Politics in Germany are really interesting these days. Even if the Pirate Party should fail in the end, the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial.
I don't see the Pirate Party failing anytime soon. In fact, I'm quite surprised they're as successful already, but I cannot imagine a future where their popularity isn't raising. They are the embodiment of the younger generation (e.g. under 25, maybe under 30) that are just becoming voters and have no real say in the politics yet. They (actually We) are used to having broadband internet, smart mobile phones, etc., i.e. ubiquitous computing and free internet access. Right now, we're getting attacked head-on by the old established empires (media in particular), but the only reason that they can lobby some laws into passing is that they bribe old politicians who have no understanding and attachment to the internet, and really don't care what happens in the world after 20 years, because they will mostly be gone by then. However, the younger generations do care, and they will not accept it (barring some radical change in the social structure). When we come into power, the media empire will lose. The Pirate Parties are the only political organization that are catering to this voters need (so far - I'm assuming other parties will adapt... most politicians are not loyal to principles, but only to power).
I cannot imagine a future where their popularity isn't raising.
Then your imagination is sorely lacking. I can guarantee that their popularity will severely decline within the next 5 years, because right now they are attracting a lot of "protest voters" who have little interest in their actual programme and simply vote for them because they attack the established parties in some way. This kind of thing always cools off after a while (just look at Die Linke).
Whether the Pirate Party can survive at depends on how they deal with that when (not if) it happens. I'm pretty sure they will, since their core points of informational freedom and transparency are still getting more relvant.
This is exactly what happened to the Pirate party in Sweden.
They had an absolutely ridiculous amount of (free) media coverage during the Pirate Bay trial, the FRA-law (that gave the government the ability to snoop on internet traffic crossing the border) and ACTA (a law written by the media industry to help and prioritize illegal file sharing) but, they have never breached the 4% barrier required to get in parliament in Sweden.
While the outrage during the FRA-law was quite impressive (more impressive on the internet than on the streets unfortunately) both ACTA and the FRA-law passed, and today I don't know if I've heard anything about the Pirate party in Sweden for the last year (I hear much more from the Pirate party in Germany - a few years ago I believe the exact opposite was true (that the Pirate party in Sweden was by far the most successful in Europe)).
I hope I'm wrong but I don't see how the Pirate party will ever get into parliament in Sweden and the only thing I can hope for is that the German, and other, Pirate parties will be successful and that that result in changes within the EU as well as reignite the spark in Sweden.
I can imagine such a future very easily. For one thing the other parties will take over some of their positions (especially the Green and the Liberal). Then there is the Pirate Parties lack of positions in many other areas of everyday politics which makes them rather uninteresting for many voters. And they still have internal quarrels which will become stronger if they gain power and may eventually break the party (hopefully not). There is a slight hype about them at the moment, but this will cool down. And then there will be a time, when the main struggles about internet freedom cools down and there are agreements and laws made (this will somehow never end finally, but it won't matter that much anymore). That's a similar situation as the Green party had to face many years ago, when they had managed to establish laws to protect the environment.
On the long run I see them around 8 to 10 percent, depending on region (more in cities) and which positions they take in areas like education, finances, taxes... At least if they can stabilize their internal structure and avoid the problems I mentioned. But this will be enough to make them interesting as a partner in coalitions, especially together with the Green Party and that way forcing the established parties to rethink their own positions.
1) I guess you are right, but at least here in Europe we can expect that matters get settled at some point in time. We do not have this law culture where a new law can be proposed over and over again in different forms. (Though there are tricks around that and who know...)
2) Yes, because they managed to move from a single focus to become a party with an established program and well known politicians. But they have very similar voters and so that new party is partially splitting forces. The Green Party will maybe react by adjusting their program in Pirate direction.
But of course a lot of things can happen and we will see. At least this Pirate success will show certain interest groups to be careful about their actions. A party that can jump above 10% out of nothing just about a single item of interest was something not expected by them. They will have to recon with that force.
