Chancellor Angela Merkel

When the German voters had their say in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, 27^th September, they re-elected their chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel, but they explicitly rejected their government. In 2005 no majority could be obtained by either the left or the right bloc and consequently a grand coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) had to be established. In this year national poll most of the voters casted their ballot for Merkel’s conservative CDU and the German Liberal Party, which together will be able to constitute a government for the upcoming four years. Despite this unambiguous outcome, the elections require further reflection on its effect on party constellations and on a Social Democrat Party being in a sorry state.

For further reading: Angela Merkel claims victory in German election (The Telegraph), Angela Merkel claims German election victory (The Guardian).

While both of the “catch-all” parties have - again - lost immense numbers of votes, especially when it comes to absolute figures, the SPD has to accept that this is a historic defeat. The party who adopted Foreign Minister Steinmeier as their candidate for chancellor lost a tremendous 11% compared to the last elections in 2005. Their remaining 23% of the votes signify their worst general election result since the Federal Republic of Germany came into existence.

Most of their voters were obviously lost to a rather new far-left party, called Die Linke. The SPD has been accused for drifting towards the political centre, more and more disregarding its voters in the working class. Several years ago, an SPD headed government implemented a broad reform of the social welfare system, cutting some of the social benefits to allow major investments to cause an economic recovery. Moreover, a lot of the successes achieved during the last four years by the grand coalition of SPD and CDU have been credited to chancellor Merkel’s party.

Thus, the far-left party, which was founded prior to the 2005 elections, was able to attract a number of votes from frustrated SPD partisans. They did so by putting an emphasis on social security and balance, being capitalist-critical and aligning clearly to a labour electorate as well as socially marginalised people.

Frank Walter Steinmeier

While the predecessor of Die Linke has been active and successful in the eastern parts of Germany only, the new established party gains votes in the former West as well. Nevertheless, a huge majority of the ballots still comes from the people living in the five eastern ‘Länder’, where Die Linke easily rises above the SPD and CDU.

Similar trends can be observed in other European countries with traditional party cleavages of conservatives as one and socialists as another major camp. During the European elections in June 2009 the socialist parties in numerous EU member states lost a huge number of seats in the European Parliament - in France, the UK, Germany and Austria people even spoke about ‘disastrous’ results for the centre-left parties. Slovakia and Greece were the only considerable exceptions, while the popularity of the Greek Socialists was demonstrated once more at the general elections on 4^th October.

The same day the German elections were held, the Portuguese electorate was called to the ballot boxes to elect their government. The Socialist Party of Portugal which could rely on an absolute majority during the last years lost about a quarter of its votes. The far-left bloc played a crucial role in this case, too. This trend is quite astonishing and at the same time it evokes essential questions to the socialist parties of Europe. How should they (re-)define their political profile? Should they distance themselves from far-left parties or rather converge with them? In times of globalization, highly competitive economic structures and especially the worldwide financial crisis, parties stressing social politics ‘for the people’ but meanwhile being accused of Marxist ideas gain a lot of popularity.

With regard to the German case, the Social Democrats plan to shift to the left in terms of their programme and positions. So far, the German parties have not considered Die Linke as a potential coalition partner at federal level, mainly due to what is perceived as propagandistic requests and partially extreme political stances. This is likely to change, taking into account that no centre-left government can be expected in the future without the support of Die Linke.

Generally, the German party system seems to be changing, since all three small parties represented in the German ‘Bundestag’ achieved their best results ever. Each of them, that is to say the Liberals, Die Linke and the Green Party, got more than 10 % of the votes and will represent quite big factions in the upcoming term. As observed at the State or ‘Länder’ level already, the potential of coalitions will transcend the traditional left-right cleavage and two-party-alliances, assuming a further strengthening of the small parties and a continuous decline of the “catch-all” parties. For the sake of the people, hopefully this won’t involve coalitions formed after the least common denominator.

JESSICA MARKUS