New Publication: The Left, East vs West, and the 2009 Election

May 242013
 

The “Blue Books” have been around for more than 30 years. For each Bundestag election, there is a massive edited volume that deals with each and every aspect of this particular event.And for more than three decades, editors have urged authors and publishers to get on with their respective jobs. Inevitably, the massive tomes have always come out just in time for the next election.

In line with this great tradition, VS/Springer has published the most recent addition to the collection in early May. Our chapter looks (once more) into the differences between voters in the former Federal Republic and their eastern compatriots in the 2009 election. While these differences persist, we find that people in the West are also deviating from traditional patterns of voting behaviour. (In German)

bundestagswahl 05 stimmzett New Publication: The Left, East vs West, and the 2009 Election
Foter.com / Public domain

The Proposed NPD Ban is Now Officially a Partisan Issue

Apr 252013
 

German political parties enjoy a special constitutional protection. Only the Federal Government, the Bundestag (parliament), and the Federal Council can apply for a ban, and only the Federal Constitutional Court can declare a party unconstitutional and subsequently dissolve it. Over more than six decades, the court has banned two parties: the neo-Nazi SRP in 1952 and (slightly more controversially) the communist KPD in 1956. In both instances, it was the government who initiated the process.

Back in 2001, the then Red-Green government sought to ban the NPD. The attempt failed spectacularly because a qualified minority of the judges raised procedural concerns about the very large number of informers within the party, and the unwillingness of the state to provide the names of these people. While the whole thing was ill-advised, it is best seen as part of a larger symbolic drive against right-wing extremism, which was rampant after unification and fuelled a whole host of violent hate crimes. Back then, the government cajoled the CDU/CSU and FDP into supporting the cause, and all three institutions jointly applied for a ban, thereby raising the stakes and putting a lot of pressure on the court.

This time round, the Federal Council (dominated by the SPD and Green, but with support from the centre right-led state governments) pushes for a ban, while the government has long dragged its feet and finally came up with a statement saying that they would not co-sponsor the bid but still provide assistance. While this sounds half-baked, it might actually be a sensible position, given what sort of evidence against the NPD has been collected.

The most bizarre performance, however, was delivered in today’s debate in the Bundestag. CDU/CSU and FDP tabled a motion not to support the ban and won with their majority, while the opposition voted against. Then the SPD table a motion in favour of a ban. The government parties voted against, the Left and some Greens supported the move, of course to no avail. Next came the Left with their own motion, which was supported by the SPD while the Greens abstained. Finally, the Greens argued that issue should not be rushed through parliament. Now the government and the SPD voted against, while the Left abstained. Throughout the day, everyone agreed that the NPD (which, although bankrupt and electorally battered beyond recognition held their party conference last weekend) was indeed a very nasty party. Five months to go until election day.

German Right-Wing Extremist Gerhard Frey Has Died

Feb 232013
 

Gerhard Frey, one of the most colourful characters of the German Extreme Right, has died one day after his 80th birthday. Frey, a famously rich businessman and right-wing journalist, began building his empire in the late 1950s. Over the decades, he published two rightist weeklies (which he was later forced to merge in a declining market), countless revisionist and openly racist books, and ran a mail-order service for Nazi memorabilia. He was one of only four persons who ever stood trial under a procedure called “Grundrechtsverwirkung”. Basically, the Federal Government tried to strip him of his right to freedom of speech (and also his right to vote, to stand in elections and to take public office) because – according to the government – he had abused these rights to incite racial hatred and glorify Nazism (the Federal Constitutional Court squashed this and all similar cases on the grounds of these measures being disproportionate).

Frey made various forays into politics, but was repeatedly rejected by Germany’s oldest relevant Extreme Right party NPD (although sat on the party’s leadership committee for a short while). Over the years, many a right-winger has accused him of being only in it for the money.

In the 1980s, he converted his German People’s Union DVU (“Deutsche Volksunion, essentially a right-wing book club) into a political organisation that during the decades successfully contested various land elections, only to tank abysmally once they had entered another land parliament.  The DVU was never a proper party. Leaving the DVU immediately after assuming office, embezzling money or getting caught while downloading child porn in their parliamentary office was more or less de rigeur for its MPs.

