German Government: The Chancellor's Shadow

The new German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder (SPD), entered office at the end of October, but his government has had anything but a brilliant start. In the eternal conflict between reformers and conservatives in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the latter have given impressive proof of their power and will to resist. The indisputable protagonist of the coalition-negotiations was not the new chancellor, but SPD leader, Oskar Lafontaine who rejected all requests for more incisive changes proposed by Schröder's radical reformers and the more liberal Greens. From his new position as German finance minister, Lafontaine is now trying to lead his country back to a Keynesian demand side economic policy. Lafontaine's conflict already in course with the Bundesbank could be only a prelude to another one with Chancellor Schröder.

The new government

When Gerhard Schröder (SPD) was elected chancellor by the new Bundestag on October 27, a part of the "New Center" which had been responsible for his victory over Kohl had already been lost along the way. Four weeks after his electoral triumph, Schröder obtained 351 votes in parliament. 287 deputies voted no and 27 abstained. As his coalition has only 345 mandates, at least six deputies of the opposition must have voted for Schröder, probably members of the former communist PDS.

By this time, however, one of the protagonists of Schröder's electoral campaign was no longer present on Schröder's cabinet list. Independent Jost Stollmann had been a very effective weapon during the campaign, as he did not hesitate to challenge the most backward economic positions of the German Social Democrats. Schröder had chosen the successful computer entrepreneur as his candidate for the minister of the economy exactly for this purpose. In his conflicts with the most conservative parts of German society, Stollmann conquered the scene and seemed to represent a new modern Social Democracy.

A conflict over competencies

Political reality immediately after the victory, however, proved to be very different. The indisputable protagonist of the coalition negotiations, besides Schröder and the Green leader, Joschka Fischer, was Oskar Lafontaine, who entered the cabinet as finance minister. The powerful and ambitious leader of the SPD tried to consolidate his strong position as first minister in the cabinet by adding some competencies to his department which originally belonged to the Ministry of the Economy.

Under Ludwig Erhard (CDU) and Karl Schiller (SPD) in the 50s and 60s, the German Department of the Economy was absolutely preminent, but since then it has been in permanent decline, and not only because of the progress of European economic integration and the passing over of competencies to Bruxelles. This time,

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