 2020, Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act nearly unanimously (an earlier version had been passed unanimously by the Senate in 2019), which was signed into law by President Trump shortly thereafter. The bill not only requires the president to regularly report on human rights abuses of the Uyghurs and Chinese efforts to expand their internment capabilities, it also imposes sanctions

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on those immediately responsible for committing such abuses (Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act 2019–2020). One day before President Biden’s inauguration, the Trump administration went one step further with Secretary of State Pompeo classifying China’s acts as “‘genocide and crimes against humanity’” (Pamuk & Brunnstrom, 2021), an assessment his successor Secretary of State Blinken has also adopted. Meanwhile, Germany has done little to mirror the US behavior toward China, on the contrary, Germany has been largely silent on the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs, not to mention the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and the US government labeling China’s acts as crimes against humanity and genocide. When the so-called “China Cables” were leaked in November 2019, revealing the systematic oppression of Uyghurs in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, Germany’s reaction was (and continues to be) to “address” and to “seriously discuss” the issue in talks with China as the speaker of the Foreign Ministry clearly stated, “(…) we will for now continue to address the situation of the Uyghurs with the Chinese side, as we have been doing emphatically for quite some time” (Federal Government, 2019). The German government was questioned by members of the opposition in April 2020 who made reference to the US bill and also to the fact that Germany was at that point a member of the Security Council and of the UN Human Rights Council. In its reply, the government above all listed how often it had addressed or seriously discussed the topic in talks with the Chinese government (Federal Government, 2020, p. 4). In October 2020, the German ambassador to the UN addressed the UN Third Committee on behalf of 39 member states demanding that China allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner access to Xinjiang province and that China respect the autonomy of Hong Kong (German Mission, 2020). Neither the rhetoric nor the foreign policy actions toward China changed, with the foreign minister once again professing that Germany continued to address the situation of the Uyghurs in late 2020 (Maas, 2020a). Viewing this rhetoric and behavior from a transatlantic angle, there is little, to no common approach. Shortly before the bill was passed in US Congress in June 2020, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas declared in a press statement that the EU must work to prevent the world from being split into a US and a Chinese sphere of interest. The EU’s task was to lead the “difficult fight for a sustainable multilateralism” (Maas, 2020b). Because Germany was about to assume the EU Council presidency, there was, according to Maas, additional impetus for Germany

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to ensure that the EU-China Summit should take place in September. During its EU Council presidency in the second half of 2020 Germany did indeed prioritize finalizing a trade deal between the EU and China, all but disregarding an open letter authored by numerous NGOs addressed to the EU which warns that “Each missed opportunity to articulate specific human rights improvements is a message to China’s leadership— and people across China and the world—that those concerns remain subordinated to other issues” (Human Rights Watch, 2019). The agreement still needs approval by the EU Parliament, with individual MEPs and NGOs voicing their human rights concerns (Amnesty International, 2021; France24, 2021; Ladurner, 2021). Merkel herself (rather than the foreign minister or an ambassador) took part in the talks between the EU and China in December 2020, thereby lending additional weight to the agreement. Examining both the US and German behavior toward China, particularly Germany’s approach seems baffling. While its transatlantic friend takes steps to criticize and accuse China of committing genocide, Germany is reluctant to follow suit. Germany promulgates a “valuebased” foreign policy which “has accepted the unique responsibility arising from its history. The avoidance of war and violence in international relations, the prevention of genocide and severe violations of human rights, and the defense of endangered minorities and the victims of oppression and persecution are integral to Germany’s reason of state” (Federal Government, 2017, p. 47). Yet the German government avoided any debate on the issue, be it in parliament or in public. In addition, there was no initiative for the EU’s foreign policy. Admittedly, the USA did not consult Germany as a “partner in leadership” in this regard when labeling the actions undertaken by China. Pompeo compared them to “what happened in the 1930s in Germany” (The Guardian, 2020), making it all the more surprising that Germany did not seize the chance of identifying a common fate and working together with the US. American foreign policy leadership has shown less self-restraint and sense of common fate toward Germany since the George W. Bush administration, a stance augmented during Trump’s administration. Nevertheless, some of the policies the USA has been pursuing are in line with Germany’s own foreign policy priorities. This would indicate a degree of weakening within the transatlantic friendship to which Germany does not know how to react. In other words, it is “frozen in the headlights”.

