West Germany adopts a first-past-the-post voting system in the 1960s?

Thande

Donor
I just came across a reference to the West German CDU/SPD Grand Coalition government of Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-69) attempting to change West Germany's voting system. West Germany (and its reunited successor today) used a mixed voting system where half the seats in the Bundestag were filled by MPs elected in (large) FPTP constituencies, while the other half were filled by proportional representation. Apparently the CDU were fed up with the fact that this voting system tends to prevent any one party from gaining a majority, in particular because they disliked having to provide concessions to their usual coalition partners the FDP. Changing the voting system to full FPTP, like Britain or the United States, would likely squeeze the FDP vote (and any other potential smaller parties) and make majority governments by either CDU or SPD the default. Because the SPD were the other biggest party and stood to gain they initially supported the CDU in this attempt to change the voting system, but later backed down.

So what if the SPD had gone through with it and West Germany had adopted a system favouring two-party politics? How would that affect the political development of West Germany since the 1960s (and reunited Germany, assuming that is not affected by the POD)?
 

Anderman

Donor
The differences between the CDU and the SPD are are basicly social democratic parties so a FPTP system could lead to polarization in german politics.
 
The very reason why the SPD didn't hold its coalition promise regarding FPTP was that they knew that swinging the FDP into a Red-Yellow (or social-liberal in pre-1998 parlance) coalition would be much easier than winning a solid lone majority again CDU/CSU. That's actually what happened in 1969, the Blacks got the most votes, but less that Red and Yellow combined. That's why Kiesinger woke up and was perplexed that the two smaller parties formed a government.

The SPD actually achieved a plurality only one time before 1998, that was the pre-mature 1972 elections, you know, after the motion of confidence that came after the motion of no confidence that Brandt surprisingly survived thanks to GDR bribes. The Blacks already regained their plurality in 1976, but it took until "Genscher's betrayal" in 1982 until the SPD was ousted from government.

If FPTP would have been introduced in Germany, well, these would have been interesting times. First of all, you butterflied the FDP and especially Herr Genscher away from government. Though path dependence holds true for every political system and especially Germany, 18 years with other foreign office heads are quite a bit deal especially if they change with every government. And as it's entirely possible that the federal example would make the Länder follow suit, you actually have a pretty stable two-party system of SPD and CDU/CSU with all the other parties rendered moot.

In the end, a government change will happen in the end because people will even get more fed up with the blacks, and with FPTP, it will be a dramatic landslide for SPD, already holding two thirds in the Bundesrat and maybe even getting said supermajority in the Bundestag once they get it on there. A one-party supermajority in both chambers is a fucking big deal. Especially if the SPD somehow manages to get said majority to make education a federal competence (= no plebiscits) and change the school system along French or British lines, the CDU/CSU will make a campaign for reintroducing the proportional system because FPTP backfired horribly. Of course, that's just a scenario, but it shows you that FPTP can be a Pandora's box going horribly right.
 
Interesting idea for an ATL. Good points by Dr. Nodelescu.

Will look into that, although not enough time right now.

Kind regards,
G.
 
Isn't there a requirement in the Grundgesetz that voting be representative? I thought there was a court ruling a few years ago on that basis that mandates that they change the electoral system to try to eliminate Uberhangsmandate and the like. I find it hard to believe that FPTP would stand up, unless they were trying to change the Grundgesetz itself.

I'm not 100% on these things as the German political system is pretty complicated and I flunked my class on it (in my defence it was a large Vorlesung full of German polisci majors).
 
FPTP wouldn't be unconstitutional as the voting system isn't specified as such in the Basic Law, that's just simple legislation. What the courts said is that an inverse success value in the voting system mustn't be. That's what's got to be fixed and still has to be.
 
You know, there's a spot where such a change might've had bigger impact - four decades earlier. It could've cancelled Hitler's takeover. He'd be little bigger threat than the British fascists were. And Weimar Germany would also have far less trouble finding governments to run the country and not need to turn to nasty radicals like Hitler.

And there was a feeling like the system did need reform.

Just saying...
 
