Coalitions of the Willing - Domestic Style
By Dr. Jackson Janes

In the run up to the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's comments about forming coalitions of the willing was the basis for the U.S. position on launching the attack on Iraq without either a NATO or a UN mandate. Arguing that the "mission should define the coalition," Rumsfeld believed that getting the job done was more important than trying to maintain institutional consensus. Some took that as undermining NATO and the conventional process of decision-making in the western alliance. But the core of the disagreement was to be found in defining the mission. In a changed environment of the post-Cold War, post 9-11 period, the coalition partners of old were redefining their interests and their preferences in new and sometimes conflicting ways.

This was not only a development in the foreign policy arena; it was also impacting on the domestic scene on both sides of the Atlantic.

In national politics, the mission among political parties is to form coalitions that yield power. The elements of coalition building can change over election cycles, but the mission remains the same - getting and keeping the reins of government. In the United States, those coalitions take place under the roof of either the Democrats or the Republicans. Battle for control of the coalition in either party can be ferocious, but the mission will ultimately determine the coalition's course. Once successful, the winning coalition will work to hold on to its position of power while the losing coalition will have to reassemble its components and redesign its strategy. Holding the consensus together on either side of the aisle is difficult, whether you are in or out of power. The second term of the Bush administration has been an illustration of the former whereas the current confusion among the Democrats exemplifies the latter plight. The next three years will show how both sides deal with forging the bridge between their missions and their respective coalition partners.

In Germany's parliamentary system, the coalitions that have ruled the Federal Republic during the last fifty-five years have always been made up of a coalition of the willing among more than two political parties. Those coalitions were first built around primarily the large parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), in alliance with the Christian Social Union (CSU) or the Free Democrats (FDP) for over three decades. When the Greens entered the political system in the Eighties, they caused a recalibration of the coalition building process, first as an effective opposition party and then in 1998 as part of the government. The entry of a sixth party now into the parliament, the Left Party, has further changed the picture of German politics, at the expense of the two large parties, both of which have been losing their support significantly over the last decade.

The picture that emerged out of the September 18 elections this year is thus a result of changing clusters of coalitions within and across party lines. Germans are redefining their political loyalties and adjusting their voting behavior according to what they see as their interests and their desired coalitions in new ways, some of which are conflicting with old patterns. The current battle within the SPD over leadership and direction is a direct result of the loss of the recent election, the arguments over what brought that result, and the debate over the consequences to be drawn. This is similar to the situation the Democrats were facing after Al Gore lost the presidential election in 2000. Despite the close election race, the Democrats were unable to come up with a narrative which explains why they lost and what the consequences should be. The result was that they lost again four years later. The SPD is going through a similar struggle with its own purposes and strategies now, enhanced by the presence of the Left Party, which will act as a catalyst for even more debate as to how the SPD allowed a party to its left - a party that knows more about what it doesn't want than what it wants - to emerge so strongly and so quickly on a national scale. This battle emerged in the wake of Gerhard Schröder's reform program and it will continue to shape the path of the Social Democrats long after Schröder's departure.

The CDU has been challenged by a similar set of pressures within its own ranks. The party is also asking how it got the bad results on September 18 and what to do about it. The older ranks of the party, raised in a west-German political culture in which the social side of Ludwig Erhard's social market economy formula took on increasingly more weight during the last thirty years, have become challenged by an eastern and western younger generation that is reassessing what they can afford within a system stacked against their own futures, in terms of economic growth, social security or medical care. Even within the more homogeneous CSU, the arguments over the policy meaning of the word "social" in their name is showing strains and cracks, be it in regard to pensions, immigration or unemployment benefits.

These three parties that have dominated so much of the German political scene during the past half-century are facing some serious challenges to their traditional sense of mission, illustrated by plummeting membership ranks.

Meanwhile, the Greens will be thrust back into the role they were born into, that of the opposition, where they will be forced to figure out what they will be most comfortable and coherent with when it comes to presenting their own platform. The continuing debate between the camps of those following the "realo" tradition of party chairs Fritz Kuhn and Renate Künast and those following the leadership of former Minister Trittin and his supporters will chart the debate over their mission and their possible coalitions in a post-Fischer Green Party.

That leaves the Free Democrats, who apparently have resolved their leadership issues with a decision to give the full levers of party power to Guido Westerwelle and to wait out the grand coalition while continuously reminding both the other parties and the voters of their mission. How to do that without sounding negative the whole time and to maintain a position of strength within their constituency will be challenging. One needs to keep in mind that their impressive results last September had much to do with the fact that many voters gave them their second vote with the intention of avoiding a grand coalition. How much of that vote was based on real political support for the FDP and not on political poker is open to discussion. Making the FDP mission clear and non-negotiable for any coalition partners will be a constant challenge in the face of temptations to seize the reins of power, especially for a party which has made switches from one coalition to another in the past.

Whatever party is involved, the mission will define the coalition. Whether the mission can address the needs and concerns of the voters and the urgent agenda needs of the nation, be it within the grand coalition or whatever comes next, will depend on skillful leadership within and across party lines. Yet the leaders all have to understand that the environment and the preferences of the voters are changing; that will have serious implications for the missions of the parties as they respond to both. The voters and the changing situation in and around Germany are forcing the parties to rethink who they are, who they represent and how best to do it. The fact that they are all having difficulty putting together a governing coalition right now is an illustration that this is not going to be resolved soon.

To borrow again from Rumsfeld, the old and new party leaders will be talking to both the "old" and the "new" political interest groups, and their coalitions will be rearranging themselves on Germany's fast-changing political stage. Yet if they are going to successful, they will need to be willing to spend as much time listening to the voters as they do talking to them. Beyond that, the party leaders need to have a better grasp of themselves and their own coalitions if they are going to be willing to negotiate successfully with each other. Maybe Rumsfeld could have been more successful with his missions and coalitions if he had also been willing to spend more time learning that lesson as well. That is how coalitions are made.

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This essay appeared in the November 4, 2005 AICGS Advisor.