Germany after Merkel will become more China-sceptic

Significance While Merkel has viewed relations with China primarily in terms of economic cooperation and German interests, there is growing opposition to this approach at home, including from within her Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Germany’s stance on China appears increasingly out of step with how its international allies view Beijing. Impacts A Green victory in September’s elections would further undermine the ratification prospects of the EU-China investment deal. A more China-sceptic parliament after September could accelerate the end of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s operations in Germany. Germany policy on China after Merkel will have a significant influence on how the EU deals with China.

German Politics and Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Eurozone Budget

This article examines selected political party positions on a Eurozone budget and fiscal transfers between 2018 and 2021. It posits that German government positions on common European debt and fiscal policy have undergone a significant but fragile shift. It must contend with continued domestic hostility before it can be said to be a lasting realignment. A great deal with depend less on the Social Democratic Party that is largely responsible for bringing it about with the support of German Greens, and more on the willingness of the Christian Democratic Union, their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union and the German voting public to adopt a more interventionist fiscal policy as well, generating shared commitments to economic policy at home and in Europe. That has not happened yet.

How to Assess Quantitatively Party-Level Committee Placements

This chapter explains methodological choices. It offers greater detail about how the dependent variable is coded. Because of the three-outcome variable (high policy, public goods, or distributive committee type), the discrete choice method of multinomial logistic (MNL) regression is used. It permits assessing the extent to which parties make tradeoffs across both committee types and models of party personnel (expertise and electoral–constituency). The chapter explains the reasons why MNL is preferable to binomial logistic regression by a comparison of results on one of the book’s party cases (the German Christian Democratic Union) under either regression format and calculates predicted probabilities for Bundestag committee placement using some of our independent variables. It also explains that some parties (those in Israel and Japan) do not make tradeoffs across committee types to the same degree as parties in our others cases, and are therefore analyzed with binomial logistic regression instead. An index of overlap of committee types on which individual members serve is developed and shown for all parties covered in the book.

Germany

This chapter tests the book’s premises on a case of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) representation, using the case of legislative committees in the Bundestag of Germany. Its results cover the two largest parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party. German parties should have a strong tendency to use the expertise model, because the MMP system means that votes cast anywhere in the country are of approximately equal value in maximizing seats. Thus, parties are able to emphasize their national reputation for policy, for which matching the expertise of their personnel to committee function is valuable. The MMP system also creates local single-seat districts in which nearly half of members are elected. Thus, aspects of the electoral–constituency model also should apply, as parties seek to develop connections to constituencies through local and personal vote of their legislators. The results offer strong support for the premises of the theory.

Culture-bound words as a method of speech strategies in german political discourse

The article is devoted to the study of culture-bound words as a method of verbal strategies of political discourse, aimed at both maintaining a positive image and verbal attacks against opponents and competing political parties. The relevance of research is due to insufficient knowledge of the lexical units with a national-cultural component from the standpoint of political linguistics. The material for the study included the speeches of the ruling parties’ leaders in Germany: Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union) and Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union) in the context of the “Political Ash Wednesday” 2017. Politicians’ statements containing culture-bound words were selected by continuous sampling method. The analysis revealed that the speakers deliberately used culture-bound words in order to implement their communicative intentions. Such units illustrate non-linguistic reality; they are directly related to the values of society and influence the recipient in communication. Using the statements of A. Merkel and H. Seehofer, the author identified five speech strategies (self-presentation and discredit strategies, informationinterpretation, manipulative and agitation strategies), and also established their relationship with the use of culture-bound words.

Początki politycznej kariery czołowych polityczek CDU i CSU na poziomie federalnym w Niemczech w latach 1991–2018

The article focuses on the first steps in the political career of female politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), who assumed top political positions at the federal level in Germany between 1991 and 2018. The author analyses when the female leaders of the CDU and CSU took their first parliamentary seats in the German Bundestag, when they obtained the first leading positions at the federal level, and also how many years after joining the party this took place. It is also interesting whether top female politicians took their first parliamentary seats through votes in direct districts or thanks to the party list (second votes). Do the career paths of the female politicians from the Christian Democrats fit the model of typical career paths, or do they also include those who have avoided key positions on their way to the top?

Refugees welcome, but not in my backyard? The impact of immigration on right-wing voting: evidence from Germany

This article studies whether immigration in voter’s neighborhoods is a driving factor of the rise of Germany’s major right-wing party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AFD) and the decline of Angela Merkel’s center ruling party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). We use the 2015 refugee crisis as a natural experiment to study the short-run impact of refugee presence on the voting behavior in German municipalities. This is the first study to use a spatial econometric framework combining small-scale immigration data, election data, and a set of socioeconomic factors. Our main finding states that the local immigration boosted AFD votes but did not affect CDU votes directly. Instead, in regions that perceived immigration indirectly, that is in neighboring municipalities, the CDU gained fewer votes.

Let Us Not Leave Our Homeland: Anti-Emigration Activities of Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas

Mass emigration of Lithuanians at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century became not only a considerable loss to Lithuania but also a serious concern for the leaders of the national rebirth movement (e.g., Jonas Šliūpas, Vincas Kudirka, Jonas Basanavičius, Antanas Smetona, and others), who frequently expressed their negative attitude towards emigration. An active anti-emigration campaign took place in Lithuania, and the press urged Lithuanians to stay in their homeland and not to go to the USA, while those who had already emigrated were implored to return to Lithuania. One of the most significant representatives of the anti-emigration policy was Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, a writer and one of the founders of the Lithuanian Christian-Democratic Union. In 1911, he and priest Konstantinas Olšauskas visited the USA where they collected donations for the construction of the “Saulė” Catholic gymnasium in Kaunas. After visiting most of the Lithuanian colonies, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas was well acquainted with the difficult situation of the immigrants and urged them not to forget Lithuania and return home. Upon return to Lithuania, he gave approximately thirty anti-emigration speeches in various cities and towns, in which he spoke about the difficult life of the immigrants and urged people not to leave for America. In 1912, he published the book Ten gera kur mūsų nėra arba neapleiskime Lietuvos (The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side or Let Us Not Leave Our Homeland) in which he attempted to prove that immigrants did not become spiritually richer in exile, while emigration impoverished Lithuania.