Anthony J. Sebok
Program in Law & Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Two months after Germany went to the polls, it finally has a new government. The "Grand Coalition" of the two main parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), holds few surprises. It is comprised of centrists from both parties. The initial "contract" which memorializes the alliance promises very little change from the status quo.

However, the election's undramatic results conceal a turbulent process that tells us something about Germany's recent past and its possible future. The Grand Coalition of 2005 owes its existence to a political movement that has barely been recognized by the American press: the new "Left Party."

The Left Party did not even exist a year ago, and yet played a crucial role in forcing the CDU/CSU and SPD together. Not only that, it also played a crucial role in driving a wedge between the SPD and its longtime ally, the Green Party. In short, the Left Party seemed to come out of nowhere to rearrange dramatically Germany's political landscape.

In fact, the Left Party did not really come from "nowhere." In Germany, like Faulkner's South, the past is never past; and the Left Party is yet one more example of the past playing a powerful role in Germany's contemporary politics.

To understand the role played by the Left Party in the September elections, one must recall that for the past 20 years German voters have chosen between two "big-small" coalitions: the Christian Democrats (big) and their junior ally the Free Democratic Party (FDP) (small) vs. the Social Democrats (big) and the Greens (small). In 2002, for example, the SPD and the Greens just squeaked by the Christian Democrats and FDP and formed the government which was led by Gerhard Schroeder until September of this year.

Conventional political analysis mapped these four parties along a simple right/left spectrum, with the Bavarian wing of the Christian Democrats viewed as most conservative and the Greens as the most liberal. The two small parties were associated with certain signal issues: tax reform (FDP) and the environment (Greens), and the support for each fluctuated between 5-10% nationally.

Such conventional analysis did not take into account the fact that all four of the parties contesting the national elections were fundamentally "Wessi"-that is, rooted in the old West Germany. Although Helmut Kohl had taken a number of political risks to "unify" West and East Germany, the old East did not instantly align with the Christian Democrats. Nor the citizens of the former German Democratic Republic feel great warmth towards the defenders of the welfare state, the SPD and the Greens. For the most part, they simply felt alienated.

Most accounts of the election of 2005 start to tell its story with the defeat of the SPD/Green coalition in the state elections in North Rhine Westphalia in May 2005. Indeed, it was after that crushing defeat that Chancellor Schroeder shocked everyone (including his own party) by declaring that he would bring down his own government and call for elections in September 2005, one year early.

Schroeder's call for early elections was motivated by a number of factors. First, he wanted to force a confrontation within his own party, where factions had been resisting his efforts to "liberalize" labor law and to cut unemployment benefits. Second, he wanted to force the Christian Democrat leader, Angela Merkel, into the election before she was ready, guessing (correctly, it turned out) that she would be a poor campaigner.

The final reason, however, is that four months before the North Rhine Westphalia debacle, a faction of left-leaning SPD activists had broken away from the party in disgust over Schroeder's centrism. They had formed the "Work and Justice Party" and were rumored to be considering an alliance with the Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS), the heir to the former Communist Party in East Germany. Schroeder gambled that if he called a snap election, the two parties would not be able to meet the complex legal requirements to run a united list of candidates.

The Work and Justice Party had polled just 2% in North Rhine Westphalia, which is in Western Germany. Although the PDS had managed to win some seats in three states in Eastern Germany, they were extremely unpopular among voters in the West. Why was Schroeder concerned? If anything, history was on his side, since anyone allied with the PDS would always be connected to the defunct (and for many West Germans, defeated) East Germany.

Two days after Schroeder's call for an early election, history appeared in another form. Oskar Lafontaine, who led the SPD until 1999, announced that he was leaving the party and joining the Work and Justice Party-and that he was open to an alliance with the PDS. Lafontaine had been the standard bearer of the SPD's left wing, and Schroeder's rival for many years. He even served in Schroeder's first government until he quit the cabinet and vowed never to work with Schroeder again.

If one looks at a map of the election results in September and the resulting coalition, one can see the impact of Lafontaine's defection. The Work and Justice Party and the PDS were able to form a single party called the Left Party in time for the election. The Left Party received 8.7% of the national vote-more than the Greens and only 1% less than the FDP. The Left Party smashed the "big-little" dynamic of German politics and it also may have started a process of political realignment within Germany's parties.

The Left Party picked up around 25% of the vote in the former East, but it also did surprisingly well - over 5% - in portions of the former West, especially those areas with high unemployment caused by a decline in the coal and steel industries. Lafontaine was able to provide a new interpretation of the motivations which had led to the formation of the PDS. Lafontaine's presence reminded voters in the West that PDS supporters are not just nostalgic for an idealized past, but have very specific concerns about the place of social welfare in the new Germany.

It is curious, in retrospect, that the SPD found it easier to secure an alliance with the Christian Democrats than with the Left Party, with whom it could have taken power in alliance with the Green Party (together the three parties received just over 51% of the vote). But history guaranteed that this coalition could not happen. The SPD and Greens were afraid that the Christian Democrats would accuse them of "legitimizing" former communists. But more important, Schroeder would never have accepted Lafontaine back into the government, even if accepting Lafontaine meant keeping the Chancellorship.

The final irony is that although the Left Party was frozen out of the negotiations over the new government, the East has finally achieved its place at the table. The new chancellor, Angela Merkel, selected by the Christian Democrats, is from the East. And the new head of the SPD, Matthias Platzeck, who replaced Schroeder's right hand man, Franz Munterfering, is also from the East. The Grand Coalition may not achieve much, but it has already made history.