Abstract
The federal election in Germany in 2005 forced the two big parties, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU)1 and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), into the second Grand Coalition in the history of the Federal Republic. None of the partners had wanted that alliance, let alone strived for it but the mathematics of the result had allowed nothing else. The familiar alliances of one big and one small party, that is a Red-Green (SPD-Greens) or a Black-Yellow (CDU/CSU-FDP) coalition, did not muster sufficient votes, and the mathematically possible combinations of three parties (the “traffic light”: Red-Green-Yellow, the “Jamaica” version: Black-Yellow-Green, and the Red-Red-Green option) either had been excluded by the potential partners or never had been seriously considered.
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Notes
I would like to thank Pat (Samuel C.) Patterson for sharing his knowledge as scholar and his experience as chief editor of the American Political Science Review with me.
Unless specified, the CDU and the CSU are treated here as one party and are referred to as the “Union.”
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© 2010 Silvia Bolgherini and Florian Grotz
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Schüttemeyer, S.S. (2010). Coalition-Building in Germany 2009. In: Bolgherini, S., Grotz, F. (eds) Germany after the Grand Coalition. Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115415_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115415_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38441-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11541-5
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