Event Highlights: German Political Culture – Changes and New Challenges
By Aislinn O’Brien, Candidate for Bachelors of the Arts in International Relations and Political Science
Last week the Center for the Study of Europe hosted German politician Karsten Voigt for a series of lectures and classroom visits. The highlight of the week was a public lecture on “German Political Culture: Changes and New Challenges” on March 20th. The event started with an opening from Professor Wippl, who has met Voigt before working together at BU. Then, Voigt began by sharing his professional background. Voight has had a long history in German politics, working with the BND, with NATO, and with the Social Democratic party of Germany. Shortly after, he discussed how one should even begin the quest of studying a country’s political history. Voight believes strongly in studying the history of another country before traveling there to more meaningfully understand its culture. Additionally, he emphasized the importance of studying your own country’s past through the eyes of other countries, as he experienced when he studied in Denmark. Then, Voigt moved on to discussing the complicated nature of German political history.
According to Voigt, Germany is historically very conservative but has now become far more liberal. This same transition has occurred for German expats living in the US. While they previously had a preference for the Bush era of Republicanism, they now largely prefer the Democratic party, Voight explained. This has been an incredibly significant shift in German political culture. Then, he described that the tension between the political left and right is increasing, leading to a significant amount of polarization. Next, Voight discussed that we need a paradigm shift to properly evaluate the emergence of far-right politics. On this point, he argued that liberal countries like Germany are simply not immune from right-wing political emergence or resurgence. Voight moved to answering the question of how a country can change political culture and institutions to prevent against this again, arguing that this is a very complicated question, giving the specific examples of the conflict of freedom of speech and propaganda in the US and the restriction of democracy as a moderating influence in Germany. Additionally, he began to evaluate the validity of utilizing an international lens on German political culture. According to Voight, you can’t really make a meaningful comparison of the Labour and Social Democratic parties as an outsider; however, from the perspective of an insider, that the Christian, Green, and Social Democratic parties all essentially fall within the ideological bounds of the US Democratic Party, while the Liberal party is similar to the US Republican Party, and that the US far-right is like the AfD.
Voight believes that experiences specific to Germany have played a role in shaping modern political culture, including the East and West German split, the refugee crisis, economic difficulties, various traditions, the question of what exactly German identity is, and so on. Nearer to the end of his lecture, Voight addressed the obligations and challenges that German political leadership faces. German politicians simply must engage with the far-right due to the significant support they have mustered, however they cannot, according to Voight, legitimize them or allow them to gain further influence, operating under “realpolitik”. In addition, German politicians much show leadership, but at the same time work with and not overpower other countries in Europe. Lastly, Voight noted that the AfD has a relationship with the US and the Russian far-right, in what seems to be almost an international right-wing movement. To end, he reiterated that the change in political culture in Germany has been a long process that has occurred slowly over the course of decades. The CSE was very thankful to Voight for this very interesting lecture!