I don't think the way the Pirate Party works internally right now, i.e. very broad discussions trying to take every member's opinion into account, will scale to the size and speed needed if they join a ruling coalition. Their Liquid Democracy voting and delegation tool seems very promising for that use case, though.
High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel
I welcome the German pirates for several reasons:
- "the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial."
- they have a high turn out of former non-voters
- "harmless stupidity": The German pirates seem to be ambivalent as of now. For instance, they are the only left-wing party that's not in favor of female employee quotas (an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia entry http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenquote). If they dig deeper into this populist lefty anti-authoritarian theme (as it seems to be the case) the first thing they will achieve is less votes for the other left-wing parties.
And personally, I think this would be a good thing (see "female employee quotas").
I think it's pretty unlikely that they fully get into all that "gender politics" stuff like the greens.
That has several reasons - mainly the see themselves as more "liberal" (it has a different meaning here than in the us) than greens, and also they are not as female-dominated in their ranks as greens are.
I think it's unlikely that they'll embrace a full blown "Frauenquote" (funny how there isn't an english wikipedia entry for it ^^), because the discussion inside the party (i am not a member) seems to be going in a direction they call "post gender".
I think this post gender idead, by and large, is a good one.
I hope they'll pursue this path more, bringing an approach of true equality to politics instead of the "gender fights" other left-leaning parties like to put on the political stage.
Reading the entry - it isn't.
It's basically the same thing.
What is different in germany, though, is that the discussion here revolves around forcing private sector enterprises to have specific (government set) quota of women in their leadership (or else be punished by the law).
Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions, but not forcing government set quotas on companies.
I can't quite imagine the US government interfering with private enterprise in this way.
"Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions,"
Affirmative action is when two people are equally suited for a job/position/benefit, the one from the disadvantaged group (based on sex, ethnic/socioeconomic background, physical impairment, ...) gets it. In more extreme varieties, it means that the one from the disadvantaged group has less strict requirements to fulfill. In a way, a women's quota is a species of the genus affirmative action.
"Frauenquote" is just a specialization of the term "positive discrimination" in the UK, France, Spain and in most of the EU, and "affirmative action" in the US and some other countries. Other countries do not have a specific term for the gender case, but it is exactly the same thing, and lots of similar policies exist. You can see this by taking a look at Wikipedia/Quotenregelung which is linked to Affirmative action in English Wikipedia.
About the Pirate Party's take on this: I don't think there's a mature consensus yet. According to a recent poll (http://www.taz.de/!89247/) only 6 percent sees the party as postgender.
Because the Pirate party is taking away voters from both the traditional conservative camp (FDP, CDU/CSU) and the traditional social democrat/Green camp, yet is too new to be seriously considered as a coalition partner for a government. That means a grand coalition (CDU/CSU and SPD) led by Merkel becomes more likely - the same one as in the previous administration, before the FDP gained enough votes to have a traditional conservative coalition, but the FDP is currently vanishing into obscurity.
That makes sense. It would also possibly the best outcome for the Pirates: being in opposition would give them time to be more professional and get their act together, and would mean that in the next elections, both CDU and SPD would be unpopular incumbents (meaning they both lose more votes to the Pirates).
Absolutely. Entering a government after they first get into the parliament would do them no good. They first need to establish themselves, before they can govern.
Does anybody know enougth about the Swiss and German system that can explain to me why we never here the term "coalition" in swiss politics? If you are in the parlament you are in it. I mean there is stuff to vote on and everybody votes for what he likes what effects does not been in "the coalition" have?
You probably don't hear it because Switzerland has a pretty much perpetual coalition:
Since 1959 the four main parties has effectively voluntarily split the federal council between them based on parliamentary representation to rather than risk being left outside government for any length of time.
The distribution of seats follows a formula agreed by those parties, so it's not "news" that the council keeps pretty much the same party composition election after election.
Most other countries don't have any long standing arrangements like that, so the question of who will form the government is always a major subject in advance of elections.
