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Alliance '90/The Greens

The Alliance '90/The Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), the German Green party, is a political party in Germany whose regional predecessor factions were founded in the late 1970s as a result of the social movements. The party was formally inaugurated on January 17, 1980, by 1,000 delegates in its first convention in Karlsruhe, West Germany, as "Die Grünen". It is one of the oldest, and so far the most politically successful of the world's numerous green parties. In 1989 and 1990 numerous civil rights groups in East Germany combined to form Bündnis 90, which merged with "Die Grünen" in 1993. Bündnis 90/Die Grünen were part of the national coalition government between 1998 and 2005.

History

1970s: Foundation

In the late 1970s, environmentalists and peace activists organized politically as The Greens (Die Grünen). Opposition to pollution, expanded use of nuclear power, NATO strategy, and certain aspects of life in a highly industrialized society were principal campaign issues. Important figures in the first years were among others Rudi Dutschke, Heinrich Böll, Petra Kelly and Joseph Beuys.

1980s: Parliamentary representation on the federal level

In 1982 the more right-wing parts of the party broke away to form the Ecological Democratic Party. Those who remained in the Green party were more strongly anti-military and against restrictions on immigration and abortion, while supporting the decriminalization of marijuana use, placing a higher priority on working for the rights of gays and lesbians, and tending to advocate what they described as "anti-authoritarian" concepts of education and child-raising. They also tended to identify more closely with a culture of protest and civil disobedience, frequently clashing with police at demonstrations against atomic weapons, nuclear power, or the construction of a new runway (Startbahn West) at Frankfurt airport. Those who left the party at the time might have felt similarly about some of these issues, but did not identify culturally with the forms of protest in which Green Party members took part.

After some success at state level and the vote for the European parliament, the party first won seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, in the 1983 election. Among the important political issues at the time was the deployment of Pershing II IRBMs and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles by the U.S. and NATO on West German soil, generating strong opposition in the general population that found an outlet in mass demonstrations. The newly formed party was able to draw on this popular movement to recruit support. Partly due to the impact of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and to growing awareness of the threat of air pollution and acid rain to German forests ("Waldsterben"), the Greens increased their share of the vote to 8.3% in the January 1987 West German national election. Around this time, Joschka Fischer, although never holding any important party office, emerged as de facto leader of the party, which he remained until resigning all leadership posts following the German federal election, 2005.

1990s: German reunification, fall out of parliament

In the December 1990 elections, taking place in newly-reunified Germany, the Greens in the West did not pass the 5% limit required to win seats in the Bundestag. It was only due to a temporary modification of German election law, applying the five-percent "hurdle" separately in East and West Germany, that the Greens acquired any parliamentary seats at all. This happened because in the territory of the former GDR, the Greens, in a joint effort with Alliance 90 (a loose grouping of civil rights activists with diverse political views), were able to gain more than 5% of the vote. Some people attribute this poor performance to the reluctance of the campaign to cater to the prevalent mood of nationalism and patriotism, instead focusing on subjects such as climate change (a campaign poster at the time proudly stated: "Everyone is talking about Germany; we're talking about the weather!", paraphrasing a popular slogan of Deutsche Bundesbahn, the West German national railway). In the 1994 election, however, the western branch of the party returned to the Bundestag when the Greens got 7.3% of the vote nationwide and 49 seats.

1998–2002: Greens as governing party, first term

In 1998, despite a slight fall in their percentage of the vote (6.7%), the Greens retained 47 seats and joined the federal government for the first time in coalition with the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer became vice chancellor and foreign minister in the new government, which had two other Green ministers (Andrea Fischer, later Renate Künast, and Jürgen Trittin). Almost immediately, the party was plunged into a crisis by the question of German participation in the NATO actions in Kosovo. Numerous anti-war party members resigned their party membership when the first post-war deployment of German troops in a military conflict abroad occurred under a Green government, and the party began to experience a long string of defeats in local and regional elections. Disappointment with the Green participation in government increased when anti-nuclear-power activists realized that shutting down the country's nuclear plants would not happen overnight, and numerous business-friendly SPD members of the federal cabinet opposed the environmentalist agenda of the Greens, necessitating far-reaching compromises.

In 2001, the party experienced a further crisis as some Green Members of Parliament refused to back the government's plan of sending soldiers to help with the 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called a vote of confidence, tying it to his strategy on the war. Four Green MPs and one Social Democrat voted against the government, but Schröder was still able to command a majority.

On the other side, a major success of the Greens as a governing party, was in 2000, the decision to phase-out the use of nuclear energy. Jürgen Trittin as the Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, reached an agreement with energy companies on the gradual shut down of the country's nineteen nuclear power plants and a cessation of civil usage of nuclear power by 2020. This was enacted as the Nuclear Exit Law. Based on the calculation of 32 years as the usual time of operation for a nuclear power plant, the agreement precisely tells how much energy a power plant is allowed to produce before being closed down.

