German Politics Thread

Merkel... popular? What strange parallel universe are you talking about?

If anything, other people are just even more unpopular than her.

edited 27th Jul '12 1:36:50 AM by Nyarly

Aren't Merkel's allies facing a string of losses in recent elections? Probably part of the "kick out the incumbent" trend that occurs during most recessions but it must count for something.

edited 27th Jul '12 1:59:27 AM by Rationalinsanity

The difference now is that the members of the Senate are now directly elected and thus enjoy greater democratic legitimacy. It would be difficult to justify an increase of the Bundesrat's power without a reform of the election process.

It's really not that inefficient, in fact some political scientists believe it to be more efficient than the more centralised system of France, but yeah that was basically the reason why they implemented it. Because the central government doesn't make all the decisions, regional projects tend to be better planned in Germany than in more centralised countrys (not all of them might you, just look at the fiasco with the the Berlin airport).

Thats why the German constitution makes it very difficult to reform the system. There have been talks about merging some Länder in order to decrease bureaucracy (for example Berlin and Brandenburg) but the constitutiond demands a plebiscit a there is still no majority in neither Berlin nor Brandenburg for this project. And honestly, it doesn't look like the system will need a deep reform any time soon. In addition, I doubt that regional politicans would suggest to surrender some of their power to Berlin.

People might now love her but they respect her approach on politics and how she handles her european partners. Polls show that more than 60% percent of the German people are satisfied with her results mostly due to the decling unemployment in Germany.

Her strengh is that she is very pragmatic and doesn't rise too high expectations. She can change her mind on political decisions quickly without losing credibility, just look on her actions after Fukushima. And she knows what she has to say before and after european summits. Because expectations are always low, Merkel can always sell anything she achieves there as a success. She basically the opposite of Cameron who always promises more than he can (which is either populism or he doesn't have a realistic view on the limits of British influenece in the EU).

edited 27th Jul '12 7:31:28 AM by Zarastro

It's probably a combination of the two — the British people (and media) don't have a realistic view on the limits of British influenece in the EU.

So in other words, Merkel runs on the mantra "underpromise and overdeliver."

That's...surprisingly sensible, actually.

Certainly makes people happier than doing the reverse.

So, how's the Pirate Party been doing? I've been out of touch with German politics...

Sadly, it seems to have effectively succumbed to the infighting caused by the east-german anti-fascist factio and their very aggressive tactics a few years back :/

Please elaborate.

The Antifa is a rough anti-fascist movement.

Which if you are honest means they are basically the left fringe equivalent to skinheads at its worst. The east-german pirates have been very close to it and made obvious attempts to focus the party on that (putting up the Antifa-flag at conventions and threatening violence when someone wanted to put it down.)

They attempted this by systematically bullying and backstabbing the leadership not part of their circle. This culminated into putting the party convention in a place where most of their people could attend, but west german pirates (who are not all simply able to travel that far) would have problems.

This didn't work and the antifa-sympathisants got kicked out. But the very long and very nasty infighting made a lot of people leave the party and basically killed all the momentum they had from the Berlin elections :/

They are still around on the state level, but not really on the federal.

Good lord...

I know that type. It exists in Spain. It's like you can't be antifascista without being gilipollas as well!

To me the main difference between a bunch of Brown crap rampaging around and a bunch of Red crazies doing the same is at times that the latter still has a Party that'll back them in parliament (The Left Party) while the former...doesn't.

A nice example for it is how my city dealth with its own little PEGIDA Offshoot. The official counter demonstration (9000 people :D) simply aimed to reach the end destination of the PEGIDA Demo (200 people?) before them and basically take their spot.

The Antifa people? Outright went and tried to demonstrate *into their way*. Only because the PEGIDA people didn't even start once they realized how freaking outnumbered they were didn't they clash.

It's not only been the antifa, imho, but general infighting with "new" members, who tried to use it as a platform for their own - and seperate - agenda. Many of those seem to have left, so not sure if the party can come back.

If it comes back it will have to rebuild itself on the state level from the ground up, sadly.

Now if only a similar crash would kill of the AFD...

Who needs a political party if you're already backed by local domestic security agencies?

I haven't heard anything about the Af D for a few months now, except them endorsing Pegida, so maybe they're already on the road to obscurity.

edited 10th May '15 4:36:05 AM by DrunkenNordmann

They have atm some top-level issues and I'm crossing my thumbs it means they'll slowly die off.

How come this thread is three years old and we have only 7 pages? Is there really so little to discuss about German politics?

The Eastern European Politics-thread is one year old and already 20 pages in.

German politics in the Merkel era are not as exciting as Europe east of Germany.

That's because Merkel's not an interesting person. The most interesting thing about her is how she manages to dodge every responsibility about everything. Even if they find out that she's known more about the NSA affair than she let on, we won't probably get rid of her. It's more likely we get a CDU-only goverment after the next election the because SPD finally manages to alienate their voting base. But maybe that's just my frustration speaking.

The SPD sounds a lot like Labour here in Britain...

And the FDP are like the Liberal Democrats in UK (participate in a coalition government with the Conservatives, end up as the big loser of the next election).

Did Labour forget their roots as a worker's party? Then yes, the SPD is like that. You can still vote for them locally, but on republican level they're mostly a red-painted CDU these days. That's also the major reason why they would never form a coalition with Die Linke - because if they did, they would actually keep their promises.

In this regard, the SPD also has some aspect of the Liberal Democrats. Before CDU/FDP they were in a coalition with the CDU - and were punished by the voters for that, leading to "Schwarz-Gelb". I sincerely hope for them getting punished again next election, if only for the chance that the left wing may finally take control of the party and make them remember who their voters are.

edited 10th May '15 6:39:59 AM by DrunkenNordmann

I just wondered, and it might not even be that relevant to the current discussion, but are any people using the Wahl-o-mat from the bpb? I remember back as I was still in twelfth/eleventh grade our sociology-teacher told us about it and I wondered if any of you have used it before and what you think about it? Just out of curiosity

It was entertaining to watch my sister reacting to the results she got.