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Is there Life after Kohl? The CDU Crisis and the Future of Party Democracy in Germany*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ludger Helms
Ludger Helms*
Affiliation:
Humboldt‐Universität, Berlin
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Extract

There are few Chapters of the Federal Republic'S History that could be written without a prominent reference to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since 1949 Christian Democratic chancellors have led German governments for no less than 37 years. Even when in opposition, the Christian Democrats - composed at the national level of the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)1 - constituted more often than not the strongest parliamentary party group (Fraktion) in the Bundestag, such as after the federal elections of 1969, 1976 and 1980. Also at state level and in the Bundesrat, which represents the individual states (L-nder) in the national decision-making process, the Christian Democrats quite often held a dominant position justifying occasional remarks of a ‘CDU/CSU bias’ within the German party system.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 419 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2000

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

References

1 As is usual in German politics, I shall refer here to the CDU/CSU as a single party with the exception of those sections in which the internal relationship between the two ‘sister parties’ is discussed.

2 Kolinsky, Eva, ‘Das Parteiensystem der Bundesrepublik: Forschungsthemen und Entwicklungslinien’, in Niedermayer, Oskar and Stöss, Richard (eds), Stand und Perspektiven der Parteienforschung, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993, p. 46.Google Scholar

3 Dalton, Russell J., ‘A Celebration of Democracy. The 1998 Bundestag Election’, German Politics and Society, 16:4 (Winter 1998), pp. 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See King, Anthony, ‘Modes of Executive–Legislative Relations: Great Britain, France, and West Germany’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, I:1 (February 1976), pp. 1–36.Google Scholar

5 For a more detailed assessment of the Christian Democratic opposition in the aftermath of the 1969 and 1998 elections see Helms, Ludger, ‘Opposition nach dem Machtwechsel: Ein Vergleich der CDU/CSU-Opposition im 6. und 14. Deutschen Bundestag’, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 10:2 (June 2000), pp. 511–38.Google Scholar

6 Ansell, Christopher K. and Fish, Steven M., ‘The Art of Being Indispensable. Noncharismatic Personalism in Contemporary Political Parties’, Comparative Political Studies, 32:3 (May 1999), pp. 283–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 November 1999, p. 3; Die Zeit, 27 January 2000, p. 1.

8 By accepting donations to the party in cash, without formally reporting them afterwards to the party treasurer, Kohl not only contravened key provisions of German party law but violated Article 21 of the constitution in which the parties’ duty to publicly account for their resources is an explicit provision.

9 According to an opinion survey carried out in March 2000, 65 per cent of respondents believed that political decisions of the Kohl government had been deliberately inf luenced by donations. See Politbarometer 03/00, Mannheim, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e. V., 2000.

10 Peter Pulzer, ‘Luck and Good Management: Helmut Kohl as Parliamentary and Electoral Strategist’, in Stephen Padgett and Thomas Saalfeld (eds), Bundestagswahl ’98: The End of an Era? (Special Issue of German Politics), London, Frank Cass, 1999, pp. 126–40.

11 See Korte, Karl-Rudolf, ‘Kommt es auf die Person des Kanzlers an? Zum Regierungsstil von Helmut Kohl in der “Kanzlerdemokratie” des deutschen “Parteienstaates” ’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 29:3 (August 1998), pp. 387–401;Google Scholar Huneeus, Carlos, ‘How to Build a Modern Party: Helmut Kohl’s Leadership and the Transformation of the CDU’, German Politics, 5:3 (December 1996), pp. 532–559;Google Scholar Clemens, Clay, ‘Party Management as a Leadership Resource: Kohl and the CDU’, in Clemens, Clay and Paterson, William E. (eds), The Kohl Chancellorship (Special Issue of German Politics), London, Frank Cass, 1998, pp. 91–119.Google Scholar

12 See Schmid, Josef, Die CDU. Organisationsstrukturen, Politiken und Funktionsweisen einer Partei im Föderalismus, Opladen, Leske & Budrich, 1990.Google Scholar

13 See L. Helms, op. cit., p. 525.

14 Disobeying the formally agreed CDU/CSU strategy of opposing the government’s taxation reform bill, the CDU party chiefs of Bremen, Brandenburg and Berlin (all of which are governed by a ‘grand coalition’ of SPD and CDU) decided to back the bill in exchange for generous financial support from the federal government for their respective Länder.

