The Parties Are Soul-Searching
By Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl-Rudolf Korte

Gradually the charm of "patchwork politics" has evaporated. Step by step, speeches from the Grand Coalition has slowly denigrated into rehabilitation rhetoric. The longing for embellished radical promises is not by any means overwhelming, but the populace expects at least some sort of coherent communication about reforms. Where does the current compass, which provides a direction and protects against the reproach of daily political arbitrariness, lie in this Grand Coalition? What is the overarching motivational connection of daily politics?  At present the only consistent change is towards less, which comes with more burdens and higher direct and indirect taxes for each individual. The reason for this trend is by no means the perplexity of the governing coalition or the logic of a settlement on the smallest common denominator; rather, it is first a reaction to the election result, which did not mandate any fundamental political change.  Maintaining social-statehood is an objective of the state in Germany. System-changing cuts in the social security system are not rewarded on election days. It is not legitimate for the Grand Coalition as a reform-requiring community to implement fundamental modernization measures. A further reason for the stagnation lies in the despondency of the two "people's parties," which both still appear as weak election losers.

The weakness of the people's parties is not connected primarily with declining membership and decreasing campaign capability in view of the increasing average age of members. Rather, the people's parties have become baseless to a large extent and thus are less and less socially rooted. The necessary representative-ness is missing in them, mostly in order to be able to act sensitively towards conflicts. They are less and less links in the functioning logic of the representative parliamentary system, and not a reflection body for general sentiment. Such organizations that are without a home base can, dependent on the political atmosphere, generate all kinds of activities.  This also increases the un-ideological pressure from competition from which the parties suffer. The competition pressure leads to a dramatic fixation on the present, and less time remains to make decisions that have much longer-term effects. Such parties with "any-idea-goes" zones are extremely susceptible to risk. They are difficult to evaluate as power resources for the political leadership, as the last eruptive processes within the SPD top management demonstrated. Both people's parties suffer from strategic uncertainty over their respective future profiles and identities.

To that extent it is logical to look for identity and trademarks with new basic policy statements. It is necessary to fill the gaps in logic. The renewal cure is necessary, in order to escape from the seduction of obvious politics. Discussing the party program is crucial for the party internally, but it has only limited external effectiveness. Party activists, usually representative of similar age groups, come together for such fundamental discussion processes; that can join them together for decades. Innovative political policies will not always be part of this.  It will be more important to fill up the supply of those facts that are commonly understood. The CDU thereby has the advantage because as a pragmatic "feeling party," the detection of its power-politics does not depend on the success of the party program discussion. It is different for the SPD; as a "program party" it binds its members more by the power of content than by the promise of power.

The starting point for the "fitness program" is aligned exclusively based on content. Because only the party is successful, which as a formation possesses the power to lend political expression to a socially-significant conflict: typical ideals of persons and programs that match. Answers to such fundamental schisms are to be looked for on three levels: the political distribution conflict line (redistribution vs. market liberality), disagreements between the center and periphery (between majorities and new minorities), and the value-based, cultural dimension of conflicts (between public-interest-oriented civility and non-civil populism).  In order to avoid arbitrariness and the pragmatism of the moment in answering these elementary conflict lines, the core of a party must be recognizable. That is much more than marketing; the core results from the respective value foundations. Leadership by values does not mean ingratiating the spirit of the time, but means to even become attractive for others. Leadership in this sense occurs strictly without echoing the current polls because one can gain new majorities only by painstaking efforts. Daily polls about current topic popularity are thereby completely irrelevant. Governing and being in the opposition consists, especially in times of economic scarceness, of determining priorities, not of their apparent abolition. Since the longing after moral orientation increases, like the knowledge of the strength of a value-orientation, it can be used also for leadership purposes.  Election campaigns aim at the mobilization of identities; therefore values are also mobilization instruments. Value-oriented leadership requires, however, the self-understanding of priorities.

What from the cultural tradition of the party is the answer to the three large socially-important conflict lines? The idea management for not only reclaiming modernization, but also for a farsighted reform process, would have to offer more than only old-social or market-liberal accents. What should a community be besides a marketplace? If it aims to mobilize identities, then it needs to place itself in the middle ground of the central conflict lines.  Middle-centered modern civility is at the intersection of the conflict lines: compassionate, social, and responsible, a political center that comes along socially-sensitively, without being egalitarian. That would be a combination of civil solidarity, public interest-oriented buyer spirit, and an educated civil-tradition consciousness. Majorities for the unpopular are maintainable in such a tonality because they count on integrated environments and do not reduce everything to functionalistic achievement parameters of the competitive society.

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Professor Dr. Dr. Karl-Rudolf Korte is Professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen and is a former DAAD/AICGS Research Fellow.

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This essay appeared in the June 9, 2006 AICGS Advisor and was translated by Matthew Wiggins.
For the original German version, please click here.