German Joys

Quote of the Day: Tolstoy on Politics

"Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life."

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.

All Hail the Sainte Laguë/Schepers Formula

As John Carter Wood pointed out in a comment to my last post, the overhang seats won't be needed to form a majority, according to the latest news. Instead, the votes cast for the parties which didn't reach the 5% hurdle will be distributed to the parties that did, according to the Hare/Niemeyer (g) formula, and that will put CDU/FDP comfortably over the top even without Ueberhangmandate. Or perhaps the D'Hondt formula will do it! No! It turns out the latest formula appears to be the Sainte Laguë/Schepers (g)!

If you want to start a fight among German political junkies, ask them to calculate the results of a hypothetical parliamentary election using one or the other of these methods. They'll begin by assuring you it's all quite simple, really, and usually end by reaching different results, even when they all claim to be using the same system (This is, by the way, an excellent response to snide Euro-mockery of the American electoral college).

Overhang Seats Rule (Us)

'Overhang seats'. No, it's not a Jackass prank, it's a feature of mixed member proportional representation election systems. They just decided the election we just witnessed here in Germany. But they're not just for Germans! Apparently the New Zealots Zealanders and Venezuelans have them too.

Which explains why there's a rather good English-language Wikipedia article explaining how they work. And the Economist has a valiant go at explaining this aspect German electoral system here.

Extra: Left Party Encourages Voter Fraud!

Most of the people I meet in Duesseldorf assure me that the Left Party ('Die Linke') are scheming Communists who are just slavering to force us all into agricultural collectives. Or at least slap an outrageous tax on yacht wax. However, my neighborhood is an exception: in fact, the Left Party held its election eve party at a bar right across the street from where I live. And look what I found on my mail slot yesterday:

At first, I was touched at the personal attention. But then I thought to myself: "Hmm... there's something wrong here. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something just doesn't add up..." And then it struck me: "I'm a foreigner! I'm not even allowed to vote in Germany!" And yet here comes the Red Guard, hanging a placard from my very own mail slot encouraging ordering me to "Go Vote on Sunday!" I couldn't help seeing this as a not-so-veiled threat. Somehow, foreigner, by hook or by crook, you'd better go vote Communist on Sunday...or else.

They're completely shameless, these cadres. And you can hardly call it an innocent mistake: after all, who in their right mind would think "A. Hammel" might be a German name?

German Politicians and the Internet

An American journalist asks me the following question: "Why do you think the Germans, and in particular the German parties, have been so slow on the uptake regarding online campaigning? And do you have any sense of how politics in other countries on the Continent has behaved?"

Here's my rapid-response, off-the-cuff answer:

 

·      First of all, Germans as a whole are much less Internet-oriented than Americans. I’d say the level of general sophistication about the Internet in Germany is right now where it was in about 2002 in the United States. I have intelligent, well-educated city-dweller friends who still feel no need to have an Internet connection at home. In fact, I’ve heard from many Germans that they actively prefer not to use the Internet during their leisure time, because they associate it with work, and Germans like to preserve a strict work-private life separation. If you want to discuss politics, you do it face-to-face at your stammtisch, among your friends or colleagues.

· Don’t forget that German society is demographically older than the U.S. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that older people don’t like them newfangled computers.

· German political campaigns are much more heavily publicly financed than U.S. political campaigns, so fundraising is not a big priority here. The notion of giving your own private money to a political campaign seems very odd to most Germans. (Also, Germans have far fewer credit cards than Americans, and are very wary of sharing their bank data on the Internet.) German political campaigning is also much more party-based, as opposed to individual- and personality-oriented. It’s much less exciting to donate money to a generic party than to a particular candidate you happen to like.

· German newspapers, radio, and TV still have very large circulations and influence. If a political party wants to get its message out, it still thinks in terms of a printed editorial in a newspaper or a speech. The number of Germans who get their news from newspapers, as opposed to the Internet, is still much higher than it is in the U.S. Further, Germans tend to distrust the Internet as a news source. At a newspaper, at least, the political reporting and commentary have been vetted by educated people, and are therefore more reliable (or so goes this line of thinking).

· German copyright laws are much stricter (and more willingly obeyed) than the U.S., and large media concerns are more protective of their intellectual property. This makes it hard to share and post segments of TV shows or political commentary, since most German politics and talk shows are not embeddable, and much political commentary is printed in newspapers and never put online.

· Sophisticated, well-run blogs such as Talkingpointsmemo or Washington Monthly or Andrew Sullivan don’t exist in Germany. Much of the online political commentary you find is from individuals, who may be highly idiosyncratic or one-issue oriented or both.