15 The party’s overall financial requirements until 2005 have been recently estimated at up to 100 million D-marks. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 April 2000, p. 2.

16 Kocka, Jürgen, ‘Historische Folgen’, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 45:3 (March 2000), p. 300.Google Scholar

17 For an analysis of the transformation of the Italian party system see Bartolini, Stefano and d’Alimonte, Roberto (eds), Maggioritario ma non troppo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995;Google Scholar Gangemi, Giuseppe and Riccamboni, Gianni (eds), Le elezioni della transizione. Il sistema politico italiano alla prova del voto 1994–1996, Turin, UTET Libreria, 1997.Google Scholar

18 There are further important differences regarding the structural conditions of party finance-related political scandal in Italy and other Latin-European countries on the one hand and Germany on the other that cannot be dealt with here in detail. Parties in the Latin-European countries have always been weakly organized or riven by faction, and party finance regulation emerged relatively late. See Pujas, Véronique and Rhodes, Martin, ‘Party Finance and Political Scandal in Italy, Spain, and France’, West European Politics, 22:3 (July 1999), pp. 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar By contrast, the major German parties have been well organized (at least since the mid-1970s), and party finance regulation has long since secured a prominent position on the Federal Repubic’s political agenda. What seems, however, worth further comparative inquiry is the role of the notable proximity of parties and state to be observed in Spain, Italy and France, as well as in Germany, in the historical emergence of informal systems of party finance.

19 See Smith, Gordon, ‘Core Persistence: System Change and the “People’s Party” ’, in Smith, Gordon and Mair, Peter (eds), Understanding Party System Change in Western Europe (Special Issue of West European Politics), London, Frank Cass, 1989, p. 158.Google Scholar

20 In North Rhine–Westphalia, 67 per cent of respondents described the CDU crisis as being ‘important’ or even ‘very important’ to them. In Schleswig-Holstein no less than 35 per cent of FDP-supporters stated that they would have voted CDU had it not been for the party scandal. Figures according to the election reports No. 101 and 102 of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e. V., Mannheim, 2000.

21 According to figures of Politbarometer 06/00, published by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e. V., Mannheim, 2000, p. 1. Pointing to a number of methodological problems, the validity of these figures has been questioned by a senior member of the renowned Allensbacher Institut für Meinungsforschung. In surveys carried out by the latter, the CDU/CSU gained just 32 per cent in June/July 2000 which was even below its share of the vote achieved in September 1998. See Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth, ‘Die CDU erholt sich nicht’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 07 2000, p. 5.Google Scholar

22 Both Lothar Bisky and Gregor Gysi, the incumbent party leader and Fraktion leader in the Bundestag respectively, announced their resignation at the PDS party conference in Münster on 9 April 2000, which marked a fundamental crisis of the party still judged as the Federal Republic’s largest ‘anti-system’ opposition party by the overwhelming majority of relevant observers.

23 While the recent announcement by one of the Liberals’ most prominent figures that the FDP was going to nominate a chancellor candidate of its own before the next federal election should not be taken too seriously, it clearly points the direction in which many within the party seem willing to proceed. Considerations among the party leadership of entering the 2002 federal election campaign, without formulating a clear coalition statement, may be seen as another case in point.

24 See on this Helms, Ludger, ‘Perspectives on Government and Opposition in Unified Germany’, Politics, 18:3 (September 1998), pp. 151–8.Google Scholar

25 In a recent survey 64 per cent of respondents stated that the opposition should effectively support the government, whereas only 22 per cent preferred an adversarial strategy of political opposition. Figures according to Politbarometer 07/00, published by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e. V., Mannheim, 2000.

26 A collection of up-to-date assessments in English of German political institutions may be found in Ludger Helms (ed.), Institutions and Institutional Change in the Federal Republic of Germany, London, Macmillan, 2000.