Reshaping Germany’s Centrist Politics

After Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hand-picked successor Anne Kramp-Karrenbauer, also known as AKK, resigned as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Feb. 10, the future of German politics remains unknown. 

Merkel and her Christian Conservative centrist party have maintained political and economic stability in the country throughout her four terms as Chancellor. Her resilience and diplomacy served as a stronghold in Europe and helped guide the European Union through a number of crises, such as the 2008/9 debt crisis and the mass immigration in 2015 resulting from the ongoing Syrian war. But Merkel’s reactions to these crises, although internationally lauded, have made her increasingly unpopular in her own country.

After the last election in 2018, Merkel announced that she would not be running for a fifth term. She designated AKK as her successor, who Merkel assumed would maintain her centrist vision and legacy in Germany’s political arena. 

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a widely held taboo in German politics concerning cooperation with extremist parties. A controversial local election in the Eastern state Thuringia on Feb. 6 led members of Kramp-Karrenbauer’s party to vote to work with a governor from Germany’s right-wing party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). 

Many took this decision as a sign that AKK is losing control over her party, and it ultimately fueled her decision to step down, although she’ll maintain her position at the Ministry of Defense. 

AKK, who was supposed to also be a potential candidate to take over Merkel’s position as Chancellor, did not receive the amount of support expected after stepping up as head of the CDU in 2018. The CDU has struggled to gain support in recent state elections, in which especially the Green party (pro-European, pro-immigrant and highly concerned about the environment) and the right-wing AfD persuaded voters to vote for them. Merkel’s support for Kramp-Karrenbauer has also faltered increasingly, due to the fact that Kramp-Karrenbauer is more conservative than her, especially on issues such as gay marriage. 

At the same time, Germany is becoming increasingly marked by growing support for radical parties. At the time of its founding in 2013, the AfD was led by economic conservatives in reaction (“alternative”) to Merkel’s decision to bail out Greece financially. After the refugee crisis in 2015, however, the party shifted its focus. It is now sharply anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic. With this increasingly fragmented political landscape, it remains unclear how the CDU should position itself for the 2021 elections. The most pressing question for CDU politicians now is how they should deal with the AfD and whether they should continue the party’s centrist course or adopt a tougher form of conservatism to win back voters from the AfD. It is also debated whether the AfD should continue to be excluded from talks about potential coalitions, or whether the CDU should enter negotiations with AfD politicians.

Possible contenders for Kramp-Karrenbauer’s position are already lining up. Candidates include Jens Spahn, the current health minister, Armin Laschet, the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia and Friedrich Merz, the former leader of the CDU parliamentary group who narrowly lost the leadership contest against AKK in the 2018 elections.

The author of The Paradox of German Power, Hans Kundnani, who is cited in  Time ,  says that “since Merkel came to power in 2005, the problem hasn’t been too much polarization—which is what you have in the U.S.—but not enough…there is too much consensus, which in turn produces these extremist movements because it pushes political opposition to the extremes.” 

However, Kundnani says the rise of anti-establishment movements could lead to positive outcomes, mainly that it may give voters more genuine alternatives.

(Picture Credit: Wikimedia)