Kristen Ghodsee of the Department of Russian and East European Studies discusses the outcome of the German parliamentary elections and the implications for Europe’s future.
The German flag flies in front of the Reichstag building the day after the German Bundestag elections were held.
The German parliamentary elections have seen the ruling party voted out of power, along with a dramatic rise by a far-right party. Penn Today spoke with Kristen Ghodsee, chair of the Department of Russian and East European Studies, who has been following the campaign closely, about what the results mean for Germany and for Europe.
What are the top-level takeaways from the German elections?
The headliner is that—and the latest results are still holding pretty steady—the conservatives, the Christian Democratic Union, Angela Merkel’s party, has taken the plurality. They will be able to rule in coalition with the Social Democrats. And that means the far-right party, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), will be shut out of power, which is good. The bad news is that the AfD finished in second place and doubled their share of the vote. Very interestingly, they won the plurality in all of the five former states of East Germany.
The other piece of news which is very important to mention is that the Left party, called Die Linke, got 8.8% of the vote, which is a very, very good showing for this party. Another party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, is hovering below the 5% cutoff line for seats in the Bundestag. It is actually a splinter party from the Left, so, if the Left had not been divided, it probably would have won more votes than the Greens.
The far-right Alternative for Germany received about 20% of the vote, doubling its support in just four years. How did the AfD receive the best showing for a far-right party since World War II?
For an openly far-right party, this is an incredible showing at the national level. They have done well in the regional elections, at the state level, in the past, but they’ve never gotten so many votes in the national elections. Twenty percent is a pretty serious force. They will be shut out of government, they will definitely be in opposition, but they’re playing the long game. They’re hoping the coalition government proves unstable and they can force another snap election and increase their share. I believe a lot of the AfD vote is in protest of the kind of center, global, neoliberal position. As we’re seeing in many societies, electorates are fracturing to the extremes.
Looking at the results map, it appears that the AfD dominated in the former East Germany while the Christian Democrats largely control the west. Are there east-west dynamics still in play hearkening back to the Cold War?
Yes, you can see it very clearly in these electoral results. People in the east are very frustrated with the way that German reunification played out 35 years ago. There are intergenerational wounds that have not healed. Unemployment is higher in the east, there are tensions especially for women, pensions are not equal. There are many lasting frustrations.
Mitchell Orenstein and I wrote a book where we made the argument that the way that the transition from Communism to capitalism was handled basically gave birth to a lot of right-wing politics in Eastern Europe, and every single election has borne that out. People are absolutely frustrated with the status quo. They’re absolutely frustrated with the center. They’re frustrated with neoliberal capitalism. They’re frustrated with inequality. They’re frustrated, especially in Germany, with migration. The AfD, for instance, is very anti-European Union. They’re very critical of NATO. They’re very critical of basic ideas of multiculturalism.
The party known as the Left, Die Linke, was another surprise success. It rose very quickly and got just under 9% of the vote, capturing a quarter of the youngest voters. What went into that?
They won the plurality in Berlin, which is huge. They also got a lot of the youth vote, which is important because young voters are the future. I think this is a major victory for the Left, especially because of the split with the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. There was a fear that neither of them would be above the 5% cutoff and would both be shut out. Colleagues and I have been going back and forth; 8.8% is a massive surprise. I think no one’s more surprised than Die Linke.
There is a firewall in place by Germany’s main parties stating they will not cooperate with any extremist party such as AfD. Will that firewall hold?
That’s the question everybody has. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union who will probably be the new chancellor, has said very clearly he will not cooperate with the AfD. The Social Democrats will not cooperate with the AfD. There have been so many popular protests in Germany against the AfD that at least for the immediate future, they can govern without them; they don’t need them. I think the mainstream parties in Germany are going to do their best to reduce the factors in Germany society that are polarizing the electorate towards the extremes.
How do the results in Germany reflect the broader political landscape in Europe? What are the next elections we should be looking at to get a sense of where Europe is headed?
On the eve of the election, one in five German voters was undecided. Earlier polls had shown that the AfD was going to get more votes. The fact that a lot of people voted for the Christian Democrats instead is a good sign that proportional representation does a good job of controlling the rise of extremist parties.
That being said, presidential elections in France are different. We kind of have to be paying attention to France because Marine Le Pen is a real threat in terms of right-wing drift in Europe. Geopolitical allegiances are suddenly in flux because Europeans find themselves weirdly united against Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin right now, which is a situation that nobody really thought they would find themselves in.
Germany really may be the leader of the free world. It may be that it’s Germany that comes to represent multiparty elections, democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, all the things that we value.
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