This is Democracy: Episode 165 – German Elections

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy. Today’s episode focuses on the German elections, which will be on September 26th. These are some of the most important elections of this year and perhaps some of the most important elections of the early 21st century. Germany, as everyone knows is one of the most important actors in Europe and one of the most important international actors in the world today, a key us partner, but also a major actor in its own, right?

With regard to China and many other issues that we all think about, particularly for the future of democracy, our subject each week, we’re joined today by an individual who has been thinking about these issues for a long time. We’re writing about them and speaking, uh, across the country and across the world.

This is Jeffrey Rathkey. He’s the president of the American Institute for contemporary German studies at Johns Hopkins university in Washington, DC. Jeff, thanks for joining us today. A real pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Prior to his role as president of the American Institute for contemporary German studies, Jeff was at the center for strategic and international studies where he was the deputy director and a senior fellow for their Europe program.

And before that he had a 24 year long career. Foreign service officer performing many different roles relevant for our discussion today, he was deputy director of the office of European security and political affairs and duty officer and the white house situation room. He oversaw and served in Berlin as minister, counselor for political affairs at the us embassy from 2006 to 2009.

So he has both the knowledge of policy-making around these issues and on the ground knowledge, uh, within. Before we turn to our discussion with Jeff. Of course we have as always our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Siri and a Zachary or poem this week includes some German in it. Yes, that’s correct.

Okay. Well, let’s hear it. Something we should remember having done. After class, I rush along the highway and Alto bond, but poorly patched over the governor. He wants my germs floating halfway across the room. The governor, he wants my classmates losing their bodies to his religion. The land, it wants us to melt back into insignificance.

It is comforting to know in a world that compounds misery with facts, thusness almost as thoughtlessly as you compound nouns. It is comforting to know, even as we fail so miserably that someone remembers the definition of decency, deeper Doy tune, their hurtfully height, the meaning of civilians. Uh, we helped your guilt grow into a miracle.

Now you school us in generosity. When your daughter you’re leader of the free world saves a million souls, it can seem to us oddly familiar. Like this is something we should remember having done. It is comforting, whatever passes, whatever comes of us. This now middle-aged tighten these daily Katan fair gung and Satan skipped in technocrat in Berlin.

I love the ending Zachary, you know, high in technocratic and brilliant. What is your poem about? My poem was really about the connection between American democracy and German democracy and the many ways in which a German democracy seems to better reflect, uh, American values sometimes. Absolutely. Uh, Jeff, as we, as Americans, watch these elections coming up, um, w why are they so important?

Why, why should we be paying attention to what should we be looking? Well, I think the first thing that is in some ways obvious, uh, about Germany is that it’s the largest country in the European union. The European union of course, is a block of around 450 million people. One of the most economically, uh, advanced spaces on earth and Germany plays a role.

Is, you know, defining in many ways, um, for Europe. So, so the direction that Germany takes, uh, will have an impact, not only on the 80 million German citizens, uh, but on the rest of the rest of Europe and indeed on countries like the United States or the UK that are closely partnered with it. So inertia, uh, for those who’ve studied, physics is not.

A body at rest tending to stay arrests, stay at rest. It’s a body in motion tending to stay in motion. And so the, uh, the trajectory that Germany is on and whether that changes will have an enormous impact, um, uh, on the transatlantic relationship and on, uh, many, many people, um, around. And how our German election similar and different from us selections.

One obvious point. Is there more parties in Germany? They tend to have coalition governments. Um, give us a little more of you of your sense of what the key similarities and differences. Yeah, well, it’s a, it’s a proportional representation system. Um, that’s the fundamental, um, uh, thing and we can get into the mechanics of it.

But, but basically what that means is that there is a percentage of the Bundestag is equivalent to the, um, the votes that are cast, uh, on election day for individual parties. Um, it’s a mixed proportional representation system, which means. Um, you have, you know, a number of, uh, 200 and, uh, um, 98 to 99, um, directly elected seats.

