More Tolerant, More Liberal, More Ecological
But the actual change brought about by the Grand Coalition was also in the arena of social policy. It was surely the SPD-Green coalition that ushered in a new era by reforming the citizenship law, immigration policy, and same-sex partnerships after assuming power in 1998. But given the hostile relations between the two camps, the SPD-Green decisions were like an opening salvo in a new, ideologically charged era. Seemingly unspectacular new policies such as the citizenship law or Schröder's green-card initiative suddenly proved highly explosive. It was only the Grand Coalition that put an end to these culture wars.
It was Merkel’s CDU that disarmed ideologically and whose ministers now fought for more modern positions in family policy and immigration policy. In its effort to court and engage with its tradition-minded followers, the CDU/CSU forged a new sociopolitical consensus that SPD-Green reform policies had been unable to produce on their own.
The party that stuck longest to the fiction that Germany was not an immigration country is now pursuing an aggressive integration policy under Wolfgang Schäuble. And under Ursula von der Leyen, the traditional image of the family is no longer the guiding light of German family policy.
This new consensus promoted by the CDU/CSU demonstrates how a Grand Coalition can work: through its partners’ willingness to take risks. Much like the SPD in its Agenda 2010 phase, the CDU/CSU has embraced a more modern social policy as a member of the Grand Coalition. After 2003, the SPD learned that changes like this are not necessarily rewarded at the polls and are sometimes even punished. Today, the CDU/CSU must feel some trepidation when it considers the capability of its more conservative constituency to be mobilized. [ . . . ]
There used to be a sounding board for ideologically charged issues in every election, but after four years of the Grand Coalition this sounding board has ceased to exist. Agitation against foreign nationals is only a marginal phenomenon. Even the polemical attacks against environmental and climate protection policies – once typical of the anti-green tone taken by both coalition parties – have long become outdated. At the end of this legislative period, the country seems more tolerant, more liberal, and more ecological than at the start. Whereas the first Grand Coalition from 1966 to 1969 was formed in a polarized society, the second has been an exercise in détente.
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