Co-authored with Joseph Klaver
Although the election campaign in Germany has been relatively quiet, the uncertainty surrounding the government that will emerge from Sunday’s contest holds significant ramifications for the country’s political parties, its politics and policies. And by virtue of Germany’s importance to the European Union and Europe as a whole, the election’s outcome will have ramifications well beyond Germany’s immediate borders. It seems clear that Angela Merkel’s center-right union parties of CDU/CSU will come away from the election as the strongest political entity in the Bundestag. However, as the union parties will almost certainly not win an actual majority of seats in the parliament, they will need to find at least one coalition partner. There are numerous potential coalition options, but only a few seem particularly likely and each of these hold very different strategic concerns for those involved.
Grand Coalition
A continued grand coalition seems perhaps the most likely outcome. While sharing the stage with one’s largest rival might seem unappealing, this option makes sense for Chancellor Merkel and the CDU/CSU for a few strategic reasons: First, even though the Social Democratic Party (SPD) will likely be the second-largest vote-getter in this Sunday’s poll, the party has no leaders that are remotely as popular as the reigning chancellor. This means that even though Merkel and her union parties will have to share cabinet positions with the SPD, it seems unlikely that the SPD will be able to challenge the CDU/CSU’s policy goals in any decisive way. However, even though the SPD will emerge from this election an even weaker coalition partner than it is in the current one, the Social Democrats will still likely command more cabinet seats in a Grand Coalition than a coalition involving the CDU and any combination of two smaller parties.
CDU/CSU + FDP
This option is likely the most appealing to Chancellor Merkel, as it does not require also accommodating the policy concerns of the Green Party while simultaneously keeping the Social Democrats out of the governing coalition. It would revive one of the traditional tandems that has governed the Federal Republic for 37 of its 68 years to the delight of both partners. However, this coalition requires that both the CDU/CSU and the FDP have an extremely strong day at the polls on Sunday, September 24th outpacing their predicted vote shares by a substantial margin which is rather unlikely.
CDU/CSU + FDP + The Greens
Although this coalition option – frequently referred to as the Jamaica coalition by dint of its uniting the CDU/CSU’s black color with the yellow of the FDP and the Green of the Greens thus replicating the color combination of the Jamaican flag -- has been repeatedly discussed as an interesting and innovative one for the national level, a coalition government comprising these three parties has to this point only existed at the state level in Germany. CDU and FDP would partner very easily, like they have in the past, but the addition of the Greens would pose a novelty that is somewhat peculiar given the substantial differences among all three parties in matters of policy preferences, as well as voter clienteles. While such a coalition would allow the CDU/CSU to keep the SPD out of government, this Jamaica coalition promises to be less stable than a Grand Coalition for several reasons. First, the government would likely enjoy a much narrower majority in the Bundestag than would a Grand Coalition formed by the two bigs, CDU/CSU and SPD. Second, because of the increased ideological diversity of a coalition that includes the Greens and the FDP – the former anchored in the radicalism of the social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, with the latter being a party of proud liberals (both neo and paleo) — vote-whipping to create the requisite unity among the Bundestag representatives that comprise the governing coalition would decidedly be more difficult. Both of these considerations represent significant downsides for Chancellor Merkel to attempt a coalition without the SPD.
While the front-runner of the 2017 German parliamentary election is hardly in doubt, there is nonetheless considerable suspense as to the character of the resulting coalition. This uncertainty is heightened by the fact that the various coalition options present very different political battlefields for the next several years depending on which parties end up in government. Although there is little suspense as to which party comes out on top, there is nonetheless a wide array of potential outcomes in terms of the government that will be ruling Europe’s largest economy for the next four years or so.