That’s a little bit similar to our congressional elections or the British first past the post system. Uh, but then the rest are made up of proportionally represented, um, uh, seats. And so you wind up. Coalition governments, as you said, and it is increasingly the case that the political landscape is more fragmented in Germany.

So you have a larger number of parties in the Bundestag now than you did 30 or 40 years ago to make that even more concrete for most of Germany’s post-war history, there were three parties in the. There was the center, right? Christian democratic union, Christian social union. There was the center left social democratic party.

And then there was the economically liberal, uh, free democratic party. And until the 1980s, those were the three parties that determined Germany’s political fate. Um, fourth party came along in the eighties. After a reunification in the nineties, there was a, uh, further left party, which was in some, which was sort of the air of the east German communist party.

Now you have the far right, uh, alternative for Germany party. And what all that means is you’ve got, um, you know, the votes of German, uh, the German electorate spread out over a larger, um, uh, spectrum in some ways. And it makes forming coalitions harder. And just in terms of the mechanics of voting in Germany, uh, the vote is on September 26th.

Is, is it all on one day? And, and one other point to, to ask about with regard to that, the constituencies for the Bundestag, um, how were they drawn and do they have a gerrymandering system like ours, or how does that work? They don’t have a gerrymandering system. Um, so that, that is, you know, th they are much more contiguous and you don’t have the same kinds of stretched out districts the way you will find across the American, um, uh, political map.

Uh, the, the voting generally happens on one day. Although this year, as we’ve seen elsewhere with the pandemic, there are expanded, uh, vote by mail possibilities. And so there’s a, there’s a likelihood that a signature. Proportion of the votes will be cast by mail. Although it will be hard to tell until it’s all over what exactly that percentage is going to be.

The other main thing is that voters cast two votes. So you are, when you walk into a polling place, you cast a, you cast a vote for a candidate who is directly elected to represent your district and you cast a vote for the. That you prefer. And that’s where this mixed, um, uh, proportional representation system comes from.

The first vote is going to determine who represents your district. The second one is going to determine the overall balance of. In the Bundestag. And, um, and so that, uh, that system has been a hallmark of, of the German approach, uh, since 1949. So for anyone who’s been remotely following this election would know that it’s been a remarkably volatile election season with three different chancellor candidates, three different parties at one point, leading in the polls.

Why is that? Well, I think this election is happening at the confluence of several major events. The, the first and most obvious one is that the incumbent chancellor, Angela Merkel is not running for reelection. And, and so the normal kind of bonus, if you want to call it that, or the normal boost that you get from incumbency, doesn’t really matter.

So, so that’s, that’s the first source I think of uncertainty. Uh, the second source is the fact that we are, well, people thought we were emerging from a pandemic, perhaps in the spring. It’s quite clear that we have not yet emerged from it, but, um, the, the pandemic effect on our societies on our economies, um, has, has changed over the last 18 months.

And when the election campaign began. It was at a time when it seemed like, you know, the rally round, the flag effect of, of having a global crisis, uh, where the German government was exercising. Pretty impressive leadership. That that that was waning. And so Germany was reverting in that way. After the crisis of the perceived crisis of the pandemic, it was reverting to the, the more diffuse, um, political support, um, that had characterized the last couple of years.

The third factor, I think, is that the. The nomination process for within miracle’s own party, um, became extremely complicated. Um, there was a battle over the part over the party chairmanship, which was, um, you know, uh, extremely closely run. Um, there was then after that a, uh, a battle for who would actually be the leading candidate, the candidate for.

In the election, that was a fight between, um, miracles, CDU party and the sister party, the Bavarian CSU. And so you had all these things happen at the same time, um, in a way that, um, you know, sort of shocked the, the political system, uh, into a different state, um, where miracle had is remains extremely popular, uh, you know, for her, depending on how you measure it, her popularity is still off the chart.

