What Germany’s election means for Germany, the US, and the world

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DAN RICHARDS: From the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Dan Richards. In February, Germany held federal elections. While the country's establishment center Right party won the largest share of votes, the election's results revealed a nation experiencing profound political and social change. The far Right alliance for Germany party received an unprecedented 20% of the vote, while the center Left incumbent party suffered their worst loss in over 100 years.

And as you'll hear on this episode, these election results will have implications far beyond Germany's borders. As the war in Ukraine continues to challenge Europe's own sense of security and the Trump administration upends US-Europe relations, what does this election mean for Germany, Europe, and the world? To help make sense of it all, I spoke with Nick Ziegler, a political scientist at the Watson Institute and expert on German politics.

We discussed what this election can tell us about Europe's biggest economy today and what it means for the future of an international order that, for the first time in decades, seems to have the US and Europe on divergent paths. Here is our conversation.

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Nick Ziegler, thank you so much for coming on to Trending Globally.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Thanks for having me.

DAN RICHARDS: So let's start with the results from this recent election in Germany, which was held on February 23rd. So the Center Left Social Democratic Party, which had been leading the prior governing coalition in Germany suffered their worst loss in-- I saw by one account since Eighteen Eighty-Seven, which is a remarkable fact. And the Center Right Christian Democratic Union and their allied Christian Social Union won the most votes. And they really behave as one party for all intents and purposes-- the CDU, CSU, and they'll now have to form a coalition government.

Another important piece of the puzzle is the performance of the Right wing alternatives for Germany party, which we will get to. But first, I wonder what you make of the incumbent SPD's loss. Was this just another instance of sort of incumbent discontent that we've seen taking place in elections around the world in recent years? Or was there a more profound rejection of what the SPD stands for?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: It was somewhat more than anti-incumbent sentiment. I would say it was three things in combination-- partly fatigue with this coalition that had been unable to reinvest in German infrastructure. German trains are surprisingly late, often have a less on time performance than Italian trains. And the education system, the social policies, all had been suffering under lack of investment, which this particular coalition was unable to relieve in any way because it couldn't agree on the legalities of greater investment. So anti-incumbency fatigue with gridlock.

A longer term factor is that the social Democrats have had great difficulty replenishing their traditional constituency among the German manufacturing working class, which still exists. It's a large constituency but nowhere near as large as it has been for the social Democrat's 140, 150 year history that's made them one of the largest parties in Europe for that whole period. So those three things together, I think, account for a real drop in the Social Democrat support.

DAN RICHARDS: And why they had such difficulty, as you say, replenishing their working class constituencies?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Well, that is partly an economic structural change as the manufacturing part of the economy grows smaller in Germany. It is not shrinking anywhere near as much as in the United States or many other advanced economies. But it is no longer quite as big as it was, say, 20 years ago, certainly not 50 years ago. In addition to the structural factors, however, the party system has really changed over the last three decades, new parties often focusing on what are called second dimension issues, not simply left, right economic issues, but lifestyle issues, LGBTQ issues, environmental issues.

Those issues have given rise to new parties. First and foremost, the Green Party, which has been a real factor in German politics since the Nineteen Eighties, but more recently, a new party on the Left wing called the Left Party, which was formed in the early Two Thousands from the Left wing of the SPD but also the former communist elite in East Germany is a fourth new party. And AfD, the alternative for Germany is a Right wing party founded in Twenty Thirteen. It's a very new party founded first of all as a simple market fiscal disciplinarian party but has moved more and more to the far Right.

It wants to throw off the so-called memory culture, which is deeply ingrained in post-war Germany, processing thinking about the Holocaust and the Nazi heritage. And that's five parties which complicate the electoral landscape considerably.

DAN RICHARDS: I was going to ask more about the AfD in a little bit, but let's talk about them right now, because I think one of the most notable results of this election was how strongly they performed, although perhaps slightly less strongly than some had predicted. I wonder, what do you make of their growth in the last few years?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Well, it is without doubt the single greatest change in the outcome since the last federal election in Twenty Twenty-One. The AfD doubled its vote total from a small amount over 10% four years ago to almost 21% today. So that's a dramatic increase, and it means AfD is now the second largest party in the National Assembly, the Bundestag, and it is the primary opposition party, which gives it a privileged voice in critiquing whatever the new government will do.

It has grown its support steadily through concerns over immigration. Since Twenty Fifteen and the Syrian Civil War, immigration has increased a great deal in Germany. And all across the political spectrum, there are indeed concerns with newcomers coming into the society and the culture, and those concerns have really helped the AfD boost its support.

