The German Election of 2005: Voters, Parties and Grand Coalition Politics by Clay Clemens & Thomas Saalfeld

Author:Clay Clemens & Thomas Saalfeld [Clemens, Clay & Saalfeld, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Political Process, Campaigns & Elections
ISBN: 9780415447652
Google: WKWIAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: B00GDCATBO
Barnesnoble: B00GDCATBO
Goodreads: 19983455
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-01-15T09:29:22+00:00

Schröder’s Last Campaign: An Analysis of the 2005 Bundestag Election in Context

Andreas M. Wüst and Dieter Roth

Introduction: The Outcome of the 2005 Bundestag Election

The Federal Republic of Germany has a tradition of rule by coalition, and the country’s voters – as well as its elite – stick to this tradition. The most common model has been a centre-right government, first from 1949 to 1966, and then again from 1982 to 1998. Alternative models have included a centre-left coalition from 1969 to 1982, along with an alliance of the moderate left from 1998 to 2005. However, since the 1990s, there has been a new dimension of power distribution: Voters in Germany now not only participate in national elections, with still rather high turnout rates, but also have increasingly begun taking into account the formation and the composition of their federal governments, something long the privilege of the parties. A democracy once almost exclusively ruled by party elites has changed into one in which voters co-decide. In 1998, voters for the first time voted a complete coalition out of office; in 2005, they forced Germany’s two larger parties into a ‘Grand Coalition’. While not the first such government at the federal level, it was the first to result from a decision of the electorate, rather than of the elites. The positive or optimistic view of 2005’s results was therefore that voters had been able to increase their influence on the formation of government. But it was a matter of perspective. The pessimistic view of this same result was that the election’s losers had formed a government, while Germany’s party system had lost in terms of stability, reliability and the capability to produce effective government.

What were the results of the 2005 election? The Red-Green government was defeated, which was no surprise. Voters had shown their disappointment with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in many polls, as well as in state and local elections. During their time in office on the national level, the Greens lost power in all governments they had been part of on the state level. More surprising was the fact that the bourgeois opposition parties, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democrats (FDP), could not overcome the left majority to form a centre-right coalition. Some 51 per cent of voters chose parties left of the centre, while only 45 per cent backed parties right of the centre (4 per cent cast ballots for others). The respective shares for 2002 were 51.1 per cent and 45.9 per cent (and 3 per cent for others). The only change was that one party of the left, the Left.PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), surpassed the 5 per cent threshold, but was not accepted as a possible coalition partner before or after the election. This meant the two major parties of the right and the left had to enter talks about forming a Grand Coalition, since ideological differences prevented formation of a different government, like a ‘traffic light’ (Red-Yellow-Green) or ‘Jamaica’

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