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ISSN: 0140-2382 (Print) 1743-9655 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fwep20

The more things change, the more they stay the same? The German federal of 2017 and its consequences

Thorsten Faas & Tristan Klingelhöfer

To cite this article: Thorsten Faas & Tristan Klingelhöfer (2019) The more things change, the more they stay the same? The German federal election of 2017 and its consequences, West European Politics, 42:4, 914-926, DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2018.1561079 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1561079

Published online: 21 Feb 2019.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fwep20 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 2019, VOL. 42, NO. 4, 914–926 https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1561079

ELECTIONS IN CONTEXT The more things change, the more they stay the same? The German federal election of 2017 and its consequences

Thorsten Faasa and Tristan Klingelhofer€ b aFreie Universit€at Berlin, Berlin, ; bJohns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

Background to the election If one were to compare the composition before and after the 2017 German federal election, one would get an impression of perfect continuity and stability: still presided over a cab- inet of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD). However, this continuity in government make-up masks tremendous shifts that occurred in party competition, the electoral arena, and the in the 2017 election and thereafter. The 2013 election had been a clear victory for Merkel’s CDU/CSU, which almost achieved an absolute majority of seats in the German . The SPD joined Merkel in the government coalition after then masterfully engineered a multi-step process to overcome intra-party resistance to another ‘’ (Faas 2015: 246).1 Making strategic use of their members’ critical stance on entering a Grand Coalition, the Social Democrats achieved quite remarkable policy wins. Ultimately, even sceptical SPD members were convinced and voted in favour of another Grand Coalition in an intra-party referendum that the SPD had agreed to as the decision mode. Angela Merkel was subse- quently re-elected as German chancellor on 17 December 2013. Merkel’s leadership style has been known for its presidential, analytic, pragmatic, and even technical nature. Only rarely has she taken risky, controversial decisions; ending the age of nuclear energy in 2011 after the Fukushima disaster was one of them. However, she was forced to take two such decisions in 2015: First, she agreed to a third financial support package for . Second, and even more important, she agreed to let thousands of refugees, who had been passing through Hungary, into Germany on the first weekend in September. From that weekend

CONTACT Thorsten Faas [email protected] ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 915 onwards, up to 13,000 refugees would arrive in Germany each day, adding up to almost one million people in 2015. Somewhat surprising given her pragmatic style, Merkel defended both of her controversial decisions to an unexpected degree, even against harsh in her own party (Helms et al. 2018). Specifically with respect to immigration, she was criticised harshly, but was eventually able to pac- ify her own party (CDU) at the December 2015 party convention. Her Bavarian sister party (CSU) would remain highly confrontational through- out the rest of the term, demanding a strict yearly limit on migration (Obergrenze), even though fewer and fewer immigrants would come to Germany after 2015. In the wake of that, the electoral and parliamentary union of CDU and CSU became ever more fragile. As the 2017 election approached, the sister parties toed the line out of necessity. The Obergrenze was bracketed out of the joint election manifesto and only included in a special CSU programme. This ‘solution’ worked during the election campaign, but would boomerang in the post-election period. No doubt, there were severe lines of conflict within the Christian Democrats, but apart from those, the Grand Coalition governed rather smoothly. However – as was the case in the 2005–2009 government – the Social Democrats had a hard time gaining visibility and profile under Merkel’s leadership. The ramifications of Merkel’s 2015 decision go way beyond CDU and CSU. -wing populist (AfD) drew new life from the chancellor’s welcoming stance regarding refugees or – as the AfD would henceforth deceptively phrase it – from her ‘illegal opening of German borders’, ultimately culminating in their demand to ‘Get rid of Merkel!’ (‘Merkel muss weg!’). The AfD – founded only in 2013 as a EU- and specifically EURO-sceptic party – had just barely missed entering the Bundestag in 2013. Their electoral support stayed at about 4% to 6% in the polls, before falling in early 2015 in the context of intra-party fights between the founding Eurosceptics on the one hand and right-wing nationalist forces on the other. In the summer of 2015, the party ousted its founder – a professor of economics – with the nationalist forces becoming dominant at the expense of the Eurosceptic economic wing. Against that backdrop, the timing of the comparatively large num- ber of refugees coming to Germany in 2015 worked in the party’s favour. While it had already entered the European and some state beforehand, the party started polling over 10% nationally and achieved stunning state election results in 2016, especially, but by no means exclusively, in the East German states of -Anhalt (24.3%) and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (20.8%). The socialist Left (Die Linke) was the leading opposition party after the 2013 election, as it came in third after the coalition parties (CDU/CSU 916 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€ and SPD). However, the party was not really successful in actually filling this role with life in the eyes of the public. Despite persistent efforts in parliament, the party was not successful in placing its topics on the wider agenda. The Greens experienced the 2013–2017 legislative term as a period of relative stability. Polling consistently around 10% federally (with somewhat rising figures after Merkel’s 2015 refugee decision), they were quite successful on the Land level. Most remarkably, the first Green Ministerpr€asident in German history, Winfried Kretschmann of Baden- Wurttemberg,€ led his party to a record vote share (30.3%) in the 2016 election and was re-elected for another term in office. However, he had to substitute the CDU for the SPD as his junior coalition party, producing the first ever coalition of this kind (a so-called ‘Kiwi Coalition’). The lib- eral FDP spent its first ever legislative term outside of the Bundestag. The 2013 election result had traumatised the party. In the extra-parliamentary opposition, the party attempted to redefine itself and strongly personal- ised around its new leader, .