For most of its existence, the DVU wholly depended on its party chair, Gerhard Frey, who had taken out considerable loans from Gerhard Frey, the publisher, to safeguard his position. As far as we know, there was never any meaningful political competition or genuine party life within the DVU, which has been dubbed a “virtual” or even “phantom” party. In 2009, Frey, already in his late 70s, finally stepped down from the leadership and dispensed with the money the party owed him, thereby paving the way for the eventual merger with its longtime rival NPD.

Germany: Right-Wing NPD Posts Semi-Secret File on Itself

Feb 202013
 

Once more, German authorities are pondering what to do with the extreme right NPD (officially “Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands / Die Volksunion” after merging with its longstanding competitor DVU). While the Federal Council (which represents the 16 federal states) has already applied for a ban, government and parliament have not yet decided whether they support this move. Only the Federal Constitutional Court can ban a party, only these three institutions can act as plaintiffs, and the hurdles are high, as a qualified majority of the eight judges sitting on the case would have to vote in favour.The last ban was issued in 1956, and the government is duly afraid of another failure after the 2003 disaster.

Interestingly, both the Federal Council’s activism and the other institutions’ reluctance are based on a confidential report by a joint working party compromised of security people from both tiers of government and led by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, i.e. one of the federal secret service agencies. In a shock move, the NPD has posted what appears to be a 140-page executive summary of this report on its website today. Apparently, the party leadership is of the opinion that they appear as mostly harmless in the dossier.

The three-part PDF, apparently a scan of a paper copy, looks genuine enough. Its style, diction and classic Word 95 typography are all in line with what one would expect from such a document, and so is its content. The 2003 disaster was due to the excessive number of activists who moonlighted for Germany’s many secret service. This time, the authors have gone to great pains to collate material that is both public and not produced bye “source”, i.e. paid informers within the party. Interestingly, the statements in the document are classified into two categories: “A” for people who were not informers after January 1, 2003 (but possibly before that date), and “AD” for people who were not on the payroll at the time they made the relevant statement.

Consequently, most of this stuff is disgusting but phrased so that it is right at the boundary of what is legally acceptable.  Germany’s extreme right has decades of experience in crafting their statements in a way that remains just under the constitutional radar. Going through that material, one can see why the party published it on its website and gets the impression that it will be different to ban the party without relying on internal communications. dossier 300x211 Germany: Right Wing NPD Posts Semi Secret File on Itself

One of the most interesting points is the recommendation. The paper suggests in rather strong terms that a ban feasible and proportionate and yet, the government dithers. This indicates that either the federal people on the working party were outvoted (which seems unlikely from the phrasing), or that there is a rift between the political leadership and the services.

A final point concerns the way through which the party got hold of the document. Today, the internet is rife with speculation: Has the NPD, for decades targeted by agents, in turn infiltrated the services? Given that relations between the services and the party have been too close for comfort in the past, that would not be entirely implausible. There is, however, a simpler explanation. The document is stamped “VS – nur für den Dienstgebrauch”, which is the lowest classification level. Such files are normally accessible by a large number of people within an office. Given the rather enthusiastic recommendation issued in the report and the reluctance of the government to act on it, it’s easy to imagine someone in an agency or a ministry leaking the paper to the press, where anyone could have passed it on to the party.

Germany: Right Wing NPD Posts Semi Secret File on Itself

Review: Gideon Botsch, Gideon Botsch, Die extreme Rechte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis heute [in German]

Feb 142013
 

I’ve just completed a review of Gideon Botsch’s history of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany after 1945 for Jahrbuch Extremismus & Demokratie. The book is good, but obviously, I have few quibbles, mostly with the (lack of) theoretical underpinnings. I also think that it is a bit too short (I seem never to  get enough of this stuff). If you read German, go to the full review.

