Friday October 15, 2021
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Online Zoom Meeting
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings, and I hope that you and yours are healthy and safe – and can stay that way.
As part of being careful to stay safe, the “Friday Lunch,” a CWRU tradition since 1989, continues on Zoom. We work to present experts from campus and sometimes beyond to discuss important issues for the university, local community, nation or the international stage.
This Week’s Program
This week’s discussion addresses a crucial aspect of international politics: the future of Germany, and of its role in Europe.
On September 26, Germany’s voters elected a new set of members of the Bundestag, the dominant lower house of parliament. The headline news was a dramatic loss for the longtime leading party in German governing coalitions, the center-right Christian Democratic Union / Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel. The CDU/CSU dropped from 245 seats out of 709 in the outgoing Bundestag to 196 out of 735 in the new chamber. (Germany has an extremely complex electoral system which means the number of seats varies from parliament to parliament). Its partner in the outgoing governing coalition, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), won 206 seats and so its leader Olaf Scholz, the Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor in the outgoing government, was quickly viewed as the likely leader of the new government.
But this result also meant that unless the CDU/CSU and SPD formed yet another coalition, only this time with the SPD claiming the Chancellor’s position, the new government would have to be a coalition of at least three parties. It seemed highly unlikely that this would occur anytime soon since, after the 2017 election, the CDU/CSU’s efforts to form a government without the SPD collapsed and the final coalition was only agreed after four months of negotiations. But the SPD also seems to have little interest in allying with the CDU/CSU again.
That makes the question of the moment whether the SPD can forge a coalition with the more left-wing Greens (118 seats) and the more economically conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP, 92 seats). Scholz clearly preferred that approach but there is a small problem: on how much the Greens and FDP can agree. And then there would be the difficult questions of how power, meaning cabinet ministries, would be divided up in any coalition.
So what’s going to happen, with what consequences? And what are the other implications of the election results – most evidently for the future of the CDU/CSU party that has led Germany for most of the postwar era? Professor Mark Cassell, having been in Germany for the election, joins us to discuss prospects and possibilities.
Signing In
This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.
If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpcO6prTwjE9N4hnq9FqOLYI0sYgZDplXN
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Mark K. Cassell, Professor of Political Science at Kent State University, teaches public policy and administration courses, European politics, comparative public policy, and urban politics. Professor Cassell also directs the Washington Program in National Issues (WPNI), Kent State’s internship program in Washington DC.
Professor Cassell’s scholarship includes a number of books, including his most recent work, Banking on the State: the Political Economy of Public Savings Banks (Columbia University Press/Agenda Publishing, 2020). The book examines how Germany’s public savings banks survive and thrive in the too-big-too fail world of global finance. Cassell and his co-author, Susan Hoffmann, published Mission Expansion and the Federal Home Loan Bank System (SUNY Press, 2010). The book explores the history and development of the Federal Home Loan Bank System. And finally, Cassell published the award-winning book, How Governments Privatize: The Politics of Divestment in the United States and Germany (Georgetown University Press, 2003). The book compares the Resolution Trust Corporation with Germany’s Treuhandanstalt, the agency charged with taking over, managing, and privatizing the industrial assets of former East Germany.
Dr. Cassell holds a Ph.D. and MA in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MPA from the Robert LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA in Economics and Politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC).
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
October 22: The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies. With Aleksandar Cuic, J.D., Director of the Immigration Clinic, Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center, CWRU School of Law.
October 29: Continuity and Change in the Opioid Epidemic. With Lee Hoffer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Psychiatry.
November 5: Redeveloping Buckeye/Woodhill. With Taryn Gress, MSSA, Strategic Director, and Debbie Wilber, Assistant Director, National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities.
November 12: Can India Survive as a Secular Democracy? With Ananya DasGupta, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History.
November 19: Hospital Boom and Busts. With J.B. Silvers, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Finance and Professor of Banking and Finance.
December 3: President Biden’s Trade Policy: Continuity and Change. With Juscelino Colares, J.D., Schott-van den Eynden Professor of Business Law. |