· German politicians are not internet-savvy. With a few notable exceptions, their websites and blogs are generally afterthoughts, and consist mostly of speeches or press-releases converted hastily into digital form. After all, they think, what’s the use of putting a lot of effort into an Internet site, when (1) the really important people don’t rely on the Internet for news; (2) the majority of visitors to your website are probably going to vote for you anyway; and (3) fundraising isn’t very important?

 

What say you, gentle readers?

Take All, Winner

American liberals are getting impatient with Obama. Amid strident Republican criticism and waffling from the White House, support for reform of the American health care system -- Obama's signature domestic-policy issue -- is plummeting. Paul Krugman puts it well:

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

As a comparative-law guy, I'd like to remind Mr. Obama that America has a conflict-based, winner-take-all political system. This is not European parliamentary democracy, where you need to patch together coalitions to run the country, and everything has to be hammered into some sort of compromise that will please the diverse members of your coalition.

No, this is America, a country in which if you win the Presidential election and large majorities in both houses of Congress, you can do pretty much whatever you want for the next couple of years. I think I speak for a lot of Obama voters when I say: Obama, my man, I didn't vote for you so you could be nice to Republicans. I don't give a fuck about the Republicans! As a former Reagan White House official recently said of the Republican party: '[U]ntil they do penance they don't deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do.' That's what happens in a winner-take-all system. The winner takes it all, and the loser gets ignored. That's called accountability, and it's a healthy part of democracy. Nobody cares how many Republicans' toes you step on. In fact, democratic accountability  requires that you crush Republican toes into purplish goo. They screwed up! They got shellacked! Nobody trusts them!

You're allowed to coo and gurgle about bipartisan co-operation exactly until the point that doing so begins to waste precious time and embolden your political enemies (and yes, that's the right word for them!). Then you stop the feel-good rhetoric and ram through your proposals. If some members of your party balk, you first promise them plenty of juicy trade-offs and fundraising visits. You tell them: 'This is the centerpiece of my agenda, and you're going to support me on it. Once we get this through, everything else is on the table.' If that doesn't work, you screw them so hard they'll be walking bow-legged for months. This is not a college debating society, it's politics. If members of your own party decline to support a fundamental part of the agenda you promised the American people, then they have betrayed you. You then respond appropriately: you freeze 'em out and fuck 'em over. Yes, it may sound rude and unpleasant, but it works. The ends, as they so often do, justify the means.

After the dust settles, people will respect you. Americans respect winners. Obama, my man, if you'd like to practice being a real, red-blooded American politician, give a listen to the following speech, which includes the deathless line: "They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred."

My Kind of Wingnut

On the way to the fitness studio, I pass by the Florapark, a pocket park in Bilk, right next to the Karl Arnold Haus der Wissenschaften (House of Sciences!). You can enjoy a coffee in the Florabar (g), located in a converted pumping station, or just sit on one of the many park benches, enjoy a cold one, and people-watch. There's a roster of chronic tipplers who stage impromptu grill parties and occasionally take a dip -- fully nude -- in the artificial pond. Then there are the Russlandsdeutsche (Russian Germans) who gather to play football on the central meadow. I once even saw a guy driving a remote-controlled miniature 4x4 around the park, which attracted plenty of attention. Middle-aged men with plastic sacks wander alone through the park collecting deposit bottles from the trash bins, often while talking animatedly to themselves.

But there's also nature! The park plays host to a gray heron, about 40 ducks, and about 10-12 moorhens. The moorhens are my favorite -- they don't fly very often, so they mostly run here and there on their gigantic yellow legs. Even though they spend half their time in the water, evolution still has yet to equip them with webbed feet, so when they swim, they have to pump desperately. Their sole cry is a sort of strangled half-squawk. They get bossed around by the other, larger birds, but survive on craftiness. The other day, one of them was being much friendlier than usual, jumping up on the bench beside me and even trying to jump onto my leg. She (presumably) wanted some of my peanuts. So I gave her one. Shortly, the reason for her overtures was clear. She immediately hopped down from the bench and ran at full speed across the lawn. Two moorhen chicks ran just as fast toward her, frantically waving their absurdly tiny wing-palps. She broke the peanut into chunks, and the chicks gobbled them down, waving their wing-nubs in delight. You can see the peanut in her beak in this dramatic photo, taken just before the transfer: 

And now to the actual subject of this post. Hovering over the artificial pond in the middle of the park is this fine tree:

It looked pretty exotic, so I went on a quest to figure out exactly what sort of tree it was. I couldn't find it in my local nature guide, so I then began browsing through tree websites. Now there's little on this earth more pleasant than looking at trees, but little more boring than looking at pictures of trees. I was about to give up, when I decided to go look at the tree itself. Sure enough, there was a little label nailed onto the damn thing. It is Pterocarya fraxinifolia. In German, it's called the Kaukasische Fluegelnuss (g). Which, literally translated, means: "Caucasian Wingnut."

