By Kristóf Szombati
Kristóf Szombati is the Editor responsible for Political Economy at the Review of Democracy. He has a background in both politics and academia, and is currently working as a research associate at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Germany is facing an endemic crisis of its economic model as a whole, with the ruling left-liberal-green coalition also facing a crisis of moral authority after the recent regional elections in East Germany, which amounted to a political earthquake. What awaits is a new governmental project under the aegis of the conservatives and under pressure from far-right forces.
Three weeks after the regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, Brandenburg’s voters went to the polls on Sunday. While the election results on September 1 had already triggered a political earthquake at the federal level, this third state election is likely to be recorded as at least a severe aftershock.
For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a far-right party – classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – has won a regional election. 32.8 percent of the votes in Thuringia went to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), with the conservative CDU arriving distant second (23.6 percent). In Saxony, where elections were also held on September 1, the AfD barely missed out on first place, receiving 30.6 percent of votes against the CDU’s 31.9 percent.
Just as the CDU in Saxony managed to narrowly push the AfD into second place, in Brandenburg the social democrats (SPD) managed to prevent the far-right party from winning, scoring 30.9 percent against the AfD’s 29.2. Nevertheless,
the AfD has clearly entrenched itself as the country’s second strongest political force,
acquiring the capacity to decisively influence the national political agenda and create major headaches for coalition-building on the regional level. The strength of the AfD has also triggered a regrouping of the anti-AfD vote, with the supporters of smaller parties (the Greens, the Liberals and the Left) flocking to the SPD and CDU in the hope of preventing the far-right from winning elections.
The result has been close to disastrous for smaller parties. The Greens only made it into the Saxon legislature, the Left (die Linke) only managed to enter the one in Thuringia, and the Liberals (FDP) dropped out of all three state legislatures. At the same time, the new left-conservative alliance led by Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) achieved double-digit results, leaving the SPD and CDU reliant on the party’s support to build working majorities in the three Eastern regions.
Although the AfD and BSW are somewhat weaker in West Germany, the results have massively shaken the ruling so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition made up of the SPD, the Greens and the Liberals.
Coming almost exactly a year before the next federal election, the outcome has laid bare voters’ dissatisfaction with the country’s direction of travel and also made abundantly clear that the ‘traffic light’ will be out of power in at most twelve months’ time.
An early election is also very much on the cards, even if the Liberals – who risk falling out the Bundestag for a second time – will think twice before leaving the coalition given that the latter still offers the chance to implement their pet project of a new pension policy, which could potentially allow them to rally their base.
The ‘Eastern earthquake’ does not simply foreshadow the fall of a government which has been beset by internal bickering, indecisiveness in the face of interlocking crises, and a general cluelessness in relation to its economic and political strategy – although all that is certainly true.
Since it came to power three years ago, the coalition led by Olaf Scholz – who will probably be remembered first and foremost for failing to lead in crucial moments – has tethered on the brink of adopting ambitious reforms, but by and large settled on half-hearted policies that fail to make a decisive difference in everyday people’s lives but come with notable costs.
The most glaring example is the by now infamous heating law or Heizungsgesetz, a policy proposed by the Greens to speed up the green energy transition in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In order to be effective and acceptable to the lower-middle class, which has borne the brunt of soaring living costs, the policy which foresaw amongst other things the replacement of private gas boilers would have needed to involve the distribution of massive subsidies to households willing to undertake expensive investments in renewable heating infrastructure. The problem was that the FDP, at the helm of the Ministry of Finance, has been adamantly opposed to (green) Keynesianism and, more particularly, to the softening of the so-called debt brake policy, which was enshrined into the Constitution in 2009.
At a time when Germany is in dire need of extra financing – witness Ukraine’s defense needs, the costs of the energy transition, and the need to defend key industrial sectors in the face of high energy costs and cut-throat global competition – the Schuldenbremse effectively functions as a financial straightjacket that prevents the state from accruing debts beyond 0.35 percent of its GDP. Although Scholz’s party publicly labeled the debt brake a “brake on the future”, the chancellor has proven incapable of overcoming opposition from the Liberals.
Other examples could also be cited to illustrate the government’s and chancellor’s inability to come up with a coherent economic strategy. To be fair, any leadership would struggle to find fixes to the country’s deep-seated economic woes. The war in Ukraine abruptly ended the supply of cheap Russian fossil fuels in 2022; Chinese businesses now outcompete Germans in many sectors where the latter have historically enjoyed a significant advantage; the Chinese and US markets are more and more difficult to access due to the rise of protectionist policies; global economic headwinds are slowing the inflow of much-needed investment; and any prospect of recovery is dampened by the burden of decaying public infrastructures (schools, roads, etc.).
What we are looking at then is an endemic crisis of the German economic model as a whole, which in some ways (namely, a record number of industrial disputes) resembles the situation before the ousting of chancellor Helmut Kohl at the 1998 election, and in others (namely, the shakiness of the ruling left-liberal coalition) the predicament of the UK in the year preceding the critical 1979 election which led to Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.
