{"id":39502,"date":"2025-05-17T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39502"},"modified":"2025-05-19T05:08:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T05:08:23","slug":"new-chancellor-old-constraints-germanys-friedrich-merz-will-have-a-hard-time-freeing-the-country-from-its-self-imposed-shackles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/new-chancellor-old-constraints-germanys-friedrich-merz-will-have-a-hard-time-freeing-the-country-from-its-self-imposed-shackles\/","title":{"rendered":"New chancellor, old constraints: Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz will have a hard time freeing the country from its self-imposed shackles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mark I. Vail<\/a>, Wake Forest University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friedrich Merz received a rude shock<\/a> on the morning of May 6, 2025, as he prepared to lose the \u201cin-waiting\u201d qualifier from his title as German chancellor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After weeks of negotiations following February\u2019s federal election<\/a>, Merz\u2019s Christian Democrats (CDU) had struck a coalitional bargain<\/a> with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), giving the bloc a thin majority of 13 seats in the 630-member Bundestag, the lower house of Germany\u2019s parliament. Yet, Merz still struggled to ratify his chancellorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He fell short<\/a> of the majority he needed on the first vote, with 18 members of his coalition voting against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he was elected on a second ballot, the initial \u201cno\u201d vote was unprecedented for an incoming chancellor in the postwar federal republic, with insiders claiming<\/a> that some of those voting \u201cno\u201d were conservatives opposed to Merz\u2019s push to loosen German fiscal rules. Aside from the immediate political embarrassment, the vote was symptomatic of something else: a more deep-seated weakness in both the new chancellor and his government. As a scholar of German politics and history<\/a> and the author of a forthcoming book<\/a> on German state traditions and economic governance, I see Merz\u2019s problems, and those of his country, as having deep historical roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the brakes off?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For Germany and Europe, the stakes in the run-up to the vote to ratify Merz as chancellor could not have been higher \u2013 a cascade of crises confronts both. As CDU\u2019s parliamentary leader Jens Spahn noted in the run-up to the May 6 vote<\/a>: \u201cAll of Europe, perhaps the whole world, is watching this ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German chancellor is looking to strengthen both Europe and Germany through firm leadership and heavier spending. He has promised a massive increase in defense outlays in order to create the \u201cstrongest conventional army in Europe<\/a>,\u201d to counter the threat from a bellicose Russia and the United States\u2019 wavering over traditional security commitments to the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This broad vision, however, is confronted by a number of obstacles, most importantly the so-called \u201cdebt brake<\/a>.\u201d Adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, this \u201cbrake\u201d limited annual deficits to a paltry 0.35% of gross domestic product and proscribed any debts at all for the German \u201cL\u00e4nder,\u201d or regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March, soon after the February election but before the seating of the new Bundestag, then-presumptive Chancellor Merz called for an exemption to the debt brake for defense spending above 1% of annual gross domestic product, with a promise to do \u201cwhatever it takes<\/a>\u201d to bolster Germany\u2019s military and verbally committing to spend up to US$1.12 trillion (1 trillion euros) over 10 years. The outgoing parliament agreed<\/a> and also created a $560 billion (500 billion euros) fund dedicated to rehabilitating Germany\u2019s crumbling infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Merz\u2019s plans to revitalize Germany\u2019s military and infrastructure could be seriously undermined by domestic forces \u2013 both within and outside of his coalition. It runs up against long-standing German norms and ideologies that threaten to hamper the state\u2019s capacity and the government\u2019s ability to act decisively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ambivalence about state power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This wobbly start to the new government hearkens back to old and deeply rooted divisions about the character of the post-World War II German state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 1960s, West German Chancellor-to-be Willy Brandt quipped that the federal republic<\/a> had become an \u201ceconomic giant but a political dwarf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the phrase would become a clich\u00e9, it captured both the fraught legacies of World War II and older German ambivalence about state power, which had long been associated with authoritarian politics under both the Nazis and the Wilhelmine Reich<\/a> following German unification under Bismarck in 1871.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three
U.S. President John F. Kennedy, left, rides through the streets of Berlin with West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, center, and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Bettmann\/Contributor<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Until the 1980s, such constraints posed relatively few problems. The country\u2019s postwar \u201ceconomic miracle<\/a>\u201d legitimized the fledgling democratic state, while empowering capital and labor within the export sectors that fueled the boom. This effectively devolved political power to economically strategic actors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These institutional features also reflected a distinctive postwar model of German politics that weakened centralized power. Achieved in the late 1940s by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, West German sovereignty was fragmented: domestically by federalism and decentralized political institutions, and internationally through integration into NATO and the European Economic Community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u201csemi-sovereign state,\u201d in political scientist Peter Katzenstein\u2019s<\/a> famous formulation, helped reclaim German moral credibility from the ashes of fascism and genocide. A decentralized state with robust checks and balances was viewed as both a bulwark against authoritarianism and a recipe for export-led growth and political stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after the restoration of full sovereignty with German reunification in 1990, German officials still trod lightly. Their concern was that a more assertive Germany would reawaken old fears about German militarism. Moreover, they were content to privilege economic rather than military power as the coin of their peculiar realm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A nation of Swabian housewives?