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German Politics Is Baffling. Here’s How to Understand It

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Two regional ballots next month will mark the unofficial start of Germany’s campaign sprint to the federal election on Sep. 26. That in turn will be the occasion for a new leader to take over from Angela Merkel, after her 16 years as chancellor of the European Union’s largest country and economy. In short: It’s an important year.

Unfortunately, this also means that international readers interested in European politics are in for some confusion and frustration in the coming months. At least that’s my extrapolation from the two other German elections I covered, in 2013 and 2017. How German politics works, what matters and what doesn’t, and how policy might eventually change: All of this is hard to divine, much less convey, especially to “Anglo-Saxons.”

Technically, the German system isn’t uniquely baffling. Austria and Belgium, for example, are also federal states with parliamentary systems, proportional representation, and lots of quirky conventions on top. But the policy machine of Berlin, thanks to its relative weight in the EU and beyond, is seen as more important to suss out than, say, Vienna’s.

The difficulties start with personalities and style. In the U.S., U.K. or France, politicians (with monikers like “The Donald,” “BoJo,” “Jupiter,” etc.) tend to be colorful and the political options (left, right, populist, internationalist) on full display. By contrast, Germany’s mainstream politicians tend to be so drab and woolly you’d think they were doing it on purpose.

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They actually might be. Historians such as Oxford University’s Timothy Garton Ash think Germans distrust passion and soaring oratory in politics because it still evokes the Nazi era. “Because of Hitler, the palette of contemporary German political rhetoric is deliberately narrow, cautious and boring,” he’s written.

The result is politicians like Armin Laschet, the new boss of the center-right Christian Democrats, or Olaf Scholz, the candidate for the center-left Social Democrats. Both have the charisma of a middle-management bookkeeper and more arms (“On the one hand … and on the other …”) than the Indian goddess Durga.

Their hairsplitting centrism has another source, however. It’s the centrality of coalitions in the German system. This means that any politician must collaborate in some form with adversaries. Scholz, for example, is in Merkel’s cabinet as finance minister. So he’s running against the Christian Democrats of Laschet and Merkel even as he’s governing with them. That’s confusing even for Germans.

Moreover, coalition geometry has become more complicated in the past generation. Postwar West Germany in effect had three political blocs: the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, with the color black; the Social Democrats, in red; and the pro-business Free Democrats, with yellow.

In the 1980s the environmental Greens joined this system. Then, after reunification, the descendants of East Germany’s communists entered parliament, later calling themselves The Left and picking a darker hue of red. More recently, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) joined in, with blue (though it’s a pariah that none of the other parties will partner with).

That leaves a lot of potential combinations in both the federal parliament and the 16 regional assemblies. And this is where German wonkery becomes incomprehensible to outsiders. The argot teems with color puns: A red-yellow-green coalition is a traffic light, a black-green one a kiwifruit, black-yellow-green would be Jamaica (after that country’s flag), and so on.

The most important thing to watch for this year is the next color combination in the federal government. A red-red-green government — that is, an all-left union of Social Democrats, The Left and Greens — would amount to a mini-revolution, and a disaster. But there appears to be no mathematical chance of that, because polls consistently show the three left parties jointly getting fewer than half the Bundestag seats.

This all but assures that the center-right blacks, as the strongest bloc, will lead a coalition. And their body language of late has leaned toward teaming up with the increasingly popular Greens to replace the Social Democrats. So the next German government could be a kiwifruit.

There was a time when this combination would have been unthinkable — the blacks’ original base was the clergy, the Greens were tree-hugging, free-loving hippies. These days, however, this coalition would be much less shocking. And that has to do with Germany’s federalism.

Germany’s second (but not “upper” in the Anglo-Saxon sense) house is the Bundesrat, or “federal council.” Unlike the U.S. Senate with its individually elected members, this assembly seats the 16 regional governments. But those administrations are also composed of coalitions, so that the color palette looks even more motley (see below).

#lazy-img-368073189:beforepadding-top:64.10899964144855%;relates to A Primer on Germany’s Election Year: Watch the Palette

As you can see, the three major camps are already collaborating with one another somewhere. So they have an incentive to avoid alienating each other too much. Moreover, each is present in enough regional governments to form potential majorities in the second chamber, with the power to block bills coming in from the Bundestag. This is another reason why policy change in Germany is usually incremental. As any painter knows, a palette in which all colors are mixed eventually becomes mud-brown.