Review: Gideon Botsch, Gideon Botsch, Die extreme Rechte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis heute [in German]

Banning Germany’s NPD – Not a Very Bright Idea

Jan 032013
 

The NPD is Germany’s oldest surviving Extreme Right party. It has been around for about five decades. After merging with its long-time rival German People’s Union (DVU, the ruling mentioned in the post was finally squashed), it is also a serious contender for the coveted title of Germany’s daftest party (see exhibit number one). While it has been electorally successful occasionally, for most of its history it has been confined to the lunatic fringe. While parties such as the Front National, the Freedom Parties in Scandinavia or the Austrian FPÖ have thrived, the NPD has, apart from a brief period in the late 1960s, always been at the very margins of German politics.

This is not to say that the NPD is not a dangerous, racist and outright nasty party. Therefore, the idea of banning the NPD has surfaced time and again, becoming its own Doppelgänger after the 2001-2003 disaster. Upon granting the matter due consideration, I think the plan is largely bonkers. If this kind of concise verdict does not impress you much, you can read my full analysis of the proposed NPD ban at the extremis project, the go-to site for all thing, well, extreme.

European Social Survey Multilevel Data

Oct 292012
 

Like social networks, multilevel data structures are everywhere once you start thinking about it. People live in neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods are nested in municipalities, which make up provinces – well, you get the picture. Even if we have no substantive interest in their effects, it often makes sense to control for structures in our data to get more realistic standard errors.

Now the good folks over at the European Social Survey have reacted and spent the Descartes Prize money on compiling multilevel information and merging them with their own data. So far, the selection is a little bit disappointing in some respects. Homicide rates, for instance, are reported on the national level only. But there are some pleasant surprises (I guess due to Eurostat, who collect such things): We get unemployment, GDP growth and even student numbers at the NUTS-3 level. Since you asked, NUTS is the Nomenclature of (subnational) Territory, and level 3 is the lowest level for which comparative data are normally published.

Regrettably, the size and number of level 3 units is not necessarily comparable across countries: For Germany, level 3 corresponds to about 400 local government districts, while France is divided into 96 European Departments. But if you need to combine top-notch survey data with small(ish) regional data, it’s a start, and not a bad one.

Germany: The Wall in the Head, twenty years after unification

Sep 282012
 

Today is Oscar Gabriel‘s retirement/leaving do. Unfortunately, I could not make it to the party, but I wrote a chapter for the super-secret Festschrift that should by now be in his hands. The chapter (in German) deals with an old favourite of his (and mine): cultural-attitudinal differences between East and West Germany (or rather between East and West Germans). To honour the occasion, I put the preprint online (there is a PDF, too).

Germany and the European Crisis: Confusion and Delay

Jun 212012
 

Yesterday, the BBC’s man in Berlin discovered that there are constitutional limits to Merkel’s ability to somehow save the Euro. Following a constitutional amendment in the 1990s, article 23 of the Basic Law stipulates that any further transfers of sovereignty to the EU require absolute two-thirds majorities in both the Bundestag and the Federal Council (which represents the Länder). That is a tough call. Her Majesty’s government may talk about red lines, Germany has them.

Just yesterday, the Federal Constitutional Court strengthened the role of parliament in a ruling on the decision through which the temporary bailout fund EFSF had been implemented last year. While this does not affect the EFSF’s status, it further increased the pressure on the government to liaise with parliament, the states, and the opposition parties.

Today, it briefly looked like the saga of saving the Euro could go ahead as far as Germany is concerned: Merkel’s coalition, the Social Democrats and the Greens declared that they had reached an agreement on the fiscal pact and the permanent ESF. That seemed to leave only the issue of securing a super-majority in the Federal Council, a formidable task in itself as the Länder are concerned about further restrictions on their already very limited spending powers.

Then, things got messy: the Left and a dissident MP declared that they would challenge the two treaties in the Federal Constitutional Court. The court in turn asked the Federal President not to sign the ratification bills into law for the time being so that they would have enough time to deliberate (once the treaties are ratified, a ruling by the FCC would be quite pointless). While this is not totally uncommon, the court held a press conference to make the public aware of the issue. It does not get much more uncommon in Germany. The president, who allegedly had been lobbied by the government to ratify the treaties before July was then forced to publicly declare that he would heed that request.

