German crises before the crisis

With the announced end of Angela Merkel’s tenure as Chancellor, the 2021 German federal election was particularly charged. In stark contrast to the Social Democratic Party, which became more united as the election approached, the Christian Democrats were not able to consolidate the fissures unveiled by Merkel’s departure. The Greens, emboldened by the polls, for the first time joined the traditional major parties in nominating a chancellor candidate. The result was a campaign period that centred heavily on the three-way race between Olaf Scholz (SPD), Armin Laschet (CDU/CSU) and Annalena Baerbock (Greens). The electoral outcome reduced the large number of coalitions discussed against the backdrop of a fragmenting party system and eventually led to a novel partnership on the federal level, a so-called traffic light coalition between the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Liberals. The formation of this coalition was facilitated by the refusal of Social and Christian Democrats to even consider renewing their ‘grand’ coalition, a newfound self-confidence on behalf of Greens and Liberals as well as the symbolic benefit that this novel alliance brought together the election winners. In many ways, the electoral result and the coalition it engendered represent new beginnings in German politics but significant hurdles to the consolidation of these patterns remain.

La Terza Via

The year 2017 was a period of contradictionary development in terms of political stability in the Netherlands. On te one hand, the Mark Rutte II cabinet, the longest serving cabinet since the Second World War, was the first since 1998 to complete the entire term. On the other hand, the highly volatile 2017 national elections yielded the most fractionalized parliament in Dutch history. The ensuing cabinet formation was the longest on to date.

The article examines the concept of “Christian socialism” by N.A. Berdyaev (1874–1948). An overview of the terminological formulations of Berdyaev's socio-political views found in scientific research is given. The hypothesis is put forward that Berdyaev developed the concept of “Christian socialism” after the 1917 revolution to counter Marxist atheistic socialism. To analyze Berdyaev's concept of “Christian socialism”, the methodology of I. Lakatos' research programs is used. The possibility of explication of the concept of “Christian socialism” by Berdyaev in terms of the Lakatos methodology is substantiated due to partial metaphorical structuring, according to the theory of conceptual metaphor by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson used in the study. The article examines the formation of the “Christian socialism” movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The socio-political program of “Christian socialism” by S.N. Bulgakov, prepared during the revolution of 1905–1907, is presented. It is argued that Bulgakov's ideas of “Christian socialism” influenced Berdyaev. It is proved that Berdyaev, in the context of the political rise of Marxist atheistic socialism after the 1917 revolution, formulated the concept of “Christian socialism”, critically revising the Bulgakov's version of “Christian socialism”. It is argued that the metaphysical core (“hard core”) of Berdyaev's concept of “Christian socialism” was the personalistic doctrine, and its “protective belt” consisted of the ideas of corporatism, syndicalism, and social democracy. Berdyaev's concept of “Christian socialism” should be considered a “research program”, improved for the world order that emerged after 1917. It is noted that in the modern socio-political discourse of Russia, Berdyaev's ideas may have practical significance related to the promotion of social democracy as a political system that supports traditional Russian values.

The communist coup d'tat in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 critically shaped the Italian general elections of April that same year, with lasting consequences for Italy's democratic trajectory. As Italian political scientist and historian Giorgio Galli observed in 1958, "the events that took place in Prague at the end of February 1948 contributed decisively to shifting the character of the electoral debate in Italy from the alternative of reform versus conservatism to that of parliamentary democracy versus communist dictatorship". Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) interpreted the Prague coup as a harbinger of what might happen in Italy should the pro-Moscow, socialist-communist Popular Democratic Front (Fronte Democratico Popolare, FDP) prevail or even gain decisive leverage. The spectre of a "Czechoslovak scenario" in Italy was a catalyst for the ferocious campaigning of both the Catholic Church and the U.S. government's open interference in the election. This article offers a revisionist twist to the familiar narrative. It argues that the elections were not secured solely through the unscrupulous tactics of the Church and Washington; they were also lost by the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI), whose support for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistick strana eskoslovenska, KS) was absolute and uncritical. Until February 1948, the Popular Democratic Front had been campaigning on a reformist policy designed to appeal to the middle classes. The PCI's embrace of the Cominform line, however, discredited it with voters who might have been swayed by a more moderate stance. The result was that Christian Democracy scored a momentous triumph, obtaining over 48 percent of the vote and, under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi (1881-1954) - together with democratic socialists and republicans - consolidated Italy's place in the institutions of the "West" through a policy of centrismo. This outcome had been by no means certain a year before, or even at the beginning of 1948. In footballing terms, American and Vatican interference may have put an extra player on the field for Christian Democracy, but it was a communist own goal that sealed the match.

