German Politics Thread

From the Basic Law:

Article 63 [Election of the Federal Chancellor]

(1) The Federal Chancellor shall be elected by the Bundestag without debate on the proposal of the Federal President.

(2) The person who receives the votes of a majority of the Members of the Bundestag shall be elected. The person elected shall be appointed by the Federal President.

(3) If the person proposed by the Federal President is not elected, the Bundestag may elect a Federal Chancellor within fourteen days after the ballot by the votes of more than one half of its Members.

(4) If no Federal Chancellor is elected within this period, a new election shall take place without delay, in which the person who receives the largest number of votes shall be elected. If the person elected receives the votes of a majority of the Members of the Bundestag, the Federal President must appoint him within seven days after the election. If the person elected does not receive such a majority, then within seven days the Federal President shall either appoint him or dissolve the Bundestag.

Seems pretty straightforward to me about it...

And I point out, Merkel is not the sitting Chancellor, she's continuing the office until a new Chancellor of the current session of the Bundestag is selected.

edited 20th Nov '17 10:01:35 AM by 3of4

It's a process which will take some time, and you have to consider that the parties in question aren't forced to vote against Merkel. They can easily vote her into office. Granted, then Merkel might try to dissolve the parliament herself by asking the Vertrauensfrage (something she currently can't do), but if they keep electing her (and there is a possibility that they will, simply because they don't really want reelection), we end up in a situation in which Merkel would have to leave office or to refuse chancellorship altogether.

This could end up in a giant mess.

edited 20th Nov '17 10:11:15 AM by Swanpride

Some time seems like, dunno, 4 weeks max? Including going through the motions. I assume Merkel is atm discussing options with Steinmeier and the party heads to see how this will go.

Minority government really depends on either SPD or FDP giving support in exchange for concessions.

Edit: Whats really giving the FDP bad optics right now seems to be that they seem to have been...*very* prepared for it. New twitter banner, press release ready.

edited 20th Nov '17 10:50:32 AM by 3of4

She already talked to him and left already.

The FDP really looks bad in all this. I don't think that they will walk away from that stunt unscathed. What the FDP keeps forgetting is that their actual voter base is less than 5%, the rest are swing voters. And swing voters have a short fuse for the "we had to stand to our principle" excuse because they themselves don't but vote based on practical reasoning above everything else.

Yeah, if there is a new election the FDP might get screwed again.

Wer hat uns verraten? Freie Demokraten! ;)

So, German political culture is really adverse to minority governments? I understand, given all the EU issues right now, why they'd be worried about it now though.

The Euro's value dropping in stock markets around the world should give an indication of how unstable a minority government may be.

It's a hold-over from the Weimar Republic. Considering what the constant reelections, reshuffling in the government and having another chancellor practically every year eventually lead to, you can hardly blame Germany for now having a constitution which encourages the parties to make it work, damnit!

Holy fuck was Weimar incompetently made.

The Weimar Constitution was full of good intentions and Golden Mean Fallacy

Also, some (German) meme's in regards to the FDP

In its defence, it was a slap-dab construct due to the population overthrowing the emperor towards the end of WWI because people were tired of dying for a lost cause. Ended the war a little bit earlier than it would have otherwise and most likely rescued a lot of lives, but left the country with no true leadership.

Its the Constitutional version of It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

The Weimar Constitution still might have worked if the democratic elite (whose power it was supposed to ensure, nobody thought in 1919 that someone like Hindeburg could become president) had been more resilient. Unfortunately, a lot of the key players died before their time due to illness (Stresemann, Ebert) or assassinations (Rathenau, Erzberger) which added among many other factors to the political weakness of the Republic in the Critical phase (1932-1933).

The Weimar Constitution had a bunch of flaws, but it still could have worked (and frankly, there are a lot more interesting Weimar What Ifs than the same old same old Axis Victory or alternate American Civil War, but I digress). The main issues of Weimar were the fractured center right (during the "classic" era of the Bonn Republic there was the CDU/CSU as the sole truly center right party, with the FDP truly centrist and sometimes even center left but also with an FPÖ-ish cadre of old Nazis during the 1950s), the lack of "true Democrats" (even Stresemann was a monarchist until at least 1919 and many who were social democrats in 1914 hated Ebert's guts come 1919) and the fact that Hindeburg was a doofus.

Now Hindenburg would not have gotten elected under any, literally any, system of elections but the one the Weimar Republic employed in 1925. You see in that election there was a requirement for an absolute majority of votes cast only in the first round. In the second round the person with the most votes won period. And you didn't even have to run in the first round to be eligible to run in the second round. Hindenburg had not run in the first round of the 1925 Presidential elections and only ran after the rightist candidate had gotten beaten, badly. The SPD for their part withdrew in favor of a centrist (center-rightist) called "Marx" ironically. The KPD for their part refused to withdraw their candidate, Ernst Thälmann (later murdered by the Nazis). You already know the outcome... Hindenburg got a bit over 40%, Marx got a bit less. An Thälmann got the rest of the vote.

