The Paradoxical Impact of Party System Change in Germany Charles ...

Lees. APSA Toronto. 2009

The Paradoxical Impact of Party System Change in Germany Charles

Lees.

Department

of

Politics,

University

of

Sheffield,

UK.

[email protected] (Paper prepared for presentation at the APSA 100th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, Canada. September 3-6 2009)

Abstract Over the last thirty years, the German party system has undergone four types of change: (1) a decline in the overall vote and seat share for the two ‘Volksparteien’ (CDU/CSU, SPD); (2) an increased level of fragmentation in the party system; (3) a skew in the party system to the left that has shifted the position of the median legislator; and (4) the emergence of a new territorial cleavage associated with German Unification. This paper focuses on the impact of these changes on the role, status and relative power of the two ‘Volksparteien’ in the German party system and argues that the changes have had a paradoxical impact. On the one hand, the decline in the overall ‘Volkspartei’ vote undermines the parties’ integrative function and weakens the ‘Parteienstaat’ principle. But, on the other, the presence within the legislature of three small parties (FDP, Greens, Left Party) rather than just the one (FDP), means that, in most instances no single small party can be ‘kingmaker’ and, because of their relative positions in ideological space, neither can they easily act in concert to extract concessions from either of the two ‘Volksparteien’. In office seeking terms, therefore, the ‘Volksparteien’ are now less vulnerable to small party threats of a decisive defection to a an alternative coalition.

Keywords: Germany; Political Parties/Party Systems; Coalitions

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1. Introduction

One the 27 September 2009 German voters will take part in the sixth federal election since unification in 1990. The previous election of 18 September 2005 resulted in the creation of a Grand Coalition of the two big ‘Volksparteien’, or ‘People’s parties’, the right-of-centre CDU/CSU and the left-of-centre SPD. The Grand Coalition arrangement had operated briefly once before at the federal level, between 1966 and 1969, and was widely regarded as being an undesirable but unavoidable coalition option, reflecting the changes that had taken place in the German party system. These changes were, first, a decline in the overall vote and seat share for the two ‘Volksparteien’ (CDU/CSU, SPD), second, an increased level of fragmentation in the party system, third, a skew in the party system to the left that has shifted the position of the median legislator, and, fourth, the emergence of a new territorial cleavage associated with German Unification (Lees, 2008).

This paper revisits the German party system four years later and on the eve of the 2009 federal election. It focuses on the impact of the changes noted above on the role, status and relative power of the two Volksparteien and argues that they have had a paradoxical impact. On the one hand, the decline in the overall Volkspartei vote undermines the two parties’ integrative function and weakens the ‘Parteienstaat’ or ‘party state’ principle that it is at the heart of the Federal Republic’s political settlement. As will be argued, this weakening of the two parties’ integrative role is alarming and must be addressed. On the other hand, the paper argues that, in purely instrumental terms, changes to the composition and dynamics of the German party system have been to the strategic advantage of the two big Volksparteien in terms of coalition formation. Thus, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, the 2


two big parties were forced to bargain with the liberal FDP, which often acted as the ‘kingmaker’ within the party system, the subsequent emergence of the ecological Greens and left-wing PDS (subsequently the Left Party) means that, in most instances no single small party can be kingmaker and, because of their relative positions in ideological space, they cannot easily act in concert to extract concessions from either of the two Volksparteien. As a result, the Volksparteien are less vulnerable to small party threats of a decisive defection to alternative coalitions.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section, I map out the changes that have taken place to the German party system over the last thirty years, with an emphasis upon the four types of change described above. In the following section I examine the challenges to the integrative role of the Volksparteien that these changes have brought about. I then analyse the changing the strategic environment that these changes have also brought about and argue in more detail about why these have been to the advantage of the two Volksparteien. I then pursue these themes in a section that examines more recent trends within the German party system since the 2005 election and in the run-up to the 2009 election. Finally, the paper concludes with a summary of the main issues and a suggestion for further research.

2. Party system change in the Federal Republic

The German party system, like party systems elsewhere in Europe, was shaped by the emergence of mass politics, universal suffrage, secret ballots, and open competition for 3


votes by parties mobilising around social cleavages. Lipset and Rokkan (1967) argue that party competition in European democracies was driven by four types of cleavage conflict: between the centre and periphery, between church and state or between churches, between urban and rural interests, and between social classes. In Germany the cleavage conflicts that persist today, albeit in a modified fashion, are those of class and religion. The class cleavage has been ameliorated through post-war prosperity and the development of welfare capitalism and, as a result, social class alone is no longer a reliable predictor of voter preferences unless buttressed by trade union membership (see Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 1976-1987, for instance). The weakened class cleavage remained cross-cut by a persistent confessional cleavage that had traditionally been regarded as a potential source of instability but in the Federal Republic had come to be regarded as a benign and stabilizing factor (Lees, 2005). Of course, party politics in Germany no longer remains ‘frozen’ in the configuration that was in place at the introduction of universal male suffrage and, as in other European democracies, embourgoisement and social mobility eroded traditional loyalties and fostered a ‘new politics’, de-coupled from the old cleavage structures. This new politics was in part the product of electoral dealignment (Padgett, 1993; Berghan, Converse, and Valen, 1971) and also as a result of the emergence of the associated but analytically distinct phenomenon of post-materialism (Inglehart, 1990; Dalton, 1996; Flanagan, 1982). The impact of these changes was amplified by Unification in 1990 and, taken together, the moderation of traditional cleavages and the emergence of the new politics has led to, first, a decrease in the overall vote share for the two Volksparteien, second, some increase in party system fragmentation, third, a shift leftwards in the ideological balance of the German party system, and, fourth, the emergence of a territorial cleavage in the German party system.

