Why Did The German Government Form Coalitions By Trying To Create A Grand Coalition

I selected the two articles above for a specific reason and that is to show how the German government forms coalitions, and in this case is trying to create a “grand coalition”. Both articles show that its not an easy task. However, the Politico article goes into details of the internal conflict within the SPD and why that is causing problems of forming a coalition. While the Spiegel article looks into the SPD, but also looks at the growing unrest possibly in the CDU/CSU. May I point out that the CSU is a sister party of the CDU. Let’s start off with the Politico article and see where the SPD stands at the moment. The article begins by discussing the disarray surrounding the SPD party leaders. It mentions that Martin Schulz basically resigned as the leader of the SPD. Since Martin Schulz was the leader of the SPD, he could have become Chancellor if his party would have won last year’s election as we learned in class. Other party leaders chose Andrea

Schulz and Angela Merkel who is the head of the CDU and is trying to form this “grand coalition” government. We also learned in class that there have been grand coalitions before and that most of those coalitions dealt with the CDU and SPD governing at once. So, this is not new in German politics these two parties trying to form a coalition. These parties are the most likely ones to form a coalition because they are the two of the oldest party’s in Germany. The CDU was created after World War 2 and the SPD was around since the late 1800’s. So, the SPD was around during the Kaiser and the Weimar Republic. These parties are also the most likely to have the most resources compared to smaller parties, which helps them get their message out. However, both parties now appear to be having problems of even trying to come up with a deal in the negotiations. Which could lead to a result of a minority government or a new election needing to take