Archiv der Kategorie: German Politics

almost a diary, German Politics, US Politics

Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today.

Believe it or not, this weeek of travel diary, easily consumable blog-entries is nearing its end. I guess it’s hard to have a bad time in New York, and I am no exception to that rule. I met friends of old days, and I made new ones. I love metropoles. There’s always something to discover. Like yesterday evening, when I was walking down East 43rd Street, looking for a theatre, I could not find. But then, 3 minutes later, I was sitting in the second row of a Bruce Hornsby jam session. Entirely unplanned. And it was great. This is what differentiates cities like New York from the likes of Frankfurt (in addition to the fact that they don’t need a qualifier concerning their location). Metropoles are cities that never sleep. However, sleeping is something I am looking forward to doing at home. The next entry will be from the old world again.

P.S.: I haven’t written anything about the Bush-Schroeder-Daeubler-Gmelin quarrels so far, because I sent my reply to William Safire of the New York Times. So I am waiting for a reply first. But you’ll be able to read my rebuttal of his NYTimes column, “The German Problem”, in this theatre, soon.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

America pissed off?

The last few days have witnessed histerical German media. Apparently, the US administration is not amused by the chancellor stating his disapproval for an invasion of Iraq as clearly as possible. A lot of analysts think that the US are right to be pissed off because they think that Schroeder is simply using the topic for his campaign (if so, it did certainly pay off), therefore creating unnecessary international tension and that he will later be forced to do anyway what he says he won’t before the election (should he be reelected).

Two things to that: One, the Iraq discussion certainly is a party political issue in the US as well. There is a lot of discussion going on. I don’t think it’s fair to denounce that in other countries, simply because they have upcoming general elections. In addition, if the discussion is owed to campaigning it should not be taken seriously anyway. But if the US government thinks that its foreign policy has to be treated at some level far above day to day politics, they should think again. Policies that are affecting everybody’s interests in the most crucial ways have to be discussed publicly. That’s crucial to a liberal democracy. Sometimes dissent is unavoidable.

Two, isn’t it great? So many Europeans lamenting about the US government not listening to its allies. And now that. I don’t think the issue has received the same kind of attention in the US – especially not during the week before 9/11/2002 – but who can say that they don’t listen to what we say if the chancellor can stir up so much attention once he says no? And he’s just the bad European of the day. Blair, the good European is having tea with W in Camp David this weekend. Honestly, isn’t it a bit like good cop, bad cop? Do the European foreign policy strategists think that treating the US from two angles is increasing its influence? I wonder…

But anyway – things probably aren’t as bad between the old and the new world as typical crisis hunting journalists on either would love them to be. The US government knows that Europe, including Germany, will support it, should it actually go in. Military support will probably be limited to showcase troops – simply because there isn’t anything useful Europe has that the US has not (maybe apart from this German ABC clearing unit already deployed in Kuwait). But Europe will probably pick up a large part of the tab by providing controlling and nation building resources after the initial intervention. Just as in Afghanistan. If we like it or not.

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German Politics, oddly enough

User’s guide to buying votes in Germany

Ebay is definitely faster than political scientists.

The latter still have to finally decide whether voting is rational. Actually, from a strict rational choice perspective, it isn’t. The infinitesimal decision making power of any individual vote cast in general elections does not justify the amount of resources committed to the act of voting.

But still, people DO vote, for whichever reason. And not only do a lot of people vote, some of them also attribute a much higher value to the infinitesimal influence of an individual vote than most of us would anticipate as this story, published by Spiegel Online, about people trying to sell their right to vote on ebay.de confers.

Needless to say, it’s illegal to do so, which is why you will no longer find the auctions mentioned in the article on ebay. As soon as they’re notified about such auctions, the auctions will be blocked.

But despite the illegality of such auctions, I wonder whether they could not become a prime research laboratory concerning questions like the one mentioned above? I would really like to know how much people would be willing to pay for the assurance of someone they have only had e-contact with to vote for their preferred party in the seclusion of the voting booth – in a month.

Why should the sellers even think about honouring their commitment if there is no way for the buyers to check the results? It’s plain moral hazard. Which mechanisms would sellers develop to credibly bind themselves to an uncontrollable as well as unenforcable agreement? Why did they have to block these auctions? This is the stuff prime economists get their Nobel prices for.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, media, Political Theory

High Noon

Well, it was about time. Being a mature liberal democracy with television, it was only a matter of time until there would be a televised duel between the two most serious contenders for Germany’s most important political office, the chancellor.