Ah the Idea would be to get a colision that is more than half the gov and then putting in all the seven head ministers only from parties in the colision. Now I see, that didn't even occur to me that one could do that but in hinsite its pretty clever. In Switzerland this almost equal distribution of the 7 head ministers was just called "Zauberformel" witch just means "Magicformula", now I understand why the called it that.
Well it has been broken anyway, the right wing basiclly kicked out both of there ministers witch led to the split of that party. The biggest party ended up with no seat in the Bundesrat (Top 7). Now they have one again but he has the militäry and nobody cares about that :)
It seems to be in large part traditional that German parties have formed formal coalitions to support governments - in the Swiss parliament you have "Fraktionen", which can have members from several parties, but are not as formally organized (German coalition governments are usually based on a written contract).
Another big factor seems to be that the German Bundeskanzler has the sole power to decide policy and choose his ministers, so having parties form a solid majority to elect and support him is very important. In Switzerland, the government consists of the seven Bundesräte, who are peers and elected independently by the parliament. They rotate at being the Bundespräsident (formal head of government), who does not have special powers.
According to the German Wikipedia, this is completely wrong - they rotate every year, and the office is given to the one who hasn't been President for the longest time (or ever).
This is, however, purely a custom; formally, the Bundespräsident is elected.
Shouldn't everyone just vote for the party who he likes most? Voting for a party has also long-term effects that you have to consider. Also in Germany every party gets money for each vote and so on... the coalition aspect is just one of many...
The old parties need to wisen up and become much more flexible in the way they form coalitions. It would be nice if they got that message from the rise of the Pirate Party.
SPD/Green is the only combination with a chance of getting >50% to end the CDU/SPD coalition. The pirates are draining votes from both of them, and I doubt SPD or CDU would be willing to form a coalition with a party as young and controversial as the PP.
Comments
Politics in Germany are really interesting these days. Even if the Pirate Party should fail in the end, the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial.
I don't see the Pirate Party failing anytime soon. In fact, I'm quite surprised they're as successful already, but I cannot imagine a future where their popularity isn't raising. They are the embodiment of the younger generation (e.g. under 25, maybe under 30) that are just becoming voters and have no real say in the politics yet. They (actually We) are used to having broadband internet, smart mobile phones, etc., i.e. ubiquitous computing and free internet access. Right now, we're getting attacked head-on by the old established empires (media in particular), but the only reason that they can lobby some laws into passing is that they bribe old politicians who have no understanding and attachment to the internet, and really don't care what happens in the world after 20 years, because they will mostly be gone by then. However, the younger generations do care, and they will not accept it (barring some radical change in the social structure). When we come into power, the media empire will lose. The Pirate Parties are the only political organization that are catering to this voters need (so far - I'm assuming other parties will adapt... most politicians are not loyal to principles, but only to power).
I cannot imagine a future where their popularity isn't raising.
Then your imagination is sorely lacking. I can guarantee that their popularity will severely decline within the next 5 years, because right now they are attracting a lot of "protest voters" who have little interest in their actual programme and simply vote for them because they attack the established parties in some way. This kind of thing always cools off after a while (just look at Die Linke).
Whether the Pirate Party can survive at depends on how they deal with that when (not if) it happens. I'm pretty sure they will, since their core points of informational freedom and transparency are still getting more relvant.
This is exactly what happened to the Pirate party in Sweden.
They had an absolutely ridiculous amount of (free) media coverage during the Pirate Bay trial, the FRA-law (that gave the government the ability to snoop on internet traffic crossing the border) and ACTA (a law written by the media industry to help and prioritize illegal file sharing) but, they have never breached the 4% barrier required to get in parliament in Sweden.
While the outrage during the FRA-law was quite impressive (more impressive on the internet than on the streets unfortunately) both ACTA and the FRA-law passed, and today I don't know if I've heard anything about the Pirate party in Sweden for the last year (I hear much more from the Pirate party in Germany - a few years ago I believe the exact opposite was true (that the Pirate party in Sweden was by far the most successful in Europe)).
