Germany’s restrictive bioethics legislation in general, and its very tight rules on embryology and fertilisation in particular, present a puzzle for political science. Early on, the country has enacted liberal rules in other moral policy domains, most notably the abortion law of 1975 (Richardt, 2003: 113). The full range of prenatal diagnosis is available to…
Update: 542 in favour, 32 voting against, 13 abstentions. Nays & abstentions all from CDU, CSU, Left, apparently. See you in June. In about an hour, Germany’s parliament will have a debate on the extension of the bailout program for Greece that is scheduled to take all of a cool 90 minutes. It will be…
In Germany, people begin to realise that Merkel may have painted herself into a corner by winning so gloriously. While her Christian Democrats are by far the largest party group in the new Bundestag, she needs a coalition partner, but nobody wants to play. Merkel may have painted herself into a corner by winning so gloriously. This could still end in new elections or a minority government
Many of the activities parties would have done in-house during a campaign in bygone times have now been outsourced to agencies. Today’s leftfield exhibit is from the Pirate party.
The Polls Are Noisy Just over five weeks before the Bundestag election, there is much merriment about the current state of play. Support for the Liberals has been consistently below the electoral threshold of five per cent for months, which implies that Merkel’s coalition would not be able to continue after September. Consequently, everyone is…