Coalition-building in Germany. All together now

The beguiling talk of a grand coalition

IF THE Left Party does as well in the German election as the polls suggest, it will hugely complicate coalition-building. Its base may be the disaffected left, but it could deprive the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) of a majority. Hence talk of a “grand coalition”, defined as one of the CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD). The seductive idea that sensible politicians from both sides should come together for the greater good is a hardy perennial in Germany. Experience suggests it would be no panacea.

Grand coalitions have been quite common at state level ever since the birth of the federal republic. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin was governed jointly by the two main parties for a decade. Many other states have tried grand coalitions, with varying degrees of success. Today there are four. But at federal level Germany has had just one grand coalition: in 1966-69, with the CDU leader, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, as chancellor, and the SPD leader, Willy Brandt, as foreign minister.

It was not a happy period. Emergency legislation failed to quell student protests. Disgruntled voters drifted towards extremists or outside politics. It was no coincidence that the Red Army Faction, a brutal terrorist group, sprang up. A more benign product was the environmentalists who later formed the Green Party. The far right also exploited the situation, with the neo-Nazi NPD securing its best-ever result in 1969, close to the 5% threshold for seats in parliament.

A second grand coalition might not provoke terrorism, but it could bring problems of its own. It would tend to soggy compromise on much-needed economic reforms, the more so since a disgruntled SPD would be junior partner. Time in opposition might rejuvenate the Greens. The Left Party would like nothing better than to take potshots at a grand coalition from the wings, raising its hopes of becoming a third political force. The NPD might be helped across the 5% threshold.

All this would depend on somebody, presumably the CDU's Angela Merkel, actually being able to form a grand coalition. But a battered SPD under a new leader, perhaps its chairman, Franz Muntefering, would surely feel resentful of the CDU, not least for having blocked much of the present SPD-led government's plans in the upper house, or Bundesrat. If the SPD prefers opposition, creating any workable government may be hard. In theory a CDU-FDP-Green coalition is possible, but the culture clash between the parties makes it unlikely. Nobody wants to ally with the Left Party. A grand coalition may be unattractive, but if voters deny the CDU-FDP a majority, it may be unavoidable.