The German Social Democrats’ (SPD) existential crisis can no longer be treated as a typical party crisis. The party captured a mere 9.7% of the vote in regional elections in Bavaria this month, and it is trailing the populist Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and the Greens in national opinion polls.

With another important regional election next week in Hesse, polls indicate that the SPD will lose still more support, though not as dramatically as in Bavaria.

The SPD and the Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) have stood as the twin pillars of German politics since the end of World War II. However, with the SPD declining, Germany is moving from a de facto two-party system to a multiparty system in which no single party plays a dominant role.

The German post-war consensus is collapsing in key areas: history (attitudes toward WWII); geopolitics (attitudes toward Russia); the economy (attitudes toward the car industry); and ethics (attitudes toward refugees).

This is reflected in the fracturing of the political scene.

German voters have rejected the longstanding CDU/ CSU-SPD “grand coalition”. Whereas smaller parties once functioned as mere subsidiaries of either the SPD or the CDU/ CSU, the bit players are now eclipsing the former stars.

Moreover, what was once “Red Munich” has now turned Green. Whereas cities had long been SPD strongholds, they are switching to the Greens and other smaller parties. Making matters worse for the SPD, the demographic profile of its core electorate amounts to a death sentence. Only 8% of SPD voters are under the age of 30, and 54% are over 60. By contrast, just 24% of Greens are over 60. And Die Linke, meanwhile, has become increasingly attractive to younger new leftists and ageing post-communists from the former East Germany.

Just as a two-party system ensures stability and predictability, so might its collapse contribute to radical social change. By definition, the fall of the establishment implies the rise of the anti-establishment, often in the form of populism.

Since 2005, the SPD has participated as the minority partner in three grand-coalition governments. As a result, it has come to be associated with the status quo, even though it hasn’t been able to claim direct credit for the previous governments’ successes.

Something similar happened in Austria, where the Social Democratic Party ruled either alone or in conjunction with the Austrian People’s Party between 1971 and 1999 (except for 1983-1986). Such long periods of grand-coalition rule allowed for the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria to present itself as an agent for change.

When a grand coalition is threatened, its members tend to panic. Those who toe the party line lose support, as German chancellor Angela Merkel has. Others thus attempt to appropriate populist language, as CSU leader Horst Seehofer has done in recent months, while still others will try to associate themselves with new political platforms.

Hence, Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU has promised a “conservative revolution,” while Martin Schulz, the erstwhile leader of the SPD, has promoted EU federation.

At any rate, when the constituent parts of a coalition start moving in different directions, things quickly fall apart. Still, it is worth noting that while the SPD and the CDU are currently losing support, their ideas remain popular.

Their problem is not that they are devoid of ideas, but that they lack political credibility.

This credibility deficit has created a vacuum for other parties to fill. Thus, the Greens have made gains in Bavaria by supporting an open-door refugee policy that actually originated with the CDU/SPD.

Likewise, the AfD has wrested the anti-refugee mantle away from the CSU and Seehofer, who went so far as to try to undermine Merkel’s government from within while serving as Minister of the Interior. The common thread connecting all of the parties that performed well in the Bavarian election is that they ran politicians who are at least consistent in their views.

Unfortunately for Germany, multiparty systems are generally unstable and less predictable, which explains why every other European country, Latvia is a current example, constantly struggles to establish a governing coalition.

Under such conditions, it is not uncommon for bizarre arrangements to arise, including coalitions between the far left and the far right, as we have seen in Greece, Italy, and Slovakia.

Germany’s best hope now is that its newly emerging multiparty system will impede the progress of the AfD, by nullifying its anti-establishment appeal. The AfD will take its place on the radical right as one party among many.

Its support will remain in the 10% to 20% range, but it will not go any further than that. In fact, this has already happened in Bavaria, where the AfD garnered 10.2% of the vote this month, down from the 12.4% that it received in last year’s federal election.

Another potential silver lining to a multiparty system is that it might lead to more political engagement. In the case of Bavaria, voter participation rose to 72.4% this election cycle, up from 63.6% five years ago.

Looking ahead, Germany may now end up with rotating coalition governments comprising multiple parties.

For example, one could imagine an arrangement between the CDU/CSU, the Free Democrats, and the Greens – the so-called Jamaica coalition.