The campaign The 2017 campaign began with the announcement of SPD party leader Sigmar Gabriel in January 2017 that he would pass on running as the main candidate (Spitzenkandidat). Instead, he – and following him the entire party leadership – nominated the former President of the , . Gabriel also declared that he would step down as the party’s leader so that Schulz could take both positions. After Schulz had ascended to the candidacy, the polls markedly improved for the SPD; it quickly gained an astonishing 10 percentage points (see Figure 1). The party also reported an influx of 10,000 new members in the month after Schulz’s nomination. At an extraordinary party convention in March, Schulz was officially elected as the new party chairman with all of the del- egates’ votes – a particularly noteworthy result in a notoriously div- ided party. The state of elation that characterised SPD sympathisers can be gleaned by the labels that were used at the time. SPD strategists saw an unstop- pable ‘Schulz train’ (‘Schulzzug’) to the chancellery, and a hashtag referred to the ‘god chancellor’ (‘#gottkanzler’). Many believed that Schulz had a fair chance of replacing Merkel after the election; after all, he seemed capable of triggering something among German voters that the SPD had long been looking for. However, euphoria would erode slowly but surely. The polls deteriorated for the SPD from the end of April onwards (see Figure 1). Real electoral losses corroborated the process of decay: The SPD lost in all three state that took place in the first WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 917

