Abstract Germany has been governed by coalitions since 1949, and how they are built has developed into a differentiated process over the past decades. Bringing the cdu , csu , and spd together after the Bundestag election of 2025 followed the established routines, which led to a new government under the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Analyzing the process and structure, the use of policy expertise, the integration, and the legitimation, as well as the public performance, it becomes clear how this informal but routinized process helps to move from campaigning to governing in a competitive multi-party system. Whether it actually results in a functioning government that is able to address challenges and solve problems remains to be seen. New forms of coalition building and government coordination may be needed in the future.
Abstract The growing convergence between the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-right Vorfeld reflects a broader strategy of ideological radicalization through cultural influence. Positioned as an intellectual and strategic vanguard, the Vorfeld promotes metapolitical agendas rooted in a right-wing reinterpretation of Gramscian thought. Central concepts such as the “great replacement” and “remigration” have been popularized by Vorfeld actors and increasingly adopted by the AfD. This alignment has shifted the party's discourse on migration and national identity, reinforcing exclusionary definitions of citizenship and belonging. The role of digital platforms, youth outreach, and alternative media infrastructures further illustrates the deliberate mainstreaming of far-right narratives within German political culture. While the AfD and Vorfeld maintain distinct roles, their alignment has contributed to the radicalization of the AfD.
Abstract This article examines the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) position following the 2025 federal election, considering whether the party is entering a stage of decline, sustaining its previous support, or moving toward greater ascendancy. The analysis assesses changes in voter demographics, regional dynamics, and issue salience to identify patterns of continuity or transformation in the party's base. We also define potential future issues, including continued dissatisfaction with the previous Ampel coalition and the grand coalition that replaced it, backlash against the end of the debt brake, and the perceived weakness of Friedrich Merz as a leader. In light of recent efforts to classify the AfD as an extremist party, the article evaluates how the party's evolving strategy and public perception may influence its capacity to shape party competition and national policymaking. Finally, it explores whether the AfD's post-2025 trajectory signals a tipping point in the normalization of far-right politics in Germany or a plateau in its influence, with broader implications for democratic stability in advanced democracies.
In all likelihood, Germany's 2025 federal election has driven a final nail in the coffin of a party system marked by two traditional catch-all parties and several small parties. The fdp, Greens, AfD, Left Party, and bsw together received a record vote share. However, not all of them were electoral winners. Led by the AfD, smaller opposition parties on the ideological extremes surged, while hinge parties in government lost ground. A clear pole position offered an edge in a polarized and fragmented field. This article examines pre-election developments, manifestos, candidates, results, and outlooks of five parties that have emerged as key players in a party system that shows signs of polarized pluralism.
Germany has been governed by coalitions since 1949, and how they are built has developed into a differentiated process over the past decades. Bringing the cdu, csu, and spd together after the Bundestag election of 2025 followed the established routines, which led to a new government under the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Analyzing the process and structure, the use of policy expertise, the integration, and the legitimation, as well as the public performance, it becomes clear how this informal but routinized process helps to move from campaigning to governing in a competitive multi-party system. Whether it actually results in a functioning government that is able to address challenges and solve problems remains to be seen. New forms of coalition building and government coordination may be needed in the future.
Since the mid-1990s, immigrant-origin (io) politicians have been represented in the Bundestag, and their number and share among national parliamentarians have continuously risen. In the aftermath of the 2013 election, a detailed view on representational patterns of this new group of national politicians was presented in this journal. Three electoral terms later, several of these patterns are revisited in this article. Are there specific electoral modes and contexts for the election of io mps? Does party ideology matter with respect to the personal characteristics of io parliamentarians? What are the specifics of their parliamentary careers and termination? The analysis identifies several patterns found earlier, but also documents a higher number of long-serving politicians and hardly detects any io discriminatory patterns. It appears that parties are selectively open to the specific origins, and a relative advan-tage for woman mps is a finding that points to variance in the career patterns within the group of io parliamentarians.
This article examines the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) position following the 2025 federal election, considering whether the party is entering a stage of decline, sustaining its previous support, or moving toward greater ascendancy. The analysis assesses changes in voter demographics, regional dynamics, and issue salience to identify patterns of continuity or transformation in the party's base. We also define potential future issues, including continued dissatisfaction with the previous Ampel coalition and the grand coalition that replaced it, backlash against the end of the debt brake, and the perceived weakness of Friedrich Merz as a leader. In light of recent efforts to classify the AfD as an extremist party, the article evaluates how the party's evolving strategy and public perception may influence its capacity to shape party competition and national policymaking. Finally, it explores whether the AfD's post-2025 trajectory signals a tipping point in the normalization of far-right politics in Germany or a plateau in its influence, with broader implications for democratic stability in advanced democracies.