However, this scenario would likely produce political paralysis, because politicians from competing parties within the coalition would constantly undercut one another other while pandering to the popular will. Moreover, the chancellorship will always be weaker in a patchwork government.

Most likely, the fall of the CDU/CSU-SPD duopoly will undermine German hegemony in Europe, even if no other country can replace Germany in that role. At the same time, the weakening of the SPD will diminish the socialist faction in the European Parliament, where a similar eclipse of two-party rule could be in the offing.

Yet without the twin pillars of the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists, the parliament will be incapable of making even insignificant decisions.

As Germany and the SPD go, so goes Europe.

Slawomir Sierakowski, founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw and a fellow at the nRobert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

Source: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/the-end-of-germanys-two-party-system-is-on-the-horizon-881213.html

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Thousands of people in the Bavarian capital, Munich, gathered on Sunday to demonstrate against right-wing populism, in a rally that was a direct rebuke of the ruling Bavarian party Christian Social Union (CSU) for its immigration policies and stance.

Under the official slogans “An end to the incitement of hate” and “Together against the politics of fear,” a large crowd assembled at the Königplatz square, an iconic cultural center of the city. A diverse group of organizations came together for the rally, including NGOs, political parties and church groups.

The demonstration follows a large protest in the Bavarian capital on May 5, where at least 30,000 people filled Odeonplatz square to express their rejection of a controversial legislative package put forth by the CSU that sought to widen police powers.

Demonstrators hold a sign spelling out CSU with the words “unchristian, asocial, inhumane.”

Read more: Trouble in Bavarian paradise: Will the CSU’s hard-line asylum strategy pay off?

Officials put the attendance of Sunday’s anti-CSU rally at 15,000, with organizers saying that 18,000 showed up, despite the unrelenting rain in Munich. Protesters singled out CSU leaders Horst Seehofer and Markus Söder as instigators of an “irresponsible politics of division” at the national and regional levels respectively. Demonstrators also spoke out against CSU parliamentary party leader Alexander Dobrindt.

Organizers of the rally wanted to emphasize that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was not the only political organization that in their eyes promotes a politics of “exclusion and hate.” Protesters were called on by organizers to put the spotlight on “a massive societal shift to the right, the surveillance state, [and] the restriction of freedoms and attacks on human rights” that they see as inherent to CSU policies.

A woman holds the sign with the event’s slogan: “together against the politics of fear.”

Read more: The challenges of parodying CSU politician Horst Seehofer

CSU reacts

Shortly before the demonstrations began, the CSU defended itself and spoke out against Sunday’s event.

In an official tweet, the CSU said “Bavaria will not be filled with hatred,” turning the accusation of inciting hate against the organizers of the event. The Bavarian ruling party said that it rejected “political agitation” and made calls for political decency. “The people in Bavaria know what they have with the CSU,” the tweet added.

CSU @CSU

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LAST week a dispute over immigration policy took Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), their conservative Bavarian partners, to the brink of divorce. “I can’t work with this woman any more!” a furious Horst Seehofer, the CSU interior minister, fumed of the chancellor for blocking his proposal to turn migrants registered in other EU countries back at German borders. Open hostilities flew between CDU and CSU MPs, who sit in a single parliamentary group, in the halls of the Bundestag as the Bavarians refused to back  down, pouring scorn on the chancellor’s request for two weeks to find a “European solution”.

But the weekend cooled heads and now détente has broken out. A meeting of the CSU leadership in Munich yesterday gave Mr Seehofer its blessing to impose the new border regime against Mrs Merkel’s will (whether or not the wording of the German constitution gives him the right to do so is debatable), but agreed that he would not act on this for two weeks, waiting to see the outcome of the chancellor’s European negotiations. For her part she conceded her interior minister permission to turn back refugees banned from Germany; albeit that measure is already mostly in effect.

The dispute is now stable, but not yet resolved. The CSU remains sceptical about the chancellor’s ability, at the EU summit on June 28th and 29th, to forge a long-elusive deal fixing the Dublin system regulating immigration to the EU, which grants responsibility for registering and processing immigrants to the member state where they first arrive. The Bavarians, whose state borders Austria and thus is the main entry point for those travelling north from Greece or Italy, accuse southern European states of waving through “asylum tourists” to Germany.