I hope I'm wrong but I don't see how the Pirate party will ever get into parliament in Sweden and the only thing I can hope for is that the German, and other, Pirate parties will be successful and that that result in changes within the EU as well as reignite the spark in Sweden.
But I barely even dare to hope on anything.
I can imagine such a future very easily. For one thing the other parties will take over some of their positions (especially the Green and the Liberal). Then there is the Pirate Parties lack of positions in many other areas of everyday politics which makes them rather uninteresting for many voters. And they still have internal quarrels which will become stronger if they gain power and may eventually break the party (hopefully not). There is a slight hype about them at the moment, but this will cool down. And then there will be a time, when the main struggles about internet freedom cools down and there are agreements and laws made (this will somehow never end finally, but it won't matter that much anymore). That's a similar situation as the Green party had to face many years ago, when they had managed to establish laws to protect the environment.
On the long run I see them around 8 to 10 percent, depending on region (more in cities) and which positions they take in areas like education, finances, taxes... At least if they can stabilize their internal structure and avoid the problems I mentioned. But this will be enough to make them interesting as a partner in coalitions, especially together with the Green Party and that way forcing the established parties to rethink their own positions.
> And then there will be a time, when the main struggles about internet freedom cools down
This will omnly happen when governments and businesses stop trying to take away our freedom, i.e. not soon.
> That's a similar situation as the Green party had to face many years ago, when they had managed to establish laws to protect the environment.
Well, the Green Party still exists, and is doing rather well in Germany.
1) I guess you are right, but at least here in Europe we can expect that matters get settled at some point in time. We do not have this law culture where a new law can be proposed over and over again in different forms. (Though there are tricks around that and who know...)
2) Yes, because they managed to move from a single focus to become a party with an established program and well known politicians. But they have very similar voters and so that new party is partially splitting forces. The Green Party will maybe react by adjusting their program in Pirate direction.
But of course a lot of things can happen and we will see. At least this Pirate success will show certain interest groups to be careful about their actions. A party that can jump above 10% out of nothing just about a single item of interest was something not expected by them. They will have to recon with that force.
I don't think the way the Pirate Party works internally right now, i.e. very broad discussions trying to take every member's opinion into account, will scale to the size and speed needed if they join a ruling coalition. Their Liquid Democracy voting and delegation tool seems very promising for that use case, though.
High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel
I welcome the German pirates for several reasons:
- "the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial."
- they have a high turn out of former non-voters
- "harmless stupidity": The German pirates seem to be ambivalent as of now. For instance, they are the only left-wing party that's not in favor of female employee quotas (an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia entry http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenquote). If they dig deeper into this populist lefty anti-authoritarian theme (as it seems to be the case) the first thing they will achieve is less votes for the other left-wing parties.
And personally, I think this would be a good thing (see "female employee quotas").
I think it's pretty unlikely that they fully get into all that "gender politics" stuff like the greens. That has several reasons - mainly the see themselves as more "liberal" (it has a different meaning here than in the us) than greens, and also they are not as female-dominated in their ranks as greens are.
I think it's unlikely that they'll embrace a full blown "Frauenquote" (funny how there isn't an english wikipedia entry for it ^^), because the discussion inside the party (i am not a member) seems to be going in a direction they call "post gender". I think this post gender idead, by and large, is a good one.
I hope they'll pursue this path more, bringing an approach of true equality to politics instead of the "gender fights" other left-leaning parties like to put on the political stage.
female employee quotas an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_government#Quotas
How is Frauenquote different from Affirmitive Action? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action)
Reading the entry - it isn't. It's basically the same thing.
What is different in germany, though, is that the discussion here revolves around forcing private sector enterprises to have specific (government set) quota of women in their leadership (or else be punished by the law).
Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions, but not forcing government set quotas on companies.
I can't quite imagine the US government interfering with private enterprise in this way.
"Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions,"
Affirmative action is when two people are equally suited for a job/position/benefit, the one from the disadvantaged group (based on sex, ethnic/socioeconomic background, physical impairment, ...) gets it. In more extreme varieties, it means that the one from the disadvantaged group has less strict requirements to fulfill. In a way, a women's quota is a species of the genus affirmative action.
