Elections
Turkey After the Elections – Where is it Heading?
While prevailing opinion delivered by most of Germany’s newspapers labeled the Turkish election results as a major setback for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, looking at the numbers will quickly make it clear that the AKP is far from legitimately being considered the election’s loser writes DAAD/AICGS Fellow Rana Deep Islam. Mr. Islam examines the election results and argues that the outcome will have a significant impact on Turkey’s foreign policy strategies in dealing with the greater Middle East.
Lessons for Liberals: Next Steps for the FDP
In this week’s At Issue, Executive Director Dr. Jackson Janes examines how the FDP lost support since the 2009 election and the challenges they – and all parties – face in getting voters to buy in to their messages.
Messages From Hamburg’s Elections
In this week’s At Issue, Executive Director Dr. Jackson Janes looks at the opening round of Germany’s regional elections in 2011 and examines the potential pitfalls and possibilities for Chancellor Merkel during this unusual year of political barometers.
A Change in Government but No Change in Policy? Implications of the 2009 German Election
In Issue Brief 32, “A Change in Government But No Change in Policy? Implications of the 2009 German Election,” AICGS Research Associate Kirsten Verclas takes an in-depth look at the results of the 2009 German Bundestag election and their implications for the future of Germany’s party and electoral system. Additionally, the Issue Brief further analyzes the current stance of the new governing coalition on key foreign policy, economic, and domestic issues and the impact this may have on the German-American partnership and U.S. foreign policy interests.
The 2009 Election: A New Coalition for Germany
In this Transatlantic Perspectives essay, Dr. Dieter Roth, professor of political science at the University of Heidelberg and the co-founder and former chairman of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V. Mannheim, wraps up the September election with an in-depth look at the voting data from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen and looks to the short-term future for the new CDU/CSU-FDP coalition.
Forging New Alliances at Home and Abroad: German Greens in a Post-Industrial Era
Colors matter in politics—on both sides of the Atlantic. The United States has blue and red states. In the first few decades after the Second World War, West German politics seemed to rely on a similarly small variety of colors…
The CDU: Still a Party for the Future?
During most of the last sixty years, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) used to be “the” German party: five out of eight German chancellors have been CDU leaders, forty out of sixty years of the Federal Republic of Germany have seen federal governments with Christian Democratic (and Christian Social, not to forget the Bavarian sister party) ministers…
The Liberal Renaissance
The Liberal Party in Germany, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), is experiencing an astonishing renaissance in the run-up to the elections on 27 September 2009— despite capitalism’s worst crisis since the 1930s…
Success, But Clouds Loom on the Horizon: The Left Party in 2009
When one scratches under the surface, however, it becomes clear that 2009 could quite conceivably be as good as it gets for Germany’s newest political party. The LP is the product of a merger between two quite distinct political parties: the predominantly eastern German PDS, with its roots in the Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the GDR, and the much newer SPD off-shoot, the WASG (The Electoral Alternative: Labor and Social Justice)…
The SPD’s Electoral Dilemmas
AICGS Senior Non-Resident Fellow Dr. Dieter Dettke, Professor at Georgetown University, takes a look at the SPD’s standing before the election and discusses the party’s outlook in the immediate and long-term future, including the possibility of a ‘united left.’ Dr. Dettke says that while the specter of a red-red-green coalition in Berlin looms large, based on the current German electoral system it is unlikely that the SPD and Die Linke will ever unite.
