The reputation of the governing coalition is extremely bad. But a study finds that the traffic light’s results at the halfway point of its government are quite impressive. The authors write that the traffic light is more diligent than previous governments – but people perceive it completely differently.
The long-awaited restart after the summer break is already in danger of being drowned out in discord, but the traffic light coalition actually has some good news: According to an analysis published today by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the three government parties SPD, Alliance90/The Greens and FDP have about half the time During their time in government, a large number of the projects agreed in the coalition agreement were completed or tackled. Study author Robert Vehrkamp summarizes the findings of the evaluation as follows: “Overall, a very promising mid-term outcome, but one that is overshadowed and characterized by publicly staged coalition disputes and many open construction sites.”
The basis of the analysis by the two democracy researchers Vehrkamp and Theres Matthieß is the coalition agreement negotiated in autumn 2021. In it, the two identified 453 concrete government promises, 174 of which have already been fulfilled; a share of 38 percent. A further 55 projects are in the process of being fulfilled and 62 have at least been addressed. However, 162 promises of the coalition agreement – a share of 36 percent – have not yet been addressed.
Comparing numbers is difficult because it does not take into account the size and complexity of individual legislative proposals. In particular, the federal government cannot implement laws on its own that require the approval of the Federal Council. Added to this is the context of political, economic and other events that were not foreseeable at the start of the government. This applies to the traffic light in particular with a view to Russia’s war against Ukraine, which caught the rulers off guard in February 2022 – while they were still dealing with the corona pandemic and compulsory vaccination was being discussed in Germany.
Against this background, comparisons with previous governments should be chosen carefully, but can still be meaningful. The coalition of the Union and the SPD, which governed from 2017 to 2021, had only 296 projects written into the coalition agreement and the previous grand coalition had only 188. This meant that the traffic light started off much more ambitiously, even though the complicated three-way team was not that easy to come to a common program found and sometimes had to bridge major differences.
An alliance with ambitions
Vehrkamp and Matthieß rate the fact that after 20 months of government – which were initially overshadowed by Corona, then the Russian war of aggression and finally by severe inflation – 64 percent of all projects have been implemented or at least their implementation has begun. At its halfway point, the traffic light implemented 144 government promises, as many projects as the previous government (141), although its first months in government were significantly more challenging, the authors note. However, the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals had also negotiated themselves into true self-enthusiasm, while the last Groko came about under the pressure of a lack of alternatives after the FDP collapsed a possible Jamaica alliance with the Union and the Greens. In short: the desire to govern was significantly greater at the start of the traffic lights.
“If you only look at the politically more complex change promises, the traffic light government appears to be significantly more active than its predecessor government (136 traffic light change promises fulfilled compared to 111 of the grand coalition at the halfway point of its legislative period),” says the analysis. From the significant increase in the minimum wage and child benefit to the reform of abortion, immigration and sexual self-determination laws to the heating law, far-reaching laws have been passed under the traffic lights. The fact that the traffic light has implemented a smaller proportion of its projects halfway through compared to previous governments is also due to the larger number of projects. However, measured in absolute numbers, the traffic light is just ahead.
In public perception, however, the image of the traffic light could hardly be more different. Only 12 percent of those surveyed believe that “all, almost all or a large part” of the agreed coalition promises will be implemented. On the other hand, 43 percent of all respondents assume that only “a small proportion or hardly any” will be implemented. People in Germany last looked at the federal government in a similarly pessimistic manner in 2017 and 2018, write Vehrkamp and Matthieß. After the grand coalition significantly improved its communication and unity with the outside world, a significant increase in trust was measurable in 2019.
From the perspective of the governing parties, this could give cause for hope, especially since the three coalition partners are in the same boat. When asked how satisfied people are with the respective party, 25 percent of those surveyed said they were “very/somewhat satisfied” with the SPD. For the Greens the figure is 23 percent and for the FDP it is 22 percent. So none of the three can clearly benefit from the status quo.
Little understanding among the population
The authors attribute some of the disappointment with the traffic lights to the population’s understanding of democracy. 85 percent of those surveyed stated that keeping election promises was “very important/important” to them. Only 40 percent admit that politicians can have “acceptable reasons” for not implementing election promises. But it is precisely a government team like that of the traffic light that requires a number of compromises and the willingness of everyone involved to put their own government goals on the back burner. The SPD and the Greens had to explain several times that higher taxation of large assets and a reform of the debt brake could not be done with the FDP, while the FDP had to give in on the question of nuclear power or a heat transition controlled solely through the CO2 price. But in the underlying survey, only one in ten respondents said they considered coalition compromises to be an acceptable reason for not keeping election promises.
The analysis reveals surprisingly clearly how much the Greens and FDP shaped the coalition agreement itself. Of the 453 coalition promises, the study authors attributed 72 to the Green election program, 45 came from the FDP and only 19 were taken directly from the SPD election program. However, it is not new that the governing party makes the most concessions in order to form majorities. 139 election promises also represent compromises from the various election programs and 178 projects have no submission at all.
When it comes to implementation, the results for the Greens are, at first glance, poor. Of the 72 promises attributed to it, only 20 have been implemented, while 21 of the FDP promises and 10 of 21 SPD promises have been implemented. However, the general comparison is again flawed by the fact that the individual government promises are not weighted in terms of their importance and complexity.