The StuSie

The New Democracy in Europe?: Who Needs a Majority Anyway?

We Americans have lived under the fantastically stable umbrella of a two party system for well over a century, only occasionally being inconvenienced by such characters as the wrinkly Ralph Nader and Ross Perot, for whom no description is necessary. In any case, these rebellious third party candidates have always failed to make more than a ripple in the sea of American bipartisanship, and we have always been 'blessed' with administrations with an absolute majority mandate.
That said, we Americans have looked on curiously (and sometimes with fear) as long-standing communist, radically conservative, and tree-hugger parties have persisted in many European countries. Many of these parties have also managed to gain multiple parliament seats, and some have even managed to obtain places of relative power in certain regions. It is in fact rare in countries like Europe that a party achieves an absolute majority and is able to govern without the help of another party (the most recent government in Germany is the red-green coalition) In the recent national elections in Germany, we see that the two main parties are back in power, but that this power has been given to them by the voters strategically with a caveat the size of the Schwarzwald. But first, a digression:
Success of non-mainstream parties was best exemplified in Weimar Germany, where public unrest and discomfort (in the form of people hauling wheelbarrowfuls of Reichsmarks to the grocery store for a loaf of bread) led the people to support extreme parties in increasing numbers. We all know the result of the ensuing power struggle: something something Reich, something something Arbeiter Partei. But what is in many ways much more interesting than studying Nazi Germany is studying the current situation in Germany, where people are experiencing increasing levels of discomfort again (though there are not yet any wheelbarrows in the streets, about 13% of Germans are now facing unemployment, and the deficit continues to balloon, among other things).
In the last three years, the German Socialist Party (SPD), led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, has watched their political stock take a severe nose dive, losing dozens of regional and provincial governments and seeing approval ratings of the previously popular Schroeder plummet. Now, a political party losing favor among the population in the face of economic and social hardship is nothing too groundbreaking, but the results of the election three weeks ago are. The SPD and coalition partners the Greens were practically clearing their desks out at the Bundestag and in the Kanzleramt months before the election, preparing it for the power transfer to the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Liberals led by Angela Merkel.
What ensued was an electoral curveball, and the CDU/CSU was the blundering batter that watched the ball slap into the catcher’s glove. The results showed the SPD and CDU neck and neck, while the Greens and FDP hung back with increasingly small percentages of the vote. Neither the CDU nor the SPD could muster an absolute majority, even with the help of their accepted partners, the FDP and the Greens, respectively. There are many reasons for the Ruckschlag of the Socialists after such a disastrous few years previous: Angela Merkel, for example, is about as charismatic as Ralph Nader on a near-fatal cocktail of barbiturates, and Schroeder’s ability to talk circles around debate opponents has been acknowledged by virtually all Germans.
In any case, these are only proximal causes of the SPD’s at least temporary return to favour. At work here is a much more widespread phenomenon emerging in European democracies: that of strategic voting. Now, most people would aver that the result of the recent German elections, a grosse Koalition of the two large parties, is the same as a political deadlock (much like the situation in the U.S. when the President is from one party and the Congress is controlled by the other). The German government, however, is structured differently: instead of one party ‘controlling’ the legislative arm of the government and another controlling the executive, in the German system the two parties in a coalition must divide up the ministers, chancellorships and parliament seats amongst themselves. In this election, for example, the CDU succeeded in negotiating Ms. Merkel’s way into Schroeder’s position. In return, however, the SPD receives 8 of the 14 minister positions.
So what’s the point, you ask? Well, if we look closely, we see that what would be a deadlock in the American system is actually mutual responsibility in the German system. Because both parties lay claim to policy-making positions in the government (the SPD controls foreign policy while the CDU has the secretary of state), they are both equally responsible for the progress made, or lack thereof, that results from the coalition. The voters, in more or less forcing the two giants in Germany to work together, have laden the parties with the huge responsibility of reversing negative trends, lest they both fall into the same trap as the democratic parties in Weimar Germany. We can only speculate what will happen if the situation worsens and people start busting out their wheelbarrows and wreaking havoc in the streets of Berlin, but we know for sure who will be responsible if they do.

posted by der Mistfink @ 06:07