2002–2008: Greens as governing party, second term

Despite the crises of the preceding electoral period, in 2002, the Greens increased their total to 55 seats (in a smaller parliament) and 8.6%. This was partly due to the perception that the internal debate over the war in Afghanistan had been more honest and open than in other parties, and one of the MPs who had voted against the Afghanistan deployment, Hans-Christian Ströbele, was directly elected to the Bundestag as a district representative for the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain constituency in Berlin, becoming the first Green to ever gain a first-past-the-post seat in Germany. Certain lobby groups which had benefited from Green-initiated legislation in the 1998-2002 term, such as the environmental lobby (Renewable Energies Act) or gays and lesbians (Registered Partnership Law), also rewarded the party with their votes. Perhaps most important for determining the success of both the Greens and the SPD was the increasing threat of war in Iraq, which was highly unpopular with the German public, and helped gather votes for the parties which had taken a stand against participation in this war. Despite losses for the SPD, the coalition government with the Social Democrats commanded a very slight majority in the Bundestag and was renewed, with Joschka Fischer as foreign minister, Renate Künast as minister for consumer protection, nutrition and agriculture, and Jürgen Trittin as minister for the environment.

One internal issue in 2002 was the failed attempt to settle a long-standing discussion about the question of whether members of parliament should be allowed to become members of the party executive. Two party conventions declined to change the party statute. The necessary majority of two thirds wasn't reached by a very small margin. As a result, former party chairpersons Fritz Kuhn and Claudia Roth (who had been elected into parliament that year) were no longer able to continue in their executive function and were replaced by former party secretary general Reinhard Bütikofer and former Bundestag member Angelika Beer. The party then held a member referendum on this question in the spring of 2003 which did change the party statute. Now members of parliament may be elected for two of the six seats of the party executive, as long as they are not ministers or caucus leaders. 57% of all party members voted in the member referendum, with 67% voting in favor of the change. The referendum was only the second in the history of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, the first having been held about the merger of the Greens and Bündnis 90. In 2004, after Angelika Beer was elected to the European parliament, Claudia Roth was elected to replace her as party chair.

The only party convention in 2003 was planned for November 2003, but about 20% of the local organisations forced the federal party to hold a special party convention in Cottbus early to discuss the party position in regard to the Agenda 2010, a major reform of the German social security systems planned by Chancellor Schröder.

The November 2003 party convention was held in Dresden and decided the election platform for the 2004 European Parliament elections. The German Green list for these elections was headed by Rebecca Harms (then leader of the Green parliament party in Lower Saxony) and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, previously Member of the European Parliament for Les Verts, the French Green Party. The November 2003 convention is also noted because it was the first convention of a German political party ever using an electronic voting system.

The Greens gained a record 13 of Germany's 99 seats in these elections, particularly on the back of the perceived competence of Green ministers in the federal government and the unpopularity of the SPD.

In early 2005, the Greens were the target of the German Visa Affair 2005, instigated in the media by the CDU. At the end of April 2005, they celebrated the decommissioning of the Obrigheim nuclear power plant. They are also continuing to support a bill for an Anti-Discrimination Law in the Bundestag.

In May 2005, the only remaining red-green coalition at the provincial (Länder) level of government in North Rhine-Westphalia lost the vote, leaving only the federal government with participation of the Greens (apart from local governments). In the 2005 early federal election the party incurred very small losses and achieved 8.1% of the vote and 51 seats. However, due to larger losses of the SPD, the previous coalition has no majority in the Bundestag.

In April 2008 the Greens in Hamburg entered into a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) the first such coalition in Germany at the State level in Germany. Although the Green had to agree to the deepening of the Elbe River and two road projects they had opposed they also received some significant concessions from the CDU. These include reforming the public schools by increasing the number of elementary school grades, the restoration of the streetcar as a public transportation mode in the city state, more pedestrian friendly real estate development, and the likely cancellation of a new coal fired power plant.

Electorate

The Infratest Dimap political research company has suggested the Green voter demographic includes those on higher incomes (e.g. above €2000/month) and the party's support is less among households with lower incomes. The same polling research also concluded that the Greens received fewer votes from the unemployed and general working population, with business people favouring the party as well as the Free Democratic Party. According to Intratest Dimap the Greens received more voters from the age group 34-42 than any other age group and that the young were generally more supportive of the party than the old. (Source; Intrafest Dimap political research company for the ARD.

The Greens have a higher voter demographic in urban areas than rural areas, except for a small number of rural areas with pressing local evironmental concerns, such as strip mining or radioactive waste deposits. The cities of Bonn, Cologne, Stuttgart, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich have among the highest percentage of Green voters in the country. The smaller towns of Freiburg, Tübingen, Konstanz, Oldenburg, Heidelberg and Göttingen, most of them towns with old and fairly large Universities, also have a strong Green vote. The party receives a lower level of support in the states of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

References

Literature about the German Green Party

Frankland, E. Gene / Schoonmaker, Donald (1992): Between Protest & Power: The Green Party in Germany. Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press.
Kolinsky, Eva (1989): The Greens In West Germany: Organisation and Policy Making Oxford: Berg.
Raschke, Joachim (1993): Die Grünen: Wie sie wurden, was sie sind. Köln: Bund-Verlag.
Raschke, Joachim (2001): Die Zukunft der Grünen. Frankfurt am Main / New York: Campus.
Veen, Hans-Joachim / Hoffmann, Jürgen (1992): Die Grünen zu Beginn der neunziger Jahre. Profil und Defizite einer fast etablierten Partei. Bonn / Berlin: Bouvier.
Wiesenthal, Helmut (2000): "Profilkrise und Funktionswandel. Bündnis 90/Die Grünen auf dem Weg zu einem neuen Selbstverständnis", in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B5 2000, S. 22-29.