For the foreseeable future, the SPD must be prepared to be the junior partner in a Grand Coalition led by Angela Merkel – By Franz Walter
Austrian-style party configurations cannot be ruled out in German politics. From 1987 to 2000, and again since 2007, a federal Grand Coalition of the Social Democratic SPÖ and the Christian-Democratic, center-right ÖVP has governed in Vienna. Germans, too, should prepare themselves for another grand coalition after the next parliamentary elections in the fall of 2013, one that might last for some time. Unlike in Austria, though, German Social Democrats may have to content themselves with the role of junior partner.
Since the early 1980s, the party system in both countries has become more fragmented. But the splintering in Germany happened left of the center. More than 30 years ago, the first of these parties to arise were the Greens. Then, as a consequence of German unification, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) emerged as the successor to East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED). Following a merger with western German leftwing groupings, it has since morphed into the Left Party (Die Linke). And for months now, German political society has been dumbfounded by the meteoric rise of the Pirate Party.
The Greens, once clearly labeled as left-wing, and the Pirates resonate particularly among the academically-trained middle class. As a result, the current coalition partners, the center-right conservative CDU/CSU and the economically liberal FDP can no longer count on future parliamentary majorities. The conservatives have long been unable to poll above 40 percent, while the FDP, at least in opinion polls, has fallen far below the five percent threshold needed for parliamentary representation.
So the classic majority coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP that characterized the chancellorships of Konrad Adenauer in the 1950s and of Helmut Kohl in the 1980s and 1990s looks increasingly like yesterday’s political model. The old center-right dispensation has been decimated, supplanted by new middle class values and changes in attitudes from which the Greens and the Pirate party draw their strength.
The Social Democrats’ image as a party of functionaries and trade unionists has been hard to shake off, and they not have been able to make comparable inroads into the new middle class electorate. Their joy over the dwindling conservative base has been dulled by the splintering of the parties on the left, which has narrowed their own room for political maneuver by depriving them of flexible coalition constellations that are also predictable for stability-conscious Germans.
At least at the national level, the Social Democrats have no interest in forming a ruling coalition with the Left Party, one of whose most influential figures, Oskar Lafontaine, was head of the SPD in the 1990s. For the moment, the SPD also has no interest in cooperating with the Pirates, a new party with far too little experience whose political principles are still too unreliable.
As is often the case among new political players, the Pirates are too disorganized, many of their members are politically naïve, their political views are sometimes chaotic and confused, and their political program is still extremely vague. In addition, the party has attracted a number of – to put it mildly – unconventional figures who may disappear from the political map as rapidly as they have appeared. The political immaturity of the Pirates and the party’s lack of contours, apart from some issues related to digital politics, is a noteworthy rarity in the history of German parties.
One cannot rule out a slight rise in support for the economic liberalism hitherto represented by the FDP, and disillusionment or frustration over the Pirates may increase. But the party and parliamentary structure sketched out here is likely to stabilize, making it more likely that a grand coalition will emerge from the parliamentary elections in 2013.
Despite favorable conditions for opposition politics, the Social Democrats seem unable to garner support from even 30 percent of the voters. In those regions where they were able to win back power after their disastrous electoral showing in 2009 – including the large and important states of Baden-Württemberg or North Rhine-Westphalia – the structure of the electorate portends a grim future for the party. The losses among young voters continue to increase, with the sharpest drop seen among those currently employed, and the party’s only gains were among retirees.
Even so, the Social Democrats do not give the impression of being overly concerned that they have fallen back, in voters’ eyes, to their situation in the 1950s, and are once more chronically limping behind Angela Merkel’s CDU. Most Social Democrats have evidently made their peace with their political role as a second-rank party of the center. There is no sign, either in the leadership or in the up-and-coming cadres, of determined and ambitious figures like Kurt Schumacher, Herbert Wehner, Willy Brandt, Helmut schmidt or even Oskar Lafontaine and Gerhard Schröder, who in earlier decades drove the party forward into tough conflicts with the CDU/CSU.
In the months to come, the SPD’s most important figures will certainly not be making any direct overtures that might lead to ministerial posts in a grand coalition with Mrs. Merkel. But some of them nevertheless seem to be quietly enjoying the prospect, come fall 2013, of heading the Foreign or the Finance or the Social Affairs Ministry.
As a result of internal changes over the last decade, the SPD has taken leave of its earlier model, when it was a mass party that encompassed a wide spectrum of social classes. Most of its members and functionaries have long since arrived in the middle classes, and few still harbor ambitions to represent the lower classes who still live in more precarious conditions. The party has become alienated from them over the last 20 years. There are few commonalties anymore between those who have been left behind by society and the new Social Democrats. They no longer encounter one another in daily life.
As a party in and of the middle, the SPD does not have great prospects – the new parties are bustling about precisely on this same political terrain – of reaching the levels of support a Willy Brandt or a Helmut Schmidt could once command. Yet parties in the middle occupy a swing position when majorities are being fashioned and power is being consolidated. The Social Democrats, in short, will be needed for governing. This might be in a coalition together with the Greens and the FDP, though little speaks for it. It is decidedly more likely that it will be in a cabinet along with the CDU/CSU – albeit under the stewardship of Angela Merkel.
– Professor Franz Walter heads the Institute for Democracy Research at the University of Göttingen and is a leading expert on the German party political system.