In the end, a government change will happen in the end because people will even get more fed up with the blacks, and with FPTP, it will be a dramatic landslide for SPD, already holding two thirds in the Bundesrat and maybe even getting said supermajority in the Bundestag once they get it on there. A one-party supermajority in both chambers is a fucking big deal. Especially if the SPD somehow manages to get said majority to make education a federal competence (= no plebiscits) and change the school system along French or British lines, the CDU/CSU will make a campaign for reintroducing the proportional system because FPTP backfired horribly. Of course, that's just a scenario, but it shows you that FPTP can be a Pandora's box going horribly right.

I think such a SPD-wank is rather unrealistic, at least in the 1970-early 80th as long as the two-party-system is stable. Massiv swings happens in a FPTP-system just then, when a third party works as spoiler(Example Britain in 1983). And a 2/3 majority in the Bundesrat would require pre-reunification 28 votes, which means the SPD would have to win all Länder except Bayern and Baden-Wurtemberg. At this time with still rather stable voting patterns quite unrealistig.

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Interesting is, that the SPD between 1969 - 1980 actually in three of four elections won a majority of the electoral districts, even if she had just in one election won a majority of the voters. Naturally in case of a FPTP-system the distribution of the elctoral districts would change. We would have propably 400 electoral disticts instead of 248. But I think the SPD had at this time a small edge. To many Unions-districts in catholic areas with nearly 60%, but more districs the SPD can win with 51%.
I think its possible that there could be a unpleasent surprise for the CDU in 1969, were they still win a majority of the votes, but the SPD wins the majority of the seats.
Were will we go from here? If the majority of the SPD is to marginal, we will still propably see a non-confident vote and new elections in 1972. But lets assume the majority is big enough to last till 1973. I think we will have in the seventies a high concentration in the two big partys. In such a system small voter movements could lead to a change in majority. So I assume we would see fast switched between the two big parties. Its possible we will have a SPD-goverment in 1969, a CDU-goverment in 1973, again SPD in 1977 and CDU in 1981. Theroretical this could go on till the end of the Eighties. But there is still the social movement, which led IOTL to the formation of the Greens. IOTL the Greens were formed, the potential electorat of the SPD was split from the left and we actually saw a massive swing to the CDU, which won over 2/3 of the elctoral districts. This could still happen ITTL. But it could also lead to a "Thatcher"-scenario. The Greens are never formed, put her supporters move into the SPD and takes over the base. More leftwing candidates are nominated (even IOTL the SPD moved to the left), which lead to a split of the electoral to the right. Former SPD-voters form with the remants of the FDP a protest-party of the centre, which propably wins 10-15% but just a handvoll of seats. Propably the CDU would move to the right, but still wins a massive majority and push a neoliberal-social conservative agenda.
The sytem would change again with the reunification. We have in East-Germany the situation, that we have a three-party-system with the LEFT as spoiler, which leads to massive swings between the SPD and CDU. THis could lead to massive majoritys for everybody who wins a election. If we still see a decline of the vote of both great partys, the critic on a system, were a party with less then 40% can win a 2/3 majority, will grow.
 
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Nice. Very nice. Awkwardly nice. Let's just continue with that. If the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 still go as IOTL, we have a freshly elected CDU/CSU government under whoever is in charge then.

1969-1973: Brandt (SPD)
1973-1977: Strauß (CSU)
1977-1981: Schmidt (SPD)
1981-1985: Kohl (CDU)
1985-1989: Rau/Vogel/Engholm/whoever (SPD)
1989-1990/1: Späth (CDU)

Wildcard reunification. Every West German government would have done the same as Kohl did IOTL. The Easterners were voting with their feet after all and how long Gorbachev could hold in power was a serious question. Reunited Germany could fare without premature elections in theory as the unification would, as in OTL, rule that a certain number (144) of Volkskammer members would automatically become members of Bundestag for the rest of the ongoing legislation cycle.

There might be a public pressure to hold pre-mature elections because of the reunification (IOTL the regular ones coincided with history). And yes, this will be true. But we can safely assume that results wouldn't differ too much from OTL as the same party holds the incumbent bonus. After all, the state election results in late 1990 proved to be very similar to the Volkskammer election results earlier in 1990, same goes for the Bundestag.