50 Election 40 30 Per cent 20 10 0 01/17 04/17 07/17 10/17 01/18 04/18 07/18 10/18

Christian Democrats Social Democrats Greens Liberals Left Right Populists Figure 1. Poll Results of major German parties in 2017 and 2018. Source: http://www.wahlrecht.de; displayed are numbers from the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. half of 2017. The election in North Rhine-Westphalia, a traditional SPD stronghold and Schulz’s home state, was particularly painful. With all parties intensifying campaign efforts in the summer, CDU and CSU attempted to repeat the strategy that brought them their resounding 2013 victory. The campaign started rather late (the Chancellor first and foremost has to govern, and not campaign, of course) and was clearly tailored towards Merkel. Amid all the turbulence of the Brexit ref- erendum and the Trump election, Merkel was stylised as the guarantor of stability. With respect to the migration issue, the message was that the government has everything under control. In line with a strategy of ‘asymmetric (de-)mobilization’ (Faas 2015: 241), CDU campaign events and political communications attempted to minimise potential conflict and shore up identification with the chancellor. A particularly instructive example of conflict avoidance was the sudden introduction of same-sex marriage after a decade-long deadlock. Angela Merkel switched from open opposition to declaring the issue one of con- science in an on-stage interview with the women’s magazine Brigitte. Subsequently, the SPD, party, the Greens, and roughly a quarter of CDU/CSU parliamentarians voted in favour of such a law in the very last Bundestag session before the 2017 summer recess. While some inter- preted the Brigitte interview as an atypical lapse by Merkel, it is at least as likely that she changed course in a sophisticated manoeuvre to keep the 918 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€ issue, on which a majority of Germans seemed to oppose the traditional CDU/CSU position, out of the campaign. Policy-wise, the Christian dem- ocrats emphasised economic issues (Jakobs and Jun 2018: 270) – a rational strategy for the governing party given the booming German economy and low unemployment levels (see Vavreck 2009). Schulz and the SPD often explicitly attacked their senior coalition part- ner. The rationale was to claim credit for policy wins and blame the CDU/CSU for those promises that could not be fulfilled. This approach was deeply rooted in the experience of the 2005–2009 coalition, when the Social Democrats felt that all their achievements had been credited to Merkel. During the TV debate with Merkel, Schulz vigorously attacked and tried to undermine Merkel’s credibility, but also portrayed her style of governing as an ‘attack on ’. Policy-wise, the social demo- crats tried to benefit from their main candidate’s expertise by comple- menting their traditional focus on labour and social policy with strong references to Europe and foreign policy (Jakobs and Jun 2018: 270–71). While highly plausible, the SPD was not able to bring its strategy to full fruition: There is always a rhetorical balancing act involved in attacking a government which one is part of. Because of their status as opposition parties, the Left and the Greens were able to attack the government more comprehensively. The Left heav- ily criticised growing economic inequality, in their manifesto as well as at their campaign events, and connected this with calls for national and international solidarity. This strategy was not completely coherent in that one of its two main candidates, , had irritated her party by taking a critical stance toward migration at the beginning of the year. The Greens were the party that emphasised environmental issues most. However, and evincing how much they have moved away from being a pure ‘niche party’ (Meguid 2007), the Greens also talked a lot about the economy, domestic policies, Europe, and foreign policy (Jakobs and Jun 2018: 270–71). The FDP and AfD were in a special position as extra-parliamentary opposition parties (Franzmann 2018). The FDP probably ran the most personalised and professionalised campaign, completely tailoring it to its leader and Spitzenkandidat, Christian Lindner. It tried to cultivate an image of him as youthful, dynamic, and attractive. Spreading its attention around many different topics in its manifesto (Jakobs and Jun 2018: 270–71), the most central issue in the FDP’s campaign communications was that of digitalisation. Demanding that the state and the people tackle the issue head-on without fatalism or risk-aversion, the party rebranded its stance in favour of the free market (see also Franzmann 2018). The AfD, in contrast, concentrated most of its campaign efforts on the WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 919 migration issue. By taking the most restrictive position of all parties and complementing it with nationalist and anti-diversity stances as well as populist rhetoric, the party aimed to divert attention away from the trad- itional economic left–right dimension to a second one where it, more or less, confronted all other parties (Franzmann 2018; Jakobs and Jun 2018: 279). In terms of campaign channels, they set new standards with respect to using social media as well as mobilising their supporters to disrupt Merkel campaign events. Entering Election Day, the polls predicted that CDU/CSU and SPD would suffer losses, with the former remaining by far the largest party. There was the clear expectation of six parties entering the Bundestag with a close (and media-wise highly emphasised) ‘race for third place’ among FDP, Greens, Left, and AfD. Figure 1 provides an overview of the poll results of all major parties from early 2017 up until late 2018. Within the pre-election period, the Schulz hype is clearly visible in early 2017, but also its lack of sustainability. The Christian Democrats were polling strongly at around 40% just a few weeks before Election Day, but then their trouble started.

The result The 2017 election shattered the statics of the system. Table 1 shows the official results of the election, separating the two tiers of the mixed electoral system (constituency vs. list votes), and the seats received by each party. The Social and Christian Democrats, the so-called ‘people’s parties’ (Volksparteien), crashed and burned: Although the Christian Democrats ‘won’ the election and would remain the largest par- liamentary party group, they received only 32.9% of the decisive list votes and hence lost 8.6 points – their second-worst result in post-war history. Obtaining 20.5% of (list) votes, the SPD received the worst result in post- war history (5.2 percentage points). The Schulz euphoria had turned into its complete opposite; this was a devastating result for the oldest German party. Taken together, the people’s parties barely received a majority of the votes: As was the case after the 2005–2009 Grand Coalition, all constituting parties fared poorly on Election Day. The winners were to be found elsewhere. Just missing the in 2013, both AfD and FDP now won more than 10% of the votes. The AfD received 12.6% (þ7.9), coming in as the third-strongest party. This is, of course, a stunning success given that the party was only founded in 2013. Minutes after the polling stations were closed, AfD Spitzenkandidat went in front of the party’s support- ers to pledge that the AfD will ‘hunt’ the new government and Merkel in 920 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€

