ABSTRACT
Introduction Party leaders in Germany are important political figures who preside over complex, multi-layered organisations. Parties are crucial players in running elections, organising parliaments and recruiting government personnel; their central role in the democratic process is constitutionally recognised in the German Basic Law. Yet, parties are also decisive in making cooperative federalism work. The German federal system is characterised by a strong degree of interlocking between the territorial levels. The German parties mirror this institutional setting through strong vertical integration inside their organisations. Elite negotiations within and across party lines are routine business in the second federal chamber and other intergovernmental arenas (Lehmbruch 2000; Renzsch 2000). In this context of an interlocked federal party democracy, the relative power of national party leaders strongly depends on vertical power balances within the party and his/her talent for political bargaining. Given this political context, it may come as less of a surprise to learn that the selection of party leaders in Germany has been and still is an elite affair which is most often determined behind closed doors. In this chapter, we focus on party leaders of the following German parties: the Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen), the Christian Democrats (CDU and her Bavarian sister party, the CSU), the Liberals (FDP), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the post-Socialists Die Linke, a merger of the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism)/Die Linke with the WASG. We choose these parties because they have achieved, with minor breaks for the Greens and the PDS, continuous representation in the German national parliament during our period of analysis. While the German party law stipulates that party conferences must elect the party leader and the bulk of the members of the party executives, competitive leadership contests have been rather rare. There are strong efforts within German parties to reach a consensus on a single candidate prior to the formal election; he/she is then presented to the conference delegates and usually ‘coronated’ by very large margins. As we demonstrate, the German parties do evidence some minor differences and there are occasional, more substantial exceptions to this rule. Moreover, the Green party is, in many respects, unique among the parties.