This chapter aims at presenting the characteristics of cabinets in Germany, in particular for the cabinets formed since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The chapter covers two decades of coalition dynamics and an era that has led to significant changes in German politics in general and the German party system in particular. The electoral support for the two catch-all parties – Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) decreased in that time period, while the increased number of parliamentary parties and the increasing vote share for the smaller parties resulted in a more complex bargaining environment. We also discuss changes in the policy profiles of the parliamentary parties and how potential coalitions are discussed during election campaigns. The chapter provides first a brief overview on the institutional setting in which parties in Germany act and which influences the government-formation process, as well as the daily business of coalition governance. In a second step, we outline recent dynamics in the structure of the German party system. The final section summarizes the findings, considers if an overall trend in terms of changes in coalition governance exists in Germany, and discusses the impact of the parliamentary presence of a left- and a right-wing ‘pariah’ party—The Left and the Alternative for Germany—for coalition politics in Germany in the future.

The monograph, covering the events of the first two decades of the XXI century, examines the most significant processes of the party political system of the European Union. The program documents of various political trends in Europe, common and country-specific in the party segment of the EU member states are analysed. Special attention is paid to election campaigns during the elections to the European Parliament, the specifics of the main «party families» of the European Union – Christian Democrats / Conservatives, Liberals, Social Democrats, «greens», ethno-regional parties, national isolationists are studied in detail. The author states the turbulence in the development of the party-political system of modern Europe, the unpredictability of the evolution of this key element of the integration process in the Old World.

This paper is focused on the evolution of the ideology of Smer - Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party and its positions on European integration before the political elections in Slovakia in February 2020. As the ‘social-democratization’ of Smer-SD was the result of party’s Europeanization, the article explores the dimensions of de-Europeanization in the politics of this party in 2017–2020. Since 2006, Smer-SD has occupied a dominant position among political parties in Slovakia. However, a substantive decline in the electoral support of the party took place after 2016. Smer-SD faced a significant political challenge during the political crisis after the assassination of the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in February 2018. The result was the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico. The appointment of party vice chairman Peter Pellegrini as Prime Minister created a new situation within the party, as for the first time the positions of Prime Minister and head of the party were separated. The political crisis in 2018 revealed the presence of internal conflicts within the party and the weakening of the authority of its chairman, Robert Fico. The establishment of two centres of power within the party resulted in competition between Fico and Pellegrini and, finally, in June 2020, a split, as Pellegrini announced the founding of a new political party.

In 1918, the creation of the new Austrian Republic was the joint work of the three political parties — Social Democrats, Christian Socials and German Nationalists. As the Socialist, Bauer, wrote: 'The Austrian State was fundamentally the product of a contrat social, an agreement to found a State, arrived at between the various classes of the Austrian people, as represented by the political parties. On the basis of a compact between the parties, the whole of the ... deputies constituted themselves a provisional national assembly and proclaimed the establishment of the Austrian State.'12 KeywordsPolitical PartyPolitical PartiDemocrat LeaderHeart TroubleConstitutional MonarchyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The question to what extent voters punish governments for cutting the welfare state is an unsettled issue in social policy research. Our contribution addresses this shortcoming by systematically analyzing how media reporting about legislative changes to the welfare state affects the public agenda and citizens’ vote intentions while controlling for the influence of actual cutbacks and expansions. In our analysis we examine the case of Germany from 1994 to 2014; a period where major cutbacks but also significant expansions to the German welfare state occurred. We find that mass media reporting about pension cutbacks is associated with a drop in government approval, whereas the reaction to expansive legislative changes is muted. We also find that the relationship of media reporting and government approval strongly depends on who is in government with the social democrats being punished harder than the Christian democrats.