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2.1. Decline in the Volkspartei vote Figure One tracks the overall share of the popular vote won by the two Volksparteien at Federal elections since 1949. The data is derived from the second vote (Zweitstimme) in Germany’s Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system and demonstrates four distinct features. First, although the two parties only won 60.2 per cent of the total vote in 1949, their combined share of the vote rose steadily over subsequent elections, reflecting their success as agents of political integration in a polity that, prior to 1949, had only a limited (and not entirely happy) experience of democracy during the Weimar Republic period and had just emerged from 16 years of dictatorship, war, and foreign occupation. Second, over the eight elections from 1961 through to 1987, the Volksparteien succeeded in consistently winning over 80 per cent of the vote and, during the early 1970s, even managed to gain 90.7 (1972) and 91.2 (1976) percent of the vote. This reflects the relatively high levels of system legitimacy and associated voter satisfaction that were one of the fruits of the economic miracle that came to define West Germany. Third, from the first all-German Federal election in 1990 onwards, we see a slippage in the overall share of the Volkspartei vote. This slippage was modest in the 1990s, but in the 2005 Federal election the two parties’ vote share fell to 69.4 per cent – a number that is closer to the 1949 figure than it is to the impressive shares of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. As will be discussed later in this paper, such a low figure, if repeated in subsequent elections, would place the Volkspartei model under considerable pressure, at least in terms of the normative and integrative roles that the two parties are expected to perform and which are central to their own sense of place within the German political settlement. Finally, and moving on from the last point, in as far as we can discriminate between the two Volksparteien in performing these functions, the data indicates that the CDU/CSU has been more successful than the SPD in commanding 5


a dominant share of the vote. With the exceptions of the 1972 and 1998 Federal elections, in which the SPD’s share of the vote (45.8 and 40.9 per cent respectively) exceeded that of the CDU/CSU (44.9 and 35.1 per cent), and the 2002 Federal election, when the two Volksparteien were effectively tied (on 38.5 per cent), the SPD has been a weaker electoral force than its centre-right competitor. It should be mentioned in the SPD’s defence that, unlike the CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU, it at least competes across the entire territory of the Federation and makes no concessions to the particularism of individual states. However, unlike, say, Australia, another parliamentary Federation where the centreright has always been similarly fractured, the SPD has not been able to consolidate itself as the anchor of the party system in the manner achieved by the Australian Labor Party (Lees and Larkin, 2010 forthcoming). Figure One about here

2.2. Party system fragmentation The rise and subsequent decline in the Volkspartei vote is reflected in the patterns of party system fragmentation to be found in Germany. Party system fragmentation can be captured by fragmentation indices such as the Theil index (Theil, 1967), Laakso-Taagepera index (Laakso and Taagepera, 1979), and Herfindahl-Hirschman index (Herfindahl, 1950; Hirschman, 1964). Figure Two presents Herfindahl-Hirschman Indices (HHIs) for the German party system over the period from 1949 until 20051. On a scale of 0 (total fragmentation) to

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HHIs and other indices of this type were originally developed to calculate the degree of oligopoly in particular markets and, in the US at least, when levels of fragmentation where low, steps were often taken under the antitrust laws to break up these oligopolies. The HHI is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm operating within the market and then summing the resulting scores. HHIs normally range from 0-1000 and the HHI increases as the number of firms in a market decreases and the disparity in their sizes increases. Conversely, HHIs approach Zero under conditions in which large numbers of firms of roughly equal size operate. To demonstrate how HHIs work in the analysis of party systems, let us look at three ideal types: (1) one-party rule; (2) a classic two-party majoritarian system; and (3) a ‘pure’ multi-party system, all set in a 6


1 (one-party rule), the mean HHI for the period is 0.38 with a high point of party system fragmentation (0.25) in 1949 followed by a period of ongoing consolidation leading to a high point of cohesion (0.45) in 1969. Such high levels of remained following the 1972 (0.43), 1976 (0.43), 1980 (0.41), and 1983 (0.40) elections. The data then demonstrates a modest increase in fragmentation in the 1987 election (0.36) but the immediate impact of unification is in fact a small increase in levels of cohesion (0.38) following the first allGerman federal election in 1990. Subsequently, however, the data shows slightly higher levels of fragmentation in the 1994 (0.34), 1998 (0.34) elections before the 2002 election (0.36) again results in an increase in levels of cohesion. Finally, however, we see a significant increase in fragmentation following the 2005 election (0.29). The forthcoming 2009 federal election in Germany will be watched with interest in order to determine whether the 2005 score is a one-off or the start of a longer-term trend. Figure Two about here

