This is cool:
Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany’s main conservative party, announced a deal on Monday that would allow her to become Germany’s chancellor in a coalition government, succeeding Gerhard Schröder after his seven years at the head of Europe’s biggest and most economically powerful country.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, right, on his way to talks on Sunday that led to the agreement for Angela Merkel to succeed him and their parties to form a coalition, ending their post-election power struggle.
Woman in the News: Angela Merkel: Politician Who Can Show a Flash of Steel (October 11, 2005) If formally elected to the post, as expected, she will become the first woman and the first person from the former East Germany to serve as chancellor.
But because Mrs. Merkel must share power with Mr. Schröder’s party, it is unclear whether she will be able to push through the changes that most economists agree are needed to shake off years of stagnation and high unemployment.
Will she be able to fundamentally alter the way the German government operates?
Doctor Gonzo
Will she be able to fundamentally alter the way the German government operates?
That’s a big “NO!” If you expect Merkel to be another Margaret Thatcher because she is conservative, you are going to be really, really disappointed.
Merkel is a lightweight. She’s not going to change anything.
TH
No.
For one, she’s a lightweight, as the Dr. Gonzo attested. To fundamentally change the german government, you’d have to have a Coup d’Etat.
The way german government works i quite entrenched, the governing is mainly by consensus and institutionalized consensus at that and we germans quite like it that way, thank you very much.
TH
Oh, and an afterthought. If an USian conservative looks closely at the german political landscape and tries to categorize it according to his yardstick, he’d probably classify all german parties as more or less communist.
Davebo
Want to fundamentally change the way the German government works?
No problem, just be patient. I understand Deutsche Post
will be buying them any day now.
Steve
Part of the deal was that Merkel had to give Schroder’s party control of most of the government ministries, so she’s probably not going to be in a position to reinvent anything.
Sam Hutcheson
Just to reiterate TH’s point: there’s nothing wrong with the way Germany works. It’s a perfectly functioning social market. While the unemployment rate is higher than US standards, the social welfare net is such that it is not a huge drag on the citizenry. Only a free market ideologue would look at a perfectly functioning system and say “Oh my, we have to fix that.”
stickler
I have it on good authority — I drank beer with a German last week — that the Grosse Koalition will probably only last a few months. The SPD and CDU can’t agree on much of anything, so they’ll get together for now, pass all the really unpopular spending cuts and tax hikes, blame each other and then call for new elections.
Germany gets reform, and neither party has to actually take the blame. It’s brilliant.
Germany’s system isn’t “perfectly functioning,” not by a long shot. It just functions better than free-market ideologues in the USA want to believe. And people should also be very wary about comparing US and European unemployment rates: if we measured our rate the way the Euros measure theirs, our rate would be much higher here.
p.lukasiak
One suspects that Schoeder knows that the coalition is going to be unworkable and that new elections will have to be called fairly quickly—–and that as Chacellor, Merkel (and her party) will be held responsible for the problems by the electorate, and ensure that Schoeder regains his position…..
TallDave
Schroeder continues to hold the Foreign Ministry. Doesn’t look good.
Stickler, you have a link to how they’re unemployment is actually measured differently? I’m curious how big the difference actually is. Can it account for a whole 5%?
I can tell you our per capita GDP is about 30% higher than theirs.
metalgrid
Only a free market ideologue would look at a perfectly functioning system and say “Oh my, we have to fix that.”
Free market idealogues wouldn’t try to ‘fix’ any system. The whole point of a free market is that you don’t interfere in it and let the system work itself out. You’re mistaking free marketeers for corporate cronies.
Kimmitt
Yeah, but we didn’t absorb an entire Communist country fifteen years ago. (Of course, that leads to the question of what France’s excuse is. Answer: they’re France.)
They enjoy longer vacations, which is relevant for the obvious reasons. I’d take a a pay cut for an additional four weeks of vacation per year, too.
Jack Roy
Will she be able to fundamentally alter the way the German government operates?
I don’t know a lot about German politics, but it does occur to me there’s no Churchill-Atlee or Thatcher-Blair divides between the big parties.
Which is good. The last time German government was “fundamentally alter[ed]” it was a very very good thing, but the time before that… oi.
stickler
Talldave:
No, it’s not 5%. But it’s not insignificant, either. Here’s a comparison (Vorsicht! PDF!) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Now, this is the BLS and they prove in this article that the BLS numbers are fine. So take with a grain of salt.
One interesting result they found was that Canadian unemployment rate actually drops by 1% if measured the same way the USA does.
There are also issues with part-time labor in the USA: people working less than 30 hours per week generally don’t get health benefits, so many firms (Wal-Mart) employ far more people in this capacity than one might expect. I remember reading (don’t remember where, though) that in Belgium and Germany such folks would not count as fully gainfully employed whereas in the USA they do.
It’s generally acknowleged that Europe in general has more “structural” unemployment than we do. But they also haven’t given up their manufacturing sector the way we have done. The tradeoff is probably this: 9% unemployment, or former autoworkers sweeping the floor at Wal-Mart for $6/hr.
stickler
Actually, the more I browse around the site, the more interesting it looks. So, I’ll recommend that everybody curious about this issue take a look. (Plus, you already paid for it, Mr. or Ms. Taxpayer.)
http://www.bls.gov/fls/
(The “fls” is for Foreign Labor Statistics.)
If you scroll down the page you come to a link where you can create your own comparison data tables. Pretty cool.
Kimmitt
I pretty much totally agree with everything stickler’s said here, especially the part about unemployment.
pleonastic piranha
Will she be able to fundamentally alter the way the German government operates?
no. hell, NO. and that’s a good thing. i disagree with other responders regarding merkel being a lightweight — just because she’s no thatcher doesn’t make her a lightweight. she strikes me as very capable on a personal level. we’ll see whether that translates into working with people who disagree with her on important issues. it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens, and whether the grand coalition has any staying power, but the SPD got too many important ministeries for merkel to make any of the large changes on which she campaigned.
scs
I think it’s funny that the first things said about Merkel is that she’s a “lightweight”. What do most Americans know about her? Not much, except she’s a woman. And I think it’s funny that the first things said about Meirs is she’s lightweight. And what do most Americans know about her? Not much, except she’s a woman. See what I mean when I talk about (sexist) perceptions?