INTRODUCTION . he Caribbean Basin has come of age. Defined generally to include Central America, the Caribbean islands, and those states on the periphery (Mexico and Venezuela particularly), the subregion is the current focus and concern of U.S. foreign policy in the hemisphere. To a degree never before experienced, the Caribbean Basin has been both "regionalized" and "internationalized." For the United States, these new realities pose both a challenge and an opportunity. In regional terms, Mexico and Venezuela have taken the initiative in seeking a political solution to the crisis in El Salvador. The Andean Pact's foreign ministers were instrumental in the negotiations leading to the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. A concessionary oil-pricing program by Venezuela and Mexico for the impoverished countries of Central America has opened a new era of intraregional development cooperation. Mexico's persistence in following an independent course in its relations with Cuba and other revolutionary forces in the Caribbean Basin demonstrates the complexity of political change in the area and the growing autonomy of the region's principal states. The United States suddenly confronts a range of international actors concerned about Washington's policy in the region and committed to participating in the ultimate resolution ofthe region's future. International interests cannot be ignored. The Socialist International, the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, labor unions, and the Roman Catholic Church have emerged as crucial transnational actors both in the Caribbean Basin and elsewhere in Latin America. They represent the ongoing penetration of the Americas by global institutions. It is a trend that will accelerate , not diminish, in the years ahead. The United States is ill-prepared to accept such a diversity of opinion or of participation. Historically, the Caribbean Basin has been relevant only when a security threat has arisen such as in Guatemala in 1954 or in the Dominican Republic in 1965. In such cases, unilateral 2 SAIS REVIEW action was deemed sufficient to restore the status quo ante. The Soviet presence in Cuba after 1959, however, led to a slow but inexorable erosion ofU.S. presence in the hemisphere. By the 1970s, in the face of a decline in the relative economic power of the United States globally, the U.S. economic presence in the Americas had to adapt to increasingly aggressive competitors from the OECD and the Socialist bloc. If U.S. political and economic influence declined in the region, it was a given that security concerns were paramount to the national interest and no quarter would be given to another unfriendly regime in the Caribbean Basin. The dramatic victory of the Sandinista offensive—an authentic revolution—and the U.S. acquiescence in that victory challenged a primary assumption ofU.S. strategic and political reasoning. The events in El Salvador have threatened to corrode another principle ofU.S. policy—the beliefthat a political "center" always exists or can be created. The efforts ofthe Carter administration and the present tendency of the Reagan administration attest to the longevity of that belief. A failure ofthe center, it is argued, would fortify the right rather than the left, and therefore it is best to either broaden the center (which is the European approach in part) or prepare to accommodate U.S. interests to the emergence ofa revolutionary regime, as we will need to do in Nicaragua. With Guatemala looming on the horizon as an even more complex policy issue, the jury remains out and the ultimate verdict unclear for Central America. The following essays on the Caribbean Basin present the many sides of the issues involved in political and social change in that troubled area. They offer a broad spectrum ofopinions and policy alternatives from the perspective ofpractical experience and history as well as from careful consideration offuture options. The ultimate outcome in the Caribbean Basin will determine, to some degree, our relations with the other countries in the hemisphere for some years to come. As well, it will provide important insights into the priorities and perceptions of the Reagan administration. No longer a local and marginal security question, U.S. policy in the Caribbean Basin may determine the broad outlines for American policy in the Third World generally...