2.3. Ideological shift If the extent of overall party system has been quite modest, we can nevertheless identify a clear leftward shift in the ideological balance of the German party system. Figure Three demonstrates how this ideological balance has shifted over the period 1949-2002. The figure demonstrates two main points. First, as in Figures One and Two, we can see a thirtyyear period of ongoing party system concentration, in which the party system is dominated

fictional legislature of 100 seats with a simple ‘decision rule’ (i.e. the criteria for commanding a legislative majority) of 50 per cent + one seat. Under conditions of one-party rule, the ruling party controls all 100 seats and this yields the maximum possible HHI of 1000. Multi-party systems of all kinds yield scores of less than 1 and our ideal-type two-party majoritarian system (based on the ruling party controlling 51 seats and the opposition party 49 seats, with no third parties) would yield an HHI of 500, whilst a pure multi-party system (100 parties, each holding one seat each) would yield an HHI of 1. I use a scale of 0-1 rather than 0-1000 in this figure. 7


by the two big Volksparteien. Second, despite the fact the Figure Two showed no huge changes in overall levels of party system fragmentation at this point, Figure Three identifies two systemic junctures in which new political actors have entered the party system and shifted the centre of gravity within it towards the political left. The first of these junctures took place in 1983, with the entry into the Bundestag of the environmentalist Greens; and the second took place in the Federal election of 1990, following Unification, in which the PDS – the successors to the ruling party in the German Democratic Republic – survived the collapse of the GDR and established itself in the new all-German Bundestag. Figure Three about here

On the face of it, the modest increase in party system fragmentation over the last quarter of a century and the entry of what are (or in the case of the Greens, at least were at the time) two flanking parties on the left of the party system was a failure of the integrative function of the two Volksparteien and, in particular, that of the SPD. This may be true but, at the same time, the integrative failures of the last twenty-five years also demonstrate how successful the Volksparteien have been in fulfilling this function over the entire period and, as discussed earlier, especially in the crucial decades after the foundation of the Federal Republic. Thus, some of the concentration of the German party system demonstrated in Figures One and Two is undoubtedly the result of social changes, such the moderation of the confessional and class cleavages and the subsequent reduction in polarisation within the party system. At the same time, however, the two Volksparteien were successful in actively preventing the emergence of flanking parties. This was particularly the case of the CDU/CSU, which deliberately integrated the political right through absorbing smaller rivals and acting as the agent of disaffected elements, such as those ethnic Germans expelled from the 8


countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War, amongst whom right flanking parties might otherwise hope to mobilise. It is no small achievement that, since the early 1960s, no party to the right of the CDU/CSU has scaled the 5 per cent hurdle to Bundestag representation. Again as already discussed, the SPD’s record is less impressive in this respect but, nevertheless, the party successfully survived the split that followed the enforced merger (Zwangsvereinigung) between KPD and SPD in the Russian zones of occupation and, in doing so, shored up the legitimacy of what would become the Federal Republic in the eyes of the left. Moreover, by 1953 it had successfully neutralised its communist rival in West Germany, to the extent that the subsequent banning of the KPD by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 now looks more of symbolic than practical importance.

2.4. Territorial cleavage Although the increase in party system fragmentation and leftward shift in the party system predate Unification, the emergence of a clear territorial cleavage within the party system is a direct result of the coming together of the two Germanies. Thus, up until at least a decade and a half after unification, once could discern two very distinct types of party system (Lees, 2005). Table One about here

In most of the old federal states there was what was effectively a two-bloc system, made up of four parties (the Greens, SPD, FDP, and CDU/CSU), arranged along a one-dimensional leftright continuum. By contrast, in most of the new federal states there was a three-party system made up of the PDS, SPD, and CDU. However, as Table One demonstrates, in as far 9


as we can extrapolate from recent state parliament elections, the distinction between old Federal states such as North Rhine-Westphalia and new ones such as Mecklenburg-West Pomerania is now less clear-cut than was the case even five years ago. Of particular note is manner in which, following the re-branding of the PDS and its merger with the Electoral Alternative for Social Justice (WASG), the Left Party has managed to make limited inroads into party systems in old Federal states such as Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, and Lower Saxony, thus blurring the east-west divide. Nevertheless, it still remains the case that the ‘national’ party system now consists of five relevant parties: the Left Party, Greens, SPD, FDP, and CDU/CSU. Second, as Figure Three demonstrated earlier, this five-party system now has a wider ideological range, within which the ideological centre of gravity had shifted leftwards from where it has been for most of the post-war period.

3. Challenges to the integrative role of the Volksparteien

Political parties are not just instrumental actors and their normative function is recognized in scholars’ categorization of parties as, for instance, ‘parties of social integration’ (Neumann, 1956) or ‘parties in the electorate’ (Key, 1964). Thus, beyond purely vote seeking, office seeking, and policy seeking (Wolinetz, 2002), political parties also act as agents of elite recruitment (putting forward candidates for public office), sustaining public institutions (providing personnel; providing leaders with logistical support/effective opposition), interest representation and aggregation (converting the demands of social interests into manageable packages of public policy choices), and mobilisation and

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integration (integrating citizens into the political system and mobilising civic participation) (Ware, 1987).

