Party Cartel and Cartel Parties in Germany

Abstract

Germany seems to be an ideal case for the cartel theory. Public funding for political parties is strongly advanced and there is much inter-party cooperation with respect to the organisational self-interests of parties. This contribution will take a closer look at the formation of the German party cartel and the three analytical dimensions of the cartel model. I will argue that in terms of party organisations, societal linkages and competitive styles German parties only partly match the expectations of the cartel model. Or, to put it more bluntly, there is a party cartel in Germany, but there are no cartel parties.

Notes

1. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organisations and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party’, Party Politics 1/1 (1995), p.17.

2. Ibid., pp.21–3; see also Mark Blyth and Richard S. Katz, ‘From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party’, West European Politics 28/1 (2005), pp.33–60.

3. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder’, Party Politics 2/1 (1996), pp.525–34.

4. Klaus Detterbeck, ‘Cartel Parties in Western Europe?’, Party Politics 11/2 (2005), pp.173–91.

5. Karl-Heinz Naßmacher, ‘Structure and Impact of Public Subsidies to Political Parties in Europe: The Examples of Austria, Italy, Sweden and West Germany’, in Herbert E. Alexander (ed.), Comparative Political Finance in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p.237.

6. Susan E. Scarrow, ‘Party Decline in the Parties State? The Changing Environment of German Politics’, in Paul Webb et al. (eds.), Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p.86.

7. Klaus Detterbeck, Der Wandel politischer Parteien in Westeuropa. Eine vergleichende Untersuchung von Organisationsstrukturen, politischer Rolle und Wettbewerbverhalten von Großparteien in Dänemark, Deutschland, Großbritannien und der Schweiz, 1960–1999 (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2002), pp.212–19.

8. Thomas Poguntke, ‘Parties in a Legalistic Culture: The Case of Germany’, in Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair (eds.), How Parties Organise. Change and Adaptation in Party Organisations in Western Democracies (London: Sage, 1994), pp.193–4.

9. Rolf Ebbighausen et al., Die Kosten der Parteiendemokratie. Studien und Materialien zu einer Bilanz staatlicher Parteienfinanzierung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), pp.187–230.

10. According to official party reports, German party organisations are financed to some 30–40 per cent by state funding. In financial terms, there are strong differences between the local party levels, which are primarily dependent on membership fees, and the regional and national party levels, which are receiving most of their income through state subsidies. At the national level, the central offices of both SPD and CDU were financed to around 70 per cent by the public purse in the 1990s. In addition, the allowances to the parliamentary parties and to the party foundations are not included in these figures. See Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.155–7.

11. Ebbighausen et al, Kosten der Parteiendemokratie, pp.340–60.

12. See Katz and Mair, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder’, p.531.

13. The post-socialist PDS/Left Party is a major force in the East at both federal and sub-national elections, capturing some 20 to 25 per cent of the vote there. In the West, however, the party has run a rather minuscule organisation and remained a marginal force at elections so far. The PDS renamed itself Left Party in 2005 and merged with a new political party called Electoral Alternative for Employment and Social Justice (‘Wahl-alternative für Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit’, WASG) in June 2007. The WASG, formed in 2005 mainly by dissatisfied former Social Democrats and trade unionists, was organised state-wide, but had its strongholds in West Germany. Thus, there is a strategic option for the Left Party to overcome the regional bias of the PDS and to exploit the political vacuum on the traditional political left (with the SPD pursuing rather modernist, ‘third way’ policies).

14. Elmar Wiesendahl, ‘Die Parteien in Deutschland auf dem Weg zu Kartellparteien?’, in Hans Herbert von Arnim (ed.), Adäquate Institutionen: Voraussetzungen für ‘gute’ und bürgernahe Politik? Vorträge auf dem 2. Speyerer Demokratie-Forum vom 14. bis zum 16. Oktober 1998 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), pp.49–73.

15. Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.302–6.

16. Klaus von Beyme, Die politische Klasse im Parteienstaat (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993); Richard Stöss, ‘Parteienstaat oder Parteiendemokratie?’, in Oscar W. Gabriel et al. (eds.), Parteiendemokratie in Deutschland (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997), pp.13–36.