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Reducing US Troops in Germany The case of reducing US troops in Germany is a topic ‘even closer to home’ for both countries. Since the early days of NATO, the USA represented the core of the alliance because Western Europe could not defend itself against a massive conventional attack from the East. In the 1980s, around 280,000 US troops were stationed in Germany alone, a number which was only gradually reduced after the end of the Cold War to around 70,000 (Zimmermann, 2009). During the Cold War, the Bundeswehr’s task was to build a first line of defense. In effect, however, it simply contributed to the alliance’s deterrence. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO’s rationale shifted to fighting diverse security threats. Germany interpreted the new world order in two ways. First, it realized the “peace dividend” which meant that Germany’s defense expenditures decreased by more than 50 percent over the next decade. Second, it incrementally transformed the Bundeswehr from a territorial army to a force capable of participating in overseas missions. Alas, this transformation was hampered by the structural under-financing on the one hand, and the investment in “old” Cold War projects on the other hand such as investing in regional military bases and defense infrastructure. Facing the realization of peace dividends on behalf of most European NATO member states, the alliance reacted by defining a 2 percent of GDP-target in Wales 2014. That being said, the USA accounts for 75 percent of NATO’s expenditures until today and continues to have around 76,000 troops stationed in Europe, of which around half are located in Germany alone (Deutsche CFR, 2020; Welle, 2020). This imbalance is an issue that has been verbalized repeatedly by past US governments. Secretary of State Warren Christopher voiced such a concern in 1993, “The United States will maintain its military commitment and responsibilities in Europe, but President Clinton must be able to show the US Congress that our Allies are contributing commensurately. Sharing must be a visible NATO principle: sharing of burdens; sharing of responsibilities; sharing of decisions” (Christopher, 1993). Almost twenty years later, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who served as such in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations) warned, “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress […] to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own

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defense” (Thompson, 2011). Having decreased its defense expenditure significantly between the 1980s and 2020s, Germany was one of the more vulnerable to US criticism (see Fig. 15.1). Trump’s claim in March 2017 that, “Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO and the USA must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany” (Deutsche Welle, 2018) was therefore very much in line with observations made by previous administrations. However, announcing a withdrawal of 12,000 troops in summer 2020 represented a major policy change in particular as this was decided without consulting either Germany or other NATO allies. Trump declared his intentions in unmistakable terms, “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore […]. We’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills; it’s very simple” (BBC, 2020).

German defense expenditures in % of GDP 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1980

1990

2000

2010

2019

German defense expenditures in % of GDP

Fig. 15.1 German defense expenditures 1980–20191 (Authors’ own depiction based on numbers provided by World Bank [2021])

1 The data does not include the expenditure for 2020, since Germany had already committed to spending e51.4 billion before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the economy. Germany had actually targeted 1.5 percent of its GDP by 2024, however, due to the lack of expected economic growth, Germany was able to cross the 1.5 percent threshold in 2020 already.

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Germany’s government was caught unaware by their friend’s surprising move, so much so that there was hardly any reaction at all. At a press conference State Secretary Seibert, spokesperson of the government explained that the government would not react to media reports but would rather wait for an official statement from the US government. He and his colleague from the Federal Foreign Office admitted that neither had they been informed nor had they consulted the US government in this regard, but rather were waiting for further information (Federal Foreign Office, 2020). The foreign minister was currently on a visit to Warsaw when confronted with this news during a press conference and needed a thousand words to say nothing. In his reply, Maas explained that this was surely a point in time in which one must talk about a changing security architecture and that once Washington knew when what and how it would be implemented, Germany would “take note of it” and “continue to deepen the dialogue with its European partners” (ZEIT, 2020).2 Once again we see a case of the USA reflecting a lack of self-restraint. Yet, in spite of this acerbic attitude shown by American leadership and Trump in particular, the USA continued to encourage stronger interdependence. However, Germany decreased rather than increased military spending and did not accept nor follow-up on the US offer of Germany being a partner in leadership. It could have easily seized the opportunity of underlining the continuous common fate, thereby reiterating and strengthening the collective identity. Instead, Germany remained largely silent on the US announcement of reducing its troops.3 In the sense of a friendship spiral, the neglect of the collective identity formation has led to a waning of the degree of internalization.