The symptoms are now plain for everyone to see: high inflation and the consequent loss of purchasing power; the country’s leading automaker announcing a historic plan to close two plants in Germany and Intel announcing the postponement of the country’s largest ever foreign direct investment; and a chronic budgetary deficit that is forcing the government to mull unpopular cuts. The fact of the matter is that there are no quick fixes to a broken model and it has become abundantly clear that it will be up to the next government to come up with a coherent and politically feasible economic strategy.
What we are observing is, however, not simply a failed economic strategy, but a broader hegemonic crisis of left-liberal-green politics. While – as Gramsci explained – a credible economic program is key for securing popular consent to a particular project of governance, at a deeper level rulers’ claim to leadership must always be morally grounded.
Moral leadership can draw on several sources to blossom, but in democratic settings there are two things it cannot forgo under any circumstances: rulers must credibly demonstrate a deep understanding of and empathy toward the disparate needs of the heterogeneous groups that make up a social formation; and they must be able to couch key decisions, which in most cases unavoidably mean them placing the needs of some over those of others, in a credible vision for a future that is beneficial to all.
Now, given that I have witnessed first-hand the collapse of left-liberal hegemony in Hungary in the 2006-2010 period and regularly make visits to Brandenburg (the site of my current research), it is hard not to notice that a collapse in the left-liberal-green camp’s moral authority is well underway in Germany. The general mood among lower-middle class people is that “the comrades” in Berlin (the word comrade here signaling the dogmatic, self-righteous, even authoritarian character of left-liberal-green politics) don’t understand the concerns and heed the basic needs of everyday people.
On the most well-meaning reading, the abandonment of people on the margins of the state (which is where rural East Germans still see themselves within the polity) is that those above are preoccupied with big foreign policy issues like defending Ukraine and do not have enough time for such chronic (but supposedly not acute) problems as the dearth of buses and trains running constantly late.
At the other end of the spectrum we find those who believe that they are the victims of a grand conspiracy aimed at transforming the foundations of German society by pursing lax immigration policy and redefining what it means to be a man and a woman through inclusive gender and language policy. In the middle we find people who are fed up with the pace of social transformation and feel that the state could and should do more to protect them from risk, harm and loss. The bottom line is that the ruling elite, and especially the Greens who – thanks to painstaking work put into their stigmatization by the likes of the Bild Zeitung – have acquired the status of ‘folk devils,’ are hopelessly out of touch and can no longer be trusted.
The most condensed image I can muster to convey the perception of aloofness, abandonment and lack of credibility which has been plaguing the party is that of a student in Leipzig handing a campaign flyer back to Greens co-leader Ricarda Lang with the words “I don’t find the anti-car policy you’re pursuing okay,” accompanied by a brief explanation that in her village public transport is a joke and that she can’t afford switching to electric.
Where all this will lead is anybody’s guess. The political situation remains fluid and dynamic. What the left-liberal-green camp is facing is most likely not a full wipeout, as in Hungary. The Liberals and the Left party are in the biggest trouble, with the first facing a parliamentary exit and the second outright extinction. The SPD is also in an extremely difficult position, as it will not only have to significantly modify its profile and try to erase the very memory of the Scholz years, but find a way to compete with upcoming rivals – the BSW, CDU and AfD – for the lower-middle class and working class vote, without which it cannot remain an influential force. Prospects for the Greens appear equally gloomy, confronted as they are with a public that looks increasingly skeptically on ambitious climate legislation and also having seen a massive decline in youth support since the last election. As for the BSW, it will sooner or later have to show its true colors by deciding whether it will stick with its protest strategy or develop clear policy positions and priorities in the hope of seeing them implemented at the regional level and perhaps the national one as well.
There are, however, two things we can be certain of. First, the AfD has managed to flood the gates of the cordon sanitaire erected around it by convincing a large and heterogeneous group that it is the most useful instrument for forcing political change. Thus, despite assurances from all of the above-mentioned parties that they will not cooperate with the party, informal deals will have to be struck in the East German regions where the AfD has obtained more than a third of seats, which effectively gives it a veto right over key decisions. Despite the policy of containment remaining in place on the national level, the party has clearly found a way to shape the views of the public, becoming the leading voice on matters of asylum and immigration and forcing the current government to implement harsher policies. Together with the country’s bleak mood, this has set the stage for the far-right to make further gains on the regional and national level.
The second certainty is that we will have a government led by the CDU after the next election. However, the composition of this government is still unclear, with the SPD and BSW being the most likely candidates to support a conservative-led government.
While a crackdown on immigration and the further diluting of the ecological agenda are all but given, it is unclear what the CDU’s answer will be on the level of economic strategy.
At the moment the party’s pro-worker and business-friendly wings are both flexing their muscles and making a case for their own policy priorities. The Federal Republic has entered uncharted territory. The earthquake that swept the AfD to victory in Thuringia and near-victory in Saxony and Brandenburg has reset the political stage, signaling the demise not only of Olaf Scholz’s premiership but of left-liberal-green hegemony. What awaits is the making of a new hegemony and governmental project under the aegis of the conservatives and under pressure from far-right forces.