Had Hindenburg been ineligible to run in the second round, had there be a requirement for a true runoff, had Thälmann withdrawn for the second round (as Moscow actually wanted, but the KPD overruled Moscow), we wouldn't have gotten Hindenburg. And from 1930 onwards, Hindenburg started to openly do what he'd done quietly before: Undermine the SPD and ultimately all he thought allied with them, including Brüning, which ultimately led to governments based entirely on his support and ultimately led to him appointing a guy he did not personally like or trust (he had been merely a corporal in the army he had basically led for a couple of years) but who was without a question a nationalist - Adolf Hitler.

But back to the present day...

I fear that the SPD will do what it has always done in situations like the current one. Someone will point out that the fate of the nation is in danger and the duty of a patriotic German is to put country first. And like 1914 when they voted for the war credits or that one time when they voted for Kohl's gutting of the right to political asylum, they'll forget why a social democratic party is supposed to exist and sacrifice what they know to be right and their own future for what they think to be the good of the country...

Although I would argue that the "gutting of the right to political asylum" was necessary back then. The system back then was devised for a few thousand refugees, not the number of people who reached Germany during the breakup of Yugoslavia (I would argue that the current system is not really working either).

The original system worked when Germany was a post-war nation and the people who ended up there basically had no other option. It held up longer than it should have because for the longest time there was a giant wall keeping people away which was build by another nation. We now have the problem that the system was not made for a country in which half of the world would LOVE to live in while having space for perhaps double of the current population at tops.

Sorry to drag it back to this, but I was writing this just before I was about to go out

It doesn't seem like there's a "winning" way to go about this. Minority governments invite instability, and new elections won't really do an awful lot (granted AfD might gain, but that won't change the situation at large very much. Deadlock will reign).

Right now, we only have two polls to go on, and they're largely the same as the current election results, give or take. Dunno if that'll change in the future. In general, I can only see the government moving for new elections if the AfD drops in the polls and there's a chance for a healthy coalition.

(Though personally, my hope is for the minority government option. Call it farfetched, but I feel like a Union/Green coalition (with SPD backing?) could work out... right?)

edited 20th Nov '17 3:43:35 PM by Snipertoaster

The question is not who will win, but who will loose the most...other than the German tax payer naturally.

Though there actually is a possibility that the swing voters of the FDP move to the CDU in reaction the actions of the FDP, while the Greens might get rewarded for presenting themselves as a less fanatic than Die Linke alternative to the SPD. In this case, there is a slim chance that Black/Green gets a majority.

The Weimar system would probably also have worked if, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Empire, the right-wing parties hadn't started recruiting disillusioned soldiers into glorified street gangs for political ends and basically created a protection gang arms race among the largest political parties.

No democratic system survives uncontrolled, state-sponsored violence against political opponents. It might just take a while before the rot really sets in.

Also, minority governments in general are pretty unstable affairs. Just look at the UK right now.

edited 21st Nov '17 5:36:36 AM by math792d

The sad state of the UK is probably one of the reasons why Merkel is reluctant to form a minority government.

edited 21st Nov '17 5:38:02 AM by M84

I mean, Schulz said he'd not do Black-Red.

Did someone ask him about Black-Red-Green 🙄 ?

Denmark has had a couple of relatively stable minority governments.

They are unstable in Germany, because Germany is not used to them. And because in Germany every thing a government does has to be agreed in a coalition treaty ahead of time (there is no constitutional requirement for that, but it is a de facto thing); which is also why Jamaica failed - they could not agree on a "vision" for the next four years.

I for one think a minority government would be the least terrible option right now. I only fear it might end up giving rise to "ad hoc majorities" including the AfD which would erode the taboo against cooperating with a party like them. Which is the first step in a party like them gaining power...

New elections cannot possibly produce any fundamentally different situation. Especially since the only party where a potential successor to the current leader exists is the CSU, where Seehofer might be replaced by Söder. But Söder is from Franconia and in 70 years the CSU hasn't been led by someone from Franconia for more than three years... And if the CSU loses even a few votes in new elections, Söder would be toast.

So new elections would most likely be held with the same leaders in place... So what possibly would change? More dissatisfaction? And then? The same guys trying to hash out a compromise that failed just now?

I thought the reason he wants the SPD to be in the opposition is to deny the Af D the opportunity to be it, since they'd get to be the opposition as the third biggest party in the Bundestag.

Also, to make his voters happy since it appears some of the losses his party suffered were from people unhappy with the grand collision between the SPD and the CDU

I was joking. Currently the option that's not a new election seems to be Black-Green minority supported by the SPD's assent.