17. Jens Borchert, ‘Die Politik der Milieus und das Milieu der Politik’, in Tobias Dürr and Franz Walter (eds.), Solidargemeinschaft und fragmentierte Gesellschaft: Parteien, Milieus und Verbände im Vergleich. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Lösche (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1999). pp.73–88.

18. The negative proof of this argument would be Switzerland. The Swiss major parties tried several times to introduce a more adequate scheme of public funding but failed according to the veto positions of interest groups, sub-national governments and the citizenry. See Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.271–3.

19. Scarrow, ‘Party Decline’, pp.77–86.

20. Peter Mair, Party System Change. Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp.152–4.

21. Katz and Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organisations’, pp.19–21; Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, ‘The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office: Party Organisational Change in Twentieth-century Democracies’, in Richard Gunther et al. (eds.), Political Parties. Old Concepts and New Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.113–35.

22. Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.57–68.

23. Wolfgang Renzsch, ‘Bifurcated and Integrated Parties in Parliamentary Federal Systems: The Canadian and German Cases’, in Rudolf Hrbek (ed.), Political Parties and Federalism. An International Comparison (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), pp.11–38.

24. See also Ruud Koole, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Comment on the Notion of the Cartel Party’, Party Politics 2/1 (1996), pp.507–24.

25. Katz and Mair, ‘Ascendancy of the Party’, pp.128–129.

26. See Susan E. Scarrow, ‘Parties and the Expansion of Direct Democracy: Who Benefits?’, Party Politics 5/3 (1999), pp.341–62.

27. Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.103–11.

28. See Paul D. Webb et al. (eds.), Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

29. See Paul D. Webb, ‘The Labour Party’, in Robert Ladrech and Philippe Marlière (eds.), Social Democratic Parties in the European Union. History, Organisation, Policies (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1999), pp.95–109.

30. See Mair, Party System Change, pp.38–41.

31. See Katz and Mair, ‘Ascendancy of the Party’, p.122.

32. See, inter alia, von Beyme, Politische Klasse; Poguntke, ‘Parties in a legalistic culture’, pp.197–199; Scarrow, ‘Party Decline’, pp.93–100.

33. See Koole, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel?’, pp.509–14.

34. See Thomas Poguntke, ‘Zur empirischen Evidenz der Kartellparteien-These’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 32/4 (2002), pp.794–6.

35. Alan Ware, ‘Activist–Leader Relations and the Structure of Political Parties: “Exchange” Models and Vote-seeking Behaviour in Parties’, British Journal of Political Science 22/1 (1992), pp.71–92.

36. Mair, Party System Change, pp.146–52.

37. See Manfred G. Schmidt, Das politische System Deutschlands (München: Beck, 2007), pp.39–42.

38. See Wiesendahl, ‘Parteien in Deutschland’.

39. See Poguntke, ‘Parties in a Legalistic Culture, pp.200–202.

40. For the controversy on this point, see Koole, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel?’ and Katz and Mair, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder’.

41. Katz and Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organisations’, pp.22–3.

42. See von Beyme, Politische Klasse.

43. For a more general treatment on this, see Jon Pierre et al., ‘State Subsidies to Political Parties: Confronting Rhetoric with Reality’, West European Politics 23/3 (2000), pp.1–24.

44. See Detterbeck, Wandel politischer Parteien, pp.262–3.

45. Katz and Mair, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder’, p.531.

46. Historically, the forced merger of SPD and KPD in the German Democratic Republic in 1946 has made it quite difficult for the Social Democrats to cooperate with the PDS as successor party to the SED. Politically, the two parties have diverging positions on many policy issues, ranging from foreign policy to welfare state reforms.

47. See Katz and Mair, ‘Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder’, p.530; Blyth and Katz, ‘From catch-all politics to cartelization’.

48. See Manfred G. Schmidt, Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik unter bürgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen. Ein internationaler Vergleich (Frankfurt: Campus, 1982); Gösta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). For a different position, see Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Macmillan, 2nd edition, 2004).

49. See Mair, Party System Change, pp.131–3.

50. Pace, Katz and Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organisations’, p.22.

51. Klaus von Beyme, ‘Party Leadership and Change in Party Systems: Towards a Postmodern Party State?’, Government and Opposition 31/2 (1996), pp.135–59.

52. See Borchert, ‘Politik der Milieus’.

53. Katz and Mair, ‘Changing Models of Party Organisations’, p.17.