Table 1. Result of the 2017 Bundestag election (differences compared to 2013 election). Constituency (‘first’) votes List (‘second’) votes Seats N % D N % D n D Eligible to vote 61,688,485 61,688,485 Voters/turnout 46,976,341 76.2 þ4.6 46,976,341 76.2 þ4.6 Valid votes (sum) 46,389,615 98.8 46,515,492 99.0 709 þ78 Christian Democrats 17,286,238 37.3 8.0 15,317,344 32.9 8.6 246 65 (CDU/CSU) Social Democrats (SPD) 11,429,231 24.6 4.8 9,539,381 20.5 5.2 153 40 Right-wing Populists (AfD) 5,317,499 11.5 þ9.6 5,878,115 12.6 þ7.9 94 þ94 Liberals (FDP) 3,249,238 7.0 þ4.6 4,999,449 10.7 þ6.0 80 þ80 Left (Die Linke) 3,966,637 8.6 þ0.3 4,297,270 9.2 þ0.6 69 þ5 Greens (B90/Die Gr€unen) 3,717,922 8.0 þ0.7 4,158,400 8.9 þ0.5 67 þ4 Others 1,422,850 3.0 2.4 2,325,533 5.0 1.2 0 0 Source: https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/bundestagswahlen/2017/ergebnisse/bund-99.html particular. The FDP gained 6 percentage points compared to 2013 and ended its four-year hiatus from parliament with 10.7%. The Left and Greens were basically able to hold their respective vote shares constant. The Left party obtained 9.2% of the second votes (þ0.6), the Greens 8.9% (þ0.5). These are somewhat disappointing results given that the Left had proclaimed itself the opposition leader and the Greens had almost constantly polled over 10% throughout 2016. It also meant that neither party could benefit from the poor result of the Social Democrats, which in turn meant that the three parties together – often seen as a ‘left bloc’ in German politics – clearly missed a majority in parliament. The historic dimension of these numbers is further underlined by look- ing at them from a party system point of view: The combined vote share of both major parties has never been lower in post-war Germany. Mirroring trends for the core mainstream parties in many other European , their joint support has nearly been cut in half compared to the 1960s average (Katz and Mair 2018: 176). Correspondingly, Germany’s effective number of parties has never been higher (4.6). While for the first time since 1998 turnout increased sub- stantially (76.2%; þ4.6 points), it remains low compared to German elec- tions from the 1950s to the 1980s. The new German Bundestag is the largest one ever (709 seats). Electoral reforms requested by the Constitutional Court had led to a pol- itical compromise potentially causing large numbers of surplus seats. The interaction of poor results for Christian and Social Democrats nationwide with the fact that these parties would still win the vast majority of seats in the 299 constituencies triggered the underlying mechanism, i.e. gave those parties a large number of surplus seats. Given a mixed-member WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 921 proportional system, those in turn had to be balanced, causing this signifi- cant increase in legislative size. Germany now has, as critics would point out, the second largest parliament in the world, just behind China. Even with respect to constituencies, the 2017 result was remarkable, as the Left Party was able to obtain a relative majority of first votes in five constitu- encies, the AfD in three, and the Greens in one, sending local MPs to parliament. In order to shed some light on what happened in this extraordinary election, it is useful to look at differences in the parties’ electorates. Based on a large-scale post-election survey conducted as part of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES; Roßteutscher et al. 2017), the upper panel of Figure 2 provides some background with respect to socio- demographic correlates of voting for the different parties. The most pro- nounced picture emerges for the right-wing populists (AfD): Their voters are predominantly male and middle-aged (35–59 years old). In compari- son, voters of the Christian and Social Democrats are relatively old, while Green voters are younger than others. Much more remarkable with respect to Green voters is the fact that about 70% of them have higher education. With respect to origin, the Left party (the roots of which are in the former Socialist party of the GDR) still has a strong backing in , which is also true for the right-wing populist party AfD. Taken together, this clearly shows that the old parties of still have problems faring well in East Germany. AfD voters also stand out when we look at issues and candidates, as the lower panel of Figure 2 indicates: Voters’ average self-placements on the classic left–right scale show that supporters of the Left party are fur- thest to the left, followed by Greens and Social Democrats. Liberals and Christian Democrats are around the centre and voters of the AfD furthest to the right. However, these overall assessments on the symbolic left–right dimension do not necessarily fit with placements on substantially differ- entiated dimensions. For all voters – except those of the AfD – place- ments on a socio-economic as well as a socio-cultural dimension (often referred to as GAL-TAN, i.e. green, alternative, libertarian vs. traditional, authoritarian, nationalist parties; e.g. Hooghe et al. 2002), are further to the right, relative to their placement on the left–right dimension. Moreover, the respective positions on the socio-economic vs. the socio- cultural dimension do fall considerably apart for some parties, especially Social Democrats and the Left. Culturally, their voters are further to the right (TAN pole) than they are economically – and hence quite far apart from their overall left–right positioning. The exceptional status of the AfD and its voters also becomes evident with respect to socio-cultural issues. It is here that their voters are substantially far (right) out towards 922 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€