Olaf Scholz's declaration of an "epochal turnaround" following Russia's invasion of Ukraine testifies to a paradigm shift in German strategic culture. The 2025 elections confirmed voters' willingness to embrace a "new responsibility" for global security initiated by Ursula von der Leyen. Despite gains by the Putin-friendly Alternative for Germany, the party most opposed to supporting Ukraine (the B & uuml;ndnis Sahra Wagenknecht) failed to enter the Bundestag. Exploring the linkage between "strategic culture" and "generational change," this study reviews party platforms addressing Ukrainian aid and defense spending. It then offers survey data attesting to shifting public attitudes before and after the election, partly in response to Trump's threats to abandon Ukraine and weaken the u.s. security umbrella. The conclusion highlights demographic dilemmas complicating Germany's efforts to operationalize its "new responsibility" in an unstable security environment.
The growing convergence between the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-right Vorfeld reflects a broader strategy of ideological radicalization through cultural influence. Positioned as an intellectual and strategic vanguard, the Vorfeld promotes metapolitical agendas rooted in a right-wing reinterpretation of Gramscian thought. Central concepts such as the "great replacement" and "remigration" have been popularized by Vorfeld actors and increasingly adopted by the AfD. This alignment has shifted the party's discourse on migration and national identity, reinforcing exclusionary definitions of citizenship and belonging. The role of digital platforms, youth outreach, and alternative media infrastructures further illustrates the deliberate mainstreaming of far-right narratives within German political culture. While the AfD and Vorfeld maintain distinct roles, their alignment has contributed to the radicalization of the AfD.
The federal election of February 2025, triggered by the collapse of the traffic light coalition in November 2024, resulted in a marked rise in support for parties that are critical of, or openly hostile to, the political system. While the cdu / csu under newly elected Chancellor Friedrich Merz benefited only marginally from its position in opposition, it was the right-wing extremist AfD that capitalized most, nearly doubling its vote share and emerging as the strongest party in all eastern German states. On the left fringe, the good result of the Left Party came as a surprise and surpassed the electoral fortunes of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance ( bsw ), which had split from it in 2024. Nonetheless, with a Cabinet formed by the cdu / csu and spd , the country continues to be governed from the democratic center—albeit under constrained conditions, as the combined strength of the Left Party and the AfD now constitutes a blocking minority.
This article examines how migration became a defining and polarizing issue in Germany's 2025 federal election. Although centrist parties initially aimed to campaign on socio-economic concerns, violent incidents involving asylum seekers and rising public anxiety pushed them to recalibrate their messaging. The campaign saw a pronounced shift toward restrictive rhetoric, particularly from the Christian Democratic Party ( cdu ), whose discourse increasingly mirrored the hard-line positions of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Seeking to stem voter losses to the far right, mainstream parties toughened their stances, with cdu leader Friedrich Merz even accepting AfD parliamentary support for a migration bill. This strategic decision triggered mass protests and raised fundamental questions about engagement with the radical right. While the AfD gained support, Die Linke benefited from its principled opposition against the right-wing party. The election highlights the risks of mainstreaming far-right narratives and weakening the political firewall against the AfD.
Traditional European parties face a dilemma: they must choose to accommodate or exclude far-right parties in policy and coalition formations. Although breaking a cordon sanitaire may counter far-right appeals, it could also legitimize the party and increase its voter base. We test these competing expectations during the 2025 German federal election, strategically varying whether the presumptive coalition leader (the cdu / csu ) is portrayed as breaching or preserving the Brandmauer (firewall) against the far-right AfD. We find that neither accommodation nor exclusion of the far right affects German voter party approval, democratic satisfaction, vote choice, or immigration attitudes. These findings suggest that party strategies toward the cordon sanitaire may have limited influence on voters, providing implications for the efficacy of the firewall as a stand-alone defense against the far right.
Most earlier assessments of the Scholz chancellorship (2021–2025) have, implicitly or explicitly, focused on a comparison between Olaf Scholz and his long-term predecessor Angela Merkel. This article develops a wider perspective, which puts the Scholz chancellorship in the context of the Federal Republic's three previous Social Democratic chancellorships (Brandt, Schmidt, and Schröder). Such a comparative assessment casts a different light on Scholz as a political leader. It reveals that some issues, such as strained chancellor-party relations and modest electoral fortunes, have been rather typical for other Social Democratic chancellors, too. At the same time, Scholz stands out even, or in fact particularly, within this sample of German post-war chancellors due to his limited skills as a communicator and crisis leader.