DAN RICHARDS: In addition to concerns around immigration and they're sort of focusing on that, you also mentioned the AfD's resistance to or skepticism of sort of looking back in history and what you described as the memory culture.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Yes. [GERMAN] is the German phrase, and it's a very common concept in Germany.

DAN RICHARDS: And the AfD has been linked to neo-Nazi ideas and groups in Germany. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Like, is the neo-Nazi ideology a meaningful component of this party off the AfD?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: It is without doubt an important element. In the appeal of the AfD, several of its regional leaders, especially in former East Germany, have made quite explicit references to Nazi symbolism, to language closely associated with the Nazi party, and it has multiple meanings in German political culture today. It is partly an effort to instill historical pride, to minimize the crimes of the Nazi period, and that is, of course, very, very serious for anyone who believes that that period in German history is one of the lowest in modern history and needs to be thoroughly understood to prevent anything similar from ever happening again.

So that is very serious. Another element of the appeal the AfD can gain from these kinds of statements is a simple anti-conventional taboo-breaking mystique that it's time for the Germans to break out of their feelings of shame or guilt that Germany is a country that should be as proud of its heritage as any other. And that has a somewhat less sharp edge but still quite broad appeal, and can appeal, among other things, to conservatively or anti-establishment oriented younger voters, I think.

DAN RICHARDS: The AfD's rise also became injected into US politics in a sort of surprising way in the last few months. In the lead up to this election, Elon Musk publicly supported the AfD, and he streamed a rather friendly interview with the party's leader online ahead of the election.

ELON MUSK: Just to educate people who have never heard of AfD or AfD if it could be German. And a lot of people, especially in America, have never heard of AfD, so perhaps this would be very helpful.

DAN RICHARDS: And then in February, Vice President, JD Vance met with leaders of the AfD when in Europe and also criticized European leaders for, among other things, marginalizing extreme populist political movements in their countries.

JD VANCE: The threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within.

DAN RICHARDS: Why did this become such an attraction, do you think, to members of the Trump administration?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: I think some of the taboo-breaking mystique of the far Right parties in Europe is appealing to a similar desire among many on President Trump's team to break with convention, with existing norms, to try to do things differently. And that is, of course, something that Elon Musk has made his trademark in his entrepreneurship, as well as in his much more recent political activities.

For JD Vance, I think it's similar. He's trying to bring the president's message that things are really going to be different now, so get used to it, to Europe. The statements made by Vice President Vance in Munich were deeply shocking to most of the German public, because the German-US relationship has been such a major pillar of Germany's geopolitical stance and outlook now for 80 years. And it sounded like that was being thrown out the window.

So that signifies a major, major sea change, if not something close to a real reversal in the nature of the Transatlantic Alliance, which Germans had viewed for all of these decades as probably the single structuring pillar of post-war international stability.

DAN RICHARDS: What was the effect in Germany of the Trump administration's commentary on politics in the country? Was Trump and his allies, were they able to sway people or shift how parties are approaching some of these issues of international security or what have you?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: I don't think there was any discernible effect on the vote totals. Most of the parties ended up close to what the polls had said. The Christian Democrats did slightly worse than the most recent polls, but I think the effect of the Trump administration's various statements, Defense Secretary Hegseth in Brussels, as well as vice president Vance in Munich, was to make the major parties who will be in the governing coalition articulate their determination to act more independently of the United States.

It means Germany is almost sure to work more concertedly for a united European position on all geopolitical issues, and it may lead to a reinvigoration of the European Union, will be moving toward a more fully multi-polar world, a very far distance from the Soviet-US bipolar opposition. Now we have the two superpowers, Russia and the US, but also China and Europe are already an economic superpower, which I do think is likely in the next 5, 10, 15 years to become a military superpower as well, or at least there's a much higher probability of that happening.

DAN RICHARDS: Before we talk more about the international implications of this election and what it means for global security, which I do want to get to, let's go back to the winners of this election. The CDU, CSU alliance won the most votes. And they will, as of this taping, most likely be forming a coalition government with the SPD, the party that had just been in power. And that's because the CDU, CSU, along with every other party, refuses to form any sort of coalition with the AfD, which came in second place.

And I wanted to start with Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Who is Friedrich Merz? And what do you see as his and his party's priorities?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: The Christian Democrats were widely expected to win this election and to be the senior party in a new coalition. The only real question was whether it would be a two-party coalition with the Social Democrats or whether they would need three parties and govern with both the Social Democrats and the Greens, which appears not to be necessary. The Christian Democrats are a very large big tent party with Center-Right economic positions.

