Clay Clemens - The German Election of 2005: Voters, Parties and Grand Coalition Politics

The German Election of 2005

The election of 2005 changed Germanys political landscape. The combined share of the vote gained by the two major parties fell below 70 per cent, eliminating the option of a coalition between one of the two major parties (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) with one of the smaller parties the traditional pattern of government that had dominated German post-war politics since the late 1950s. The election resulted in the first national Grand Coalition of the two major parties since 1969.

While some have seen this government, elected in November 2005 and headed by the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel, as the symptom of a crisis of the traditional post-war German party system, others have highlighted the opportunities it opens up for constitutional and policy reform as Merkels Grand Coalition controls an overwhelming majority of the votes in both houses of the German legislature.

The German Election of 2005 analyses the road to the 2005 election and provides in-depth studies of the campaign and candidates, of voting behaviour and immediate consequences of the election, with contributions from leading experts from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. The findings are informed by theoretical and empirical work in the comparative study of parties and elections offering a nuanced, empirically rich picture of continuity and change in German electoral politics.

This book was previously published as a special issue of German Politics.

Clayton Clemens is Hamilton Professor of Government at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Thomas Saalfeld is Reader in Political Science at the University of Kent (Canterbury).

The German Election of 2005

Voters, Parties and Grand Coalition Politics

Edited by

CLAYTON CLEMENS and THOMAS SAALFELD

First published 2008 by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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2008 Edited by Clayton Clemens & Thomas Saalfeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 10: 0-415-44765-8 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-44765-2 (hbk)

Christopher S. Allen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia.

Christopher J. Anderson is Professor of Government at Cornell University.

Frank Brettschneider is Professor of Communication Studies and Communication Theory at the University of Hohenheim.

Clayton Clemens is Hamilton Professor of Government at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Thorsten Faas is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Thomas Gschwend is Research Fellow at the University of Mannheim (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research).

Charlotte Kellermann is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg.

Thomas Knig is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheim.

Charles Lees is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sheffield.

Katja Neller is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Stuttgart.

Hans Rattinger is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg.

Michaela W. Richter is Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Dieter Roth is Honorary Professor of Political Science at the University of Heidelberg and founding member of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V. Mannheim.

Thomas Saalfeld is Reader in Political Science at the University of Kent at Canterbury and one of the editors of German Politics.

Susan E. Scarrow is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston.

Hermann Schmitt is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Mannheim (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research) and Privatdozent at the Freie Universitt Berlin.

Rdiger Schmitt-Beck is Professor of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Andreas M. Wst is Research Fellow at the University of Mannheim (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research).

Thomas Zittel is Research Fellow at the University of Mannheim (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research) and currently Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute at Florence.

Contents

Clayton Clemens and Thomas Saalfeld

The German general election of 18 September 2005 was remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was unusual in terms of its timing and the manner it was brought about: The Bundestag elected in 2002 was dissolved more than one year before the end of its regular constitutional inter-election period,1 triggered through Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schrders engineered loss of a vote of confidence in the Bundestag. Whilst strategic election timing is not uncommon in other parliamentary systems of government2 and constitutes an important agenda-setting power3 in the armoury of many heads of governments in such systems,4 it has been a relatively rare occurrence in post-war Germany.5 With its strong emphasis on government stability, the German Basic Law makes early dissolutions of the Bundestag relatively difficult. Although such dissolutions are not ruled out completely (as, for example, in the Norwegian constitution), the German Federal chancellor and the Bundestag majority are heavily constrained in this respect. The Basic Law does not invest the Federal chancellor with the power to ask the head of state for an early dissolution, as long as he or she enjoys the support of a parliamentary majority. More importantly, perhaps, it does not grant the Bundestag a right to dissolve itself by a (qualified) majority vote. In practice, therefore, Article 68 of the Basic Law has been used to engineer early dissolutions in 1972, 1983 as well as in 2005:6

If a motion of the Federal Chancellor for a vote of confidence is not supported by the majority of the Members of the Bundestag, the Federal President, upon the proposal of the Federal Chancellor, may dissolve the Bundestag within twenty-one days. The right of dissolution shall lapse as soon as the Bundestag elects another Federal Chancellor by the vote of a majority of its members.7