As I performed this literal translation in my head, I began laughing to myself out loud, in the middle of the park. (This is common in the Florapark, so nobody paid it any mind.) I thought to myself: it would too perfect if the English name for this tree were actually "Caucasian Wingnut." Lo and behold, it is! Other examples of Caucasian Wingnuts can be found here and here (g). This tree may look placid and mild-mannered, and doesn't seem to have its own radio talk show yet. But that just makes it perhaps the most dangerous sort of wingnut...

UPDATE: The pun-sibilities are endless. Here's another: "Feel free to waste a wingnut or two! They do grow on trees, after all!"

The Enemy of My Enemy is Now My Enemy

Recently, several Americans have been jumping off the 'anti-jihadist' bandwagon, as it veers into the reeking back-courtyards of the European nativist right. Here is Bruce Bawer, as quoted on Little Green Footballs:

Recently, Andrew Sullivan posted a link to an article about Charles Johnson, the celebrated blogger who has distanced himself from many other anti-jihadists and called them “a bunch of kooks.” Though it grieves me to say so, and though I’ve hoped that things would somehow turn around, Charles is, alas, not whistling Dixie: I can testify that in the last couple of years some significant, and lamentable, shifts have taken place on the anti-jihad front. Writers and bloggers whom, not very long ago, I would unhesitatingly have described as staunch defenders of liberal values against Islamofascist intolerance have more recently said and done things that have dismayed me, and that, in many cases, have compelled me to re-examine my view of them.

Once upon a time, these people made a point of distancing themselves from far-right European parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – whose most prominent Internet voice, Paul Belien, has declared himself to be fighting for “Judeo-Christian morality” not only against jihadist Islam but also against “secular humanism.” Belien has made no secret of his contempt for gay people and for the idea that they deserve human rights as much as anyone else. Now, however, many of the anti-jihadist writers who once firmly rejected Vlaams Belang have come to embrace it wholeheartedly. In fact, for reasons unknown to me, this regional party in one of Europe’s smallest countries appears to have become, for a number of anti-jihadist writers on both sides of the Atlantic, nothing short of a litmus test: in their eyes, it seems, if you’re not willing to genuflect to VB, you’re not a real anti-jihadist.

In a sense, this break-up was inevitable. European parties such as Vlaams Belang embody a style of politics that most Americans are likely to find foreign and distasteful.* Of course, European immigration policy leaves a lot to be desired. However, I personally would put it far from the top of the most pressing problems Europe faces. In my experience, Europeans who think poorly-integrated immigrant minorities are the most pressing issue facing Europe today and who put it at the center of their world-view (which would describe most Vlaams Belang members) often turn out to have unpleasant hidden agendas. Get a few beers into a Vlaams Belang supporter (and give them a little sympathetic feedback to convince them you're on their side), and you'll generally start hearing things that will have you saying 'check please'.

I'm not accusing everyone who's concerned about immigration of being racists or nativists -- only the people whose world-view is dominated by this one concern. But in many European countries, that's 20-30% of the population, and those people have their own political parties. When Americans begin engaging with the sort of people who run Vlaams Belang and its sister parties, conflicting world-views come into play quickly. Here are a few particular points of conflict I've noticed. Note that I'm not necessarily always saying that the American world-view is the right one, just that it's likely to be very different from the nativist European's take:

