Sławomir Sierakowski says the 2017 general election in Germany ushered in a multiparty system, spelling the end of the two-party system, whose main “cleavages” have governed German politics since the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949. The first is between the secular and the religious, which is why Germany’s centre-right parties are “Christian”. The second is between labour and the middle-class. The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democrats were bourgeois, and the Social Democrats (SPD) working class.

The author says the SPD and the CDU/CSU have stood as “the twin pillars” of German politics since the end of World War II. This traditional party system has provided for political stability, allowing Germany to become Europe’s economic giant and key player in the EU. Its economic success is to a large extent built on its export of high-quality and high-tech goods, fiscal discipline, and consensus-driven industrial relations and welfare policies.

For a long time, politicians from the CDU/CSU and the SPD had contributed much to the country’s prized stability. It had come to terms with its troubled past in history and walked a tightrope between Moscow and Washington. There was no radical-right party that made inroads into the federal parliament. Yet since 2013, the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) had emerged to take that role. The rise of social liberalism and environmentalism brought in the Greens, and populism the AfD.

With the SPD in decline, there is the risk that it could pull out of the unpopular coalition government with Merkel in order to save its skin. This would trigger fresh elections. As the political landscape in Germany has become increasingly fragmented, no single party will win a landslide victory and govern on its own. The author points out that “while the SPD and the CDU are currently losing support, their ideas remain popular. Their problem is not that they are devoid of ideas, but that they lack political credibility. This credibility deficit has created a vacuum for other parties to fill.” Yet reaching consensus has become a huge challenge.

Critics fear that the rising influence of extreme parties could evoke the darkest days of the Weimar Republic, when short-lived governments ruled by emergency decrees. The author says, Germany “may now end up with rotating coalition governments comprising multiple parties.” Regardless of their constellation, it is imperative to “impede the progress of the AfD, by nullifying its anti-establishment appeal.”

Moreover the author believes, “multiparty systems are generally unstable and less predictable,” as they would “most likely produce political paralysis, because politicians from competing parties within the coalition would constantly undercut one another other while pandering to the popular will.”

This does not have to be the case. Germany could learn from Switzerland, whose multiparty system enables “more political engagement” across partisan lines. The executive branch makes up of seven members from the four biggest parties of the country. The Federal Council has a collective head of state elected for four-year terms by a joint session of both houses of parliament. For decades Switzerland has one of the world's most stable governments.