Christian Democrats Christian Democrats

Social Democrats Social Democrats

Liberals Liberals

Greens Greens

Left Left

Right−Wing Populists Right−Wing Populists

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Per cent Per cent

Sex Age Region Education Male 18/34 East Germany Low 35/59 Med 60/99 High

Christian Democrats Christian Democrats

Social Democrats Social Democrats

Liberals Liberals

Greens Greens

Left Left

Right−Wing Populists Right−Wing Populists

−5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 Average Position Average Evaluation

Dimension Candidates Left−Right Merkel (Christian Democrats) Socio−Economic Schulz (Social Democrats) Socio−Cultural Gauland (Right−wing Populists) Figure 2. Composition of parties’ electorates in the 2017 German election. Source: German Longitudinal Election Study, Post-Election Survey. the TAN pole. What is more, analyses of the data (not shown) indicate that the socio-cultural dimension had a higher salience than the socio- economic one for the electorates of all the parties. Regarding candidate evaluations, Chancellor Merkel – at least at the time of the election – still had a strong backing among her party support- ers, less so among Social Democrats (even though they were in coalition with her). The reverse is true for Schulz and his support among Social and Christian Democrats, though to a lesser degree. Merkel also was sur- prisingly popular among Liberal, but also Green voters, leaving her chal- lenger Schulz clearly behind in both groups. Even among socialist voters, Schulz was barely ahead of Merkel. A completely different picture again emerges for the AfD – in two ways: First, its leading candidate Gauland was evaluated extremely negatively by supporters of all parties except the AfD. Second, Merkel as well as Schulz were evaluated highly negatively by AfD supporters.

The new government and beyond The 2017 election was historic, emphasising new lines of conflict in German politics. Turmoil, however, would only really start after the elec- tion, as the results caused major problems in terms of coalition building: SPD party leader Schulz announced in his concession speech on election WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 923 night that his party would not join yet another coalition with CDU/CSU. A renewal of the alliance seemed to fly in the face of the huge losses that the governing parties had just suffered. Given the lack of a parliamentary majority for either of the traditional coalitions (CDU/CSU–FDP, SPD–Greens) or a coalition of the left (SPD–Greens–Left) or the ‘Traffic- light Coalition’ (SPD–Greens–FDP), the only remaining viable option was the so-called ‘Jamaica Coalition’ (CDU/CSU–FDP–Greens). Any form of coalition with AfD had been rejected ex ante. Before coalition talks could start, CDU and CSU had to confront their shaky pre-election compromise regarding the Obergrenze. The sister par- ties agreed on a limit of accepting about 200,000 refugees per year. Although both potential Jamaica partners, Liberals and Greens, heavily criticised the compromise, talks finally commenced on 18 October. Unsurprising given the diverging preferences of especially the FDP, the CSU, and the Greens in terms of economic, welfare, and immigration pol- icies (Br€auninger et al. 2019:89–91), the negotiations proved difficult and protracted. After the potential governing partners missed a number of self-imposed deadlines, it was the FDP which finally left the negotiations, with its leader Lindner proclaiming that ‘It is better not to govern than to govern poorly’. Given that the SPD had deemed itself unavailable for a renewed coali- tion, the break-up of the Jamaica talks seriously brought the possibility of a Christian Democratic as well as a new election to the fore, both unprecedented in German post-war history. Clearly, the lat- ter option was unattractive for most parties as the polls projected the AfD to gain even more votes (see Figure 1), making coalition talks ever more complicated. Consequently, the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, deemed it necessary to take on the historically unusual role of trying to influence the formation process substantively (Br€auninger et al. 2019: 93). Echoing arguments about responsibility for the state, he con- vinced the SPD leadership to (re-)consider joining a coalition with the Christian Democrats. A stony path was ahead of them: And after some preliminary coalition talks at the end of 2017, the SPD party leadership managed to get the support of delegates at an extraordinary party conven- tion in January, freeing the way for official coalition talks. A few weeks later a coalition agreement was completed with yet again stunning victo- ries for the SPD in terms of both policy and office. For instance, the Social Democrats took three heavyweight departments: Finance, Foreign Affairs, and Employment/Social Affairs. At the same time, Martin Schulz was forced to resign from the party leadership to enable the ‘renewal’ of the party. , who had assumed the leadership of the SPD parliamentary faction after the election, took over, becoming the first female leader of the SPD. 924 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€