Like the content and the context of the bailout packages, all this is very unusual. Today’s events do not yet a constitute a constitutional crisis. But they do provide even more evidence  that we are living in very interesting times.

Germany and the European Crisis: Confusion and Delay

Germany’s and Merkel’s role in the euro-crisis

Jun 162012
 

Globalisation is a wonderful thing. I just had a full Brazilian. Interview, that is. A journalist for Exeme sent me a mail with a couple of questions, I sent back my answers a few hours later and lo, thanks to broken English and the internet, the job is done, time difference and the Atlantic not withstanding. So here is my rather nuanced view:

All over the world, the views about the Euro crisis are seemingly becoming more apocalyptic. Analysts say it is “five minutes to 12″; that Europe has only 3 months left to act. In Germany, the clocks seem to run in a different timing when taking measures to tackle the crisis is concerned. How come?

Even 3 months might be an optimistic assessment, but actually nobody seems to know just how to put an end to this crisis. Over the last year or so, the German government has time and again agreed to (and sometimes proposed) measures that it considered unthinkable only months and weeks ago. Many times, Greece/the Euro/Europe were “saved”, only to find themselves in mortal danger the next week, so the public is growing tired. Yet, I think if the government had a clear strategy for solving the problem, it would act decisively.

The pressures for Germany to act (specially for Merkel) are growing by the day. Do the expectations this time have a different nature?

For a long time, observers in Germany and abroad were focused on yet more guarantees or loans. Only now citizens and politicians begin to realise that there is a political problem at the core of this crisis (i.e. a lack of integrated fiscal and redistributive policies in the Eurozone), but there is obviously no quick fix for this problem.

To which extension Merkel’s position reflects her own personality?

Merkel’s approach to policy making is pragmatic and incremental. She tends to act only if she has a clear understanding of the problem and if she is sure that she has enough political support.

Are there internal political reasons for Merkel not to act like other countries expect her to?

You bet. Merkel heads a coalition of three parties that disagree on many domestic issues. At the moment, it seems not likely that the coalition will win another term in the 2013 election.
Saving Europe only adds to these woes. While her own CDU is staunchly pro-European, many of her MPs consider Germany’s responsibilities under the current bailout packages more than a little daunting. The CDU’s Christian-Democratic sister party CSU is a regional party whose main purpose is to protect Bavaria’s interest in Germany. They have a fair number of closet eurosceptics in their ranks. Finally, the liberal FDP has been teetering on the brink of self-destruction and electoral implosion for years now. They have faced a minor backbenchers’ rebellion over the bailout, and their leadership does not seem to believe that Greece can stay in the Eurozone.
As far as the public is concerned, saving the Euro is not exactly a vote-getter. Germans were very reluctant to join the Euro in the first place. In real terms, their wages have stagnated over the last decade, and they have reluctantly accepted massive cuts in welfare programs. Over the last 22 years, the West-German majority has transferred a net sum of about one trillion Euros in East-Germany, and yet the Eastern states are lagging behind economically.
A vast majority of the public is convinced that Greece cannot be kept within the Eurozone, and many believe that Greece is some sort of European welfare scrounger.  The government has framed all previous bailouts as exceptional emergency measures and has made no attempts to prepare the public for any fundamental changes to the EU’s treaty base.

Which political groups play an important role as on views to tackle the crisis in Europe? Does the struggle between Merkel and SPD to ratify the fiscal pact represent something unusual for the political scene in Germany? Where do their positions are different, fundamentally?

The SPD’s support for the fiscal pact is a constitutional and political necessity. Regarding European affairs, there is normally a very broad consensus amongst the major German parties. The SPD backs the consolidation measures in principle but wants to ease the burden for the southern economies somewhat. They also believe that the EU should launch a stimulus program, and that the banks should contribute to the reconstruction of the Eurozone through a transaction tax. I’m sure that the SPD and the coalition will come to an agreement eventually.

Germanys and Merkels role in the euro crisis
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