Posted on 09/22/2018 8:51:26 AM PDT by Olog-hai
For most of Germany’s postwar history, the conservative CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD) were the undisputed twin poles of German politics. Known as Volksparteien, literally “popular parties,” these big-tent associations of interests have led every government since 1949. They were the German equivalents of the Republicans and Democrats in the United States or Tories and Labour in the United Kingdom.
But their popularity is eroding alarmingly. In the words of venerable German political scientist Herfried Münkler, the Volksparteien look increasingly like “last year’s models.”
The most recent Deutschlandtrend survey, published on September 20, put support for the CDU/CSU at only 28 percent, while a mere 17 percent of respondents said they would vote for the SPD. Their combined total of 45 percent is not only lower than ever before — it would be insufficient to form a government, if a general election were held today.
Much has been made of the rise of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party eating away at the mainstream, but all of the country’s smaller parties are profiting from the decline of the CDU/CSU and SPD. For the first time in post-war history, there are six major parliamentary groups represented in the Bundestag, and the trend looks set to continue. […]
Fighting about migrants, particularly within the conservative bloc, has also led voters to look for other alternatives. The AfD claims that the secret to their success is popular outrage over Merkel’s welcoming policy toward refugees, but surveys have shown that the general populace is far less up in arms about that issue than far-right populists are. What turns voters away from the Volksparteien is the sense that government is too dysfunctional to meet this and other challenges. …
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
Its a reversion to the politics of the Weimar period with the steady decline of the center in German politics. The Cold War merely delayed its onset.
What next in Germany? Who knows.
Germany’s current government is a Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from the decaying body parts of intellectually and morally dead establishment parties.
Something like that is happening in Austria, where the two parties have been largely sharing power since WWI. Austria almost always has a coalition government, and it’s usually been between the Socialists and the People’s Party (the equivalent of Germany’s Christian Democrats).
“But their popularity is eroding alarmingly”
I wonder why it is “alarming.”
history repeats itself, only the individual actors change.
people are people regardless of the time period.
At least post-WWII Germany has the 5% vote threshold for a party to enter the Bundestag. Still, things could get "interesting" in the future.
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