Um, compared to anyone else in the German political system, but her, her direct errors in her party are not enjoying that. In fact, they’re now in second place, uh, in the. And do you see Jeff a movement to the left in German politics? You, you made the argument about the fragmentation of the political landscape and for many years, you and others, uh, at any many experts have spoken about the rise of the right, uh, In Germany and elsewhere, including in the United States and in Germany, this is the day, right?

The alternative for Germany. Um, but it, it seems the narrative in the last few weeks about this election has been the rise of the left, the SPD and the green party. Um, so, so how, how should we understand this? Um, that’s a, that’s a good point. I think the place to start, first of all, is that. Approximately 75% of German voters, um, support parties that could loosely be defined as mainstream.

That is on the center, left side, the, the social Democrats and the greens on the center. Right side. Again, I’m speaking very broadly, the Christian Democrats and the free Democrats, the liberals. So. I think that’s important to start off with, you know, you do have voters on the right and the left extremes, but they are still, you know, a distinct minority.

So that centrism at the heart of German politics has remained pretty persistent. Um, over time now. Is German politics moving to the left. I think you can say one thing about the right and that is, it has plateaued. It reached, you know, around 12% it hovers there. Um, in the opinion, polls, um, has not expanded its appeal beyond that, uh, hardcore of support.

Although there are some parts of Eastern Germany where, um, they. Are able to mine a bit more, um, uh, disaffection and, uh, and they do, they do well low in a localized way on the left. If you look at the, the opinion polls, depending on the day, there might be a majority for a left-wing government, the SPD, the greens, and, and the, the, the party called the left, the post communist party.

You know, it’s a pretty narrowly run thing. Uh, so I wouldn’t say you have a shift to the left, but what I do think you can see in the green party and, and, and even though they’ve had some troubles in the last few weeks, they are still pulling almost to twice as high as they did at the last. The, the greens are a different kind of leftism.

Of course they have leftist roots, um, and pacifist roots indeed. They’re at their origins. Um, but what they have turned into over the last few years is a much more pragmatically focused party that is. Um, does not reject market solutions, um, that is much more appealing to S to centrist voters and especially as, uh, the, the deep sense of crisis, um, surrounding, um, climate change and environmental policy, uh, as that, uh, spreads in German society, uh, I think there’s a greater willingness.

Uh, those ecological questions at the heart of German policymaking. I’m not sure that’s exactly a left, uh, leftist thing. Um, but it is certainly, um, increasingly, you know, characterizing the, the political debate in Germany. W what should we expect on Sunday from the election? I think the thing to expect is that there will be uncertainty on election night about who is going to form and who will lead the next government in Germany.

And the reason for that is that, uh, as we talked about the fragmentation of the political landscape, it is highly likely that three parties will be required to, uh, form. Coalition with a working parliamentary majority, and that hasn’t been done in the last several decades in Germany. And it’s always been possible to form a two-party coalition.

And so negotiating a three-party coalition is going to be more challenging. Um, and there will be different options. Um, you will have the, probably the possibility of a, uh, majority led by the social Democrats, with the greens and the liberal. But it will also probably be mathematically possible for the Christian Democrats, even if they finish second to form a government with the greens and the liberals as well.

So this is going to be a complex multi-layered multi-directional negotiation that is going to be, I think, pretty fluid, at least in the first few days. And it could take, you know, there could be at least one attempt at forming a coalition that. We saw this in 2017, by the way, where there was a negotiation that lasted months for the CDU, for medical, the form of government with the greens and the FDP that failed, ultimately because the FDP, um, uh, walked out of the talks.

And, uh, and so you could have something like that happened again this time. And we may reach the end of this calendar year without a new German government sworn in. And that would mean that miracle will remain in a caretaker capacity until a new government is constituted and elected by the new Bundestag.

Th this is a really important point, Jeff, and I’m so glad you brought it up, uh, that the, that the miracle government and miracle will remain Buddha’s consular, uh, until there’s a new government. So they don’t have a situation where. Similar to the United States where we have a date when a new government must form and the old government must go out that she stays on until there’s a new government, correct?

