Stoiber - Dominant But Not Omnipotent
By Prof. Clayton Clemens

An election without suspense need not be an election without interest. No one ever doubted that Bavarian voters would return minister-president Edmund Stoiber and his CSU to power with an increased Landtag majority on September 21, 2003. Betting on any other outcome would have ranked up there with investing heavily in Enron stock. Certain as the outcome was, however, its larger meaning remains somewhat less clear. Is this just a case of Bavaria's clocks running differently than those elsewhere in Germany, or should an alarm bell be ringing for the government of Gerhard Schröder in Berlin?

Bavaria's last Landtagswahl, in 1998, came just a week before the federal election that almost everyone knew would bring an end to Helmut Kohl's sixteen years as chancellor. Stoiber's CSU then nonetheless bucked a nationwide tide of change, winning 52% and retaining its absolute majority. That win gave him a strong claim when the Union began casting about for its chancellor candidate to unseat Schröder at the next federal election, set for 2002. Stoiber tossed his feathered cap into the ring, becoming the first Bavarian to bid for Germany's top job since the ill-fated campaign of legendary CSU boss Franz Josef Strauss in 1980. His effort last year seemed so certain of success that aides could already picture themselves quaffing Weizenbier while gazing out on Berlin's skyline from the upper floors of its modernistic chancellery. On election night, Stoiber even prematurely claimed victory before the final vote tally gave Schröder's team a narrow edge.

Almost exactly one year to the day after this excruciating setback, Bavaria's leader has exacted an awesome measure of revenge. To paraphrase Lenin (granted, not exactly the CSU's patron saint), quantity has a quality all of its own: from an already impressive base, Stoiber's party gained over 8% and garnered a stunning 60.7% vote share, more than it ever did even with Strauss atop the ticket (albeit a point or so less than Alfons Goppel's historic 62% in 1974). This gives the CSU a two-thirds majority of the seats in Bavaria's Landtag for the first time ever, a monopoly that no party in postwar Germany has ever enjoyed in an assembly at any level (and something all but unheard of in other democracies, especially those with proportional electoral systems, but even those like the US or Britain). Stoiber and company already pretty much had their way in Munich's Maximilianeum, though with 124 of its 180 seats they will now run it entirely, and could even launch referenda for constitutional amendments all on their own.

Nor is there much dispute over the reasons for this success. The CSU continues to govern Bavaria well, especially in social, economic and even environmental policy. Stoiber and his cabinet enjoy especially high approval for their competence: while their Land's economy is no longer quite the miracle it was, voters are plainly satisfied with what Stoiber calls the Bavarian model. Moreover, as always, the CSU remains a superbly oiled machine, in terms of recruiting candidates, presence at the local level, membership service, voter outreach, publicity, and campaigning. Under Stoiber and general-secretary Thomas Goppel, the party ran a flawless campaign. Finally, the CSU's very success in identifying itself so closely with Bavaria both benefited from and further deepened the misery of its opponents: the Freistaat's already flailing SPD, burdened by Schröder's slumping popularity and hardly helped by a lackluster candidate, was reduced to lamely warning that voters should not give any party a two-thirds majority. It did not even reach 20%. Bavaria's eclectic none-of-the above party, the Union of Free Voters, won 4% - a success that in past years might have discomfited the CSU by making its right flank appear vulnerable, yet this time barely drew a headline.

But both the CSU triumph and reasons for it reach beyond Bavaria's borders. While technically his unprecedented two-thirds Landtag majority at home cannot help Stoiber fix a traffic ticket north of the Main River, the aura of this triumph plainly strengthens his already pivotal position in federal politics. This is all the more important given that one reason for it was his national strategy. In the past, CSU chiefs bolstered their image at home by attacking CDU colleagues and pressing for all out confrontation with the left. Though much of his rhetoric was bluster, Strauss perpetually picked fights with Kohl and urged the Union to exploit domestic crises rather than resolve them. In response many CDU leaders lampooned their Bavarian sister party as provincial reactionaries, all but abandoning Strauss's 1980 chancellery bid. The manager of that campaign - Edmund Stoiber - would ultimately rise to lead the CSU himself over a decade later. Though more austere and technocratic than Strauss, he initially seemed to share his mentor's wariness of the CDU and emulated his tactics, mercilessly harrying Kohl, especially on European policy, and earning the image as a Scharfmacher during the 1990s.

