The Economist - USA (2020-02-08)

TheEconomistFebruary 8th 2020 41

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ever letanyone say a handful of votes

changes nothing. Last October, had

Germany’s liberal Free Democrats (fdp)

won 74 fewer votes in an election in the

east German state of Thuringia, they would

not have entered its parliament. Bodo Ra-

melow, the popular state premier, might

have had the numbers to renew his left-

wing coalition. And Thomas Kemmerich,

the fdp’s leader in Thuringia, would not

have scandalised the country on February

5th by leaning on the votes of the far-right

Alternative for Germany (afd) to win a par-

liamentary ballot to succeed Mr Ramelow.

No German state premier has ever been

elected on the back of afdsupport. As de-

monstrators chanted anti-fascist slogans

outside the state parliament in Erfurt, and

mps inside jeered, Mr Kemmerich vowed to

maintain the firewall against the afd,

whose branch in Thuringia is especially

noxious (its race-baiting leader, Björn

Höcke, pictured right with Mr Kemmerich,

runs the party’s extremist “Flügel” wing).

The reaction was swift. Mr Kemmerich’s

win had also rested on support from the

centre-right Christian Democratic Union

(cdu), which leads Germany’s ruling co-

alition. The cdu’s leader, Annegret Kramp-

Karrenbauer, urged another election, say-

ing the Thuringia branch had defied her by

teaming up with the afdto back Mr Kem-

merich. The Social Democrats (spd), junior

partner in the national government, de-

nounced the vote as a low point in post-war

German history and called an emergency

meeting of the coalition for February 8th. It

is anyway unclear how the fdp, with just

five out of 90 seats, can run a government.

Yet Thuringia is just the most extreme

example of the fragmentation of German

politics. For decades the country’s big-tent

Volksparteien (“people’s parties”) guaran-

teed stability and a certain predictability.

West German governments tended to

swing between centre-left (the spd) and,

more often, centre-right (the cdu, plus

their Bavarian sister party, the csu), with

the fdpusually acting as kingmaker. In the

1970s the cdu/csuand spdtogether com-

manded over 90% of the national vote.

This cosy picture was to be triply dis-

rupted. First came the Greens, founded in

1980, who quickly morphed from hirsute

radicals into a party of government. Reuni-

fication in 1990 brought in the former east-

ern communists, who later merged with

west German leftists to form Die Linke, Mr

Ramelow’s party. The biggest jolt was the

rise of the afd, which began in 2013 as an

anti-euro party but soon curdled into xeno-

phobic populism. Today there are six par-

ties in parliament, and the decline of the

Volksparteien means three of the four gov-

ernments Angela Merkel has led since tak-

ing office in 2005 are “grand coalitions” of

the cdu/csu and spd; two faltering giants

leaning on each other for support. On cur-

rent polling they attract barely 40%.

Fragmentation is at its starkest in Ger-

many’s unusual federal system. Thirty

years ago seven of its 16 Länder (states),

which have powers in education, policing

and infrastructure, were ruled by single

parties; all but one of the rest had two-party

coalitions. Today almost half are governed

Germany

The splintering states

BERLIN

A shock in Thuringia dramatically illustrates the consequences of Germany’s

fragmented politics

Creeping coalitions

Germany, state governments

Bynumberofpartiesingovernment

Source:Stateparliaments

*Governmentformation

pendinginThuringia

16

12

8

4

0

201510052000951990

One party Two parties Three parties

*

Europe

42 SyrianrefugeesinTurkey

43 TheriseofSinnFein

43 AnoddmuseuminRussia

44 Norway’soil-addictedgreens

46 Charlemagne: The parable of the plug

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