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And now, you know, she is not going to have the same latitude to break new ground in this kind of interregnum, but she will remain head of government and, and we’ll have the authorities necessary to carry out the business of state, but without a voter mandate, To do anything new. I think, you know, it will be a very, uh, she’ll interpret that relatively narrowly and just try to stay the course rather than, you know, do anything remarkable or, or new in, in those few months, uh, while we wait for the next.

And Jeff, will it matter a lot, which kind of coalition is formed, especially from an American point of view, looking at Germany and thinking about our important wide ranging relationship with Germany, what will it matter a lot? Whether it’s an SPD led government or a say, do, um, how should we think about that?

It does matter. It matters in a, in a slightly indirect way. Of course, if you have a center left government, its priorities are going to be different from those of a center, right. Government. And I think in particular, when you think about, um, things like economic policy and taxation, um, you know, there you have, um, you know, quite a divergence of views, um, uh, among the mainstream parties on the specific elements of.

Of, uh, environmental policies and climate change and the prominence that those should play in policy-making that’s also going to be different. So there will be a coalition agreement, which is always hammered out between the parties, forming a government, and that agreement will try to anticipate. As many of the issues for the next four years as possible, because everybody wants to get down in writing, you know, the things that they are, uh, achieving for their party and their party’s interests in advance.

And they will take that to their members where necessary to get approval to enter the government. But what I find interesting about Germany is not just the things that are written down in, uh, in the coalition agreement. It’s the things you can’t answer. And if you look at the major changes in German policy over miracles, period of chancellorship, for example, what you see are that the biggest things, the longest lasting impact are from things that were not anticipated.

In the coalition agreement. So let’s take 2011, uh, after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, um, miracle decided to speed up the, um, the shift, the German shift out of nuclear. Um, that has had enormous consequences for the German economy, for Germany’s energy policy and for things like north stream two, if you want to talk about, um, you know, gas and relations with Russia and so forth, um, you know, there’s a direct connection between the, um, the, the, what they call the , the move away from nuclear power and all of these decisions that was not in a coalition agreement, that it would be speeded up in reaction to.

Uh, you know, and a nuclear accident in Japan, but it is something that Germany is still having to deal with the consequences of today. Um, similarly the refugee and migration crisis in 2015. Also, you know, how could you anticipate that in a coalition agreement? Uh, and if you think about the economic measures, uh, in Europe to deal, not only with, uh, COVID, um, and the issuance of, uh, of debt by the European union, but also if you go back further to 2008, 2009, and then the early 2000 teens, the reaction to the Eurozone crisis and the debt, uh, problems of countries like Greece, um, Ireland.

All of those things were improvisations. Um, and so those deep impacts on Germany’s course and on Europe’s course are likely to arise from things that people. Are not able to predict when they sit down this fall to write a new coalition agreement. So change comes, but it doesn’t come just from the signature on the coalition document.

It comes from how you react to future crises. It’s such an important point. The personality. Uh, matter quite a lot. And often it’s not even the ideologies they were attached to or the parties they were attached to, but how they think about particular issues. That, that seems to me has always been the case, especially in transatlantic relations.

Uh, when a Helmut Schmidt couldn’t get along with, uh, Jimmy Carter that made it, that made for problems in U S. German relations in contrast, right? The close relationship between a president, George H w Bush and chancellor Helmut Kohl certainly facilitated some major unseen changes. So, so I think your point about personalities is so important, Jeff.

Yeah. It’s something that I think we’re also going to have. Uh, we will have a new personality at the head of the German government. In some ways the social democratic chancellor candidate Olof Schultz has been the finance minister for the last four years. So he’s pretty well-known in governing circles and has a track record of working with his international counterparts, the, the Christian Democrats candidate arm in it.

He is the governor of Germany. State north Rhine-Westphalia population of about 20 million people, but, uh, it’s also the most prosperous state in Germany. Uh, but he doesn’t have the same kind of, um, you know, day-to-day governing, um, uh, interactions with European and especially with American counterparts.

