Elections in Bavaria: One-party state

Date: 20/09/03

Why the conservatives will reign on

IF FRANZ MAGET, the Social Democrats' candidate to be Bavaria's premier, avoids disaster in the state election on September 21st, he ought to thank terrorism. Earlier this week, it emerged that he had been a potential target of a neo-Nazi gang that had apparently planned to let off a bomb at the ground-breaking ceremony for a Jewish community centre in Munich. That, at least, helped voters know who he is.

Yet that welcome boost in name recognition won't help Mr Maget and his party much. While pollsters put his Social Democrats at around the 20% mark, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the independent Bavarian sister party of the conservative Christian Democrats, will probably get three times as many votes. The CSU, which has ruled Bavaria since 1957, may even win a two-thirds majority in the state parliament, giving it virtually absolute power. Why this extraordinary dominance?

To Edmund Stoiber, Bavaria's current premier who narrowly failed to become chancellor at last year's general election, the answer is simple: it's the successful economy - due, of course, to decades of brilliant CSU policy. Compared with the rest of Germany, Bavaria is indeed doing quite well: in the past decade, its GDP grew by more than 20% (against 13.3% in western Germany), unemployment is at 6.7% (versus 8.3%) and, at the end of last year, public debt reached only €1,572 a head, compared with an average of €3,974 for Germany's main western states.

Mr Maget counters that his opponents' success has more to do with the unique position of the CSU in Germany's political landscape. On the one hand, he says, the party has managed to be seen as the only organisation able to defend Bavaria's interests. On the other, it also has a national reach, giving its leaders a political stage that he and other top Social Democrats in Bavaria lack. If things look even worse this time, it is because the left-of-centre government in Berlin is now having to push through several unpopular reforms.

But there are other reasons. Bavaria used to be riven by regional and political differences. The economically liberal urban establishment was pitted against the conservative, church-minded rural folk. The CSU's achievement was to pitch a big tent for both camps, reconciling “progress and tradition”, to use the party's main motto (whose unofficial version is “laptops and Lederhosen”).

The CSU is not just a political party but a power network woven into Bavarian society. Choirs, sports clubs and other associations are stuffed with CSU members. Many of the board meetings of such organisations, goes a local joke, could easily double as city councils. Political and business elites are also highly intermingled, which explains why Bavaria has had its fair share of financial scandals.

Moreover, the CSU has managed to avoid the usual consequence of being in power for decades: ossification. It has been clever at rejuvenating itself without creating splits. As many as four centres of power (Bavaria's government, CSU members of the state parliament, the party organisation and CSU members of the federal parliament in Berlin) compete with each other but come together when it really counts, says Andreas Kiessling of the Centre for Applied Policy Research at the University of Munich.

If there is a serious threat to the CSU's dominance, it is not the opposition but the weakening of the CSU's claim that it has been the main reason for Bavaria's economic success. The state is suffering from the high-tech sector's slump - and things could get worse, as chunks of the information-technology industry migrate to central European countries as well as to India and China. But an even bigger danger to the CSU could arise if the party loses its enthusiasm for healthy internal competition, which has been more or less stifled since Mr Stoiber took over the leadership.

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