But as Stoiber considered a bid for the chancellery in 2002, he discovered - contrary to his expectations - the benefits of a different approach. The CDU was struggling after a near-fatal crisis triggered by revelations about Kohl's past party finance practices, and exploiting its weakened state seemed risky. Thus Stoiber instead sought to help it rally by cooperating more closely with northern colleagues, to be sure, without entirely abandoning his proud boasts about the Bavarian model. He found that the CDU - out of its desire to regain power and respect for his success at home - was now more than willing to support a Bavarian atop the ticket, especially one who enjoyed a more positive national image than their own leaders. Over breakfast at his home in the Alpine foothills, he and a reluctant CDU chair Angela Merkel worked out an effective division of labor, making him chancellor candidate and her (later) chief of the joint Bundestag caucus. They adopted a pragmatic campaign based on economic issues rather than potentially divisive social themes. This tactic held the Union parties together throughout their campaign, and - arguably - helped bring them to the very verge of victory.

Since then, Stoiber has cherished his image as not merely leader of the CSU, but de facto leader of the Union as a whole - and the recent result in Bavaria only further enhances this stature. Indeed, just days afterward, he was in effect helping defuse a squabble among CDU leaders sparked by the Union's decision to help pass Schröder's bill reforming Germany's costly health care system. Ironically, the CSU and its chief have achieved their maximum influence in national politics and policy at precisely the time when they seem less stereotypically "Bavarian" than ever. That Stoiber will remain the key opposition figure is beyond doubt. What CDU counterparts wonder is whether his ambitions extend further. Some have "generously" suggested that Stoiber's win earns him right of first refusal to be the Union candidate for federal president, in place of the retiring Johannes Rau. But given his past image as a polarizer and his workaholic tendencies, the largely bipartisan, ceremonial chief of state post would be an odd choice for him. The real question is whether Stoiber still aims for the chancellery. CDU colleagues have all but tacitly admitted that he would still be the Union candidate should Schröder's wafer-thin majority crumble in the coming months. But if that does not happen, what of the 2006 federal election? CDU leaders would be loath to pass the top job off to their junior partner twice in a row. Freshly re-elected as Bundestag chief, Merkel sees herself as the logical nominee - and believes that her loyal support in the last contest has earned her Stoiber's support. Given convincing Land election victories themselves earlier this year, Hesse's minister-president Roland Koch and perhaps Christian Wulff of Lower Saxony also have their eyes on the chancellery.

Moreover, while dominant, Stoiber is not omnipotent. After all, his massive win where he already has a huge home field advantage may say less about nationwide trends than many in the CSU think. For while Stoiber's 60%+ in September did represent a big gain over his party's 1998 Land election showing, that vote share in effect matched what he already won in Bavaria at the 2002 Bundestag contest - which was not enough to put him over the top nationwide then. That some two-thirds of his home region's electorate see him as an ideal minister-president or chancellor is not totally new. Like its last federal election, though, Germany's next is more likely to be determined mainly by swing voters in the north and east - whose preferences, to say the least, are not reflected in Bavarian Land elections. Moreover, while Stoiber has successfully softened his image and wants to keep the Union united, that has created some confusion about where he stands on major issues of socio-economic policy: it hurt him in 2002 and continues making it difficult to discern his strategy for dealing with the Schröder coalition's legislation on entitlement reform, taxation and spending. His insistence that these measures must bear the Union's imprint strikes a constructive tone, but may also be too vague to win over skeptics - and too mild to rally his own troops for battle.

For now, Stoiber and CDU counterparts have no choice but to continue cooperating with one another closely and eschewing all-out opposition to the government: after all, this harmony has helped them exploit the SPD-Green coalition's problems, and thus at least partly explains a healthy Union lead in the polls. Such a course will prove ever trickier in parliamentary (especially Bundesrat) deliberations on the government's reform legislation, measures which Schröder - for all his talk of bipartisanship in the national interest - would dearly love to use as a way of playing divide and rule among his opponents. A feud over the Union chancellor candidacy could be an even bigger gift to the crafty chancellor. Thus if Stoiber's Bavarian landslide emboldens him to make another bid for national office, he could finally realize his dream - but could also play right into the hands of his SPD rival.

Clayton Clemens is professor at the Department of Government at College of William & Mary and a member of the AICGS Advisory council.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone.
They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.