Germany’s SPD - from Volkspartei to coalition engineer

Jan Seifert

For lack of articulating unifying idea for the German Left, Germany’s oldest party is being eroded from all sides

It has been a rough start for Kurt Beck. After the Schröder years and an unstable interim period the current SPD leader took over the top post of his party in May 2006. Since then the SPD has stopped the steady fall in public opinion and keeps stabilising at record low levels around the 30% mark. The circumstances for Beck were tough to say the least: after seven years in government the party and its personnel had been burnt out in the wake of the 2005 electoral defeat; with charismatic Schröder moving on to shady business (greetings from Russia), the power centre waned and a leadership gap appeared. But potentially more dangerous is the lack of a new idea for a modern SPD beyond 2005.

Since other coalition options were unworkable, the two big parties CDU/CSU and SPD had to agree to a Grand Coalition in late 2005. Such a constellation has only worked in (West-) Germany from 1966-69 and did not go down in the history books as a particular success story. At least the last time paved the ground for charismatic Willy Brand to capture for the first time the chancellor post for the SPD. Now it looks unlikely that the SPD can gain ground and initiative from within the grand coalition. With parties surrounding the social-democrats from all sides, the oldest German party undoubtedly has the toughest job in Berlin’s political market.

Heavily-underestimated by many, the new Linkspartei with its charismatic leaders Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi turns out to be the most stable party in national polls (scoring around 10%). The reason for this is the SPD’s incapability to reach out to its traditional base, in particular to those people in society who believe that the extent and duration of welfare spending is proportional to a party’s social awareness. Not surprisingly, it is very easy for Lafontaine, the former SPD leader and new Linkspartei hero, to claim that the Left party is the real heirs of Willy Brandt. Their populist, old-school rhetoric in favour of unlimited welfare handouts recalls the strategy of opposition of the SPD during the 1980s and 90s. Schröder’s second-term reform package, the Agenda 2010, turns against his own party now. This series of reforms, praised by economists and business, implemented decisive changes to Germany’s economic and social regime and laid the foundation for the current economic upturn. However, Schröder communicated the reforms very badly within his own electoral base and thereby let his own voters fade away into the hands of those who keep on preaching the never-ending brilliance of the old West German Sozialstaat.

In this context the irony of the SPD-Linkspartei relationship in the city-state of Berlin is apparent. Here the two parties continue their second-term government coalition while implementing Germany’s toughest budget cuts of any Land during the past 6 years.

While the SPD can practically draw voters from the realm of all other four parties, it also has the toughest competitive environment of any party. What makes the party very vulnerable is also its biggest strength. While the SPD is currently governing only 4 out of 16 Länder as the senior government party, it has recently shown that – unlike the CDU - it can successfully govern with all other four parties. This strategic advantage is also the main reason for the social-democrats not to be too afraid of the immediate future as long as power is the only concern. On the other hand it is only too obvious that the Greens might actually take over as king-maker in the foreseeable future. Grand coalitions have historically been very bad solutions in German political culture. So it might be as soon as spring 2008 that the Greens could join the first “black-green” coalition (in Hamburg). Once established as an option on any Land level, the participation of the Greens in a CDU-led coalition (with or without the FDP) will be a viable option - and simply putting European practice (the Greens currently governing in three EU countries with right-leaning governments) into German reality.

In the last weeks of 2007 the SPD adopted its new Hamburg manifesto. This first basic party programme after German re-unification brings the SPD formally in line with the more modern Scandinavian understanding of social democracy. At the same time the party did not dare to move into a new century and abandon its initial attachment to “democratic socialism”. Now the new manifesto brings the party back into European mainstream but leaves its activists still without a clue when it comes to concrete and worthy visions for current and future government. No one really knows what the SPD is really standing for and which project would justify its return to the job of chancellor. Consequently, the comrades are struggling to find their way around and act like an opposition party while being in government. How this party without a renewed project and more inspiring personnel can gain back power on national level in 2009 remains a mystery. But if anything can be said about Germany’s political system - and even more so its social-democrats since 1998 - then it is that nothing is impossible.

Jan Seifert is a former European president of Young European Federalists

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