Conclusion The united Germany has, by and large, followed the West-German commitment to the transatlantic partnership. In the Cold War, the rearmament in the 1950s, Germany’s silence on Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and the deployment of medium-range missiles in the 1980s were cases in point. After 1991, Germany supported efforts to institutionalize

2 The video of the press conference is no longer available online. 3 For now, the Biden administration has put the reduction of troops on hold.

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the WTO, joined with the USA in the Kosovo War, and followed the USA to Afghanistan. This did not mean, though, that Germany always refrained from unilateral action. Yet, the Ostpolitik in the 1970s and the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia (1991/1992) were based on the foreign policy belief “to know better”. Indeed, the USA did follow suit in both cases. The US administrations after WWII were mainly driven by the bipartisan consensus after Pearl Harbor and their policy vis-àvis Europe remained stable and calculable. This only changed with the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War when the Europeans broke apart with Germany being the first vocal critic (Szabo, 2004). The disagreement over Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO accession were two additional examples of US-German divergence. However, after the Obama interregnum, it was the Trump administration which departed from the transatlantic partnership by bringing into question all the relationship’s core components of cooperation, be it trade relations, NATO policy, or the deployment of US troops in Europe. How did Germany react to this most drastic foreign policy change after WWII? Despite rhetorical lamenting, we assert the German government simply stuck to its policies and changed nothing. As the case of troop reduction reveals, Germany adhered to the course of “politics of denial”. Namely, claiming the German government did not know if the information was reliable, noting further that if the information is reliable it will take a long time to implement, and ultimately claiming that if troop reduction really did develop as a US policy action, it would not rise to a level of importance considering the overall presence of US soldiers in Germany. The non-reaction of the German political class is striking. No consultation with NATO partners was initiated (let alone Poland) and Macron’s provocation on NATO’s future was trivialized and silenced. As the politics of denial and delay indicates, Germany prefers a NATO as it was in the 1990s and looks with nostalgia to an early era when life was simpler with an unquestioned defense guarantee from the USA in return for modest contributions required of Germany. sTrump’s farewell to an internationalist, value-laden foreign policy led some observers to assume that Merkel might step in, thereby making Germany the last defender of Western values. The Uyghur case demonstrates that this assumption is most probably mistaken. Despite the German self-commitment to ban and prevent mass atrocities, the government silenced the issue while putting emphasis on negotiating the China-EU trade agreement. Given the Congress’ unequivocal sanction policy vis-à-vis China, the Uyghur issue would have provided Germany

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with the chance to side with the Trump administration. By no means did Germany seize this chance. Rather, it ignored the USA (and, moreover, all human rights organizations) by not mentioning the issue and thus avoiding angering China. Therefore, complementing ignorance with obstinacy. Germany bypassed the Trump administration by pursuing an appeasing-realist “Germany-first” strategy. In a theoretical vein, reiteration and alter-casting explain Germany’s attempt to remain a friend and pursue the transatlantic partnership as if it were intact. Germany’s problems had already increased during the George W. Bush years when the US administration gave up any self-restraint (but still stuck to common fate and interdependence). The Trump administration not only discarded self-restraint but also demolished the common fate and eventually sought to decrease interdependence by further weakening NATO, as well as trade ties. While the Trump administration treated Germany as a foe (alter-casting), Germany rejected this new role (role-taking). Yet, this role attribution paralyzed the German élite which reacted in an obstinate “more-of-the-same” mode. The Uyghur issue as well as Nord Stream 2 are examples of such an obstinate “Germanyfirst” policy. Only if the Biden administration turns the headlights off, is Germany’s foreign policy likely to “unfreeze”.

