Department of Political Studies. Faculty of Social and Human Sciences – NOVA FCSH
The political system has changed at the center and the new balances must be found there. The imperfect German bipartisanship gave way to an unstable quadripartisanship, but perhaps more dynamic and innovative
Last Sunday’s German parliamentary elections are not only historic in that they signify the end of Merkel, but also in heralding the end of an era marked by a political culture of consensus that Chancellor has masterfully shaped his image and his interests.
The pandemic has accelerated several social and political trends, bringing about a structural change in the German political system that will inevitably have profound consequences for European politics. The most important result is the sharp decline of the Volkpartei – SPD and CDU – and the emergence of the Liberals and the Greens as central parties in the system. We now have a substantially different party center, with 4 parties representing different versions of the left and right.
One of the main drivers of this change is the emergence of a sharp opposition between the younger and older generations. If voters over 35 years old continued to vote for the old parties (SPD and CDU), younger voters voted en masse for the Greens and the Liberals, denoting a split in the post-World War II political culture. Aware of representing a new generation, these two parties began a close collaboration in order to increase their weight in the future government coalition compared to the old parties.
The crisis created by the pandemic facilitated the emergence of this cleavage. A new study by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows how sacrificing the freedom of younger generations, perceived as a greater challenge to their way of life, has resulted in a widespread feeling that the future of younger generations has been sacrificed for the well-being of your parents and grandparents. Young people are also much more suspicious of the motivations of governments to introduce restrictive measures, seeing them as a way to better control the public.
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In Germany, where the management of the pandemic in the winter of 2020/21 was guided by an aversion to risk and centered on the protection of the elderly, and where society is guided by liberal values that cherish individual freedom, half of the population said they felt shackled by an all-powerful state, just 11 percent said they felt free. In last Sunday’s elections we saw how this feeling of unease has become a powerful political force. The Greens and Liberals bet heavily on this feeling, presenting candidates who embodied the values of urban and youth populations. While the Greens presented a young woman with an international profile, Christian Lindner, the leader of the liberals, articulated the libertarian right’s agenda, challenging the monochord and one-dimensional management of the Merkel pandemic.
This result, although confusing, shows an unmistakable change. The challenge to the stability of the postwar political system that the Chancellor has prolonged in time no longer comes from the extreme left and the extreme right. Both Alternative to Germany (nationalists) and Die Linke (far left) saw their electorate shrink and geographically concentrate in East Germany. Now the political system has changed at the center, and the new balances have to be found there. The imperfect German bipartisanship gave way to an unstable quadripartisanship, but perhaps more dynamic and innovative.
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