"Frauenquote" is just a specialization of the term "positive discrimination" in the UK, France, Spain and in most of the EU, and "affirmative action" in the US and some other countries. Other countries do not have a specific term for the gender case, but it is exactly the same thing, and lots of similar policies exist. You can see this by taking a look at Wikipedia/Quotenregelung which is linked to Affirmative action in English Wikipedia.
About the Pirate Party's take on this: I don't think there's a mature consensus yet. According to a recent poll (http://www.taz.de/!89247/) only 6 percent sees the party as postgender.
> High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel
How does that follow?
Because the Pirate party is taking away voters from both the traditional conservative camp (FDP, CDU/CSU) and the traditional social democrat/Green camp, yet is too new to be seriously considered as a coalition partner for a government. That means a grand coalition (CDU/CSU and SPD) led by Merkel becomes more likely - the same one as in the previous administration, before the FDP gained enough votes to have a traditional conservative coalition, but the FDP is currently vanishing into obscurity.
That makes sense. It would also possibly the best outcome for the Pirates: being in opposition would give them time to be more professional and get their act together, and would mean that in the next elections, both CDU and SPD would be unpopular incumbents (meaning they both lose more votes to the Pirates).
Absolutely. Entering a government after they first get into the parliament would do them no good. They first need to establish themselves, before they can govern.
Does anybody know enougth about the Swiss and German system that can explain to me why we never here the term "coalition" in swiss politics? If you are in the parlament you are in it. I mean there is stuff to vote on and everybody votes for what he likes what effects does not been in "the coalition" have?
I hope I made myself clear.
You probably don't hear it because Switzerland has a pretty much perpetual coalition:
Since 1959 the four main parties has effectively voluntarily split the federal council between them based on parliamentary representation to rather than risk being left outside government for any length of time.
The distribution of seats follows a formula agreed by those parties, so it's not "news" that the council keeps pretty much the same party composition election after election.
Most other countries don't have any long standing arrangements like that, so the question of who will form the government is always a major subject in advance of elections.
Ah the Idea would be to get a colision that is more than half the gov and then putting in all the seven head ministers only from parties in the colision. Now I see, that didn't even occur to me that one could do that but in hinsite its pretty clever. In Switzerland this almost equal distribution of the 7 head ministers was just called "Zauberformel" witch just means "Magicformula", now I understand why the called it that.
Well it has been broken anyway, the right wing basiclly kicked out both of there ministers witch led to the split of that party. The biggest party ended up with no seat in the Bundesrat (Top 7). Now they have one again but he has the militäry and nobody cares about that :)
It seems to be in large part traditional that German parties have formed formal coalitions to support governments - in the Swiss parliament you have "Fraktionen", which can have members from several parties, but are not as formally organized (German coalition governments are usually based on a written contract).
Another big factor seems to be that the German Bundeskanzler has the sole power to decide policy and choose his ministers, so having parties form a solid majority to elect and support him is very important. In Switzerland, the government consists of the seven Bundesräte, who are peers and elected independently by the parliament. They rotate at being the Bundespräsident (formal head of government), who does not have special powers.
They dont rotate its always the oldes in years of beeing a Bundesrat.
According to the German Wikipedia, this is completely wrong - they rotate every year, and the office is given to the one who hasn't been President for the longest time (or ever).
This is, however, purely a custom; formally, the Bundespräsident is elected.
Possible. Not importent anyway.
Shouldn't everyone just vote for the party who he likes most? Voting for a party has also long-term effects that you have to consider. Also in Germany every party gets money for each vote and so on... the coalition aspect is just one of many...
The old parties need to wisen up and become much more flexible in the way they form coalitions. It would be nice if they got that message from the rise of the Pirate Party.
SPD/Green is the only combination with a chance of getting >50% to end the CDU/SPD coalition. The pirates are draining votes from both of them, and I doubt SPD or CDU would be willing to form a coalition with a party as young and controversial as the PP.