So the Christian Democrats are a well-known quantity viewed as the party that might be able to relieve gridlock and get Germany going again. Friedrich Merz however, is a slightly new kind of a personality. He was very active in the CDU as a younger politician but was forced out of active improvement of his power base within the party by Angela Merkel and decided therefore to leave politics. Went to work for BlackRock, the US-based asset manager. Very successful business person, well-established.

He is thought to be, in temperamental terms, pretty sharp personality capable of real outbursts of anger. And one of the questions is whether he can fit himself into the rather staid style of politics that's been more typical of CDU leaders. And he may not do that. He may be quite a dramatic leader of the CDU.

DAN RICHARDS: Something you mentioned that caused significant political problems for SPD when they were in power was the issue of immigration. And I wonder how the incoming government may change Germany's approach to immigration, or might it be more of a rhetorical change without a change to policies? Like how important is figuring out a new approach to that really contentious issue for this new government? Never mind with the AfD becoming the party of opposition.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Well, immigration is indeed a significant issue for German society. The proportion of non-native born Germans is higher now than it's been for many decades. And many of the newcomers are from the Middle East or Muslim countries, which Germans perceive as being more distant culturally than previous immigrants from Southern Europe, or for that matter, from Ukraine, who are generally perceived as well-educated and in some sense, European, more similar to the Germans.

Many of the Muslim immigrants, it should be added, are also extremely well-educated, including the Syrian migration during the Syrian Civil War. But the element of cultural distance is really there, and it does require quite a lot of adjustment in German institutions, language adjustment. Managing that process is a non-trivial issue which the government needs to be able to deal with. And there have been very unfortunate attacks that have been identified with recent immigrants in the last four or five months, which has made this issue very, very explosive.

And the CDU can be counted on, I think, to introduce some legislation that will look like a crackdown on any illegal activities. It may make it harder for newcomers to apply for refugee status in Germany. So I do think that's something that has to be grappled with. And these are important issues for German society as it processes its sense of collective identity, what it means to be German. Is it a traditional, culturally homogeneous kind of a society, or is it moving toward some kind of more multicultural, multi-ethnic democracy?

And that is indeed something that's been happening for 15, 20, 25, in a way more years. But not all Germans accept it. So this will have to be an ongoing discussion.

DAN RICHARDS: And do you think that AfD's strong showing in this election will impact how the government manages these types of questions? The AfD won't be in the governing coalition, of course, but this election points to a big chunk of German society that clearly is sympathetic to some of these more Right wing nativist ideas and is fed up with how the mainstream parties have been handling this.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: This will be a very contentious issue within any CDU-SPD coalition. The CDU is likely to favor some policies that go part way toward placating the anti-immigration constituency of the AfD, and the social Democrats would prefer to resist bitterly making any concessions to that part of the political spectrum. So that is going to be a very tough issue. That will be in part hashed out over the next several weeks as the two parties agree on what is called in Germany, a coalition agreement.

And it's a formal written statement of what they want to do that does guide, in fact, the government once it takes power. So we'll hear more about it.

DAN RICHARDS: And more practically, will the AfD have any sort of sway in parliament? And I guess more generally, that the firewall has existed for some time, sort of preventing the AfD from working with the major parties. But now the AfD is not some small fringe. It's the second biggest party in parliament. Like how will that shape what comes?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: This is an important question. It does mean that the new coalition, which will be taking power, is going to be a target for the AfD from the very beginning. And as the largest opposition party, the AfD stands to benefit from any mistakes that the new government makes. That does mean, with all the openness in German politics right now, that there's a real risk that AfD will be able to increase its constituency over the next four years simply by virtue of anti-incumbency feeling. And that puts an extra premium on the new government to perform well and deliver for the German public.

DAN RICHARDS: I want to turn, as we start to wrap up, to what this election might mean for another really pressing and important topic in Germany and indeed in all of Europe, which is the relationship between the United States and Europe and especially as it relates to international security. President Trump has continued to express criticism of the US's role in NATO. And as we touched on, his allies have been skeptical of a lot of mainstream European political ideas in the recent past. How do you think this new governing coalition is going to be approaching and thinking about the relationship between the Europe and the US?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Well, I think this is one of the most interesting and significant consequences of this election for the United States and for your listeners, because the two largest parties reacted quite sharply to the statements at the Munich Security Conference by Vice President Vance. There will be a very real effort, while wanting to maintain relations with the United States, a very real effort to become more independent of the United States. That does raise one issue, Dan, that we haven't touched on, which is the important budget issue.

