‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’? Determinants of Local Coalition Formation and Termination between the CDU and the Greens, 1994–2016

Abstract

Drawing on empirical evidence from 11 CDU–Green coalitions in large German municipalities, this article investigates the determinants of formation and termination of black–green minimal winning coalitions. Such coalitions are likely to be formed if the mayor is a party member of either the CDU or the Greens, if one of the two parties dominates the local party system, and if the SPD suffers from severe vote losses. Furthermore, the results indicate that CDU–Green coalitions are primarily formed if neither the CDU nor the Greens have gained a parliamentary majority with their ‘usual’ coalition partners. Ideological connectivity, however, does not play a major role. Regarding coalition stability, Christian Democrats and Greens are able to govern successfully for an entire legislative term in most of the cases. If a coalition is terminated early, however, this is due to a party breaking the coalition agreement by voting on specific policies together with the SPD in the local council.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martin Gross is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) in Mannheim, Germany. He received his PhD in 2015 from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. His research is focused on local politics, political institutions, party competition, coalition formation processes in multi-level systems, and EU cohesion policy.

ORCID

Martin Gross http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8836-3388

Notes

1 For example, several CDU members of the German Bundestag with a constituency in larger cities met in 2012 to discuss ways to compete more successfully with the Greens (Rossmann 2012, 6).

2 Coalitions between the CDU and the Greens are dubbed ‘black–green’ due to traditional party colours. Although there are also coalitions between the CDU and the Greens in which the Greens are the larger party (so-called ‘green–black’ or ‘kiwi’ coalitions, as in Baden-Württemberg), I stick to the usual term black–green coalition.

3 Models of portfolio allocation cannot be tested in this paper due to a lack of data availability. It is not possible to finally assess which party got which portfolio. For example, coalition parties can determine the number of deputy mayors, the size of committees, and – running on a joint list – who is heading the committees. Furthermore, these portfolio allocations are not always part of the coalition agreement and could not be analysed for all cases by relying on local newspaper information. Hence, there is only anecdotal evidence on which party was more successful in obtaining portfolios.

4 Parliamentary fragmentation is calculated as ‘effective number of parliamentary parties’ using seat shares (see Golosov 2010). Parliamentary volatility is calculated using seat shares (see Pedersen 1979).

5 I use the general left-right axis because research shows that it is one of the most important factors in explaining local coalition formations in Germany (see Debus and Gross 2016).

6 Parties’ webpages have been searched for election manifestos and parties have additionally been contacted by e-mail and by post. Yet some parties did not respond or did not want to provide the election manifestos.

7 I use the election manifestos of the CDU, FDP, Greens, and SPD for state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia between 1990 and 2010 as well as the election manifesto of The Left for the state election in 2010 as ‘reference texts’. For Hesse, I use the election manifestos of the CDU, FDP, Greens, and SPD for state elections between 1991 and 2009, as well as the election manifesto of The Left for the state elections in 2008 and 2009. ‘Reference texts’ for Rhineland-Palatinate are the election manifestos of the CDU, FDP, Greens, and SPD for state elections between 1991 and 2016, as well as the election manifestos of The Left for the state elections in 2011 and 2016. ‘Reference scores’ are the left–right policy positions of the respective parties, provided by Bräuninger and Debus (2012).