Bundestag Election 2009

Angela Merkel has won a second term in the 622 seated parliament, the Bundestag after her party, the CDU, routed the Social Democrats. She will be the first woman to win re-election as leader of Germany. Today's election is special since Germans have renewed Merkel's mandate to serve as their Chancellor for the second time after elections in 2005. According to Deutche Welle, German public broadcaster, Merkel's CDU along with CSU have secured 239 seats in the lower house. The liberal Free Democrats Party led by Guido Westerwelle have gained significant seats in Bundestag. The FDP has captured 93 seats while the Social Democrats (SPD) won 146, the worst since World War II. Interestingly, the leftist party, Die Linke, made significant gains by winning 76 seats and the Green Party has captured 68.

The mandate proves that Germany has a succesful democratic system with a woman winning re-election for the first time in the nation's history and Merkel can focus on implementing economic reforms without sharing power with the SPD. Political analysts predict a coalition between the CDU/CSU and the FDP. This new alliance will ensure Merkel's success in solving Germany morbid economy by encouraging business-friendly polices.

For more information, go to:

http://www.dw-world.de/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651610,00.html

Lack of Revolutionary Mass Power in Deutschland

I think probably one of the most arguable reasons why Germany was not a successful democracy in the first half of the 20th century is probably due to the lack of any revolutions by the masses demanding more individual liberties. The common man, the peasant, always knew where his or her place was in the German social hierarchy. What scholars argue implies that the traditional way of life was held more strongly in the German society especially among small farmers and landlords than in France and Great Britain.

The second arguable reason why Germany never developed a democratic culture was mostly Germans were content with the rulers who ruled with an iron fist. Bismarck is probably the best example. He was not a democratic by no means, he initiated the Kulterkampf, divided the liberal party thus weakening the liberal movement, and cracking down on Social Democrats. The French were not satisfied with King Louis the XVI, they no longer felt that the king was absolute and equal to God, and the British forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. way back in 1215; Magna Carta proved to be one of the first documents that was enforced to keep a check on an absolute ruler.

It leads to my third arguable point, when the Great Depression affected the world in 1929, Germans looked towards the Fascists, the Nazis to alleviate their misery since historically all the problems regarding the economy, religion, and political crisis have been handled by larger than life unelected rulers. In 1933, the majority of the German population elected the Nazis to power who dangerously usurped power from the Reichstag and began a totalitarian regime.

Liberalism

Liberalism is important for the development of democracy because there is always a group of people committed to giving enfranchisement to the people and responsible power to an elected legislative body. However, Germany never had a genuine liberal movement. Arguably, German leaders and most politicians had a feudal mindset towards establishing a democratic republic. The Reichstag was more of a rubber stamp organ of conservative influential elites than an actual parliament keeping a check on the government. It's important to understand, that unlike Britain, Germany was ruled by three social classes; the aristocracy, the military, and the monarchy. Britain did not have a universal suffrage till the 20th century but it had an established parliament that performed check and balances on the monarchy as well as on the government. The political parties were much stronger to perform, the Liberals and the Consevatives. The society was relatively open and democratic than Germany's. Why did Liberal's fail to have clear definite goals and represent the middle class?

The Liberals never had mass support from the German people. By far majority of the people were elites who never ever knew what democratic culture feels like. Most of the them were scared of what universal manhood suffrage despite implemented after the German unification. Liberals like conservatives had a deep fear of Germany experienced a type of French revolution. In addition, liberals did not push for making the Reichstag responsible and accountable to their constientuency. There was opposition to the national budget but they failed to take the monarch, the military, the unelected elites, and Bismarck head on.

The economy is important because since the economy was doing well and Germany was becoming more industrialized, there was no need for Liberals to push for political reforms. This is the same scenario with China today. If there is economic prosperity, than there was no need to democratize politics and society.

The Social Democratic Party

The development of Social Democracy is rather interesting since during the time, there were "reformed" radicals, men and women who supported universal suffrage, improved work conditions, and the public ownership of property, that decided to push for their cause in the parliament rather than on the streets. In Germany since the industrial revolution was in full force, affecting the urban and rural society, both the aristocrats and the peasants alike, new political development to give the masses more democracy was intensely debated. The German Workers Association and the Social Democratic Party more or less did adopt tactics such as advancing socialism through parliamentary means rather than initiating a revolution. In the beginning there were two groups, the General German Workers' Association led by Ferdinand Lassalle and and the Social Democratic Labor Party led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. The SDLP party was influenced by Marxism while the former was established to bind socialism with democracy. When the Reich was established in 1871, the two parties came close together and both merged to form the Socialist Labor Party of Germany. The new party decided above everything else to improve workers' rights by abolishing private property and establishing state sponsored cooperatives that would be publicly owned. The new party planned to implement their plans through parliamentary means which betrayed Marxist's goal of creating a violent revolution. The idea of starting revolution became popular when the Socialist party was persecuted by Bismarck between 1878 and 1890. During that time, the party once again embraced Marxism. This time the German Socialist Labor Party came up with a two-part plan that would appeal to the workers. The first plan was long term, social democrats envisioned the evolution of captilism, one from private ownership to public ownership held and owned by the common people. Property included, land, mines, raw materials, machines, and transportation that would be eventually owned collectively by the workers. The second part was short changes needed to be made while a capitalist economy prevailed. The Socialist Party proposed widespread political reforms but also economic reforms such as an eight hour work shift, a social insurance system, the rights of labor unions, and a law to ban child labor.

Many of the ideas and goals that the Social Democrats advocated were part of the Erfurt program. Clearly the Erfurt program was vague in whether these political and economic ideas should be implemented through revolutionary means. Rather, the Social Democrats made their voices heard by opposing every policy that Bismarck's government proposed including boycotting the vote for a national budget in the Reichstag or in the state assembly, the Prussian Landstag.

Germany Unification

German unification was not possible without the iron hand of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He made it possible for the various German states with different backgrounds and history to consolidate and become a major European power during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the reasons why Bismarck was successful was because he was clever and brought both the conservatives and the liberals to support his policies. Bismarck was able to convince the conservatives and the liberals that "National Unity" was first and it needed solid backing from both groups in order for the German states to unite as one nation. When Germany was finally formed, the German parliament was divided into two houses, the upper house Bundesrat was to accomodate royal nobles and elites while the lower house, Reichstag was elected by universal manhood suffrage. Germany also adopted federalism in which the central government shared power with the states in governing the people. Another reason why Bismarck was successful in making Germany unified was he made Prussia responsible for the unification. While Bismarck used political pragmatism to win liberals as well as radicals over to his side, he also knew Prussia was the most powerful German state. It had already reformed its army and its weapons were much superior than German state. Kitchen wrote, "The Prussian army was equipped with the needle gun which could release seven rounds a minute and could be fired lying down." When Prussia went to war against Austria, several German states joined the Austrian empire including Saxony, Hanover, and Electoral Hesse, all of them were attacked the Prussian army. Prussia was so strong that in less than three weeks, it defeated Austria at Koniggratz on July 3rd. Austria lost 45,000 soldiers compared to Prussia losing 9,000 lives. Such victory for Prussia made it possible to annex the Northern German states and eventually use its new political clout to merge the southern nation states into the new union.