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Index

A Abolitionists, 2 Adenauer, Konrad, 90, 135, 136, 232, 323, 338, 358, 382, 383 Adoption, 123, 134, 135, 192, 252 Agenda 2010, 134, 141, 143, 145, 150 Agree-to-disagree, 225 Al-Gaddafi, Muammar, 367 Alliance for Germany, 11, 138, 190 Alliance for Jobs, 141 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 29–31, 34–36, 38–40, 45, 46, 78, 89, 108, 110, 113, 114, 117, 121, 123, 125, 144–146, 165, 177, 197–199, 201, 223, 225, 226, 233–245, 251, 259, 263, 274, 276, 277, 280, 281 Alternative politics, 194, 213, 216, 221 Al-Wazir, Tarek, 224 American Civil War, 2 American exceptionalism, 317

Anti-nuclear protest, 211 Arab Spring, 367 Atlantic Alliance, 77, 358 #Aufschrei, 259 Austerity, 95, 147, 214, 338, 347, 353 B Baden-Württemberg, 208, 211, 224, 236, 261 Baerbock, Annalena, 88, 89, 151–153, 208, 209, 212, 217, 218 Barcelona Objectives, 256, 257 Basic Law, 54, 84, 85, 135, 167, 254, 255, 259, 271, 275, 285 Basic program, 136, 212–215, 221 Beck, Kurt, 138, 142, 143, 150 Berlin, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21–23, 119, 135, 136, 142, 152, 193, 199–202, 211, 226, 238, 239, 281, 297, 300–303, 305, 307, 363, 368, 369, 371

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Oswald and J. Robertson (eds.), The Legacy and Impact of German Unification, New Perspectives in German Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97154-0

395

396

INDEX

Berlin Republic, 83, 85, 86, 92–95, 110, 145, 150, 152, 208, 232, 238, 244, 270, 294 Berlin Wall, 1, 10, 275, 294–297, 299, 301–303, 305, 306, 308, 309, 315–318 Black-yellow coalition, 142, 143, 194 Blair, Tony, 107, 121, 147, 329 Bonn Republic, 85, 95, 134, 135, 150, 208, 226, 244 Brandenburg, 18, 110, 138, 200–202, 225, 227, 235, 240, 241, 252, 261, 280, 281, 301, 332 Brandenburg Gate, 294, 299, 301–303, 315 Brandt, Willy, 90, 133, 136, 138, 143, 150 Bremen, 18, 135, 138, 145, 152, 199, 201, 203, 211, 261 Bundesbank, 324, 326, 331 Bundesrat, 85, 139, 141, 142, 152, 254 Bundestag, 10, 57, 84–86, 88, 90, 91, 108, 119, 120, 134, 136, 137, 140–142, 144, 146, 150, 152, 161–163, 165, 174, 191, 194, 195, 197, 203, 209, 210, 218–220, 227, 237, 242–244, 254, 255, 259, 261, 263, 274, 275, 277, 279, 281 Bundestag elections, 30, 34, 36, 40, 134–136, 138, 145, 152, 153, 164, 174, 194, 196 Bush, George H.W., 293–295, 297–300, 302, 305, 309, 310, 315, 316, 378, 382, 383 Bush, George W., 94, 140, 294, 303–305, 309, 315, 317, 383, 386, 387, 390, 391 Bütikofer, Reinhard, 217

C Carbon emissions, 213, 214 Cartel Office, 322 Cartel party, 106, 149 Carter, Jimmy, 147, 324 Catch-all-party, 104, 120, 148, 166, 214 Centralization, 123, 217 Chancellor, 8, 30, 31, 78, 83–92, 94–99, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139–143, 146, 150–153, 162, 165, 174–176, 180, 188, 195, 202, 218, 221, 232, 239, 249, 250, 257, 262, 279, 287, 299, 314, 323–325, 329, 347, 349, 358, 364, 383 Chancellor candidate, 86–89, 96, 135, 137, 143, 144, 151–153, 208 Childcare, 252–259, 262 China, 268, 269, 282, 287, 306, 308, 312, 313, 319, 349, 350, 363, 370, 379, 384–386, 390, 391 Chirac, Jacques, 362, 367 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 11, 87, 88, 110, 113, 138, 140, 143, 145, 149, 151, 162, 164, 167, 173–177, 180, 188–191, 196, 199, 201, 202, 219–221, 223, 224, 233, 235, 239, 240, 249, 251, 252, 256, 258, 260, 262, 275 Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), 86–90, 104, 108–111, 113, 116, 134–138, 141, 142, 144–146, 151–153, 162, 164–166, 174, 175, 180, 194, 195, 208, 214, 215, 221, 223–225, 258, 324, 325 Christian Social Union (CSU), 87, 113, 140, 162, 167, 173–175, 177–180, 258, 260, 262 Citizens assemblies, 213, 255

