POLITICAL PARTIES in comparison

Subtle "hints of change" in the German liberal party

If you really want to say it that way then you could blame the German liberals for being political dinosaurs - not because they are as heavy and as strong but because they seem to be lacking contemporary survival skills or, to come back to political terminology: the right answers after the economic crisis in the last year.

That they were actually voted into parliament with the best result ever did surprise a few if not many people in Germany. Knowing the difficult political situation Germany currently faces and the new, massive voter flotation in between parties, which were caused by the lessening strength of the two leading parties, the conservative CDU and the social-democratic SPD their success in the last election is easily explainable: people just seemed to be having no other options. It was not their program that laid the foundation for their victory, nor their campaign but the tremendous loss of the voters´ faith and trust that the others parties experienced. The CDU lost nearly a third, the SPD half of their voters during the last eight years!

The German liberal party FDP has a long history, and most of the time it has been a story of success and importance for the development of the German society and the political system. Ever since 1945 the party consisted mainly of two strong factions. The so-called social-liberals had an emphasis on human right and peoples´ rights. Liberalism in their understanding means less control of the state both over the people and the economy. The keyword for their agenda is "freedom" which contains the idea of the free and self-responsible citizen as well as the idea of a free market economy. However, the social-liberals always believed in a strong social welfare system and in the responsibility for the weaker in the society as well. This faction had is high-time in the Seventies and early Eighties, when they formed a coalition with the social-democratic party.

The other faction has been the stronger and more influential one during the last ten years. They were - and still are - Germany´s true neo-liberalists and, according to the world-wide atmosphere, they changed their ideology and program. The keyword again was "freedom", but freedom in the sense of an unhindered global economy, the privatization of crucial social institutions like the health system, a tax reduction for the high-income earners while simultaneously a reduction of the social welfare was advised. The modern liberal party of Germany, the FDP, is what scientists call a Klientelpartei, a client´s party that makes politics for the well-being of a certain part of the society even if this might be carried out on the shoulders of the rest.
When the global economic system started to collapse and with this the neo-liberal ideology proved to be a failure the German liberals seem to be at a dead-end. Everybody expected them to be the main looser of the upcoming elections since their ideology had proved to be devastating. Slight alterations in the campaign were already noticeable. In one big interview last fall, the chairman of the liberal party, nowadays minister of foreign affairs, Guido Westerwelle, already rowed back a little when saying that he and his party had always believed in the state´s responsibility to control the economy. In the end, even this would have not been necessary. Despite the collapse of the world-wide system, despite the fact, that the German tax-payer indirectly had to pay for the mistakes of the speculators, despite the fact that the Liberals didn´t change their agenda while the weak and poor were hit by the economic crisis first, on Election Day the voters gifted the liberals with their best results ever.

In the end one is always smarter. This old German proves its point again. After only slightly more than six months in government, the FDP has lost most of their voters and faces a long term low with an approximately eight percent loss of support in less than a year. A little late, but not too late, people on both sides of the fence seem to finally wake up. During the last regional elections many voters returned to the conservative and social-democratic party, showing once again that the surprising support for the liberals was more a result of the lack of prospects then real acceptance of the liberal´s political agenda. And inside the party, a new generation is ready to lead the party in the times after the end of ordoliberalism. The chairman, Gudio Westerwelle, without an alternative in the last ten years, is constantly losing the faith of his party. A few first tentative voice already mentioned that it might be a good idea if there would be a change on the top. Westerwelle still has the support of some strong people in the background, but all of them just the political grandseigneurs from the Eighties. The younger generation however whistles some wind of change. Social-liberalism, they whisper, was not a bad idea after all.