Remaining in this ping-pong cycle of FPTP elections, this could be a result:

TL with premature elections in 1990/91:
1991-95: Späth
1995-99: Scharping
1999-03: Schäuble
2003-07: Schröder
2007-11: n/a*

TL without premature elections:
1991-93: Späth
1993-97: Lafontaine
1997-01: Schäuble
2001-05: Schröder
2005-09: n/a*

* Stoiber and Schäuble would be a bit too old, Merkel could be butterflied away without the eternal Kohl and I don't know whoever is supposed to successfully stand up against Prince Charming Schröder, even if there weren't a well-timed Elbe flood and/or a well-timed Iraq War. The CDU without Kohl as its head in the late 1980s and no "girlie" Merkel to be "raised" by him is very difficult to imagine. I mean both the fat one and the girlie butterflied away many other alpha men as heads of the CDU. Who would have won among the alpha men? The 1999 contribution scandal without a darkhorse Merkel could give quite interesting twists.
 

Thande

Donor
Cool analysis, thanks for the information.

I wonder if the electoral patterns in the former East Germany will be different following reunification considering FPTP dynamics. If the Left Party is still formed they would still be competitive I think (they come top in some of even in OTL Germany's much larger FPTP districts in the East) but might be viewed as a purely regional force. Again it may depend on whether the Landtags go FPTP as well or stick with PR (or I suppose it might end up as some Landtags using one system and some the other). I think the Greens are likely to be part of the SPD in this timeline--or rather most of the people who vote Green in OTL will be with the SPD and there may be a smaller, much more extreme than OTL's German Greens, Green Party similar to the UK's.
 
You have to imagine large parts of East Germany as kind of swing states. Due to 40 years of GDR, there are hardly base voters and many more swing voters out there and even less heartlands for a party. A region-wide plurality for a party can really translate into plurality in any goddamn constituency in said region, meaning the winner can really take it all over that state.

Even IOTL with our "personalized proportional voting", we have that problem with hangover deputies, the pun is completely justified. Actually, only Lower Saxony and NRW have clear enough partisan heartlands to be hangover-proof. The current Bundestag started with 24 "hangovers" in addition to the 598 base members. They all came from CDU and CSU, my home state provided no less than ten of them and I used to be a tactical split voter causing this. And furthermore, check out the constituency map of my state's last state elections. Instead of Green-Red, we'd have a completely high CDU supermajority despite them only getting 39% of the votes under an FPTP regime, not even Vladimir Putin would be so blunt to turn a 40% turnout into 80% of seats, maybe Lukashenka. That's something you just can't ignore.

Essentially, the further you go from Berlin in the East, the less red and the more black. Thuringia and Saxony used to be very black after reunification and the latter still is to an extent. Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also started out as black states that turned schizo and Brandenburg was a thoroughly red stronghold ever since. The CDU profits big time from the divided left in Germany, their votes are often split in half among two candidates. Of course, in a pure FPTP, the leftist parties would quickly address the problem and make accords, meaning coordinating where which party won't stand to give their "partners" a chance to kill a CDU seat.

If things get too awry, you can still try a walk to Karlsruhe to the honorable Federal Constitutional Court and press your luck and get FPTP scrapped for proportional representation, at least for the upcoming elections and maybe even forever. Even France had a proportional election every now and then IIRC.
 

Thande

Donor
You have to imagine large parts of East Germany as kind of swing states. Due to 40 years of GDR, there are hardly base voters and many more swing voters out there and even less heartlands for a party. A region-wide plurality for a party can really translate into plurality in any goddamn constituency in said region, meaning the winner can really take it all over that state.

Even IOTL with our "personalized proportional voting", we have that problem with hangover deputies, the pun is completely justified. Actually, only Lower Saxony and NRW have clear enough partisan heartlands to be hangover-proof. The current Bundestag started with 24 "hangovers" in addition to the 598 base members. They all came from CDU and CSU, my home state provided no less than ten of them and I used to be a tactical split voter causing this. And furthermore, check out the constituency map of my state's last state elections. Instead of Green-Red, we'd have a completely high CDU supermajority despite them only getting 39% of the votes under an FPTP regime, not even Vladimir Putin would be so blunt to turn a 40% turnout into 80% of seats, maybe Lukashenka. That's something you just can't ignore.