INDEX

Civilian powers, 360, 361, 364, 365, 371, 372 Cleavages, 9, 134, 163–165, 178, 210, 215, 227 Climate change, 95, 153, 208, 211, 213, 214, 275, 289 Climate neutrality, 213 Clinton, Bill, 147, 294, 298, 299, 329, 387 Coalition strategy, 209, 221, 222, 226 Cold War, 3, 202, 284, 287, 295–297, 303, 308, 358, 363, 366, 367, 372, 377, 382, 387, 389 Collective leadership, 208, 216 Commission on Modern Services in the Labor Market (Hartz Commission), 141 Communism, 4, 7, 48, 49, 185, 198, 202, 303, 382 Competition, 111, 116, 119, 126, 148, 149, 161, 163, 165, 181, 202, 218, 226, 322, 327, 342, 351 Complementarity, 216, 217, 352 Conservation of creation, 177 Constitutional debt brake, 146 Corona, 313, 322, 331, 333, 334 Coronavirus pandemic, 152, 212, 214, 333 Corporate Quota, 260 Corpus analysis, 294 Crisis prevention, 367 D Decline of Social Democracy, explanatory approaches, 135, 147 Defense expenditures, 387, 388 Democracy, 1, 2, 15, 30, 39, 51, 75, 76, 87–89, 105–107, 121, 122, 136, 137, 147, 163, 192, 195,

397

198, 200, 201, 213, 234, 235, 245, 274, 276, 277, 280, 285, 299, 301, 302, 304, 305, 308, 309, 316, 365 Deregulation, 325 Digital technologies, 105, 121–123, 213 Direct democracy, 213 Dual citizenship, 139

E Early elections (2005), 90, 142, 150 Eichel, Hans, 138 Election manifesto, 196, 197, 212, 215, 221 Electoral Alternative Work & Social Justice (WASG), 89, 105, 108, 142, 185, 195, 197, 199, 200, 202 Electoral explanatory approaches, 150 Electoral-professional party, 121 Electoral threshold, 194, 209, 210 Emotional leader, 217 Engholm, Björn, 138 Environmentalism, 329 Erhard, Ludwig, 90, 321, 322, 332 Erler, Fritz, 135 Esken, Saskia, 146 Eucken, Walter, 322 Eurocorps, 359, 361 Euro-crisis, 221 European Army, 358, 361 European Central Bank (ECB), 331 European Community, 298, 357, 358, 364, 383 European elections, 146, 208, 209, 211 European integration, 4, 50, 91–93, 211, 221, 280, 281, 286, 331, 337, 338, 340, 346, 352, 357, 362, 364

398

INDEX

European Security Strategy (ESS), 360, 371 European unification, 358 European Union’s Global Strategy (EUGS), 360, 361 European Union (EU), 4, 8, 12–14, 17, 25, 28, 31, 50, 75, 78, 91–93, 95, 98, 107, 232, 244, 250, 252, 257, 259, 281, 282, 310, 311, 332, 334, 337–340, 343–346, 351, 352, 357–361, 364, 365, 368–372

F Factions, 180, 212, 216, 217, 224–226, 235, 239, 329, 330 Federalism, 85, 236, 324, 325 Feminism, 259, 263 Fiscal pact, 331 Fischer, Joschka, 88, 89, 139, 283 Foner, Eric, 2, 3, 7, 76 Franco-German Brigade, 359, 361 Franco-German (relations, discourse), 357, 372, 373 Free Democratic Party (FDP), 31, 34, 108–110, 113, 134, 136, 137, 140, 143–145, 152, 154, 178, 194, 215, 221, 223, 225, 227, 233, 244 Freedom, 263, 268, 269, 271, 276, 277, 295, 297, 299–302, 304, 305, 308, 309, 316–318, 322, 327 Fridays for Future, 213 Friendship, 379–384, 389 Fukushima, 176, 221 Fundis/Linke, 216

