Germany: From Stable Coalition Camps to New Complexity

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.

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.

The article reviews recent writing on the political economy of Germany. Even before the global economic crisis of 2008–2010, scholars of German politics had identified deep fissures in the German model of capitalism and in the policies that sustained this system. Neither Social Democrats nor Christian Democrats seemed capable of initiating and executing the reforms that would tackle the fiscal dilemmas of the state. Though these recent accounts of German troubles agree in their diagnosis of severe strains and inadequate political response, they diverge in their analysis of the source of these problems. Are they endogenous to capitalist societies that try to reconcile free market economics with social welfare policies? Or were they Induced by the disruptive shocks of globalization and European integration? Whether the origins of the crises before the big crisis were exogenous or endogenous, there remains the further question of the national state's capacity to provide solutions. This article considers the German state's responses to the 2008–2010 financial and economic breakdown and concludes that there may be greater resilience and capabilities in national politics than those that the recent literature has identified.

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.

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.

La Terza Via

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.

In this chapter, we examine the challenges that the German party system and established parties faced in the early 2020s, tracing the path towards polarized pluralism. Through longitudinal data, we illustrate the major trends since the post-war period, with an emphasis on the system’s polarization, fragmentation, and electoral competition. We also address the challenges that parties face as organizations in a changing political environment. The German party system has undergone significant changes, putting parties under increased competitive pressure. These changes include heightened volatility, weakened catch-all parties, and a rise in politicization, leading to diversified political competition through the emergence of the populist radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the success of the Green party. Currently, the party system is more polarized and pluralistic than ever, with new and diverse coalition models reflecting the altered competition. While the situation does not necessarily indicate a democratic crisis, the increasing polarization, particularly evident in eastern German federal states, could threaten the system’s future stability.

In the 2021 German federal election, Alliance 90/The Greens received its best result so far. The outcome was based in part on a popular party leadership, government participation in different coalition formats on the state level, and an increasing salience of environmental and climate policies with which the party is strongly associated. After the election, the Greens became part of a novel three-party coalition with Social Democrats and Liberals where the party finds itself in a more influential role than in its first federal coalition with the spd. The opinion polls placing Alliance 90/The Greens above 20 percent before the election and its continuously growing membership base indicate a new centrality of the party in the German party system, as well as the potential to further increase its vote share.

The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.

Formulation of the problem. The urgency of a comprehensive study of the institute of political parties is conditioned by several illustrative circumstances. The past election campaign in the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 was marked by the fact that it was held under the old "rules of the game." It is known that the parliamentary election campaigns of 1998, 2002, 2007, 2012 also used a mixed system of elections, in which 50% of parliamentarians were elected in majority constituencies and 50% of people’s deputies were elected on a proportional basis for party lists. According to the current rules of elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, candidates for the People’s Deputies will be nominated by a political party, which were registered in accordance with the established procedure no later than one year before the elections. Despite the fact that the institute of self-nomination of candidates for the People’s Deputies remains, political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. The purpose of this article is to reveal the history of political party formation in order to gain a better understanding of the essential nature of these important political entities and to identify promising moments in the development of parties in Ukraine. Analysis of recent research and publications. In the world and Ukrainian partology, it should be noted that well-known foreign experts J. Sartori, M. Duverge, A. Leiphart, S. Avineri, G. Almond, E. Wind, S. Lipset, S. Rokkan, S. Neumann in characterization the current state and prospects of the development of parties as political institutions indicate a direct connection and mutual influence between the party and electoral systems. Particular attention of domestic partologists M. Primus, N. Goncharuk, A. Pakharev, I. Kresina, O. Erzhov, V. Lytvyn, G. Malkin, Y. Shvedy focuses on the problem of the influence of the electoral process on the formation of the party system in Ukraine. Recently, in connection with the growing role of parties in the political life of our country, studies of new aspects of their activity have appeared: L. Gonyukova considers political parties as an institute of state policy and governance, O. Sakiri concentrates attention on the principles of constructing the image of a political party, O.Nikogosyan considers the peculiarities of the development of political parties and party systems in the post-communist space, A. Tetyanich explores the constitutional and legal principles of state control over the activities of political parties, etc. The article deals with the history of the formation and development of political parties as socio-political institutions, from the time of antiquity to the emergence of mass parties in the second half of the nineteenth century. The latest trends in the evolution of the institution of political parties as subjects of democratic politics in polyarchy systems are analyzed. It is noted that political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. Modern political parties emerge as institutions of democratic politics, they "grow" from the bottom, are created by politically active citizens for the protection of their own interests, and therefore represent first and foremost an important segment of civil society, which unites it with public authorities. For a long time, the division of the parties into the left was adopted (the Communists, the Social Democrats were referred to here), the centrists (those who tried to defend the interests of the majority), the right (who stood for an elitist understanding of politics). However, as most political parties shifted to the middle class in the 20th century, only two of them became right-wing: center-right and center-left. At the same time, the ranking scale itself remained the same. At the end of the twentieth century. significant changes occurred in the political sphere of society. Political parties began to lose their traditional class character and appeal not so much to certain social strata as to all groups of the population. American political scientist J. Lapalambara called this type of political party a "grab all party" and then a "voter party". This trend is also confirmed in modern Ukraine (Party of Servants). Parties have stopped offering ways to develop society, politicians are only interested in voter votes, not ideological issues. It is concluded that modern Ukrainian parties need to go a long way in their development to meet all the criteria of a democratic political party. Ukrainian parties must undergo a transformation from political additions of oligarchic holdings to truly mass popular structures based on the principle of modernization, and then there will be a significant increase in real support. A promising direction for further research is to consider the organizational foundations of the functioning of political parties in polyarchies and under hybrid political regimes. Remarks are made about the prospects of party building in contemporary Ukraine.

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.