IT COULD HAVE been even worse. That was the only consolation for opponents of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (afd), which on September 1st secured its first-ever state-election win, in Thuringia, and in neighbouring Saxony ran the centre-right Christian Democrats (cdu) a close second. At least many anti-afd voters lent their support to the cdu to bolster opposition to the radicals. The Brandmauer (firewall) against the afd remains intact, ensuring it cannot take office. But few could avoid the conclusion expressed by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, that the results were “bitter”. Nor the anxiety that attends the start of a lengthy period of coalition talks in the two eastern states.
It was not supposed to be like this. West Germany’s post-war institutions, extended to the east after reunification in 1990, were designed to see off the chaos of the pre-Nazi Weimar years. Strong “people’s parties” like the cdu and the Social Democrats (spd) were encouraged, to weaken fringe outfits. Parties’ role in politics was even anchored in the constitution. Other safeguards included a rule that parties had to win 5% of the vote to enter parliaments. Courts were permitted to ban parties that violated democratic principles, although none has done so since 1956.
For decades the system yielded strong parties and coherent coalitions. Two factors have eroded it. The first, familiar to many democracies with proportional voting, is a fragmentation of the party system. Seven party groups now sit in the Bundestag. At the last election, in 2021, the cdu (along with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) and the spd between them got less than half the vote for the first time. Germany’s 16 states are run by a rum array of coalitions. Independents without a party affiliation are growing in local politics, especially in the east.
Fragmentation alone did not undermine coalition politics. The addition of the Greens to parliament in the 1980s, for example, in time simply expanded the coalition options available to the spd. But then came the growth of parties that sit beyond the firewalls. In other European countries these have eroded as, usually, centre-right parties have given up resisting the success of national populists: recent examples include Sweden and the Netherlands. In Germany, by contrast, the Brandmauer holds at national and state level.
This applies chiefly to the afd, an outfit radical even by the standards of European right-wing populism. But its strength makes the mathematics of coalition formation that much harder. In Thuringia, for example, the afd now commands 32 of the 88 Landtag seats. That leaves four parties, occupying a spectrum of hard left to centre-right, to assemble a 45-seat majority from 56 seats (see chart). And the cdu’s refusal to work with the Left party, owing to its communist heritage, in effect makes the formation of a stable governing majority impossible. Tricky negotiations, and perhaps the sacrifice of sacred cows, lie ahead.
No wonder the Brandmauer risks crumbling. At the two states’ last elections, in 2019, the strength of the afd forced the cdu to ally with the spd and the Greens in Saxony, and to prop up a minority government in Thuringia. Now the only viable options in both states yoke the cdu to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (bsw)—a “left-conservative” party set up by Ms Wagenknecht, an ex-communist, in January—and the spd in so-called blackberry coalitions (the parties’ colours supposedly resemble the fruit’s stages of ripeness).
In simpler times the bsw’s stance on Ukraine (it wants Germany to cut aid) and other foreign-policy matters would also have rendered it untouchable for the cdu. This week several cdu grandees have urged their eastern colleagues not to work with Ms Wagenknecht. But when Friedrich Merz, the cdu’s national leader, suggested an anti-bsw firewall earlier this year his state branches forced him to backtrack.
“It’s a huge dilemma for the cdu,” says Christian Stecker, a political scientist at the Technical University in Darmstadt. Should Ms Wagenknecht, who has her eye on next year’s federal election, prove an intractable negotiator—she has made security policies that lie beyond the remit of state governments a condition of coalition talks—the cdu could split, or government formation prove impossible. Even if coalitions can be formed, their conflicts could play out at national level in the Bundesrat, the upper house, which comprises representatives from state governments.
All this risks fulfilling the prophecies of figures in the afd such as Björn Höcke, head of the Thuringian branch (pictured), who expect the cdu to implode under the contradictions of the eccentric coalitions it is condemned to lead, enabling the radicals to ride to victory next time. The afd is entrenching itself at local level, and post-election surveys found that a growing number of voters were persuaded by its populist anti-immigrant message, rather than plumping for it out of protest. Meanwhile, many cdu foot-soldiers in the east long to cosy up to the afd. At municipal level across much of east Germany the firewall has long expired.
These problems are magnified in the east, where voters are volatile and more open to extremists or charismatic individuals. But comparable forces are at work in the west, where 85% of Germans live. Since 2021 the federal government has been an awkward three-party coalition, Germany’s first for nearly 70 years. Its early promise soon gave way to endless in-fighting. The dismal results of all three parties on September 1st do not appear to have inspired a renewed attempt to find common ground.
What to do? Mr Stecker thinks parts of Germany should consider less formal modes of governance, including minority or shifting coalitions. But the country does not appear ready for that. Depressingly, one likely outcome after next year’s election is yet another grand coalition of the cdu and the spd—precisely the sort of contraption that the afd has previously found it so profitable to oppose. ■
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