G Gabriel, Sigmar, 143–146, 150

G-Coordination: coalition agreement, 144, 145, 215, 224–226 Gellner, Winand, 133, 141, 293, 316 Gender equality, 218, 249–252, 254–263 German Chancellors, 84–86, 90, 91, 98, 249, 262, 294, 310, 314, 315, 383 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 10, 11, 13, 15, 25, 28, 30, 55, 64, 70, 78, 134, 137, 163, 174, 185–193, 199, 241, 244, 251, 253, 254, 256, 262, 275, 277, 328 Geywitz, Klara, 146 Global governance, 340, 342, 361 Godesberg Program, 136 Goetsch, Christa, 224 Government coalition, 110, 240, 258 Grand coalition, 85, 90, 136, 142–146, 151, 196, 201, 221, 223, 225, 227, 239 Grassroots ideology, 209, 211 Greens & Green Party, 88, 89, 92, 97, 98, 108–110, 112, 117, 134, 137, 143–146, 150, 152–154, 165, 166, 179, 190, 196, 207–216, 218–227, 274, 275, 283, 329, 378 Group discipline, 220 H Habeck, Robert, 151, 152, 208, 209, 212, 217, 218 Hamburg, 18, 135, 142, 143, 151, 199, 201, 223, 224 Hartz-laws, 215 Hartz, Peter, 141 Hartz reforms, 141, 143, 257, 329, 330 Hesse, 18, 135, 138, 141, 142, 145, 199, 224, 281

INDEX

Höppner, Reinhard, 138

I Ich-AGs, 141 Ideational explanatory approaches, 147 Inhalte vor Macht , 224 Inner-party democracy, 143 Institute of Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN), 362 Intraparty vote, 208, 224, 226 Iraq War, 364, 378, 383, 390

J Jobert, Michel, 358

K Keynesianism, 324, 325 Kohl, Helmut, 8, 10–12, 14, 31, 84, 87, 90–92, 95, 137, 138, 140, 147, 174, 188, 189, 191, 233, 255, 282, 299, 324, 325, 329, 338 Kosovo War, 383, 390 Kraft, Hannelore, 145 Kramp-Karrenbauer, Annegret, 87, 145, 176, 251, 363, 364 Kretschmann, Winfried, 208, 211, 224 Kühnert, Kevin, 151

L Lafontaine, Oskar, 137, 138, 142, 145, 150, 195, 196, 232 Laschet, Armin, 87, 151, 153, 176 Leadership, 2, 5, 8, 10, 13, 14, 29, 31, 78, 87, 88, 90, 93, 94, 106, 121, 122, 124, 137, 141–143, 150, 152, 166–169, 171, 172,

399

174–178, 180, 187–189, 194–197, 200, 208, 209, 214, 215, 217, 218, 225, 227, 232, 235, 236, 241, 249, 251, 252, 260, 261, 272, 295–297, 299, 302, 309, 313, 317, 329, 362, 368, 373, 382, 383, 386, 389 Leading candidate, 151, 212, 218 Left Party, 89, 105, 108–110, 112, 113, 120, 134, 142, 152, 195, 223, 224, 226, 243, 281 Liberal democracy, 105, 107, 202, 213 Liberals, 3, 121, 134, 137, 148, 173, 190, 208, 212, 225, 234, 239, 268, 275, 339–341, 346, 352, 382 Lisbon Strategy, 257 Local politics, 168, 211 M Maastricht, 331 Maastricht & EU convergence criteria, 140, 331 Macron, Emmanuel, 332, 358, 362, 363, 390 Mahler, Horst, 139 Mass party, 107 Materialist explanatory approaches, 147, 150 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 210 Member party, 149 Membership, 87, 88, 104, 110, 117, 120–126, 135, 138, 143, 149, 162, 164, 165, 167, 213, 226, 237, 245, 281, 282, 367 Member vote & referendum 2013, 145 Merkel, Angela, 29, 31, 78, 84, 87, 90, 91, 93–95, 98, 99, 142–145, 148, 151–153, 165, 174–176, 180, 218, 221, 239, 249–252,