It is this last feature of political parties’ role that has been central to the Volkspartei model in the Federal Republic after 1949. In Imperial and Weimar Germany, a strong strand of conservative German political thought considered political parties to be agents of social division and it was only after the fall of the Third Reich that a consensus emerged in which political parties came to be regarded as crucial conduits for participation and the development of other-regarding vales and behaviour. In particular, it was recognized that, in a new democratic order that had effectively been imposed upon a defeated and compliant populace, political parties could perform a disciplinary role in educating the general public about societal interests and individual members of it about the limits of personal preferences (Lees, 2005).

As a result of this emerging consensus, institutional builders augmented the traditional notion of the Beamtenstaat or ‘administrator state’ that had characterized earlier narratives of the German state with the new notion of the Parteienstaat or ‘party state’. This principle was codified in Article 21 of the Basic Law of the new Federal Republic, which stated that ‘political parties shall participate in the formation of the political will of the people’. The growing inter-dependence of state and political parties was such that, by the 1970s, the main political parties staffed more than 50 per cent of all senior civil service posts (state secretaries, heads and departmental heads of division) at the state and federal levels. Of course, this party-political penetration of the state went beyond the CDU/CSU and SPD. It encompassed the FDP and, in subsequent decades, the Greens and, eventually, even the 11


PDS would be able to place key cadre at least within the state-level civil service. But, given that, as already noted, the 1960s until the late 1980s were characterized by a combined vote share of 80 and sometimes 90 per cent of the vote, the Volksparteien played the central role as the political wing of the German people.

The Parteienstaat principle was buttressed by three other key institutional features, First, Germany’s MMP system, which promoted coalition government, limited the number of viable parties within what was nevertheless designed to be a multi-party system, and shut out parties of the extreme right and left. Second, the notion of 'Chancellor democracy', which established the office of Federal Chancellor as primus inter pares, and avoided the constitutional tussles between Chancellor and President that characterised the Weimar years. Third, the requirement for a form of super-majority to over throw the executive, via the constitutional requirement for a 'constructive vote of no confidence' in the Bundestag before voting out an incumbent Chancellor. All of this constituted what Gordon Smith memorably called Germany’s 'efficient secret', part of the so-called 'the politics of centrality', that underpinned the stability of the Federal Republic's political settlement (Smith, 1986: 231-5), through the cultivation of ideological moderation, coalition discipline, and governmental stability (Lees, 2001; Smith. 1979).

In short, Article 21 constructed a new norm of state power in Germany in which state legitimacy was directly linked to the legitimacy of the political parties (and vice versa). And inevitably, the privileged position that the two Volksparteien enjoyed in the new Federal Republic resulted in a feedback effect in which the construction of the parties’ own ideological profile over time was shaped by the technocratic discourse of the civil service. 12


This process was particularly marked in the SPD, where what had been a Marxist-informed discourse of evolutionary social transformation was moderated into one of technocratic welfarism, especially in those states, such as North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin, where the Social Democrats were the governing party (Lees, 2000).

As long as the Volksparteien continued to call upon the levels of support it enjoyed between the 1960s and 1980s, the conflation of political and system support was sustainable. However, as Wiesendahl (1990) observed, this cosy consensus was in fact a 'modernisation trap' in which the logic of the Volkspartei blurred party identities and alienated those supporters still attached to more heroic political visions of the right or the left. Disaffection was accelerated by the nature of the established parties' organisational structures, which were complex, bureaucratic and hostile to new groups or new ideas. Over time, the sense of malaise seeped into the political mainstream and ordinary voters also began to resent the monopoly of power enjoyed by an insulated, self-selecting political class; a world of ‘cliques, cabals, and careers’ (Scheuch and Scheuch, 1992). In short, the Volksparteien were no longer seen as the integrating force that they had been in the past (Jeffery and Lees, 1998). And inevitably, this disaffection was both a reflection of past failures and a further constraint upon their claims to formulate the political will of the people.

4. The changing strategic environment

In the 1970s, when the vote share won by the Volksparteien was at its peak, the West German party system was held in high regard for its cohesion, generated by two ‘balanced 13


