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UC Berkeley Working Papers UC Berkeley Working Papers Title Germany 1994 : the year of elections Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3n00x0hz Author Glaser, Ulrich Publication Date 1994 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California /f7 i/]0. ^ ///^,/f^ Germany 1994: The Year of Elections Ulrich Glaser University of Erlangen-Nurnberg Germany Working Paper 94-14 INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES LIBRARY DEC 0 1994 university ofCALIFGRWI;^ ICS INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY Germany 1994: The Year of Elections Ulrich iGlaser University of Er4-aCfigen-Nurnberg Germany Working Paper 94-14 Working Papers published by the Institute of Governmental Studies provide quick dissemination of draft reports and papers, preliminary analysis, and papers with a limited audience. The objective is to assist authors in refining their ideas by circulating research results and to stimulate discussion about public policy. Working Papers are reproduced unedited directly from the author's pages. GERMANY 1994: THE YEAR OF ELECTIONS Ulrich Glaser University of Erlangen-Nxirnberg Hofmannstrasse 15 91052 Erlangen Tel. 09131-209334 Fax. 04131-862717 Harris Seminar Institute of Governmental Studies University of California at Berkeley 3/22/1994 T. Introductory Remarks Since I do not believe in the predictive powers of Political Science (and even less in my predictive powers), most of what my remarks will to be rather general comments on the current German situation, on the German party system and on the recent and upcoming elections. 1994 will be a record setting year in German electoral history: Never have there been that many elections in one year. Of course there are different levels of importance, but since the most ' important elections; the vote for the federal parleuaent (the "Bundestag") takes place at the very end, All the other elections are taken as predictors of the things to cbme. On the handout, I listed (table 1) the elections of 1994, of which two have already taken place: The state election in "Niedersachsen" (Lower Saxony) 10 days ago, and the local elections in Schleswig-Holstein idiich took place just this past Sunday. Overall, there will be the federal election, the election to the European Parlament, 8 state elections (in alle 5 eastern states and in 3 of 11 western states) and 9 local elections (4 of 5 eastern states, and 5 of 11 western states). The state elections usually take place every four years, the term for local elections varies between 4 and 6 years. To give you a short impression of the states, I listed the 16 German states (western and eastern) in table 2 on the handout with a note on the parties that form their governments. Additionally, there is the presidential elections for the successor of Richard Weizsacker, the two-term German president. Although this is a largely ceremonial post and the office is not a popularly elected one —the President is elected through an electoral college consisting of the members of the federal P^i^ii^®nt and equal number of members of the state parliaments^ — it will be a quite interesting decision: Neither of the two large parties has a majority in the electoral college. The candidates are Roman Herzog (the Chief Justice of the German Supreme Court) for the Christian Democrats and Johannes Rau (the Prime Minister of the state of Nordrhein—Westfalen) for the Social Democrats. The Free Democrats nominated the well known and popular elder stateswoman Hildegard Hamm—Brucher and the Greens support Jens Rsich, a prominent member of the East Germany democracy movement. In the opinion polls, Rau is by far the most popular candidate, but this will have no impact on the actual vote. All these elections take place in a remarkable situation: First, there is the worst recession in German history since 1945 with over 4 mio. people unemployed. Three factors are combining: The almost complete breakdown of the eastern industrial base, a recession in Western Germany and a structural deteriorating of the German competitiveness in the world market. Second, there is widespread disatisfaction with the way the political systems currently works in Germany. There is the tradition of having a "word of the year", selected by a self- appointed jury: I am sure that the word "Politikverdrossenheit" which literally means "being annoyed by politics" would have been the word of the year in 1993 and would be the frontrunner for 1994, but it was already selected for 1992! (Instead in 1993, the word "Sozialabbau", "dismantling of the social system", was chosen.) Third, the elections of 1993 will of course give a real and complete picture of the German political landscape after unification, which was not provided by the scattered state and local elections in 1991, 1992 and 1993 and will in particular show, how the political situation in the East which conducts its first elections since 1990 will be structured in the future. Fourth, the elections take place while an international audience is quite curious (if not afraid) of the direction Germany will take in the future. Will there be a resurgence of right-wing German nationalism? Will there be a destedsilization of the German political system? Will there be a change in the way Gexmany interprets its international commitments? 2. The Situation of the Germanv Partv Svstemt The "Traditional Parties" Since most of the annoyance with West German politics is focused on the role and the state of the parties (Hamm-Brucher 1993), I will start with some general comments on their current condition and on the individual parties. In all parliamentary systems the role of the parties is central. In Germany this central role has been expanded to areas outside of a narrowly defined political subsystem: Part of the current criticism of parties is focused<on their dominating role in the public broadcasting media, in public administration, in the judicial system, even in local savings&loans associations etc. On.a left-right scale which proved to be very stable since the 1980s (Dalton 1993a: 19) the German party system is fairly easy to describe. Nr. 3 on the handout shows the results of exit polls after the federal election in 1990. The place the voters see themselves would be, on this minus 5 to plus 5 scale, very little to the right of the center, very close to where the FDP is situated by eastern voters. On the very left there is the PDS, the "Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus" (the "Party of Democratic Socialism") which is the successor of the defunct "Socialist Unity Party", the former state party of the GDR. The PDS which organizes mostly former members of the Socialist Unity Party and still has over 100.000 dues-paying members was quite successful in the 1993 local elections in the state of Brandenburg where it gathered more votes than the Christian Democrats. The PDS is a strictly party of the East where it has been somewhat successful in articulating' discontent with the economic situation and where it has a potential of up to 20% of the vote. The Green Party which has been called the "most significant political movement in the 1980s in Western Europe" (Oalton 1993a: 1) is next on the left-right-scale. When it was founded in 1980, there was still a considerable number of conservative environmentalists in the party ranks, but its identity as a party to the left of the Social Democrats was firmly estedalished in the early 1980s. The Greens entered the Western German parliament in 1983, ceu&e back stronger in 1987 and did, surprisingly, not pass "toe 5%-hurdle in 1990 (only a small niunbet of eastern Greens are in the Bundestag, due to the split electoral law for the 1990 election). This electoral defeat did not, however, end the permanent integration of the Green Party into the German party system: They have been successful in all the election since, an set a new record at the state level when they gathered 13,5% of the vote in Hamburg in September 1993. They are still a party that has most of its support among the very young (growing only a little older: in 1980 71% of their voters were under 35, in 1987 only 61% were in the age group under 35), among the highly educated and among the voters with postmaterialistic values (Dalton 1993a: 3ff.). Of all parties, their social basis is the most volatile, their party membership is very small, and their supporters tend to have very weak partisan inclinations. The Social Democrats are, of course, the major left-of-center party in Germany and compete with the Christian Democrats for the leadership of the federal government. They led the goverment from 1969 to 1982; their electoral fate in the 1980s has been one of gradual decline. (Table 4 on the handout shows the results of the parties in the federal elections since 1949.) Although the general trend of the weakening of ties between sociocultural groups and the parties has hit them the hardest, the Social ' Democrats have gained a lot of ground since the elections of li990 which were in many respects a referendum on German unity which was not supported wholeheartedly enough by them. The Social Democrats now lead the goverments of 8 of the 11 western states, are involved in the government of two more, and lead in the opinion polls in respect to the 1994 federal elections. Since the election of Rudolf Scharping, the centrist Prime Minister of the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, as party president in 1993 (the first party president election in German history that was accompanied by a "primary" among the party members), the party shows an unusual degree of unity.
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