400

INDEX

255, 257, 258, 260, 262, 263, 272, 279, 287, 310, 311, 314, 338, 347, 349, 352, 358, 378, 383, 386, 390 Merz, Friedrich, 87, 175–177 #MeToo, 259 Milieu party, 200 Military mission, 221, 359, 369 Mini-Jobs, 141, 257 Minimal wage, 322 Mission statement, 224 Mittelstand, 326 Modell Deutschland, 326, 330, 331 Modernization, 40, 78, 135, 146, 163, 170–181, 200, 240, 243, 257–259, 262 Möllemann, Jürgen, 140, 233 Movement party, 216 Müller-Armack, Alfred, 322 Mulroney, Brian, 325 Multinational Command Support Brigade (MNCS Bde), 359 Müntefering, Franz, 142, 143, 150 N Nahles, Andrea, 145, 146 NATO, 8, 11, 12, 92, 94, 137, 140, 283, 284, 286, 287, 296, 316, 358, 359, 362–369, 378, 382, 383, 387, 388, 390, 391 Neocorporatism, 141 Neoliberal economic policy consensus, 147 New left, 208 New social movements, 165, 211, 216 Normalization, 209, 218, 245 O Obama, Barack, 94, 272, 273, 294, 306–309, 312, 315, 316, 347, 363, 378, 383, 387, 390

Ollenhauer, Erich, 135 Operation Enduring Freedom, 139 Ordo-liberalism, 322, 334 Organizational reforms, 216 Organizer, 217 Özdemir, Cem, 217

P Pacifism, 212, 234 Parity, 12, 252, 253, 260–263 Parity Law, 252, 261 Party central office, 126, 167 Party change, 170, 172, 173, 178–180 Party congress, 88, 209, 212, 214, 216, 223, 224, 241 Party elites, 87, 88, 118–121, 126, 168, 170, 171, 177, 180, 192, 216 Party in public office, 106–108, 120, 167, 218, 219 Party in the electorate, 209 Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), 78, 89, 104, 105, 108–110, 120, 125, 134, 140, 142, 163, 165, 185, 189–195, 197–200, 202–204, 226, 232, 243, 244, 330 Party on the ground, 106, 108, 121, 123, 167, 168 Party system, 29, 78, 89, 98, 104, 105, 108, 110–113, 122, 123, 125, 126, 133, 134, 136, 146, 151, 152, 164, 166, 181, 201, 203, 208, 211, 212, 215, 222–224, 226, 227, 233, 237, 243, 244 Party typology, 148 People’s Chamber, 137 People’s Chamber election 1990, 137, 138, 189

INDEX

Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), 361 Personal (biographic) explanatory approaches, 135 Petersburg Declaration, 359 Peter, Simone, 217 Pirate Party, 214 Platzeck, Matthias, 150 Political strategy, 150 Populism, 57, 60, 64, 65, 67–69, 147, 196, 199, 232, 234, 236, 244 Post-democracy, 147 Postmaterialism, 67 Power-sharing, 216 Presidential speeches, 77, 294, 295, 299, 302, 303, 315, 316 Progress trap, 371, 372 Public private partnership, 330 Q Quotas, 260, 261, 263 R Reagan, Ronald, 147, 324, 325 Realos/Reformer, 212, 216, 217 Reconstruction, 2, 3, 76 Red Army Faction, 139 Red-green project & red-green coalition, 134, 138–141, 143, 195, 201, 202, 226 Reform party, 172, 174 Refugee crisis, 31, 93, 144, 177, 235, 240, 241 Registered civil partnership for homosexuals, 139 Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, 360, 371 Reunification (re-unification), 2, 28, 39, 56, 78, 133–135, 137, 138,

401

140, 163, 181, 188, 189, 198, 207–209, 219, 222, 226, 269, 274, 276–278, 280–283, 286–288, 295, 302, 337, 351, 352 Rhineland-Palatinate, 18, 29, 138, 152, 211 Riester pension, 139 Robertson, John D., 133, 141, 293, 316 Roll-call-votes, 218–221 Rotation of mandates, 216 Roth, Claudia, 217 Röttgen, Norbert, 87