• We rock because we're Flemish. Vlaams Belang, like all European nativist parties, draws most of its support from the working and lower-middle classes. Lots of these people are unemployed, or they may have boring, stressful, low-status jobs. That is, they don't have many sources from which to draw self-worth, so they tend to resort to bare ethnicity or cultural affiliation. "I'm proud to be Flemish," they'll say, and then list Flemish artists, sports heroes, or generals. The proud Flemish (or Austrian or Hungarian) nationalist may sit in some reeking bar most of the day, but by God, at least they're doing it while being Flemish. Their ancestors, after all, built this damn country, and their taxes (if they were paying any) now go to support these shiftless, lazy...you get the picture. Americans are acculturated to pride themselves on their own individual achievements. A claim for respect and recognition based on bare cultural affiliation seems cheap and lazy, and forming a political party (more or less explicitly) based on ethnic origin seems primitive and tribal.
• Ancient Historical Grudges. Talk to a European long enough, and you'll start hearing about things that happened long ago. They've got thousands of years of history, after all. The nativists tend to focus on ancient historical grudges that explain their current prejudices: 'They tried to take us over once, during the days of the Ottoman empire, and they got to the very gates of Vienna! Now they're trying to do it again!' The first instinct of most Americans is to ask who 'they' is supposed to be. All the people involved in the Battle of Vienna have been dead for 275 years. What on earth does some ancient conflict have to do with modern-day problems?
• Why are you so worked up? For every legitimate concern of the anti-immigrant crowd, there are many others which will seem overblown to a typical American.  
  • Islamic women may wear headscarves. So what? If that's their choice, based on their interpretation of their religion, then so be it. Perhaps some of them wear headscarves because of strong social expectation or even threats, but there's not much we can do about that without invading the family's private sphere or monitoring religious beliefs, which are two things the state should refrain from.
  • They don't accept the values embodied in our Constitution or our 'social order.' First, who defines those values? There are ferocious debates on what defines 'Germany' or 'Europe' going on every single day among the majority population, and most European countries modify their Constitutions every few years. And even if you can actually agree on some consensus values, and prove that some immigrants don't share them, so what? It's not the State's business to police thoughts. As long as these misfits aren't committing any crimes, let them believe what they want. If they do commit crimes based on those beliefs, well, that's what we have a criminal justice system for. If  the criminal justice system doesn't work, that's another problem.
  • They commit crimes at disproportionate rates, and their children do worse in school. This is true and unfortunate, but visible minorities are outsiders in every society. And for that matter, discrimination against immigrants by the majority community is surely one cause of the social problems in immigrant communities -- but parties such as Vlaams Belang are not interested in doing anything about that. To put it very mildly. And in any case, the situation is not catastrophic. The statistics for Turks in Germany or Arabs in France or Africans in Belgium don't look very different from the statistics for blacks in America. Individualistic Americans, for better or worse, have learned to live with large disparities in health and social achievement in their own society, and don't tend to think they represent a crisis.
  • Honor killings! Yes, they're unsettling, and we should be trying to prevent them, where possible. And, in fact, there's alread a name for those who commit honor killings: murderers. It's not as if they're allowed to get away with it. Besides, it's likely that for every immigrant killed in an honor killing, there are probably ten German women killed by German husbands in a jealous rage. Europeans obsess over honor killings because they're driven by motives alien to mainstream European culture. But isn't drunken jealousy the more important problem, judging by sheer numbers? 

Once again, the difference here is a matter of degree. It's not that the American doesn't think that these problems are problems -- they clearly are. But the American is likely to see them as manageable. Americans come from a country that has integrated millions of immigrants without too much difficulty, so they tend to think any cultural misunderstandings will likely fade with time. The American is likely to find the obsessive focus on a minority of "poorly integrated" immigrants as overblown and perhaps suspicious. Once again, I'm not saying the American view is the right one. A European, for example, might claim with some justification that (1) Europe's immigrant problem is much tougher to solve than America's, and therefore worthy of all the attention it gets; and (2) Americans, ever the optimists, tend to avert their attention from the serious social problems in their own society.

* The conservative-on-conservative misunderstanding goes both ways, of course -- a moderate American Republican politician would be seen as freakishly anti-government and slavishly pro-business by Tories, European Christian Democrats, and even European far-right parties, who appeal to their working-class clientele by stressing their 'social' credentials.

[Photo of Hungarian Guard members marching in Budapest in March 2009, from here (g)]

What's Driving the Wave Election

I'll be giving a speech (g) in German in a couple of weeks, but I thought I'd sketch out a couple of the main themes here. The subject of the speech is whether this election will be a Gezeitenwende, or changing of the tide. I'm beginning to think it will be. Here's a chart-heavy post that explains why:

1.  Income Inequality

The first chart shows income inequality in the U.S. and other nations, as measured by the Gini coefficient and provided on Lane Kenworthy's blog:

What is Social Democracy For?

Exciting times in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). After a couple of years under the leadership of the bear-like Kurt Beck, Beck has now been kicked out. The party will now be run by Franz Muentefering, and current foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be the candidate for Chancellor.

Beck's key problem had to do with Die Linke (the Left Party), which represents a fusion of the remains of the former East German socialist party with a variety of left-of-SPD parties in the West. For a while there, the Left Party wasn't much of a factor in West Germany. Although it polled respectably in the former East Germany, and was even invited to join a few ruling coalitions, it never got traction in the West. That all changed recently. The biggest problem came in the German state of Hessen. Before the elections, Beck said that the SPD would not enter a coalition with the Left Party. The point was to keep disgruntled SPD members in the boat: a vote for the Left Party would be a wasted vote.