Is the long march through the institutions finally over for the German Green party? The death of the Greens has been forecast many times since the party’s birth in 1980, not least when it failed to win enough votes in 1990 to get into the Bundestag. Judging by opinion polls, it may again fail to reach the 5 per cent mark in federal elections next September. In any case, Chancellor Schr?der has suggested that the Social Democrats, who have ruled Germany in coalition with the Greens since 1998, may seek a more congenial junior partner.
But behind the Greens’ parochial political difficulties it is tempting to see bigger historical patterns: the final absorption of the 1968 radicals into the system; the definitive emergence of a “normalised” Germany, more relaxed and self-confident, partly thanks to the stamp of the 1968ers; and nothing less than the end of the post-postwar period in Germany.
If there was a single moment that marked the shift, it was November’s vote of confidence over Schr?der’s offer to send 3,900 troops to Afghanistan. Both the offer of combat troops and the fact that it was reluctantly backed by most Green Bundestag deputies would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.
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