Yesterday evening, 20:15 was the hour of truth for both contestants. Given that this sort of two-man-show is a new element in German campaigning, it is understandable that both Mssrs. had some trouble to find the right way to deal with the other.

There were no fatal mistakes, no watch-checking, no claims about Eastern Europe being still under Soviet control. Actually, the duel was not actually a duel. The contestants hardly spoke or even looked at each other. Nor did they look at me (or the other estimated 14m viewers, which equals appr. 50% prime-time market share) since cameras, contestants and the two interviewing journalists were placed in a way it appeared the two men simply looked nowhere when they were actually looking at the journalists. Seriously, I wonder if they should pay their campaign advisors.

So the event is the main story. And for all the pundits being interviewed afterwards this was in all likelyhood a very profitable evening. But for the rest of us and for our democracy, the debate (that was not) was not very helpful.

By the way, the (conservative) BILD-Zeitung has apparently decided that Edmund Stoiber won. Actually, a lot of people said that today. Such commentary is a good example of the fact that pessimists tend to be more effetive than optimists, because because their “should be / is”-fraction will always be higher. Stoiber won simply because everyone expected him to perform as abysmal as he did in the first one-hour interview after his nomination as CDU/CSU candidate.

So to sum up, we did a) not learn anything interesting about policy options in the debate (that was not), b) we have a winner because a duel by definition needs a winner and c) unfortunately, that “winner” only because he tragically lowered expectations by himself. It’s a bit like the soaring approval ratings for George W. Bush after his handling of 9/11. Most people expected him to fail so they were positively surprised when he did not (fail entirely).

Note: It is evident why a televised debate is being introduced in Germany just now, but interestingly, it is less certain than in many previous elections that the voters will get the chancellor the want. Germany is a parliamentary democracy and the public elects the parliament, not the government. As no single party will be able to get 50+% of the votes, they will need to form coalition.

This, in turn, means that the candidate who received the most votes will not necessarily become chancellor. It all depends on the vote distribution between the parties. And given current trends, the FDP might well choose the SPD over the CDU as a coalition partner as they would have more weight in such a coalition. So Schroeder could stay in office despite getting less votes than Stoiber. Now this is a logical possibility of a parliamentary democracy and far less problematic than in the case of the last American election.

From here, the discussion would become increasingly theoretical and thus I will spare you (and me) tonight. Whatever the public says (through elections or otherwise) there is no correct way to translate it into majorities. It’s just an (socialised) agreement.

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German Politics, Germany

Too much water. And Moral Hazard.

THW Hochwassereinsatz DeutschlandFaced with the destruction of the floods currently covering a good part of East Germany and the Czech Republic, more than 4m victims will only be able to deplore their impotence with regard to the destructive potence of nature and to feel the anxiety of not knowing how to go on with their lives.

It is truly a tragedy what is happening these days after 12 years of reconstruction in the formerly Communist East. But for all their losses, none of the victims is faced with the moral dilemma which German government politicians will have to tackle. On the one hand, their human hand, they will feel compassionate just like everyone else (and will deplore the budgetary consequences of generous government bailouts for the affected regions). On the other, their (party) political one, they will see the enormous potential this national crisis is offering to them in public relation terms with the general elections looming in five weeks. But then, their private smugness will certainly be offset by the mourning of opposition leaders…

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German Politics, Iraq

FT: FDP criticizes Schroeder’s stance on Iraq

(Link) I really don’t know why the papers pay so much attention to politicians during campaign time. They really ought not to.

Wolfgang Gerhardt, the boring old possible successor of Joschka Fischer in the foreign office has given an interview. Now that is something he does not do very often since he was ousted as chairman of the FDP by Guido Westerwelle in 2001.

He’s a politician, so he probably likes media attention. And he probably wants more of it. And he thinks he will get some for criticising the chancellor for something I am pretty sure neither of both actually has: an (informed) stance on Iraq.

It’s election times, people. As a reminder, election times are those in which policy is the last thing on a politician’s mind, for the product/market diagrams his campaign staff have prepared dominate the thinking part of his/her brain. So my guess is, should they actually have an informed stance on Iraq (and I *very* much doubt that) neither of them is going to tell it to the public before the election.