clusters’ of the SPD-FDP coalition (which lasted from 1969-1982) and the CDU/CSU in opposition (Smith, 1979: 135). Prior to 1966 and again after 1982, the polarity of this balance was reversed and CDU/CSU-FDP coalition faced an SPD opposition. For a brief period from 1966 to 1969, a surplus majority grand coalition of the two Volksparteien held office but, until the electoral arithmetic following the 2005 federal election forced a reprise, the Grand Coalition option was certainly not the preferred option of any of the mainstream political parties. The ‘triangular’ party system (Pappi, 1984) of the period allowed for competition and co-operation along one of three issue dimensions. First, as had been the case in the period up until 1966 and again from 1982-98, the CDU/CSU and FDP could cooperate along the dimension of ‘bourgeois issues’ such as economic growth and prosperity. Second, as during the period 1969-82, the SPD and FDP could co-operate along the ‘socialliberal’ dimension. Finally, as during the Grand Coalition of 1966-69, the SPD and CDU/CSU were able to co-operate along the corporatist dimension. But, putting this latter sub-optimal solution to one side, the default coalition arrangement was one of the two Volksparteien in coalition with the FDP, the raison d’etre of which, in the absence of significant and socially grounded electoral support, was to act as the ‘kingmaker’ or pivot party within the system. In Rikerian terms, this arrangement was nearly always the ‘minimal winning coalition’ or MWC (Riker, 1962) and the FDP was decisive within it. And, inevitably this decisive position empowered the FDP to punch above its weight in the coalitions in which it held office:, not only laying claim to the foreign ministry but also on occasions other ‘blue-chip’ portfolios such as the Economics and Interior ministries. The FDP’s leverage was based on the credible threat or even, as was the case in 1982 when the FDP brought down the ruling Social-Liberal coalition, the reality of defection from the coalition and the formation of another MWC with the other Volkspartei. For the reality was, despite the pretensions of the Volksparteien to 14


formulate the political will of the people, the exercise of that will was in the hands of a party elected by little more than six per cent of the population. Figure Four about here

Although it was not immediately apparent at the time, the entry of the Greens into the Bundestag in 1983, followed by the PDS in 1990, was to end the FDP’s kingmaker role. Figure Five sets out the number of MWCs and also coalitions with swing following German Federal elections over the period 1949-2005. The concept of a coalition with ‘swing’ is derived from Power Index analysis and describes the number of coalitions in which that a party is able to transform a winning into a losing coalition by its defection from a coalition (or vice-versa)2. The figure reconfirms the extent to which the German party system was consolidated over the post-war period. Thus, following the first Federal election in 1949, there were 26 MWCs and 197 coalitions with swing yet, by 1961, this had reduced to three MCWs and three coalitions with swing: the classic triangular party system of the Pappi model. As Figure Four demonstrates, the triangular system remained in place until the arrival of the Greens increased the number of MCWs to four and the number of coalitions with swing to seven. German unification, and the emergence of the PDS, further fragmented the German party system, with 4 MCWs and 14 coalitions with swing following the first allGerman election in 1990 (this pattern was repeated in the 1994 and 1998 elections). The 2002 election produced a distribution of party weights that interestingly reduced the number of MCWs to three and the number of coalitions with swing to 12. Finally, the 2005 election – in which the two Volksparteien fared particularly badly – once again increased the number of MCWs to 7, although the number of coalitions with swing remained at 12. Thus, 2

For a Power Index analysis of the 2005 German Federal election, see Lees and Taylor, 2006. 15


although the number of potential MCW outcomes is nowhere near as large as it was in 1949, there are now more than twice as many as there were during the period of the triangular party system of the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, although the number of coalitions with swing has reduced over the last two Federal elections, 12 coalitions with swing is a long way from the three outcomes available in the years of the triangular party system. And, crucially, the FDP no longer controls all of the possible MCWs. Table Two about here

The FDP’s former kingmaker function has been further eroded by its loss of the median legislator within the Bundestag. As already noted, the Bundestag has undergone a skew to the left since 1983 and this, combined with the FDP’s own re-positioning within the bourgeois bloc of the emerging two-bloc system, following the FDP’s defection from the Social-Liberal coalition in 1982. The impact of these changes is demonstrated in Table Two, which shows that the SPD has ‘owned’ the median legislator following the 1998, 2002, and 2005 elections. This made the SPD the so-called ‘Mparty’, without which no ideologically connected majority coalition can form and which should make it decisive in any coalition game. Moreover, because of the SPD’s size relative to its coalition partners, in 1998 and 2002, the party also owned the median legislator within the coalition. This made it MpartyK and, given that policy positions should theoretically fall within the interstices of the preference curves of the median legislator and median legislator, it is assumed that the SPD will be decisive in intra-coalition negotiations (de Swaan, 1973). Because of its size and the ideological range of the coalitions in which it took part, the FDP never succeeded in being both Mparty and MpartyK. Moreover, as Table Two shows, the SPD lost its MpartyK status following the 2005 elections. And of course, recent past performances are no guarantor of 16


future prospects. At the time of writing (Summer 2009), the FDP is performing exceptionally well in the polls and the SPD is doing very badly. But at the very least, Table Two demonstrates that the FDPs structural monopoly as Mparty has been broken.

