The Left Party and Germany's Coalition Conundrums

Party politics in Germany used to be predictable and pedestrian. This—as the four recent Land elections in Bremen, Hesse, Lower Saxony, and Hamburg have amply illustrated—is self-evidently no longer the case. The 2009 federal election subsequently promises to be the most interesting, contentious, and exciting in living memory. Predicting what is likely to happen, the strategies and tactics of the actors involved, as well as the events and controversies that may shape the campaign is anything other than straightforward. Germany now appears genuinely vulnerable to the plague of instable government and 2009 will subsequently be an important marker in illustrating to what extent Germany’s six parties are able (to continue) to craft parliamentary majorities. This is so for four reasons.