Germany’s dangerous political marriage

More than five months after Germany’s federal election last September, a new grand coalition government – comprising Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) – has finally been formed. But there is little reason to celebrate.

Germany has endured nearly six of months under a caretaker government (the longest in the Federal Republic’s history), a failed coalition agreement, weeks of arduous negotiations, painful internal party rumblings, and much politicking. Moreover, a recent national poll dealt yet another blow to the center-left SPD, indicating that if elections were held today, the party would be outperformed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Add to that Europe’s ongoing right-wing backlash (exemplified, most recently, by Italy’s election) and the threat of a trade war with the United States, and Germany’s new grand coalition reeks of desperation…

Germany’s new grand coalition – the third in Merkel’s long chancellorship – is a marriage of convenience: loveless, largely unloved, and devoid of any overarching vision. It is a good outcome for Germany’s short-term stability, especially with regard to Europe. But it is an uncertain outcome in the longer term, given the coalition’s considerable political baggage, and it is a bad outcome for democracy, especially at a time when populist forces are a growing threat.

One might argue that it is good for democracy that Merkel’s coalition has shrunk. Because the government parties control barely more than half of the Bundestag, they no longer overwhelm the opposition, rendering it irrelevant. The problem is that the largest official opposition party is now the populist AfD.

Moreover, the share of the Bundestag held by opposition parties that are only semi-loyal to liberal democracy – the AfD and its left-wing counterpart Die Linke (the Left) – now approaches one-quarter. Not since the Weimar Republic has a far-right party been the largest opposition force, or have anti-liberal forces controlled such a large share of the Bundestag.