During my recent visit to Madison, when speaking with
protesters around the Capitol, some inquired about coalitions between various political parties in the Old World and how they function. Even the motherland of the one-party majority rule, the UK, is now governed by a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals in Parliament, with the Labor Party in opposition.
The situation is even more colorful in Germany since we have a whole "spectrum" of parties. The Christian Democrats (CDU with the usual 30 to 40% of the votes in elections) are our conservatives. However, people have recently become uneasy about the adjective Christian as some great leaders are divorced, and one has fathered an illegitimate child.
The other
Volkspartei, our GOP*, is the Social Democrats (SPD with 25 to 35% of the votes). They traditionally are the party of the working class. Recently, however, they renewed their pact with the industry that had worked so well under the Schröder administration. The SPD eventually understood that elections are won only when the party appeals to the middle class and follows the rule:
thou shalt not kill the cow (industry)
that gives the milk (jobs). Such an attitude, however, never pleased the traditional left-wingers.
*Not ideologically but just what it literally means: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands is our Great Old Party, founded in the 19th century and still exists. Due to Germany's industrialization in the 2nd Reich, the number of SPD voters increased steadily. Bismarck attempted to take the wind out of their sails by introducing old-age and health insurance for the working class. When, contrary to his plans, the rollback did not work, Bismarck had the Reichstag (parliament) pass the Socialist Act, which outlawed the Social Democrats. Later, the SPD was admitted again because Emperor Wilhelm II needed the Socialists' votes to pass the war budget in 1914. Following the lost war, the Social Democrats were the party whole-heartily supporting the Weimar Republic. It was the only political formation that voted in parliament against Hitler's Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) that eventually assured absolute power to the Nazi regime. Additionally, today, the Social Democrats are one of the pillars of German democracy.
When the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was integrated into the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, nostalgic Marxists in the East founded the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The PDS, suffering great labor pains, eventually amalgamated with the extreme left of the Social Democrats in the West to form the Left Party (Die Linke), which garnered 5% of the votes in the West and 20% of the votes in the Eastern parts of Germany.
Returning to the party spectrum, the Christian Democrats are traditionally associated with the color black, as they originated from the Zentrum, the Catholic Party in the Weimar Republic. You guessed it: the Social Democrats wear red. Since there is no redder than red, the post-communist PDS is presented by magenta in pie charts.
Green for the Green Party (10 to 20% of the votes) is obvious, and the Liberals (5 to 10%) are painted yellow. New parties have to take what is left over in the spectrum. The recently formed Pirate Party, which demanded free internet access for everyone in its program, chose orange.
Now, let us form coalitions. The hard part is to find a compromised common governmental platform allowing the survival of a whole legislature with a usual small majority in a coalition government against solid opposition. The easy part is the colors. In the past, traffic light (Ampel) coalitions of Red, Yellow, and Green were quite popular.
When in some of our State governments (Länder), the Social Democrats are replaced by the Christian Democrats, a Jamaica coalition may form, which is my favorite only in terms of the combination of colors: Green, Yellow, and Black.
More common than three-party coalitions, two parties form a government, as seen in the Black-Yellow coalition, which is our present Federal Government in Berlin. The other proven working combination is Red-Green. There have been successful cases of Red-Black coalitions, too. These are called grand coalitions because of their large and comfortable parliamentary majorities for the two parties concerned. In such a combination, the Social Democrat Party generally is the junior partner and usually suffers a setback in the next election. On the other hand, an experiment of a Black-Green coalition in the State of Hamburg ended in an electoral disaster for the Christian Democrats.
If you have been wondering about some recent erratic reactions and decisions by our Federal government*, you should know that there are upcoming elections in three of our Federal States. Since their outcome is vital for the majority in our Senate (Bundesrat), the government avoids any unpopular decisions that could deter voters from choosing Black-Yellow.
*The hectic dealings with the minister of defense, Guttenberg's copy-and-paste thesis, the sudden about-face in support of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, and the negative vote in the UN Security Council about the Libyan no-fly zone
Today is Election Day in the State of Thuringia. Will there be a new edition of a
grand coalition, or will we see the formation of a Red-Magenta government?
Next weekend, Germany is looking forward to a Super Sunday. I shall vote in the election for the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg. At the same time, people elect their State parliament in the Land of Hessen. For the latter, it is practically sure that Hessen will be governed by a Red-Green coalition.
However, for my Ländle, the election result is a thriller: will the incumbent Black-Yellow government survive, or will a Green-Red coalition take over? You read correctly: Green-Red means that a green Ministerpräsident (Governor) would form a coalition State government for the first time in German history. Stay tuned for a possible political earthquake in Germany's South-West.
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