Northern Germany’s wealthy city-state of Hamburg may soon become home of the country’s first-ever Black-Green coalition government involving the conservative CDU party and the environmentalist Greens. If successful at the regional level, such a previously almost unthinkable political configuration could pave the way for future Black-Green coalitions at the national level in Berlin. Both the CDU/CSU parties and the Greens are in dire need of more strategic political space if they want to move beyond the traditional confines of center-right Black-Yellow, leftist Red-Green, and Chancellor Merkel’s current CDU/CSU-SPD Grand Coalition governments that have dominated the political landscape for decades but are now increasingly difficult to put together because of the rise of the post-Communist Left party. In particular, the on-going political fragmentation and polarization of Germany’s party system–the surging Left is at now an all-time 14 percent high in national opinion polls–has prompted the SPD leadership to embrace populist left-wing positions, primarily in the realm of economic and social policy, but also in terms of foreign policy, where the Left party’s pacifist anti-Afghanistan-mission rhetoric is appealing to sizeable parts of German public opinion. At least so far, the strategy has not worked as the SPD’s nation-wide polling figures have fallen to an all-time low of 24 percent. Hamburg’s state elections held about two weeks ago are symptomatic of Germany’s current political stalemate. While the CDU lost its absolute majority, it nonetheless managed to remain the strongest party with around 42.6 percent of the vote. The SPD came in second with 34.1 percent, followed by the Greens and the Left party with 9.6 and 6.4 percent respectively. In this context, Hamburg’s wealthy and patrician citizenry explains the Left party’s relatively weak showing there. Surprisingly, the free-market FDP party only garnered 4.8 percent of the vote and failed to clear the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. In the wake of the elections, only three coalition options are feasible. The first one, a CDU-SPD grand coalition, is opposed by the Hamburg conservatives who are eager to avoid the kind of political turmoil that CDU Chancellor Merkel recently had to deal with in Berlin. The second one, a Red-Red-Green coalition involving the SPD and the Greens tolerated or supported by the Left party is not really an option for the SPD folks in Hamburg, who tend to be more on the conservative (and wealthy) side and do not want to be seen as colluding with radical left-wing forces.
That leaves the Black-Green coalition as the most appealing and most innovative option out there. For sure, things are made easier by the fact that Hamburg’s CDU mayor, Ole von Beust, is openly gay and is known as a moderate. Also, ever since being voted out of Chancellor Schroeder’s Red-Green coalition in the fall of 2005 and loosing their last remaining Red-Green government in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia earlier that year, the Greens have been eager to return to power. They are likely willing to make important concessions to accommodate the CDU in the tough coalition negotiations ahead. In Hamburg and nation-wide, major sticking points for future Black-Green coalitions–potentially complemented by the FDP party, which would turn this into a Black-Green-Yellow Jamaica coalition named after the island’s national colors–would probably be homeland security and immigration. Both are areas where the Green party leadership and their base (like the SPD, the Left, and even the FDP for that matter) are quite dogmatic, if not naïve, and are only slowly beginning to grasp the need to adapt to the threat posed by Islamist terror. Remember, under the previous Red-Green city-state government, Hamburg served as a logistical base for several of the 9/11 attackers, some of whom posed as university students, before traveling to the United States. Energy policy is another tough political nut to crack. The Greens are determined to stick to current plans to phase out all German nuclear power plants over the next 20+ years whereas CDU/CSU want to leverage the nuclear option in the fight against global climate change. In contrast, Black-Green coalitions would work very well in the realm of economic and education policy, two areas where the SPD, let alone the Left party, are stuck in ideological trenches of the past. Today, for example, many Greens are firmly committed to balanced budgets and select tax cuts (they want to raise taxes on energy consumption though). It is interesting to point out that the Greens have the wealthiest and most educated electorate of all German political parties. Also, influential Green thinkers like Rolf Fuecks, who is the head of the party’s Heinrich Boell Foundation, have recently been talking about the need to turn Germany into a “green market economy.” Chancellor Merkel has already given the CDU folks in Hamburg a free hand to strike a deal with the Greens. However, it would be premature to suppose that a Black-Green coalition at the regional level could be replicated at the national level. The fact is, most of the Greens still feel more comfortable with the SPD and even with the Left party. After all, certain common ideological roots cannot be denied. And indeed, there is growing talk on the German left about the need to create a “Broad-Based Left-Wing Alliance” (that is, a Red-Red-Green coalition) in Berlin to kick Chancellor Merkel’s ruling CDU/CSU parties out of government next year. The results would be dramatic. Given Germany’s rapidly progressing political fragmentation and the increasing structural difficulties of forming a solid center-right CDU/CSU-FDP government in Berlin, a Black-Green or Jamaica coalition may well be the best bet moving forward.