DAN RICHARDS: Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit more, actually, because, I think it can sound really technical of questions around national debt, but it's actually really important to these questions of international security.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: The last government and this government also will be constrained by strict limits on government borrowing in Germany that were instituted in the early Two Thousands. They are known as the so-called debt brake. In German, the [GERMAN]. And it is a constitutional provision that limits government spending. It's the strictest limit on fiscal indebtedness amongst any of the advanced countries, and it really is the constraint that brought down the last government.

The Christian Democrats refused to consider loosening it while they were in opposition. Now that Friedrich Merz is slated to become chancellor, he has indicated some openness, indeed a desire to do something to loosen the debt brake. And this is crucial, because without relief from this self-imposed fiscal straitjacket, the new government will not be able to increase defense spending as much as the Trump administration wants, and indeed, as much as the major parties outside of AfD in Germany also want.

So the first key issue that the new coalition will face is what to do about the debt brake, and will they be able to muster the 2/3 legislative majority necessary to loosen it up? And that'll have a great deal to do, I think, with Germany's ability to respond to the pressure coming from the Trump administration to participate in a more active effort by the Europeans to become self-sufficient in the defense realm. Whether or not this is a good idea for the Trump administration, whether it serves US interests to have a fully independent Europe, I think is a very good question, but there's no doubt that Germany will be trying to move much more in that direction as soon as the new coalition takes power.

DAN RICHARDS: Another thing I wanted to touch on was that there was another party that did surprisingly well, the far Left party Die Linke. It ended up being the largest party among voters, 18 to 24 years old. What does that tell you about how young people are thinking about politics in Germany, and also like looking ahead at how the political situation could evolve?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Well, younger German voters really fled proportionately from the large traditional parties. They didn't vote exclusively for the fringe parties, but many younger Germans in the 18 to 24-year-old group, but going up to 45, did vote for the far Right alternative for Germany, the AfD, but many more than expected ended up voting for this left party, Die Linke. And in the 18 to 24-year-old group, as you said, more 18 to 24-year-old voters showed up than for any other party.

DAN RICHARDS: Are both the AfD and Die Linke opposed to increasing military spending?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: Yes. And this is, of course, very important for Friedrich Merz and his efforts to continue supporting Ukraine. AfD would like to eliminate aid to Ukraine, and De Linke is also a very traditional, far Left peace-oriented party that would like to reduce defense spending altogether and doesn't want to be deeply involved in Ukraine. Together they make up almost 30% of the German electorate now.

So Friedrich Merz will have a great deal of work to do to continue defending Germany's position supporting Ukraine in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

DAN RICHARDS: And aside from that, what does it mean for Germany's politics and future that so many young people are more interested in these smaller, newer parties?

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: What this means is that the traditional large people's parties-- the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats-- have a great deal of work to do to replenish their electorate, and some of these younger voters may gravitate to the more moderate parties as they grow older, but there's absolutely no guarantee.

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This also means that amidst all the uncertainty in geopolitics, in the way the new coalition will take shape, there also are real reasons to see vitality in Germany's democracy. Electoral turnout in this latest election was well above 80%. That's significantly higher than in recent decades. And to see younger voters going for the far Left, as well as the far Right, suggests that they really want some change in Germany.

It also means as many younger Germans as may be impressed with the AfD and its conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration position, a very sizable number of new voters in the youngest age group decided to vote for the left, to vote for something new but very different than this conservative sort of anti-immigration position. So it means this is a period of terrific openness, and politics can develop in many different ways over the next four years in Germany.

DAN RICHARDS: Well, Nick Ziegler, thank you so much for helping us make sense of all this, and hopefully we can have you on again soon to take stock of what these elections mean for Germany, Europe, and the world.

J. NICHOLAS ZIEGLER: I'll be glad to come back. Thank you very much, Dan.

DAN RICHARDS: This episode was produced by me, Dan Richards and Zach Hirsch. We had production assistance from Eric Emma. Our theme music is by Henry Bloomfield, with additional music from the Blue Dot Sessions. If you like this show, leave us a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps others to find us. And if you haven't subscribed to Trending Globally, please do that too.

If you have any questions or comments or ideas for episode topics or guests, send us an email at trendingglobally@brown.edu. Again, that's all one word, trendingglobally@brown.edu. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Trending Globally. Thanks.