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The historical ambivalence about the German state\u2019s role and related dilemmas about German power will not be easy for Merz to resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With respect to Germany\u2019s capacity for decisive leadership, the past three years suggest that much work remains to be done. Confronted with a series of unprecedented shocks \u2212 from Russian military aggression in Ukraine<\/a>, to the attendant energy crisis that exposed German dependence on imported Russian gas<\/a>, to the rise of the far-right<\/a> Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) \u2212 Merz\u2019s predecessor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, called in 2022 for a \u201cZeitenwende,\u201d or \u201cepochal change<\/a>,\u201d in defense and energy policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But instead, Scholz\u2019s \u201ctraffic light coalition\u201d of (yellow) Liberals, Greens, and (red) Social Democrats dithered and bickered, eventually succumbing to a rare \u2013 in German politics \u2013 public interparty squabble that ultimately brought down the government<\/a> in late 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reluctant to send its most advanced weapons \u2013 notably long-range Taurus cruise missiles \u2013 to Ukraine, and unable to overcome the Liberals\u2019 hostility to badly needed fiscal expansion, Scholz was criticized for leading from behind<\/a>, wary of backlash from pacifist currents in the German electorate and captive to long-held German concerns over expanding the national debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merz is looking not to repeat the same mistakes. But to accomplish his vision of a revitalized and more secure Germany, he has to overcome both the debt brake and, even more important, the deep ideological currents that gave rise to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These factors intensified long-standing constraints on defense spending<\/a>, which had failed to keep up with inflation for much of the 2000s and remained far below the NATO norm of 2% of annual gross domestic product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cbrake\u201d was subsequently embraced by governments of both left and right, from SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der\u2019s \u201cRed-Green\u201d coalition of 1998 to 2005 to the governments of Christian Democrat Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2021. As is abundantly clear in the pages of Merkel\u2019s recent memoir<\/a>, the proverbial character of the frugal \u201cSwabian housewife<\/a>\u201d was one that she relished rather than resisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to many observers, this fetishization of austerity has contributed to decades of underinvestment in domestic infrastructure \u2212 from roads, to schools, to public buildings, to broader public services \u2212 failures which the AfD has been eager to exploit. And as promising as it seems, Merz\u2019s commitment of $560 billion (500 billion euros) is approximately<\/a> equivalent to the country\u2019s existing needs, without accounting for future depreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Far-right activists gather near the Ostkreuz railway station in Berlin, Germany, on March 22, 2025 . Omer Messinger\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even Germany\u2019s traditionally punctual train service has become a laughingstock, with jokes about late or canceled trains now standard fare<\/a> for German comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going beyond rhetoric<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It remains unclear whether Merz\u2019s rhetorical shift and a constitutional change that permits but does not in itself create more robust defense spending augur a new direction in German politics, or whether Europe\u2019s largest economy will continue to be hobbled by self-imposed constraints and parliamentary squabbling. If the latter happens, Germany risks both continued economic decline and bolstering the AfD, whose support comes disproportionately from economically stagnant former Eastern regions, and which last month surpassed Merz\u2019s CDU<\/a> in public opinion polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And despite Merz\u2019s commitments, not a single euro of the promised military and infrastructure funds has yet been budgeted. And even if it were, that would not address the country\u2019s yawning needs in other areas, such as state-funded research and development and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe, too, needs Merz\u2019s words to turn into action \u2212 and soon. The threat of Russia to the east and the turning tide of relations with Trump\u2019s America to the west has put the EU in a bind and in need of strong leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark I. Vail<\/a>, Worrell Chair of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark I. Vail, Wake Forest University Friedrich Merz received a rude shock on the morning of May 6, 2025, as he prepared to lose the \u201cin-waiting\u201d qualifier from his title as German chancellor. After weeks of negotiations following February\u2019s federal election, Merz\u2019s Christian Democrats (CDU) had struck a coalitional bargain with the center-left Social Democrats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":39503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,46,295,296,36,4,38],"tags":[1672,16419,349,715,9092,16421,16416,242,16418,16420,885,891,886,860,11192,16417],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39504,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39502\/revisions\/39504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}