Angela Merkel’s Last Term – An Introduction

ABSTRACT

This introduction to the special issue first describes the cumbersome process of forming the fourth and final Merkel government. Both coalition partners experienced severe electoral losses in 2017 and were not particularly close to one another programmatically. This made the formation of a new coalition difficult. Next, the to-do-list is discussed. It turns out that, as a response to the Fridays-for-Future protests, voters considered climate change to be the most important problem in 2019, while the Corona pandemic dominated the agenda from early 2020. Interestingly, none of the coalition parties ‘owned’ either of these issues and this could have made policy-making even more intricate. In the third part, we summarise the policy profile of the fourth Merkel government, based mostly on the contributions to this special issue. It turns out that the policies of the fourth Merkel government mirrored those of its predecessor. In the socio-economic dimension a gentle de-liberalisation continued, while the policies on the social dimension followed a moderately liberal path. In the final section, the plan of the special issue is outlined.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This coalition constellation is colloquially called ‘Jamaica coalition’ in Germany because the colours of the CDU/CSU (black), FDP (yellow) and Greens (green) mirror the colours of the flag of Jamaica.

2 This comes along with substantial inner-party concessions between CDU and CSU. Not only did the CDU back the CSU’s demand for (some kind of) a ceiling of the number of refugees per year. Christian democrats did also cede the right to nominate the Minister of the Interior, Construction and Homeland to their Bavarian sister party.

3 This is true although it was controversial between the mainstream parties how necessary the individual measures were, with the FDP taking the most liberal position (see Zohlnhöfer and Engler in this SI).

4 At this point, it would be premature to claim that the debt brake had been given up. Rather, the regulation (article 115 basic law) explicitly allows higher deficits in cases of natural disasters or unusual emergency situations beyond governmental control.

5 Töller (in this SI) argues that without the Fridays for Future movement and the good results of the Greens in the 2019 European elections, the Climate Protection Package would have been less far-reaching. At the same time, however, the Christian democrats substantially delayed and diluted the Climate Package even after the European elections (Zohlnhöfer and Engler in this SI) and were quite dismissive regarding the Fridays for Future demonstrations (Raisch and Zohlnhöfer 2020). Hence, the effect of party competition was probably only quite muted even in environmental policy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reimut Zohlnhöfer

Reimut Zohlnhöfer is professor of political science at the Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests include comparative political economy, policy processes and German politics. He has published in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, European Political Science Review, Journal of European Public Policy, Socio-Economic Review and West European Politics.

Fabian Engler

Fabian Engler is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests include comparative political economy, political parties and MPs’ legislative behaviour. He has published in journals such as the British Journal of Industrial Relations, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Parliamentary Affairs and Policy Studies Journal.