Title of the article

Party-Political Landscape of Modern German Federalism, the End of the 20th Century – the Beginning of the 2020s

 Authors 

Aleksey Yu. Salomatin —  Doctor of Law, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Sub-department of Theory of State and Law and Political Studies, Penza State University, 40 Krasnaya street, Penza, 440026, Russia, valeriya_zinovev@mail.ru
Angelina S. Koryakina —  Postgraduate Student, Penza State University, 40 Krasnaya street, Penza, 440026, Russia, angelinakoryakina@mail.ru

 Category 

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL LEGAL SCIENCES

Year,.Volume, Number 

2021, Vol. 9, № 4 (36)

 Pages 

37-45

 Article type 

Original article

 Index UDK 

329

 DOI 

10.21685/2307-9525-2021-9-4-5

 Abstract 

Background. Political parties play a significant role in the history of any state. They influence the state, including the form of government. In federations where the powers traditionally compete with each other, parties are able to influence the processes of centralization or decentralization. In the 1950s – 1980s they certainly played a stabilizing role, but what happens after the unification of Germany in 1990? The article examines the activity of German parties through the prism of their involvement in federal relations and solution of key problems in German politics. Materials and methods. The authors rely on Russian and foreign literature, electoral statistics. They use the historical-state method to explain the ongoing changes in the party-political landscape and the system of governance under German federalism. Results. If the two "people's" parties – the CDU/CSU and the SPD – with the auxiliary participation of a small FDP party formed inter-party coalitions in the 1950s – 1980s, then after the accession of the German Democratic Republic, new problems arose in the state and the party-political system began to fragment. Its leading force at the turn of the 21st century was the PDS as the heir to the socialist past of the German Democratic Republic, as well as the unsatisfactory social policy of the new ruling coalition of the SPD-Greens in 1998 – 2005. It is noteworthy that two key reforms in federal relations were carried out in 2006 and 2009, i.e. under the "grand coalition" of the CDU/CSU and the SPD, which contributed to reaching a compromise. At that, under other coalitions and after the onset of the global financial and economic crisis, no new reforms were undertaken. A big surprise for the old parties was the ascent of the conservative-patriotic party AfD since 2013 against the background of escalating migration problems. In the 2017 elections the party managed to take votes from almost all parties, but in 2021 it did not consolidate its gains. The results of the 2021 election campaign highlight new trends. First of all, this is the conditional victory of the SPD, which, being the first, received only 25.7 % of the vote, while the CDU/CSU received almost the same (24.1 %). However, there are concerns about the strengthening of the Green party with its fantastic recipes in the worst sense of the word for transforming the economy and international relations, Russophobia. Conclusions. There is no doubt that, unlike Canada, there was no deep regionalization of the parties in Germany. Nevertheless, there are other significant implications for German federalism. The traditional contradictions between the western and eastern lands have been compounded by differences between the north and the south, which inevitably complicates the party-political landscape and destabilizes the German unity.

 Keywords 

parties in modern Germany, elections in Germany, German federalism, constitutional reforms in Germany, regional contradictions in Germany, migration crisis in Germany

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References

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For citation

Salomatin A.Yu., Koryakina A.S. Party-Political Landscape of Modern German Federalism, the End of the 20th Century – the Beginning of the 2020s. Elektronnyy nauchnyy zhurnal "Nauka. Obshchestvo. Gosudarstvo" = Electronic scientific journal "Science. Society. State". 2021;9(4):37–45. (In Russ.). doi:10.21685/2307-9525-2021-9-4-5