VNot much is left of the coalition agreement, given the many crises, but the SPD has found something. A few days ago, she proudly referred to her election promise to raise the minimum wage to twelve euros and added: “I promise. Kept.” Keeping campaign promises is considered the supreme discipline of government. One of the reasons why the Social Democrats are so proud of the minimum wage is that the traffic light coalition had to break several principles and promises at the same time to deal with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis. So now there is an SPD chancellor who wants to spend 100 billion euros on upgrading the Bundeswehr, a green environment minister who is extending the life of nuclear power plants, and a liberal finance minister who is really not pursuing an economical financial policy.
Never before has a coalition had to radically change its timetable so quickly and so fundamentally. How this will turn out for the country and how for the parties cannot yet be conclusively said. However, coalitions and parties have had to break promises and certainties in the past. Some even with taboos. How did you fare with that? And can you learn something from it for the current handling of the crises?
SPD is no longer a peace party
Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the SPD has lost its certainty that it is a peace party, which was particularly evident in its close cooperation with Russia, which was not peaceful before either. This hurt all the more because the SPD had to deal with another break in its tradition: the introduction of Agenda 2010, especially that of Hartz IV. The SPD no longer only supported the citizens with a lavishly developed welfare state, but now demanded it some of them too.
The story is well known: the decline of the SPD that began after Gerhard Schröder became chancellor was primarily attributed to the labor market reforms. In fact, many SPD voters have turned away because of this. From then on, however, the SPD devoted itself so intensively to self-flagellation that it overlooked the fact that it had lost contact with several milieus many years earlier: first with the workers who had risen, then with the new Green voters. In all the years since 2005, the SPD has not found any real answer to its tricky situation. She was finally redeemed by the booming job market – and the weakness of the political opponents in the federal elections. In the case of the SPD, the main conclusion drawn from the agenda debacle was that election promises must be kept.
The Greens see it differently. Like the SPD, they too are a party of principles. And principles are always in tension with the ability to learn, especially when governing. For the Greens, the question was very specific: At what point does peacefulness become irresponsible?
In 1999, the party passionately discussed NATO’s Kosovo mission. Also back then: war in Europe, a Green in the foreign office. Joschka Fischer campaigned for basic support for the NATO mission: “Never again war, never again genocide, never again Auschwitz”. He was able to assert himself against the party left, which had requested an unlimited and unconditional halt to NATO air attacks on Yugoslavia. What have the Greens made of this painful debate?
They have developed their concept of a human rights-based foreign policy that does not rule out military operations. All in all, the breaking of the taboo that the Green leadership pulled through at the time is now considered a phase in the maturing of the former Opposite party. As a result, the Greens have also opened up to more conservative milieus. It is possible that courage and adaptability are more rewarded in smaller parties than in large ones. Basically, only the SPD could probably introduce Hartz IV, only the Greens could enforce the Kosovo mission. This was the only way to overcome the resistance.
The FDP, on the other hand, had historical bad luck on several occasions. In 2009 she became part of the government and saw herself as the advocate of all those who advocate privatization and deregulation. Then the financial crisis hit. Tax cuts, also a constant concern of the liberals, were no longer to be thought of. The FDP found itself increasingly cornered and suffered shipwreck in the 2013 federal election. Outside of Parliament, she completely renewed herself and promised to stand for real change while at the same time not betraying her principles.
This leads to the original situation that the FDP is currently the party that is probably suffering the most from the crisis-related timetable changes – according to the polls and the debacle in the Lower Saxony elections – and is precisely why it is clinging to the coalition agreement of December most staunchly. Is that an expression of firmness in principle or stubbornness? That, too, will only become apparent in retrospect.
The biggest breaches of taboos may have been in the CDU, of all places. As a person, Angela Merkel was already the personification of breaking a taboo: East German, female, childless, Protestant. Due to its policy, which is often described as the social democratization of the CDU, it lost classic Union voters, but also gained new ones in the middle. Probably the most comprehensive changes in the Merkel era were in family policy, but they didn’t come with a big bang. The most blatant breach of taboo was Merkel’s support for Defense Minister zu Guttenberg’s 2010 plan to suspend conscription. He argued with changed security policy considerations and the lack of military justice. Well-known arguments that didn’t count for much in the CDU until Guttenberg came along and carried everyone away. Breaking a taboo needs the right moment.