Essentially, the further you go from Berlin in the East, the less red and the more black. Thuringia and Saxony used to be very black after reunification and the latter still is to an extent. Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also started out as black states that turned schizo and Brandenburg was a thoroughly red stronghold ever since. The CDU profits big time from the divided left in Germany, their votes are often split in half among two candidates. Of course, in a pure FPTP, the leftist parties would quickly address the problem and make accords, meaning coordinating where which party won't stand to give their "partners" a chance to kill a CDU seat.

If things get too awry, you can still try a walk to Karlsruhe to the honorable Federal Constitutional Court and press your luck and get FPTP scrapped for proportional representation, at least for the upcoming elections and maybe even forever. Even France had a proportional election every now and then IIRC.

It wouldn't stay that way forever though--if the system favoured the CDU with big majorities all the time, you'd think either all the other parties would band together into an alliance to create a competitive two-party system, or perhaps the dominant CDU would split between Christian Democrats proper and people who want more of a neoliberal economic approach. Which, of course, would bring us right back to where we started with the FDP.
 
It wouldn't stay that way forever though--if the system favoured the CDU with big majorities all the time, you'd think either all the other parties would band together into an alliance to create a competitive two-party system, or perhaps the dominant CDU would split between Christian Democrats proper and people who want more of a neoliberal economic approach. Which, of course, would bring us right back to where we started with the FDP.

IMHO there'd definitely be a change in the parties. The SPD would become a collection of social democrats, proto-greens, peace movementers, social-liberals and outright socialists. On the other hand, the CDU would span all from national-conservatives, catholic traditionalists up to "neoliberals" and those "christian socialists". Quite an interesting mix in both cases, which should lead to far mor internal discussion and disunity in comparison to the OTL rather monolithic parties.

I'm not sure whether we get swing states - besides the former GDR. If you look at the direct mandates, their party aligning is extremely stable in many cases. I'm from Baden-Württemberg, and only in the large cities non-CDU politicians have a chance to get the direct mandates, and this often developped only in the last years. It's also interesting how the black-red divide goes along a cultural north-south divide IMHO, in particular in Hesse...
 
@Dr. Nodelescu:
Interesting scenario, though I have one issue: I cannot see Strauß winning, neither in 1973 nor in any federal election. There was and still is too much bias in the rest of Germany against a Bavarian chancellor, but more so against the person of Strauß who was a too controversial figure. Besides that in 1973 Barzel would still be the leader of the CDU and therefore very likely be the candidate for chancellor. He might actually have a better chance of winning than Strauß, but considering OTL elections in 1972 and 1976 I think the SPD could have held on.

@Monty Burns:
OTL parties are not that monolithic at all. Although I concede they were much more so in early years of the Republic, latest developments show that the differences are more in details than in principled ideologies - which actually shows that either party is harbouring quiet diverse ideas. Both are called Volkspartei (people's party) for a reason. The SPD and the CDU often look more to me like two wings of the same really centrist party. I only see two monolithic parties in Germany right now: The FDP, which really has dropped most of its left-wing and concentrated om the very small segment of the population which are the richest. And DIE LINKE, which also has some variety tends quiet monolithical to the extreme left. The Greens are the honest to God most diverse party at the moment with both a strong right wing faction as well as a strong left wing faction, with some liberals thrown in for good measure, all glued together by some enviromentalism which exceedingly gets less and less important, while the other parties are catching on, and might be replaced by some vague leftwing ideas especially on citizen participation in legislative procedures.

I do think a third party might still have a small chance of establishing itself. Note that the UK, despite the dominance of the two party system saw emergent LibDems.

Kind regards,
G.
 
I think the Länder could be big problem, if Germany adopted FPTP. I think in some Länder like Bremen, Bayern, Baden-Würtemberg, Brandenburg and Sachsen there would be most of the time not even a token opposition and it would be factual one-party parlaments.

