German political parties
27/05/24 11:48 Filed in: Politics
On Sunday morning's 10K run through north central Berlin (I recommend the Volkspark Rehberge and the Plötzensee), I saw many political posters. These are for the German elections to the European Parliament, which take place on Sunday 9 June. So here is a guide to German political parties, with some comparison of the German and UK political systems.
Germany has many political parties, large and small, national and regional. I am focusing here on the 16 parties which have at least one representative in either the German Parliament (the Bundestag) or the European Parliament. The featured posters are all that I saw on my Berlin run. The biggest omission, in terms of seat numbers in the Bundestag, is the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), which is obviously not a Berlin-based party.
The German electoral system for the Bundestag is a form of proportional representation in which voters cast one vote for a constituency candidate and one vote for a party list. The numbers are adjusted to ensure true proportionality overall. This means that no one party ever gains an absolute majority of the 735 seats and the outcome is always a coalition government.
The current Bundestag was elected in 2021. The term of a Parliament is fixed at four years so the next election will be in 2025. The current government is a coalition of the SPD, the Free Democrats and Alliance 90/The Greens, known as a 'traffic light coalition' because of the parties' traditional colours of red, yellow and green. Before that, from 2013 to 2021, the two main parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) worked together to form what is known as a 'grand coalition.'
The two main UK political parties oppose proportional representation, ostensibly because coalition governments are weak, but really because the UK system of First Past the Post enables one party to govern, usually with an absolute majority of seats in Parliament, but with the support of a minority of the electorate. So the Conservative Party won the 2019 election with a landslide majority of 80 seats based on the support of 43.3% of the electorate. The government has lost some seats in bye elections since then but still has a comfortable overall majority.
It seems to me that the current UK government – still in power even though Parliament will soon be dissolved and an election is imminent – has entered a state of paralysis. FPTP has produced a one-party government which is weak rather than strong. I don't know enough about German politics to comment on the strength of their government.
As is clear from the posters, most of the leading candidates for the Euro elections are female. Poster boy has become poster girl. It is refreshing to see so many women going for roles of power and responsibility. However, for domestic elections at least, Germany is similar to other large Western European countries in the proportion of female Members of Parliament. Here is some data on the current population (millions) and proportion of female parliamentarians.
- France – 64.8m – 37.3%
- Germany – 83.3m – 35.3%
- Italy – 58.9m – 32.3%
- Spain – 47.5m – 44.3%
- United Kingdom – 67.7m – 34.8%.
Now here are the top 16, ranked in order of Bundestag seats (735 total) then Members of the European Parliament or MEPs (96 total – 5-year term, last election 2019). Data from Wikipedia. In terms of political position, from left to right:
- Left-wing 3, Centre-left 5, Centre-right 5, Centre-right to Right-wing 2, Far-right 1.
- Seats – Bundestag 206, MEPs 16
- Ideology – Social democracy, Pro-Europeanism
- Political position – Centre-left
- Seats – Bundestag 152, MEPs 23
- Ideology – Christian democracy, Conservatism, Pro-Europeanism
- Political position – Centre-right
- Seats – Bundestag 118, MEPs 21
- Ideology – Green politics, Social liberalism, Pro-Europeanism
- Political position – Centre-left
- Seats – Bundestag 91, MEPs 5
- Ideology – Liberalism, Classical liberalism, Conservative liberalism, Pro-Europeanism
- Political position – Centre-right
- Seats – Bundestag 80, MEPs 9
- Ideology – Right-wing populism, National conservatism, German nationalism, Euroscepticism
- Political position – Far-right
- Seats – Bundestag 45, MEPs 6
- Ideology – Christian democracy, Conservatism, Bavarian regionalism
- Political position – Centre-right
- Seats – Bundestag 28, MEPs 4
- Ideology – Democratic socialism, Left-wing populism
- Political position – Left-wing
- Seats – Bundestag 10, MEPs 0
- Ideology – Socialism, Social conservatism, Left-wing populism
- Political position – Left-wing
- Seats – Bundestag 1, MEPs 0
- Ideology – Social liberalism, Regionalism, Soft Euroscepticism, Danish minority interests, Frisian minority interests
- Political position – Centre-left
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 2
- Ideology – Liberal conservatism, Regionalism, Soft Euroscepticism
- Political position – Centre-right
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Political satire, Humanism, Anti-fascism, Environmentalism, Pro-Europeanism
- Political position – Left-wing
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Green conservatism
- Political position – Centre-right
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Pirate politics, E-democracy, Direct democracy, Social liberalism, European federalism
- Political position – Centre-left
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Social liberalism, Pro-Europeanism, European federalism
- Political position – Centre-left
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Conservatism
- Political position – Centre-right to Right-wing
- Seats – Bundestag 0, MEPs 1
- Ideology – Conservatism, Familialism, Social Conservatism, Christian Democracy
- Political position – Centre-right to Right-wing