Last Sunday, Germany held elections for the lower house of its parliament.  Given the mixed-member system that Germany uses, German elections are not immediately conclusive.  The results merely set the terms for the negotiations that will follow over the shape of the government.  But the election results do reflect the changes in Europe over the last 50 years.

The short version of the results is that the Social Democratic Party (the junior partner in the current government) made significant gains at the expense of the Christian Democratic/Social Union (the senior partner in the current government) and is now the largest party in parliament (206 seats vs. 196 seats).  The Green Party made significant gains to move from sixth place to third place (now at 118 seats).  The Free Democrats gained some seats but due to the big gains by the Greens stayed in fourth place (now at 92 seats).  The Alternative for Germany fell from third place to fifth place dropping eleven seats (now at 83 seats).  Finally, the Left lost about half of its seats to drop from fifth place to sixth place (now at 39 seats).  While the numbers have shifted, the essential facts of political life remain the same.  The only potential two-party majority is a grand union between the “Union” and the Social Democrats and a three-party coalition that features only one of the two largest party would require both the Greens and the Free Democrats (as the Left and the Alternative for the reasons noted below are not preferred options).

Hopping into the wayback machine, however, todays results would be unrecognizable to the German voter who voted in the 1980 election.  Back in 1980, West Germany was primarily three parties — the Union, the Social Democrats, and the Free Democrats.  At that time, the Free Democrats were essentially the balance in the center between the Union and the Social Democrats.  The Free Democrats had the power to decide who would form the government and used that power to keep either of the other two parties from shifting to far from center.  Over the 1980s, prior to unification, the Green Party formed and rivaled the Free Democrats for third party status.

The unification of East Germany and West Germany, however, changed German politics.  The former Communist Party of East Germany became the Party of Democratic Socialism which eventually morphed into the Left.  The Left has become a more socialist alternative to the center-left Social Democrats and the Green Party.  As discussed below, the Left has had trouble gaining traction in West Germany which still associates it with its Communist Party roots.  In East Germany, there remains a significant portion of the population which does not have negative views of the old Communist regime in East Germany.  This history makes the Left a less preferred option for a coalition partner.  While, theoretically, an all-left coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Left is possible,  the Social Democrats are likely to try to forge a coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats which could be difficult to manage given the differences between the Greens and the Free Democrats (which has some very libertarian elements).

The other big change has been the rise of the Alternative for Democracy.  The Alternative for Democracy is a nationalist party.  It has struggled to avoid being viewed as associated with even further right nationalist groups — some of which have been banned for crossing the line into being neo-Nazi movements.  The Alternative barely missed winning seats in 2013 before having a major success in 2017.  This election saw the Alternative fall back.  Because of the association of the Alternative with extreme nationalism, the Alternative is not seen as a viable coalition partner by any of the other major parties.

The key to the election results is that they still reflect significant differences between the former West Germany and the former East Germany.   In West Germany, the best land (the German equivalent of a state) for the Left and the Alternative was Lower Saxony in which the two parties combined for nine of sixty seats.  In every West German land, the Alternative and the Left finished behind the Greens and the Free Democrats.  In East Germany, the Alternative and the Left combined for about one-third of the seats.  The worst land for the two groups combined was Berlin which partially contains what was part of West Germany as West Berlin.  In Saxony, the Alternative finished first,   In terms of seats, the Alternative finished second in Brandenberg, tied for second in Saxony-Anhalt, tied for second in Mecklenberg, and tied for first in Thuringen.  As the numbers show, the Left is the weaker of the two “extreme” parties but managed to beat the two mainstream “minor” parties (the Greens and the Free Democrats) in Mecklenberg, and Thuringen and tied them in the remaining land other than Berlin.

And, while not uniformly true, the differences between the former East Germany and West Germany reflect the differences between western Europe and central Europe.  In western Europe, the evils of the Nazis were seen as an extreme form of nationalism.  European unity was seen as the antidote to nationalism.  It is only recently that nationalism has seen a resurgence in western Europe.  And for the forty years between 1950 and 1990, centrist political parties took root that were pro-Europe and anti-nationalism.  In the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, however, that political development never emerged.  The Communist regimes did not make a clear distinction between capitalism and nationalism in the way that the regimes of western Europe did.  Both capitalism and nationalism were viewed by the governing powers as evil.  Any attempt to form a Hungarian communism or Polish communism that differed from the Soviet form were suppressed.  Unfortunately, because nationalism was suppressed by the government rather than rejected by the voters, nationalism has found fertile ground in the former members of the Warsaw Pact.  Similarly, the former members of the Warsaw Pact do not have the same commitment to “constitutional law” as a restriction on the government and protection of the freedoms necessary for a functional democracy.

This division within our NATO allies between the old members who view the team effort as worthwhile and are committed to democracy and the new members who view NATO membership as merely protection from any attempt by Russia to reassert its dominance over central Europe with no commitment to shared values will be a key foreign policy challenge for the Biden Administration going forward.  It is just another version of a long-term debate — how much should the U.S. support authoritarian regimes because of temporary mutual interests versus how much should the U.S. focus its foreign policy (including our troop commitments and foreign aid) on promoting human rights and democratic values.  While these decisions tend not to directly impact elections, they do have an impact on how people around the world view us (are we with them or their oppressors) which can come back to bite us in terms of being seen as a target by groups that want to use force to remove oppressive regimes.  And that can impact our elections.