So what will happen in the run-up to Sep. 26? The main relay events will be several state elections, starting on March 14 with Baden-Wuerttemberg (currently governed by a kiwifruit coalition, but with the Greens in the lead) and Rhineland-Palatinate (a traffic light). In theory, these ballots could change the balance of power in the Bundesrat, but that looks unlikely.

In practice, they’ll be seen as early barometers of the national mood. But the analysis tends to get obtuse. Every state is different — especially between what used to be West and East Germany — and nobody really knows whether any given regional ballot says more about local or federal politics.

Worse, there’s no equivalent of America’s midterms — one big day with many simultaneous elections — that could serve as a reliable bellwether. Instead, there’s a “drip drip” of little results, says Jeff Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington.

My advice is to keep squinting at the overall hue of the national palette. It’ll always tend toward mud-brown. But a black-green pattern is also becoming discernable. As you see in the Bundesrat chart, the two are already cohabiting monogamously in two state governments and in a menage-a-trois in three more. So they’re used to each other.

If Christian Democrats and Greens convince voters that they can finally reconcile ecology (Greens) and economy (blacks), they could together dominate the zeitgeist for years. They’d have to compromise on a lot, but that’s what German politicians do.

Overall, I’d say that German policy will become slightly more fiscally dovish, ecologically hawkish, pro-European and anti-Russian. As ever, there will be no sudden moves or big leaps — unless, of course, the world around Germany changes radically, which can’t be ruled out.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Andreas Kluth at akluth1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.net

Source: – Bloomberg

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Former PQ minister turns back on politics, records jazz album

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A former minister with the Parti Québécois (PQ) says his time in politics is over, and he’s ready to focus on his first love: the arts.

“People have to remember that I was dealing with the arts for 30 years before I went into politics,” Maka Kotto tells CTV News a day before boarding a flight to his native Cameroon for a music festival. “After 14 years in politics, I felt that I did what I had to do. And so, I decided to get back to my old practices.”

Kotto represented the PQ in the riding of Bourget from 2008 to 2018 and was also the culture minister in Pauline Marois’ short-lived government.

In addition to his time in provincial politics, Kotto represented the Bloc Québécois from 2004 to 2008 in the Canadian House of Commons — the party’s first Black member of Parliament.

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“It drained my energy and I lost contact with my family, with my friends. When I was inside, I didn’t realize that,” he said. “My mother went to the other side in 2018 and I couldn’t say good-bye… I wrote a song about that.”

Kotto says his mother’s death was a moment that notably marked him.

“This was very awful. Until now, I still suffer for that,” he said. “You see, when you’re investing in politics, you have many, many sacrifices that you’re facing.”

Closing the political door and turning his attention back to music and acting was an effortless decision for the 62-year-old.

“This was much, much more, easier than politics,” he said.

Kotto says he remembers his father not liking the idea of him getting involved in the arts as a child — he wanted him to “be a good student.”

“The last time I sang, I was between 16 or 17 years old,” he recalls. “That was in college, at the boarding school church. It was a French Jesuit boarding school in Cameroon.”

When asked what’s scarier: putting out a jazz album or working in politics, Kotto doesn’t miss a beat.

“Oh, politics is scary because you don’t have fun in politics. You have problems every day, every night, every morning and you have to solve real problems,” he said. “When you’re singing, it’s a passion…The only goal you have to reach is to share what you feel.”

Kotto says he worked for about six months on his album, collaborating with the likes of Antoine Gratton, Taurey Butler and the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal (ONJ).

“We have a lot of fun. That was the goal, and I hope that everybody listening to this album will have the same fun as the one we had in studio,” he said.

A few words he uses to describe his music: fun, love and friendship.

The release of Kotto’s first album is scheduled for the winter of 2024.

 

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

The Trump campaign is saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was referring only to the US auto industry when he warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected. Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona debate what he meant.

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

The Trump campaign is saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was referring only to the US auto industry when he warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected. Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona debate what he meant.


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