Germany now has a genuinely multi-party system in which three smaller parties are able to find niche positions on the dominant left-right continuum. The consensual triangular dynamic is now a thing of the past, replaced by a relatively polarised ‘two-bloc’ system, with a dominant left right ideological dimension cross-cut by a libertarian-authoritarian dimension (Lees, 2008). This is set out in Figure Five below. Figure Five about here

Figure Five also identifies three issue dimensions along which political parties can cooperate. One of these, the corporatist issue dimension, remains from the old Pappi model and provided the context for the formation of the Grand Coalition after the federal election of 2005. Interestingly, this corporatist dimension also potentially encompasses the SPD and Left Party. Second, there is the possibility of co-operation between the CDU and FDP or, less orthodox, the CDU, FDP, and Greens, along the bourgeois issue dimension. Third, the ‘new politics’ dimension allows for co-operation between the SPD and Greens, or the SPD, Greens, and Left Party. It should be noted that the old ‘social liberal’ issue dimension, that provided the context for co-operation between the SPD and FDP, was neutralized by the absorption of the FDP into the bourgeois bloc. There was a renewal of interest in the SocialLiberal option during the brief tenure of Kurt Beck as Chairman of the SPD from 2006 to 2008 but the focus has since shifted to the more likely possibility of a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition. Nevertheless, the possibility of a Social-Liberal coalition being formed in the 17


future, or even the more implausible coalition between the SPD, FDP, and Greens cannot be ruled out unequivocally. There are many mathematically possible coalition options but, at present, there are nine politically feasible coalition options that cannot be ruled out: the Grand Coalition (CDU/CSU-SPD); Black-Yellow (CDU/CSU-FDP); Black-Green (CDU/CSUGreens); ‘Jamaica’ (CDU/CSU-FDP-Greens); Red-Green (SPD-Greens); Social-Liberal (SPDFDP); Red-Red (SPD-Left Party); Red-Red-Green (SPD-Left Party-Greens); and ‘Traffic Light’ (SPD-Greens-FDP).

5. The strategic environment in 2009

As already noted the CDU/CSU and SPD formed a surplus majority Grand Coalition, following the 2005 federal election. Since then the two ruling Volksparteien have enjoyed mixed fortunes, with opinion polls indicating a slow haemorrhage of support away from the SPD whilst support for the CDU/CSU has remained relatively buoyant. This is demonstrated in Figure Six, which sets out opinion poll ratings for the political parties and/or parliamentary factions over the period September 2005 to July 2009. The two parties entered government with similar levels of support and throughout the Autumn of 2005 this remained the case, with the CDU/CSU enjoying ratings of 37 per cent and the SPD polling a quite respectable 35 per cent. However, by the start of 2006 opinion poll ratings for the two began to diverge and, by April 2006, the CDU/CSU was polling 42 per cent, whilst the SPD had dropped to 31 per cent. Since then support for the two Volksparteien as expressed in opinion polls has fluctuated but, in the months preceding the 2009 federal election the SPD’s performance deteriorated further with the party polling just 25 per cent in June and July 2009, compared 18


to 37 and 36 per cent for the CDU/CSU. Over the entire period since the 2005 federal election, the CDU/CSU’s mean support has been 38.4 per cent, compared with 29.4 per cent for the SPD. Figure Six about here

A detailed analysis of why the SPD’s support has dropped so dramatically is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is worth noting that such a drop was not expected in 2005 and indeed analyses as the time noted the SPD’s relatively strong strategic position and its disproportionate weight in the new coalition cabinet (see Lees, 2008, for instance). With hindsight, it is clear that the end of the Schröder era had profound consequences for the centre-left in Germany. These consequences were threefold. First, the SPD found it exceptionally hard to move on, leading to an internal leadership vacuum and three changes of leader since 2005. Second, it encouraged the emergence and consolidation of a more potent competitor on the SPD’s left flank, in the shape of the Left Party, that works explicitly to mobilise those individuals within the electorate who might have previously considered themselves natural SPD voters but felt disenfranchised by Schröder’s Hartz IV supply-side reforms. Thus, over the period from 2005, the Left Party has enjoyed a mean poll rating of just over nine per cent. Third, it cast a long shadow over the Greens. Despite four years in opposition, the Greens continue to grapple with the consequences of decisions taken by the Schröder government that polluted the Greens’ brand as a pacifist, emancipatory, party and alienated much of their core support. As a result, the Greens were the least well supported party in opinion polls since 2005, with a mean support of just under nine per cent, although in the months preceding the 2009 federal election, this support rose somewhat to around 11 per cent. 19


Figure Seven about here

All three factors noted above had an impact upon the dynamics of party competition but the key development must undoubtedly be the remarkable rise in support for the FDP in the run-up to the 2009 federal election. The party enjoyed a mean poll rating of just under ten per cent over the period since 2005, making it the most popular of the small parties, but of particular note was its poll performance throughout 2009, in which it consistently polled between 13 and 15 per cent. Figure Seven sets out the opinion poll ratings for German political parties ordered by potential coalition outcomes over the period September 2005 to July 20093. As already noted, there are nine politically feasible coalition options: the Grand Coalition; Black-Yellow; Black-Green; Jamaica; Red-Green; Social-Liberal; Red-Red; Red-RedGreen; and Traffic Light. At the start of the period, the ruling Grand Coalition was overwhelmingly the most ‘popular’ combination, with support for the two Volksparteien close to that enjoyed at the 2005 federal election and, over the entire period, the two parties enjoy a mean combined support of 67.8 per cent. However, what is clear from the Figure is that other coalition options are potentially possible, given the right distribution of party weights when the polls close on the evening of 27 September 2009. Over the period since 2005, the next most popular coalition option was Jamaica, with a mean of 57 per cent, followed by Black-Yellow (a mean of 48.2 per cent), then Traffic-Light (48.1per cent), BlackGreen and Red-Red-Green (47.3 per cent), Social-Liberal (39.1 per cent), Red-Red (38.5 per cent), finally, Red-Green (38.2 per cent). In the months preceding the 2009 federal election, the Grand Coalition option remained the most popular, at around 61 per cent, closely 3

