Quo Vadis CDU: Left, Middle, or Right?
When Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK,) the CDU party leader and presumed successor to Angela Merkel as chancellor, announced her resignation from her role as CDU party chairwoman on February 8, 2020, speculation about …
Episode 19: Sending the Right Signals: China, Foreign Policy, Politics
Few topics have dominated the German-American discourse lately more than China and the role of Huawei in 5G communications. Germans have become increasingly wary of Chinese interference, and are seeing …
Between German Pragmatism and “America First”: Democrats’ Foreign Policy in the 2020 Presidential Campaign
In the final weeks of 2019, The New York Times conducted video interviews with seven of the Democratic candidates for president, who were asked a series of questions on a …
Episode 18: Hamburg as Barometer: What’s Happening in German Politics
On Sunday, Hamburg voters went to the polls for what is the only (scheduled) regional election in Germany this year. Recent regional elections have served as a barometer for the …
The New German Math
The chaos in Thuringia is another sign that the German party system is fragmenting, with dangerous consequences both for Germany and for its role in Europe. The new German political …
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Dusting Off Local Politics: New Ideas for Political Participation in Rust Belt Cities
Our world today is increasingly marked by social divisions. The political fault lines can be witnessed between liberals and conservatives, generationally between millennials and boomers, or geographically between urban and rural …
The German SPD and the Curse of Corbynisation
On December 12, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party slipped to inglorious defeat in what was Britain’s third general election in four years. Labour’s worst result since 1935 leaves the party no …
A Farewell to Power: Germany’s Social Democratic Party After the Election of a New Party Leadership
The Social Democratic Party, Germany’s oldest democratic party which emerged from an early German labor movement, survived the challenge of communism after World War I, was forced into exile during …
Social Democracy in Search of Its Identity
Despite untamed global capitalism and growing inequality within advanced economies, the traditional left continues to be in sharp decline. Social democratic parties lost significant support in almost all Western democracies, …
Maneuvering Around the Middle: Party Politics in 2020
In the last two weeks, four political parties in Germany have gathered at their annual conferences to start positioning themselves for the next federal election, currently scheduled for 2021. In …
Uprising Against German Chancellor in the Case of Huawei
From the U.S. perspective, the situation is simple. The Trump administration banned the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from the U.S. market—and made it pretty clear that it does not want …
Anticipating Uncertainty: Lessons from 1989 for 2020
As we approach the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, some of us might recall where we were when we heard the news of …
The 2019 Thuringia Elections: New Winners, Tough Challenges
With Sunday’s vote in Thuringia, the 2019 election year in Germany came to an end. Following several state elections, including in Saxony and Brandenburg, approximately 1.7 million voters went to …
The Economics of AfD Expansion
With the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieving almost 25 percent in the elections in the two east German states of Brandenburg and Saxony in September 2019, and both …