Mr Seehofer considers the long-term solution “anchor centres”, centralised immigration camps currently in operation in Bavaria, where applicants can be monitored and promptly deported if denied the right to stay. Until they are rolled out across the country, he reckons the only answer is to refuse entry to Germany to those registered elsewhere in the EU. How practical this would be is doubtful. The logistics of comprehensively manning, say, the 815km-long German-Austrian border, with its roughly 70 road crossings, are daunting. Whether Austria would readmit those refused entry by Germany is uncertain. Vienna might simply close its southern borders, prompting what Mrs Merkel described yesterday as a “domino effect”: a disastrous wave of unilateral border policies bringing down Europe’s free-movement regime. But the CSU’s goals are more than just practical: the party is also looking nervously at the state election in Bavaria in October, where the far-right Alternative for Germany threatens the party’s traditional hegemony.

What now? Mrs Merkel’s “European solution” will involve seeking bilateral deals with southern European states like Italy, Greece and Bulgaria to secure the prompt and automatic repatriation of immigrants from Germany to the states where they were first registered. These will not come easily: such countries feel they already bear an unfair share of the immigration burden. Indeed Italy’s new populist government, and particularly Matteo Salvini, its hard-right interior minister, is determined to reduce this burden at almost any cost. The chancellor will surely need to bring out her cheque-book. In her press conference yesterday she suggested she sees her existing cash-for-repatriations deal with Turkey, which has helped reduce flows of immigrants to Germany, as a template.

Following the EU summit late next week Mrs Merkel is due to present her achievements back in Berlin on July 1st. Then it will be up to the CSU to decide whether to accept them as substitutes for the threatened border policy, or whether Mr Seehofer should act unilaterally. The interior minister’s tough talk over the past days has left him little room to back down; he is in any case under pressure from Markus Söder, his long-time rival and the current prime minister of Bavaria, and Alexander Dobrindt, the CSU’s leader in the Bundestag, to keep up the pressure on the chancellor. Most likely is that Mrs Merkel will achieve enough in her European talks over the coming days for some compromise (perhaps involving step-by-step increases in border patrols and checks) to be reached with the CSU. But it is far from certain.

But if not? Mrs Merkel has made it clear that unilateral action by Mr Seehofer would be an act of war, yesterday stressing that the absence of a European solution should not automatically lead to the new controls and asserting that such matters were her responsibility as chancellor. All of which would make it hard for her to smooth over relations with any semblance of authority in the event of a unilateral move by her interior minister in early July.

In that event Mrs Merkel may therefore have no practical alternative but to fire him, which would probably eject the CSU from her coalition, leaving its remaining components (her CDU and the Social Democrats) just short of a majority. The Greens or the pro-business Free Democrats might be persuaded to make up the numbers, perhaps supporting the government in crucial votes without formally joining it. But Mrs Merkel’s authority would be greatly, perhaps terminally, diminished. She might stand down in favour of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU general secretary and her preferred heir. A more disorderly departure might favour the chances of more Merkel-critical figures in the CDU, like Jens Spahn, the health minister and an ally of Mr Dobrindt.

Yet for now, as last week, a health-warning applies: do not write off Mrs Merkel just yet. The chancellor remains the most popular politician in Germany. She retains the support of most of her party; including that of a number of MPs not currently speaking up, to avoid further inflaming relations with the CSU, but who would stand behind her should her leadership come under dire threat. None of her possible replacements looks quite ready to step into her shoes yet (were this drama playing out in a couple of years’ time the picture might be different). The CSU’s tactics seem to be backfiring: polls show support for both the CDU/CSU nationally and the CSU in Bavaria falling. Many in the CDU, and some quietly sceptical moderates in the CSU, are losing patience with Mr Seehofer’s theatrics. It is one of the central rules of German politics that voters prize stability above most things. For as long as Mrs Merkel looks a better guarantor of that stability than her rivals, she remains a force to be reckoned with.

Source: https://www.economist.com/kaffeeklatsch/2018/06/19/angela-merkel-has-two-weeks-to-keep-germanys-centre-right-together

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