Arnon Grunberg

Profited

Crisis

Der Spiegel (Dirk Kurbjuweit) on the end of Merkelism:

"Germany, to be sure, has profited from Merkelism. The country skated elegantly through the global financial crisis and the economy prospered. Nonetheless, Merkel was never able to bring herself to undertake major reforms because doing so would have riled people up and put an end to the stifling quiet. Unfortunately, democracy has also decayed a bit because strife is its lifeblood -- the competition between different positions. The darkest symptom of this type of governance was the desire for lower voter turnout because Merkel's party, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), was thought to profit from it.

Now Merkelism is in a state of crisis because two important prerequisites are no longer being filled. For one, it requires a societal climate in which broad consensus is possible. And, by its very nature, it also requires that Merkel be strong."

Read the article here.

Isn't Merkelism just another word for consensus democracy? And what exactly is the alternative? The reincarnation of Franz Josef Strauß?

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