Shoddy electioneering isn’t an American particularity, as the recent German elections amply illustrate. While politics in the nation’s capital, Berlin, have been a feature of post-WW2 Germany, its contribution this year is both telling as well as morbidly fascinating. Some polling places closed due to a lack of ballots, and others handed out excessive ballots (leading to up to 159% turnout). In short: there is a distinct possibility that part of the election must be repeated.
Still, there is no chance that another round of elections would change the results. Incredibly, and despite the following considerations, the parties in power—a coalition of the Social Democrats with the Greens and the Left—actually managed to increase their share from 52.4 to 54.5 percent. While the above-mentioned shenanigans may explain this result, it is also quite curious given the significant amounts of malfeasance on part of the ruling politicians: administration and public services are getting worse and worse, public schools are underfunded, and the state and competence of infrastructure planning is perhaps best illustrated by the massive delays and cost overruns of Berlin’s new international airport: it took 29 years of planning and 14 years of construction. When it finally opened in October 2020, Covid-19 was certainly among the lesser, if no less existential, worries of the airport. (Funny enough, ‘even’ Wikipedia has a useful overview of these shenanigans.)
But these high-profile issues obscure the fact that up to 100,000 residential units are needed; the homeless population numbers between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals; rents have been exploding in recent years. In addition, the inner parts of ‘Greater Berlin’ are now home to now-familiar gentrified hip inhabitants who favour posh vegan restaurants over thinking twice about the precarious temporary jobs of those who deliver overpriced organic foodstuffs to their doors. Consequently, their political ‘home’ is the Green Party, which realised massive gains in these areas.
The majority of Berliners, however, doesn’t live anywhere near these areas. They are also oddly disinterested in more bike lanes in the city centre, weekly farmer’s markets, yoga studios, and gender-fluid discourse in official documents. Any reaction on the more pressing issues outside these circles, however, were not forthcoming.
Hence, it is only fair to consider the chairwoman of the SPD, Franziska Giffey, as a kind of ‘conventional’ machine politician who is virtually disinterested in mass politics. Hence, it came as no surprise that the easiest way forward (sic) was a renewal of the ruling coalition last Friday. If anyone had expected more than mere words, and if past experience is any guide, not much, if anything, will change.
Anyone who’s been to Berlin knows this is a structurally dysfunctional city whose problems are compounded by the government’s inability to understand the antagonistically diverging areas. For the next 4-5 years, however, not much will change, except for the notion that ‘democracy’ works mysterious ways. It will be interesting to see how long Giffey and her team will be able to forestall the inevitable, which is the hard work of actually doing something that is more than mere sloganeering.