Her my idea of a TL:

1969: Brandt SPD
The SPD wins surprisingly a majority of seats, even after just finnish second in the popular vote. The majority is stable enough to push through the Ostpolitik and survive till.
1973: Barzel CDU/CSU
With the East-treaties already ratified in 1972 the Ostpolitik isn´t not the dominating issue in the election campaigne. The economy shows some problems and Brandt seems tired and uninterested during the campaigne. Both partys making gains but in the end its a slight majority for the Union.
1977: Schmidt SPD
The 1974 recession hurt the CDU goverment. Barzel is seen as unpoular and uncharasmatic. The RAF-terror in 1977 leads to a rally-around-the-flag effect for the Union, but the SPD still wins the election.
1981: Kohl CDU/CSU
The growing economic crisis and the leftwing-protest of the Green weakens the SPD and lead too an Union-landslide.
1985: Kohl CDU/CSU
The recovering economy helps Kohl. The hardleft program of the SPD leads to a split. Rightwing Social democrats and the remants of the FDP form a new Socialliberal Party. The Union wins again a landslide, the Social liberal about 15% but just 4 seats.

More later.
 
1989: Kohl CDU/CSU
Critic on the leadership Of Kohl and the Social Conservative program of the Union grows. The SPD runs with a new moderate program. In the end the Development in the GDR favors the goverment. The Union lose nearly 80 seats but keep a majority. The SLP drops to 10% and lose all seats.

1990: Kohl CDU/CSU

Part of the Unity-treaty between the two german states is a new Art. 145a Basic Law. This Articel demand a new election of the allgerman Bundestag 60 days after the reunification. The Union wins a landslide. The SLP wins together with the LDPD 6 seats, the PDS 3 seats.

1994: Kohl CDU/CSU

The Union wins another landslide, mostly through her dominance in East-Germany. The PDS rise to 11 seats.

1998: Schröder SPD

The SPD wins a massive landslide. The Union lose the half of her seats. The PDS rise to 14 seats.

2002: Schröder SPD

SPD and CDU are head to head in the popular vote, but the gains of the Union are mostly in the south and the SPD is still dominant in East Germany and keep a majority of 50 seats. SLP gets 7 seats, PDS drops to 8.

2006: Schröder SPD

Economic recovery helps the SPD to wins a slight majority again. SLP 9 seats, PDS 16

2010: Wulf CDU/CSU - SLP coalition

The SPD have to deal with the rise of the LINKE, the CDU-candidate with past affaires. Winner of the election are the SLP. which gains over 20% of the popular vote and 21 seats. The Linke gains over 10% and 23 seats. A colation between CDU and SLP is formed. After a new election law, in the future 40% of the seats should be disbrutiutet through proportional election.
 
@Monty Burns:
OTL parties are not that monolithic at all. Although I concede they were much more so in early years of the Republic, latest developments show that the differences are more in details than in principled ideologies - which actually shows that either party is harbouring quiet diverse ideas. Both are called Volkspartei (people's party) for a reason. The SPD and the CDU often look more to me like two wings of the same really centrist party. I only see two monolithic parties in Germany right now: The FDP, which really has dropped most of its left-wing and concentrated om the very small segment of the population which are the richest. And DIE LINKE, which also has some variety tends quiet monolithical to the extreme left. The Greens are the honest to God most diverse party at the moment with both a strong right wing faction as well as a strong left wing faction, with some liberals thrown in for good measure, all glued together by some enviromentalism which exceedingly gets less and less important, while the other parties are catching on, and might be replaced by some vague leftwing ideas especially on citizen participation in legislative procedures.

Well, in comparison to, say, the US system the German parties are indeed monolithic. Not to speak of the fact that the "official" party always tries to reduce this infighting and tries to maintain its basic principles.

Let's put it that way: in a two-party system, the left party would have all SPD-factions - plus all green and Linke factions, and likely also a sozialliberal wing. Thus diversity within the parties is increased simply because these parties cover more diverse movements.
 
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