Word: socialism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government out of benefits provided to legitimate victims, such as food and temporary shelter. But they admit to being surprised by the rising numbers. "It's worse than what we had expected two, three or four years ago," says Armando Escobar, who heads IDP programs for the government's social-welfare agency...
...Even the public TV journalist seemed at a loss as he sheepishly attempted to find common ground between the motley collection of candidates during his election wrap-up. On the far right of the podium was a neo-Nazi, joined by a Communist and Social Democrat in the middle, then a probusiness liberal, an environmentalist Green and, not lacking in irony, a conservative Christian Democrat all the way to the left. It was a political free-for-all. With so many smaller parties entering state governments and Germany's federal election just weeks away, the country's main political players...
...more similar in their political preferences. Parties that used to be typical West German parties, such as the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), now have significant support in the former East. And Die Linke, an amalgam of the former East German ruling Communist Party and disgruntled Social Democrats, is gaining ground among left-leaning voters in the former West. Voters who were once loyal to a single party have become swing voters, with the main parties taking the hit. The ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is losing support to the FDP because voters feel...
...result is a fragmentation of the vote that will make it more difficult to form the kinds of stable coalitions that Germany has gotten so used to of late. Sunday's elections demonstrate the trend at the state level, with potential coalitions - such as a government of Social Democrats, Die Linke and the Greens or one linking the CDU, the FDP and the Greens - being considered. But the states also tend to operate as political laboratories for the federal government, and any new coalition combinations will be closely watched as potential models in the aftermath of the federal election...
...German politics is no longer dominated by the two big parties - the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats - with the kind of stable two-party coalitions that were typical of West Germany. The political game is much more open, with at least five parties vying for power and reflecting the much broader spectrum of political opinion in the population. This seemingly unstable coalition system is the new normal. "The trend for the future is a stabilization of instability," says Ulrich von Alemann, a political scientist at the University of Düsseldorf. (Read "Busting Out: German Pol Plays the Cleavage...