German Politics and Society

Angela Merkel has not only been repeatedly ranked “the world’s most powerful woman;” she is also the only German chancellor since 1949 to have successfully led her party to a “normal” victory after a full term heading a grand coalition from 2005-2009. Merkel’s ability to lead has been shaped by the dynamics of coalition politics, proportional representation, and German federalism. Perceived as a more successful leader under an exceptional grand coalition than under a typical cdu/csu-fdp constellation, Merkel provides a one-woman-laboratory for comparing the impact of different coalition modes on the chancellor’s powers and limitations on her ability to rule. The study offers a two-level analysis, comparing Merkel’s performance atop a “gender balanced” Grand Coalition (2005-2009) with Hans-Georg Kiesinger’s male-dominated Grand Coalition (1966-1969). It then contrasts leadership dilemmas confronting Merkel during her first term with those arising during her second chancellorship, 2009-2013. It urges scholars to “bring the institutions back in” when considering the skills female leaders must evince in order to manage divergent coalition types: grand coalition configurations may, in turn, require men to adopt leadership behaviors usually ascribed to women in order to prove effective cross-party managers.

The bureaucratic politics of the German decision to bailout Greece reveal that policy proposals from the Office of the Federal Chancellery and the Federal Ministry of Finance to cope with the crisis in Greece stood to benefit those specific ministries. Centered on a national/supranational cleavage, policy debates in the second Angela Merkel government revolved around whether the European Union should be delegated more power in terms of broader Eurozone macroeconomic governance. Angela Merkel rejected broader treaty revisions insisting on strict adherence to the Stability and Growth Pact and the large-scale participation of the imf. Conversely, Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble opposed imf involvement and advocated for increased eu competency including support for the French proposal to institutionalize the Eurogroup. The policy positions of these two organizational actors remained deeply conditioned by organizational interests, rather than partisan or ideological divides over conceptions of “European Unity.”

This paper explores the determinants of ministerial duration within the German Länder between 1990 and 2010. In arguing that different terminal events ceasing ministerial tenures should be analyzed separately, it distinguishes four exit types: voluntary, forced, collective (ministers leaving office because their whole party does so) and exits that are neither volitional acts of the minister nor politically induced. Depending on the exit type, competing-risks Cox-models show different effects for one and the same variable on the hazard for ministerial turnover. Seniority in high-level politics for example helps not to be forced out of office while it has no effect on voluntary or collective exits. Heading an important ministry on the other hand increases the chances to rise to other positions in high politics or private business, but does not impact the other two hazards. The analysis furthermore shows that the principal-agent-logic known from Westminster systems with the prime minister being largely sovereign in hiring and firing cabinet members must be adapted to the German context of frequent coalition governments. In coalition governments, only ministers from the same party as the prime minister exhibit higher hazards for forced exits, while ministers from other coalition partners are much safer in that regard.