As had been agreed upon at the extraordinary party convention, the party’s participation in the coalition was then put up to membership ref- erendum, mirroring the 2013 procedure (Faas 2015: 246). CDU delegates approved it at a party convention in February. After an intense campaign and a series of regional conferences, the SPD leadership was yet again able to convince its members – 66% of the SPD members eventually approved the coalition agreement (turnout: 78%) – and Angela Merkel was re-elected as Chancellor on 14 March 2018. Never before had it taken so long to (re-)elect a chancellor after an election – even exceeding the 2013 post-election hiatus. Note also that this is already the fourth instan- tiation of a coalition of Christian and Social Democrats, which had trad- itionally been considered a coalition of last resort to be formed only under exceptional circumstances. The historical label ‘Grand Coalition’,of course, no longer fits very well given the electoral and parliamentary size and shape of the constituent parties. As can be seen from the more recent polls (see Figure 1), the public image of the ‘Grand’ Coalition has suffered tremendously since it took office. In the course of little more than half a year, PR debacles amassed: for example, there was yet another bitter fight between CDU and CSU about the refugee issue which even threatened to break up their union. Amid this turbulence, two important state elections deeply hurt the Christian Democrats. In , the CSU lost more than 10 percentage points and thereby its ability to govern alone. In , the CDU lost even more than 11 percentage points. In both cases, the Greens, which in January had elected two new party chairs, fared extraordinarily well and started polling over 20% on the federal level. The morning after the Hesse election, Angela Merkel announced that she would step down as the CDU at the regularly scheduled convention in December, while wanting to finish her term as chancellor. Immediately after the announcement, competition for the leadership (and implicitly for the next chancellorship) broke out between Friedrich Merz (the bearer of hope of the party’s conservative wing who had left politics after being ousted by Merkel from the chairmanship of the CDU/CSU parliamentary party group in 2002), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK; CDU secretary general and Merkel protegee), and (vocal Merkel critic who had been incorporated by her as Minister of Health in the 2017 government). In the end, AKK became new party chair, barely beating Merz with 52% of the delegate votes in a run-off election at the party convention.

Outlook Roughly one year after the 2017 election, the sitting German government might give the superficial impression of continuity. As we have seen, WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 925 however, tremendous shifts linger under the surface. It is necessary more than ever to rely on two dimensions to describe German party competi- tion accurately: a socio-economic and a socio-cultural one. Moreover, the AfD has been very successful in bolstering the TAN pole of this second dimension and also increasing its salience overall. It thereby reoriented the patterns of party competition, giving the other parties (traditionally defined in socio-economic terms) severe headaches. The ever more fragmented German party system makes government formation increasingly difficult (see Br€auninger et al. 2019). If the down- fall of Christian and Social Democrats should continue, not even a ‘Grand’ coalition might be feasible in the future. What is more, the party system itself does not seem to be in equilibrium just yet. On the right, , the former party chair of the AfD who had left the party a day after the election, tried to found a new party. While unsuccessful, severe tensions inside AfD remain between the radical and the more moderate forces. On the left, Sahra Wagenknecht, the (co-)leader of the Left parliamentary party group, founded a movement to supposedly unite the left (‘Aufstehen’). The hesitation among SPD and Greens to join, but also the disputes in the Left party indicate that this attempt may actually present a dangerous precursor of a split of the Left. The end of Angela Merkel’s tenure as CDU party leader truly is the end of an era. It remains to be seen whether she can finish her term as chancel- lor as she intends to and whether AKK can hold the CDU together. Time will also tell whether Merkel’s eventual exit from politics fully brings to a close the relative stability that has characterised not only her chancellorship but also German politics more generally for a long time.

Note 1. For other recent contributions in the elections in context series, see for example Prosser (2018), van Holsteyn (2018) and Bodlos and Plescia (2018).

Acknowledgements We thank Jette Bergen, Paula Jost,€ and Fabio Best for excellent research assist- ance. Arndt Leininger, Elizabeth Mendenhall, Wolfgang C. Muller,€ and Simon Richter have provided invaluable feedback. We take full responsibility for any mistakes, misinterpretations, or misplaced emphasis.

Notes on contributors Thorsten Faas is Professor of Political Sociology at Freie Universit€at Berlin. His work focuses on elections, electoral behaviour and election campaigns. [thorsten. [email protected]] 926 T. FAAS AND T. KLINGELHOFER€

Tristan Klingelh€ofer is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. His dissertation investigates the role of emotions in (multi-)party competition. [[email protected]]

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