Germany's Energiewende (energy transition) is often misunderstood as a top-down industrial policy triggered by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Its origins lie much earlier, however, rooted in decades of grassroots activism, citizen-driven initiatives, and policy innovations like the feed-in tariff, which collectively propelled significant renewable energy expansion nationwide. This article explores the historical evolution of the Energiewende, the tensions between bottom-up and top-down approaches to it, and the implications of later decisions by the federal government to controversially embrace more centralized policy tools like the auction system. By analyzing both local and national dynamics, it highlights how citizen participation and decentralized governance have been critical to enabling the rapid and widespread diffusion of renewables in Germany, effectively turbocharging the Energiewende, and offers key lessons as countries the world over seek to accelerate their own energy transitions.
Amid a persistent affordability crisis, German political parties increasingly frame housing as the “new social question of our time.” But to what extent do parties at the national and regional levels also agree on solutions, given Germany's stark regional housing differences and regionalized housing policymaking? Using a novel dataset on party positions toward housing, we analyzed 361 party manifestos from national and Länder elections between 2000 and 2020 and find that housing has become an increasingly salient electoral issue over time. We also show that left-leaning parties prefer renter-oriented policies, while right-leaning parties favor homeownership. Finally, we find clear that housing salience varies significantly between eastern and western Länder.
The article places the current malaise afflicting the Federal Republic of Germany in a post-war historical context. It argues that the recent reversal in Chancellor Angela Merkel's academic and journalistic fortunes—from darling to devil within a few short years—reflects a broader schizophrenia in the intelligentsia's views on Germany's economy. Since the early 1950s, opinion has swung, almost violently, from fawning adoration to dark pessimism. We have, in short, been here before, and the present apocalyptic gloom is, as it has always been in the past, likely overdone. The article then reviews the crises Germany is confronting—including housing, decaying infrastructure, migration, and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the far right—and outlines how the contributions to this special issue address these and other challenges.
German unification was initially hailed as a Glücksfall, a stroke of luck, but recent political and social developments suggest a more complex reality. This article examines the evolving East-West divide, the resurgence of identity politics, and the rise of populism, particularly in eastern Germany. It explores historical narratives shaping public discourse, including perceptions of East Germans as victims, perpetrators, or heroes. By situating these debates within broader temporal, spatial, and comparative contexts, the article challenges rigid national frameworks and emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary approaches to understanding Germany's post-unification transformations.
This article considers Germany's response to the Hamas attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 and the Israeli assault on Gaza that followed and analyzes the impacts of that response on how the Holocaust is studied and understood. I identify three rifts that have widened as a result: between public and scholarly discourse on the Holocaust; between the concepts of Holocaust and genocide; and around what I call “bespoke histories” of the Holocaust, that is, versions of the Holocaust designed to fit the demands and desires of the present. With regard to these developments, Germany is distinctive but not unique.
Since the 1980s, innovation has emerged as the dominant epistemic framework for imagining and engineering futures across much of Europe and America. This article investigates the cultural and political work performed by contemporary innovation discourse, using Germany's Future Strategy for Research and Innovation as a case study. The analysis draws on methods from literary studies and conceptual history to approach innovation as a mode of governance that is both historically contingent and symbolically charged. The article traces how innovation narratives are structured by a recurrent binary of promise and threat—projecting technological progress as national redemption while mobilizing anxieties over decline and obsolescence. The analysis reveals that, in the name of seemingly depoliticized foresight, innovation discourse legitimizes specific policy agendas, privileges particular technological trajectories, and reorders socio-economic priorities. By foregrounding the normative and rhetorical dimensions of innovation discourse, the article calls for a more critically attuned understanding of its political stakes and showcases the distinctive contributions that cultural analysis can offer to debates on science and technology policy.
A “crisis of democratic representation” has emerged as a pressing challenge in Germany and other Western democracies. The crisis is characterized by declining trust in institutions, the erosion of major parties, and the rise of populist movements that exploit feelings of political estrangement. This article examines the underlying causes—such as globalization, economic inequality, and cultural shifts—that contribute to fragmenting public spheres and diminishing political integration. It also explores constitutional perspectives on potential reforms, including direct democracy, citizen councils, and electoral law adjustments. The article concludes that these dynamics should be seen as part of a larger history on the adaptability of democratic representation.