So, you know, the personalities and how they will develop, uh, as you said, Jeremy, that’s, that’s, uh, something we, we can only guess at, at this point. Um, and, uh, and we’ll have to, uh, Jeff. This has been so helpful and you’ve given us such a really thoughtful overview. Uh, before we close Zachary, I just wanted to ask you, you’ve been following this incredibly closely, more closely than many of my graduate students and others.

Why is the German election so interesting to you as a 16 year old? Who’s interested in democracy? Why does it matter so much? It’s fascinating to me too, to watch another system go through such a complex election cycle, uh, that in many ways has, has, has implications on a similar scale, uh, to the American elections, uh, in the past few years.

But in a sense, even though the German political system has its own pathologies and its own problems, uh, it, it it’s comforting to me at the very least. Uh, at least some semblance of a functioning democracy operate on unsettled. Large-scale that’s right. And there’s so much we can learn about democracy, not just by looking at ourselves, but by looking at other democracies, uh, other countries that in some ways do things better as, as Jeff has described it, you could argue that the German system’s more representative.

Um, and that there’s a lot. We could learn. Jeff, last question to you before we close, what, what do you encourage Americans to learn from this whole. Well, I think the, the most important thing for American audiences to keep in mind is that. You know, the international partnerships, the United States built throughout the post-war era.

They’ve, you know, gone through some rough times, but they are still at the heart. And I think you could argue, they are increasingly important as the balance of global power shifts. Um, if you are. Looking at this from the point of view of, um, you know, democracy and, uh, the, uh, the contrasts and, and even the rivalries between democracies and autocracies, if that’s your framework, um, or if you think about this in more traditional, uh, terms of the United States partnership with its, um, you know, allies and partners around the world, no matter which, which way you look at this, the United States is.

Is more dependent now on its partners like Germany to accomplish its objectives in the world that is not going to change. In fact, it’s going to accelerate and, and so, uh, you know, the government that. Shape and takes office in Berlin is going to be more important for American interests than has been the case in previous decades.

And so that’s why it’s worth paying attention, I think. And, and that’s why, uh, we will probably have to work harder in the future between Washington and Berlin and other capitals to. Achievable priorities together and, and pursue them in ways that we can. Um, we can all support. That’s really hard in the best of times.

Um, it’s even harder now, but I think that’s what makes it, at least for me, that’s what makes, um, this, uh, this working. That’s so well said. And of course, Jeff, it’s why we need a well-trained foreign service officers like you. Uh, and then I always encourage our listeners to get involved in the foreign service.

It’s a wonderful career path. And as you’ve just laid out, there’s, there’s such important. Work ahead. One of the themes of our podcast each week is that democracy is about partnerships and cooperation. And you’ve given us a wonderful and really helpful way of thinking about that with regard to transatlantic relations and us German relations in particular, uh, Jeffrey Rathkey.

Thank you for joining us. Uh, this week, it’s been a real pleasure to have you on the path. It’s been terrific to be with you. Thanks so much, Jeremy, and thanks Zachary, and, uh, wish you and your listeners all the best. And by the way, um, we’ll be doing a series of events next week. Uh, AIC, gs.org. If people are interested in, uh, more on the outcome of the German elections and their impact on, uh, on the United States and the transatlantic relationship, and we’ll be doing our own podcast, uh, series, uh, we have a podcast called the psycho.

Uh, you can find it on our website and we’ll be having a series of guests in the coming weeks to look at different aspects of German policymaking that will be important for the, for the next government and for the future. So, um, I’m really glad to be with you today. And, uh, I look forward to remaining in dialogue with, uh, with you all and, uh, and hopefully with your listeners.

Absolutely. And I know I will be. Paying very close attention to your events because I’ll be trying to figure out and understand what’s going on and you are one of the best sources that we have. So again, thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Zachary for your wonderful poem. And most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this week of this is democracy.

This podcast is produced by the liberal arts, its development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is democracy on apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time