It should be noted that Figure Seven is not a time series of polled responses to possible coalition options but rather an aggregation of support for parties, ordered by possible coalition options. It may therefore differ from actual responses of popular support for potential coalition options. However, given that the public are not polled on the outcome of real world coalition negotiations, this distinction is not crucial to the analysis. 20


followed by Jamaica at around 60 per cent, and Black-Yellow and Traffic Light at around 49 per cent. Of the other coalition options, only Red-Red-Green is feasible at around 45 per cent.

The unusual strength of the FDP, combined with SPD’s weakness, in the months before the 2009 federal election has had an impact on the coalition options considered to be most likely following the election. However, even given these unusual levels of support for the FDP, what is clear is that the FDP is in no way decisive in any potential coalition game. It is true that Black-Green is the CDU/CSU’s preferred coalition option but, even if the electoral arithmetic allows this option, the CDU/CSU will have at least two other options available to it. One, the Jamaica option, also involves the FDP whilst the other, the Grand Coalition, does not. This gives it considerable leverage in any post-election bargaining game with the FDP. For its part, the FDP has two potential coalition options with the CDU/CSU (Black-Green and Jamaica) and one with the SPD (Traffic Light), an option that it has to all intents and purposes ruled out before a vote is cast. However, even if we do not rule out Traffic Light, both it and Jamaica involve the FDP and the Greens as junior parties to one or another of the two Volksparteien, thus reducing the credible threat from either small party of defection to a rival coalition. For its part, the SPD’s two options are limited to the Grand Coalition and Traffic Light options. Of these, the Grand Coalition option is more likely. Moreover, on the basis of recent polling in which Jamaica (at 60 per cent) is only one percentage point behind the Grand Coalition (on 61 per cent) there is the real possibility that, in the event that BlackYellow is not an option, the Grand Coalition is not the surplus majority coalition but is in fact that the MWC with the optima distribution of payoffs. The results of the 27 September 2009 election will be revealed in due course but is possible to predict with some confidence that 21


the FDP will not be the decisive player in any coalition game and that one of the Volksparteien, most likely the CDU/CSU, will be. There will be no return to the Pappi model.

6. Conclusion

This paper has described how, over three decades, the German party system has undergone four types of change. First, there has been an overall decline in the overall vote and seat share for the two ‘Volksparteien’ (CDU/CSU, SPD). Second, there has been an increased level of fragmentation in the party system. Third, the emergence of the Greens and then the PDS led to a skew to the left in the party system that has shifted the position of the median legislator. As a result, the FDP is no longer decisive and the SPD has been Mparty since 1998. Fourth, we have seen the emergence of a new territorial cleavage associated with German Unification, although this seems to be less salient than it was in the years immediately after unification.

All of these changes – even the last one - have to some extent had an impact on party competition and in particular the role, status and relative power of the two Volksparteien.

However, this paper demonstrates that these changes have had a paradoxical impact. On the one hand, it is clear that the normative/constitutional function of the Volksparteien, based upon their integrative function, had been weakened and that this, in turn, had adverse consequences for the ‘Parteienstaat’ principle that is central to the Federal Republic’s political settlement. This is clearly not a desirable outcome in a polity that for 22


reasons of history and geopolitics sets great store on system legitimacy. For this reason, it is clear that the analysis and addressing of the underlying causes of the decline in the Volkspartei vote is an urgent topic for further research. On the other hand, if we put the constitutional roles of the Volksparteien to one side and simply regard them as the kind of ‘normal’ office-seeking parties to be found in all advanced democracies, then in many ways their strategic positions have been enhanced by the changes described in this paper. Thus, as described, the presence within the legislature of the FDP, Greens, and Left Party rather than just the FDP means that no single small party can be kingmaker across all feasible coalition options and that they are less vulnerable to small party threats of a decisive defection to a an alternative coalition. Nevertheless, the coalition options discussed in this paper are just theoretical until all of Germany’s political parties are judged by the people on the 27 September 2009.

23


References

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24


Lees, C (2001): 'Coalitions - beyond the Politics of Centrality?' in special issue of German Politics (S. Padgett and T. Poguntke (eds.) 'Continuity and Change in German Politics: Beyond the Politics of Centrality. A Festschrift for Gordon Smith'), Vol. 10, No.2 : 117-134. Lees, C, and Larkin, P. (2010 forthcoming) Australian Party Politics in Comparative Perspective. Manchester University Press. Lees, C. (2008) ‘The German Party System(s) in 2005 – a return to Volkspartei dominance’, in Clemens, C. and Saalfeld, T. (eds.) The German Election of 2005: Voters, Parties and Grand Coalition Politics. Routledge, 2008. Lees, C. and Taylor, A. (2006) ‘Explaining the 2005 Coalition formation process in Germany – a comparison of Power Index and Median Legislator coalition models’ in Politics Vol. 26, No.3: 151-160. Lees. C. (2005) Party Politics in Germany - a Comparative Politics Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005. Lees, C., (2000) The Red-Green Coalition in Germany: Politics, Personalities, and Power. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lees. C. (2000) The Red-Green Coalition in Germany: Politics, Personalities and Power. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lipset, S. and Rokkan, S. (1967). ‘Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments: an introduction’, in Lipset, S. and Rokkan, S. (eds.) Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free Press. Padgett, S. (ed.), (1993) Parties and Party Systems in the New Germany. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Pappi, F., (1984) ‘The West German Party System’, West European Politics 7: 7-26. Riker, W., (1962) The Theory Of Political Coalitions. New Haven: Yale University Press. 25