In the Turkish national elections of 12 June 2011 the ruling Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party) registered an exceptional success in Turkish democracy. For the first time, an incumbent party had managed to increase its votes for three elections in a row and established its predominance. This article argues that the AKP, like the Christian Democrats in Italy, Liberal Democrats in Japan or Social Democrats in Sweden, has established a cycle of dominance that includes initial mobilization, expansion of core support through material benefits, delegitimization of the opposition and selective use of ideological rigidity and flexibility. It is through this cycle that the AKP consolidated its position as a right-wing party, unifying centre-right and Islamic constituencies and thereby accomplishing what the other right-wing parties in Turkey had failed to do in the past.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has held power in Sweden most years for a whole century. For many years, it held it in coalition with other left-wing parties, proposing the general course of democratic functional socialist ideology, regular measures to strengthen the welfare state, a benevolent immigration policy, and a peaceful foreign policy, by mediating between west and east, and also north and south. Social Democrat activities were often carried out clearly and with predictability, with great hopes of counteracting future economic, social, political and cultural challenges. When too many of these challenges appeared in public and foreign policy, the ‘social democratic arsenal’ vanished, and less preventive measures appeared to counteract the cataclysms. The radical Sweden Democrats Party rushed into the political arena, and became the third party after the 2018 Riksdag election, and the second party after the 2022 Riksdag election. The Sweden Democrats proposed not only widening and deepening the welfare state’s programmes, and strengthening punishments for crime, but also a strict anti-immigration policy, primarily a racist anti-immigration policy towards newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. Other right-wing parties viewed the programme and the activities of the Sweden Democrats with reservation, but they had to form a coalition with four right-wing parties in order to win the Riksdag elections. After a right-wing victory in the 2022 election, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderates, attained the right to form a government on behalf of a coalition between the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The political situation in Sweden before and after the 2018 and 2022 Riksdag elections is presented in the article, together with the political crisis between these two elections, as well as the results of the 2018 and 2022 elections. In the article, the author uses the descriptive analytical method, together with synthesis and some evaluations of the Riksdag elections.

Why did pro-welfare Social Democrats and Christian Democrats cease to support the welfare state in the 1980s and 1990s, and support measures such as tighter welfare programme conditionality rules and lower social security benefits instead? Building on the party position change literature, I argue and empirically demonstrate that parties with an activist-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the party voter position. Parties with a leadership-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the median voter position. Parties in which neither leaders nor activists dictate party policy shift in the opposite direction of the previous policy shift if they are excluded from office. Using a cross-sectional time-series regression analysis of 181 position shifts of European Socialist, Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties in the period 1977–2003, I find strong evidence that party organization is a crucial mediating variable in explaining when these parties shift to the right or left. Demonstrating that differences in party organizations motivate parties to respond to different incentives, this study has implications for the relationship between party behaviour and welfare state policy-making.

The Grand Coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) under Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel came into power in October 2005 as an indirect result of the indecisive 2005 Bundestag election. Neither the hitherto existing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens (the so-called Red-Green coalition) nor the opposition parties of Christian Democrats and Liberals (FDP) managed to win a majority of the Bundestag seats in that election. Because neither of the large parties was able to negotiate a coalition agreement with both of the two smaller parties, FDP and Greens, and because the SPD was not willing to cooperate with the Left Party, the Grand Coalition emerged as the only viable alternative at that time. In stark contrast with the first Federal Republic’s Grand Coalition (1966–1969)—where coalition partners agreed upon several reform projects such as legislation concerning the state of emergency, reform of the federal system, economic policy instruments’ modernization, and electoral reformt—his second coalition comprising CDU/CSU and SPD was not built on common policy ideas. On the contrary, during the electoral campaign both SPD and CDU/CSU had argued for very different policies in regard to health care, the labor market, and other key issues.KeywordsGrand CoalitionFamily PolicyVeto PlayerSocial Security ContributionCoalition PartnerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.