Life Goes On in Germany
Germany had an election on Sunday. It gave the Christian Democrats, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, just over 33 per cent of the popular vote.
Her closest rival, the Social Democrats, got 23 per cent. The other parties got far less. None won a majority in the Bundestag.
So, Merkel will do what she did in 2005, when her Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats were virtually even. She will form a coalition, though this time it won’t be “the grand coalition” with the Social Democrats, who are left-of-centre. It will be with the Free Democrats, who are right-of-centre.
But whether Germany is governed by a centrist coalition, as it was over the past four years, or a centre-right coalition, as it will be over the next four years, it will be governed. The government will be comprised of ministers of different parties and different loyalties. It won’t have the unity of a one-party government, but it will forge a consensus in Berlin.
Many will be unhappy their party isn’t in government. But no one can honestly say the system is broken in Germany. The coalition will ensure there is stability and continuity in the most powerful country in Europe.
It is true that neither the Christian Democrats nor the Social Democrats got their way the last time. Both had to compromise. By and large, though, the government acted sensibly.
Germany remained in Afghanistan. It remained committed to fighting global warming. It responded to the economic crisis with innovative policies, such as its incentives to take old cars off the road.
Merkel, uninspiring as she is, showed moral leadership in rebuking Pope Benedict for his tepid response to a Holocaust-denying bishop in England.
True, the fundamental economic reforms of deregulation and privatization which Merkel had proposed in 2005 didn’t happen. But laws were passed and decisions were made. Things worked.
Things will work under this new coalition government, too. In fact, things may even work better, because a free-market coalition will be more likely to embrace tax cuts and labour reform, though not immediately.
Coalition government has succeeded in Germany, as it has succeeded elsewhere in the democratic world, in Ireland, Israel and India. In many countries, such as Switzerland, coalition government is the norm.
In Canada, a coalition is anathema. It is a threat, a taunt and an epithet. Stephen Harper misses no opportunity to condemn it; he tells baying partisans that his Conservatives need a majority government so advocates of “their little coalition” are “taught a lesson.”
When the three opposition parties embraced a coalition late last autumn, the Conservatives were apoplectic. A coalition was sly and deceitful, they said. It was undemocratic, unprecedented and unCanadian.
In truth, it is none of those. While the desirability and viability of a coalition government is certainly open to debate, its legitimacy is not.
We are a constitutional monarchy, not a republic. While coalition government is rare in our history, that it’s uncommon doesn’t make it unconstitutional. In fact, we had a “union government” between 1917 and 1920.
Yet critics tell Canadians that a coalition is alien to our politics and foreign to our nature. This is curious in a country with fewer ideological differences among our major parties than those in Germany. And even more curious in Canada, a country with a much-cherished, self-congratulatory tradition of compromise.
In other words, if others can run their lives this way, why can’t we? As much as we fancy ourselves as peacekeepers, thinking ourselves genetically suited to conciliation, why not multi-party coalition-builders?
Sadly, that appeal doesn’t cut much ice in our peaceable kingdom. From the Conservatives, talk of a coalition of the Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois brings full-throated cries of “separatists,” “socialists” and “opportunists.” Oh, dear.
At the same time we disparage coalition government, we continue to lend credence to today’s other great canard: that minority government in Canada is unworkable in general, and that the current minority government is “dysfunctional” in particular. Just like the last one, which is why Harper said he called the election a year ago.
This, too, is wrong. Minority governments have succeeded before, particularly the two under Lester Pearson between 1963 and 1968, which were the most productive in our history.
Nowhere is it written that a hung Parliament is a dead Parliament.
But in a country that treats coalition government like a contagion and has come to believe that minority government is unworkable, it’s no wonder the chattering class is bemoaning the state of democracy these days. Their salons and seminars on the subject have become a new cottage industry.
We are trapped in a narrow conversation, led by a political class that is unable to put the national interest above its own. Once again, let us look to the Germans and others to see how they make their governments work.
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