Scheuch, E. and Scheuch, U. (1992) Cliquen, Klüngel und Karrieren, Reinbek. Smith, G.(1979) 'Western European party systems: on the trail of a typology' West European Politics 2, 1. Smith, G., (1986) Democracy in Western Germany: Parties and Politics in the Federal Republic. Aldershot: Gower. Theil, H. (1967) Economics and Information Theory. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company. Ware, A. (1987) Citizens, Parties, and the State. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wiesendahl, E. (1990) 'Der Marsch aus den Institutionen', Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B21. Wolinetz, S., (2002) ‘Beyond the Catch-all party: approaches to the study of parties and party organisation’, in Gunther, R. , Montero, J., and Linz, J., (eds.), Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

26


Figure One. Percentage share of total vote (Zweitstimme) for the Volksparteien in German Federal elections, 1949-2005

Source: http://www.wahlrecht.de

27


Figure Two. Herfindal-Hirschman Index of Federal German Party System Cohesion/Fragmentation, 1949-2005


28


Figure Three. Changing Left-Right dynamics in the Federal German party system. 1949-2005 49

L

53

57

61

65

69

72

76

80

83

87

90

94

98

02

05

KPD PDS Green SPD FDP CDU/CSU DP BHE DZ DRP WAV BP

R

SSW Juncture 2

Juncture 1

Source: adapted from Lees, 2005: 131

29


Saarland Saxony SaxonyAnhalt Schleswig-Holstein

Other*

Thuringia

NPD

Mecklenburg-West Pomerania North RhineWestphalia Rhineland Palatinate

Reps

Lower Saxony

DVU

Hesse

PRO

Bremen/ Bremerhaven Hamburg

FDP

Brandenburg

CDU/CSU

Berlin

SPD

BadenWűrttemberg Bavaria

Green

Left Party

Table One. Party systems in the German Länder Parliaments as of 1 September 2009 L R Normal Term/ Next Election

5 years/ Spring 2011 5 years/ Autumn 2013 5 years/ Autumn 2011 5 years/ Autumn 2009 4 years/ Spring 2011 4 years/ Autumn 2009 5 years/ Spring 2013 5 years/ Spring 2013 4 years/ Autumn 2010 5 years/ Spring 2010 5 years/ Spring 2011 5 years/ Autumn 2009 5 years/ Autumn 2009 5 years/ Autumn. 2009 5 years/ Autumn 2011 5 years/ Spring 2010

Source: Deutscher Bundestag (htttp://www.bundestag.de/info/wahlen/152.html); Land websites. Notes: Table refers to party Fraktionen only. * ‘Other’ refers to local/particularist parties. At present there is one such party in a Land legislature: the South Sűdschleswigsche Wählerverband.

30


Figure Four. Number of minimal winning coalitions and coalitions with swing following German Federal elections, 1949-2005


31


Table Two. Mparties, MpartiesK, and Coalition Outcomes following German Federal elections, 1983-2005 Date of Bundestag Election 06/03/83

25/01/87

02/12/90

16/10/94

27/09/98

22/09/02

18/09/05

Seats in Bundestag CDU/CSU

244

223

319

294

245

248

226

FDP

34

46

79

47

44

47

61

SPD

193

186

239

252

298

251

222

Greens

27

42

8

49

47

55

51

PDS

---

---

17

30

35

02

54

Total Seats

498

497

662

672

669

603

614

Minimum Winner

250

249

332

337

335

302

308

Mparty

FDP

FDP

FDP

FDP

SPD

SPD

SPD

MpartyK?

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

No

Coalition

CDU/CSU-FDP

CDU/CSU-FDP

CDU/CSU-FDP

CDU/CSU-FDP

SPD-Greens

SPD-Greens

CDU/CSU-SPD

Degree of Change

None

None

None

None

Total

None

Partial

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2005

32


Figure Five. The Strategic Environment in the Federal German Party System

Greens FDP L

R Left

SPD

CDU

Party

Bourgeois Issues

New Politics Issues

Libertarian

Authoritarian

Corporatist Issues Key Ideological Dimension Issue Dimension Notes: Party positions are approximate and derived from judgemental data rather than content analysis of manifestos.

33


Figure Six. Opinion poll ratings for Federal German political parties/parliamentary factions, Sept. 2005-July 2009

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009

34


Figure Seven. National opinion poll ratings for German political parties by potential coalition outcomes, Sept. 2005-July 2009

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009

35