As Merkel era ends, German post-war system is in flux

WITH Angela Merkel in her final weeks of power, the German post-war political and economic landscape is in wider, historic ferment with the Green Party sensationally topping national polls this week.

In the weekly Kantar survey, the Greens polled 28 per cent, up 6 percentage points. This means, for the first time in the nation's history, the party is more popular than Dr Merkel's right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) bloc, and also the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The reason this is so significant for Germany is that the SPD and CDU/CSU have stood as the twin pillars of German politics since the end of World War II in a longstanding duopoly of power. But with the CDU/CSU's bearings uncertain in the post-Merkel era, and the SPD not polling strongly either, Germany may now be fast moving from a de facto two-party to a multi-party system with smaller parties which once functioned as subsidiaries of either the SPD or the CDU/CSU now sometimes eclipsing them.

This week's Kantar poll put the CDU-CSU on 27 per cent, the SPD on 13 per cent (the party's lowest result since August 2019), the socialist left party (Die Linke) at 7 per cent, the far-right, populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 10 per cent, and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) at 9 per cent. Part of the reason that the two main parties are languishing in the polls is their choice of candidates for chancellor this year: the CDU/CSU bloc has chosen Armin Laschet (the current CDU chairman), rejecting Bavarian Premier Markus Soder who is more popular with voters, while the SPD has put forward Olaf Scholz, who is currently serving as vice-chancellor.

While the Greens may yet fall away in popularity, and not become the largest single group in the Bundestag, major parties are rattled. Annalena Baerbock, who has been chosen by the Greens as their candidate for chancellor, has been roundly criticised in recent days for inexperience, with Mr Scholtz, for instance, saying that "Germany is one of the world's biggest and most successful industrial countries. It should be run by someone who has experience in governing, who not only wants to govern, but can actually do it".

This underlines that Germany's political flux is not just a domestic issue, but one that also matters deeply for Europe, and indeed the world at large too. Germany is the continent's most populous country and largest economy with its influence within the EU likely to grow significantly post-Brexit.

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One of the drivers of Germany's political ferment is that the nation's post-war consensus is falling away in multiple areas. This includes history (such as attitudes towards World War II), geopolitics (including views towards Russia), the economy (such as attitudes towards the auto industry) and ethics (including views towards refugees), and this is reflected in the fracturing of the political landscape.

Historically, many Germans have been generally content with their post-Cold War lot, seeing themselves as beneficiaries of globalisation with unemployment at the last federal election the lowest since the reunification of East and West Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, this may be changing as shown by the rise of smaller parties with, for instance, the Greens winning votes on the basis that now is increasingly seen by many as the right time for a political departure in the country, to protect the climate and reduce inequality.

While the Greens' poll lead brings the decline of the two-party system into sharp focus, the movement towards a multi-party system has longer origins. The last federal election, in 2017, saw some 42 parties competing for 598 Bundestag seats with six securing more than 5 per cent of the vote and therefore winning seats in the Bundestag.

EMERGING MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM

In addition to the CDU/CSU, and SPD, this included the Greens, and the FDP. However, the story of the election was the rise of the AfD which surged to third place, becoming the first far-right group to win Bundestag seats for some six decades.

The AfD campaigned extensively on immigration: an issue which has grown significantly in salience since 2015 when around 900,000 migrants and refugees were allowed into the country by Dr Merkel. Moreover, some elements of the German far-right also sought to link her immigration stance to recent terror attacks.

The flux in Germany also reflects the vacuum of power at the apex of power, as the most important political leader in Europe, Dr Merkel, gradually transitions from the political scene having been head of the CDU since 2000 and Chancellor for more than one and a half decades. To put her longevity into wider international perspective, four French presidents (Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron), and five UK prime ministers (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson) have already served during her tenure. And Dr Merkel has also exceeded the previous record of Margaret Thatcher as Europe's longest serving female leader of 11 years.

This year, she matches Helmut Kohl's 16 years of office from 1982 to 1998. In fact, with her full fourth term she sits only behind Otto von Bismarck who served for almost two decades from 1871-90 during a period in which he helped previously drive unification of Germany.

Looking forward, the nation's multi-party system future may now mean that politics is generally more unstable and less predictable, with even greater challenge each election cycle to establish a governing coalition. So there may be more rotating coalitions with problems this can bring, including potential paralysis and the prospect of the chancellorship becoming weaker in patchwork governments.

However, there may be positives too. Firstly, the emerging multi-party system may impede the progress of the AfD, by nullifying its anti-establishment appeal. That group may take its place on the radical right as one party among many and its support may then be pegged in the 10-20 per cent range. Another potential benefit of such a multi-party system is that it might lead to more political engagement. This is because with more parties, there are some signs that voter participation may rise again.

This underlines the historical crossroads the nation is now at. While a multi-party system could have some positives, the political danger is a potentially weaker Germany and Europe at a time of growing global geopolitical flux and economic uncertainty in the 2020s.

• The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.