The Origins of Christian Democracy

Only a few years ago, scholars were arguing for an apparent terminal decline of the so-called Volksparteien, the main political parties that had dominated German politics since 1945. During the Cold War, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and the Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) were both regularly able to secure around 40 per cent of the vote, with the liberal FDP and, later on, the Green Party dividing the remaining 20 per cent of the electorate between them. Yet, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both parties began to experience a palpable decline in voter numbers. Within a decade, a party-funding scandal seemed to represent an existential threat to the CDU, while the SPD began to experience serious splits resulting from moves to reform the German social welfare system. However, while the SPD went on to experience a massive decline in its vote share, the CDU, under the leadership of a broad team under Angela Merkel, has managed to bounce back, hitting poll numbers in the 2013 Bundestag election that could match those of the late 1960s or early 1980s. This remarkable resurgence of German Christian Democracy has been the subject of considerable academic debate. While contemporary political and economic factors have undoubtedly been crucial in ensuring the survival of the CDU, the deep roots which its organisations and informal networks have been able to establish across Germany since the late 1940s have given it the resilience to survive demographic challenges to its voter base and internal crises that could have sunk less institutionally robust political parties

Democracy · Economic history · German · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social Democratic Party · Sociology · History · Law · Public Administration · Religion and Society Interactions

• A Matter of Public Interest

  Open Access•Krista Cowman•Open Library of Humanities•2020

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