Germany is a democracy. And we have tv. And one and one still adds up to two.

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German Politics

New Left, again.

OK, now that the left has really come round to understand the coordinating value of markets, they want to apply their knowledge whereever they can. This is an excerpt from a campaigning website of the SPD which tries to motivate people to volunteer for their Online Campaigning Team. Funny…but in German.

Wie werden die Aufgaben an das Online Campaigning Team verteilt? Das geschieht auf dem Jobmarkt.

Der Jobmarkt ist eine Art Marktplatz. Er funktioniert wie ein Internetforum. Die Einträge sind nur fär OCT Mitglieder sichtbar. Wer Aufgaben an das OCT zu vergeben hat, kann hier ein Angebot aufgeben. Die Mitglieder des OCT können auf jedes Angebot antworten. Auf dem Jobmarkt werden die Informationen ausgetauscht, wer bis wann welche Aufgabe erledigen kann und welche Fähigkeiten dafür benötigt werden. Für eine Aufgabe benötigt man z.B HTML Kenntnisse, manche Aufgaben sollen von vielen OCT Mitgliedern bearbeitet werden, manche nur von einem. So soll sich der Markt selber regeln und Angebot und Nachfrage zusammenführen, so dass jede Aufgabe von dem bearbeitet werden kann, der dafür am besten geeignet ist.

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Economics, German Politics

Do it the German way, if you have to. But do it.

Gerhard SchröderThe Social Democrats (SPD) seem somewhat desperate these days. With the general elections looming in only 48 days and the SPD still trailing the Christian Democrats (CDU) by about five cruicial points, Chancellor Schroeder kicked off the ‘official’ SPD campaign in Hannover saying that his government would contine to conduct business, that is economic policy, “the German way” – as opposed to the American way of social security, of course.

While campaigns are not usually a good opportunity for serious policy analysis, this statement is actually interesting, because it demonstrates to which extent this government is at loss about its economic policy. A few weeks ago, the chancellor tried to gain points among the reformist voters who helped him into office back in 1998 by proposing to pursue the implementation of the proposals of a working group (the “Hartz-commission”) under the direction of a member of the VW-board.

These proposals include serious supply side changes to the incentive structure of the German labour market regulations. The deal he tried to cut was – back me again and I’ll be in a better position to keep the Unions in check than a conservative-liberal coalition so I could actually implement the plan.

While this calculation may be right if – and it certainly looks as if – Schroeder himself is the only argument that could keep the SPD in office, many voters seem to have lost their faith in his ability to deliver. After all, they signed precisely that deal in 1998 and the only changes the SPD made to labour market regulation, even after the departure of my-heart-beats-on-the-left finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, made it even more rigid than before.

So it seems the SPD campaigners now believe that they will have to rely more on the votes of the traditional social democratic core than they thought and thus start a campaign to defend “the German way” – the corporatist rhenish capitalism – of organising the economy. Not helpful, you might say and you could be right.

But I still believe in Schroeders deal. Especially if the SPD has to cut a deal with the Liberals after the election instead of the Greens whose very knowledgeable spokesperson for budgetary and economic matters, Oswald Metzger, will not return to the Bundestag due to plainly stupid electoral regulations, once conceived to promote the role of women in the Green party.

So I fear in a coalition with a technically neoliberal chancellor they might try to appeal to leftist tradiationalists and slow down necessary reforms. I would certainly miss Joschka Fischer and will dearly deplore the lack of social progressiveness in the FDP but as things stand today I figure a coalition of SPD and FDP will be the best deal this country can get.

So if Schroeder has to praise “the German way” to be reelected, be it. In any case, I would advise you not to listen too closely to any politician over the next 48 days, it’s campaign time. If you’re campaigning yourself, you’re a journalist or you’re into advertising, you might have have fun.

All others – try to spend the rest of the summer abroad.

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German Politics, Iraq

Soundbites.

German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stated today that in his opinion a war against Iraq is not useful for the time being. The middle east conflict should be solved before considering any further action against Iraq.

I have not yet made up my mind concerning a western military intervention in Iraq but to wait until the middle east conflict will be resolved would certainly be a bit longer than useful. Sometimes I wonder whether politicians secretly hate Emil Berliner for inventing the microphone…

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