S Salary caps, 216 Same-sex marriage, 139 Saxony, 18, 110, 137, 190, 199, 225, 227, 233, 237, 240–243, 245, 280, 281 Saxony-Anhalt, 18, 110, 138, 199, 201, 202, 225, 227, 233, 240, 280, 281 Scharping, Rudolf, 87, 138 Scherf, Henning, 138 Schleswig-Holstein, 18, 138, 143, 145, 217 Schmid, Carlo, 135 Schmidt, Helmut, 136, 147, 150, 324 Scholz, Olaf, 31, 146, 151, 153, 218 Schröder, Gerhard, 84, 87, 90–95, 134, 138–143, 147, 150, 165, 191, 195, 197, 202, 251, 257, 329, 338, 364 Schulz hype, 145 Schulz, Martin, 144, 145 Schumacher, Kurt, 135 Scsshröder, Gerhard, 364 ‘Second founding’, 2 Seehofer, Horst, 177, 178

402

INDEX

Separation of party office and public mandate, 216 Simonis, Heide, 138 Social Democratic Party (SPD) & Social Democrats, 31, 32, 34, 78, 86–90, 92, 104, 108–110, 112, 113, 117, 121, 122, 133–154, 162, 164, 165, 179, 190, 191, 195, 196, 199, 200, 202, 208, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 218, 221–227, 238, 239, 252, 255, 257, 260, 262, 324, 329, 330 Socialist Unity Party (SED), 10, 12, 14, 78, 104, 134, 137, 142, 185–187, 189, 192–195, 199, 200, 202, 280, 286 Social-liberal coalition, 133, 136, 137 Söder, Markus, 87, 151, 153, 178–180 Soviet threat, 358 Staatspartei, 136, 233 Stabilization, 211 Stakeholder capitalism, 326 State elections, 141, 142, 145, 152, 177, 178, 195, 199, 208, 281 Statutory minimum wage, 144, 146 Steinbrück, Peer, 134, 144, 146, 150, 347 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 93, 142–144, 150 Stoiber, Edmund, 87, 92, 140, 174, 195 Stolpe, Manfred, 138 Student movement, 207 Supply-side politics, 147 Sustainability, 179, 214, 224, 226, 349 T Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 139 Thatcher, Margaret, 147, 325

Third Way, 139, 141, 147, 329, 363 Thuringia, 18, 110, 137, 152, 190, 199–202, 226, 233, 235, 237, 240, 241, 243, 245, 250, 252, 261, 280, 281 TINA politics, 147 Trade unions, 325, 326, 329 Transatlantic friendship, 381, 382, 386 Transplantation, 4 Treaty of Lisbon, 93, 359 Treuhand, 13–15, 328 Trump, Donald, 94, 272, 284, 285, 287, 293, 294, 310–317, 378, 379, 381, 384–386, 388–391

U Unemployment, 13, 15, 20, 30, 141, 146, 195, 226, 273, 324, 328 Unemployment Benefit I, 143 Unemployment Benefit II, 141 Unification, 1–17, 20, 25, 28, 30, 39, 40, 46, 48, 50, 51, 54–56, 59, 60, 64, 65, 67–70, 73, 75–79, 83–92, 95–98, 104, 105, 110, 113, 114, 117, 120, 125, 126, 137, 188–194, 198, 199, 209, 210, 226, 227, 232, 240, 241, 243–245, 250, 251, 253, 254, 258, 270, 280, 283, 288, 293, 300, 301, 316, 322, 323, 326, 327, 330, 332, 333, 335, 338, 367, 372, 379, 382 Unification Treaty, 13, 192, 254–256 US foreign policy, 284, 295, 296, 316, 378, 379, 381, 384 US presidents, 98, 293, 294, 309, 315–317 US troops, 379, 382, 384, 387, 390 Uyghurs, 384, 385

INDEX

V Volkspartei, 135, 136, 148, 165 Volksparteien, 30, 78, 86, 162–167, 169, 172, 180, 181 von der Leyen, Ursula, 257, 378 Vote of confidence (Schröder 2001), 139

Wehner, Herbert, 135, 150 Welfare state, 57, 134, 136, 164, 323–325, 327, 332 Western European Union (WEU), 359 Westerwelle, Guido, 140, 152 Women quotas, 216

W Walter-Borjans, Norbert, 146 Wealth tax, 215

Y Yom Kippur War, 358 Ypsilanti, Andrea, 142

403