🇩🇪 Germany: ⬛️ CDU/CSU chancellor candidate for 2021

[beesley]

I find this whole business of being leader but not being the candidate for the Chancellery incredibly stupid. Any reason why such a phenomenon exists?

[beesley]

I find this whole business of being leader but not being the candidate for the Chancellery incredibly stupid. Any reason why such a phenomenon exists?

CDU and CSU are two separate parties. Each of these parties have a chairperson, but together they have a single Chancellor-candidate.

Historically, the Chancellor-candidacy was an invention of the SPD though. In 1961, they had first named a Chancellor-candidate with Willy Brandt. Brandt's campaign had largely been inspired by JFK's presidential run in 1960, including the specifc position of a Chancellor-candidate.

Unlike the Westminster system, Germany doesn't really have a tradition of unifying everything into a single position. What is usually called a party leader in Britain is split up into the party chairman, the parliamentary group's (caucus') chairman, and the Chancellor-candidate/lead candidate around here. And in some cases, political parties even have two of each, leading to up to six separate people holding the afoementioned positions (the Greens, the Left, and the AfD in particular follow that model). At least the party chairs and Chancellor-candidates/lead candidates also don't need to be incumbent members of parliament themselves. Particularly in the case of CDU/CSU, FDP, and a lesser extent SPD it is not uncommon to at least partially and/or temporarily unify these positions in a single leader though.

Politically, the split between a Chancellor-candidate and a chairperson allows a party to select a Chancellor-candidate who's more popular among the general electorate than he's within his own party while retaining a chair where the opposite might be true (think Schröder/Lafontaine in 1998 as a classic example).

I find this whole business of being leader but not being the candidate for the Chancellery incredibly stupid. Any reason why such a phenomenon exists?

I remember reading once that it started in 1961 when Willy Brandt became chancellor candidate despite Erich Ollenhauer being the leader of the SPD. The inspiration apparently was the American system, in which the leader of the national committee is also not automatically the nominee for president. Brandt tried hard to channel JFK-energy, running a very Americanized campaign.

Brandt eventually became SPD leader before becoming chancellor. 1974-1982 was the first period in which the chancellor was not the leader of his respective party. After Brandt resigned as chancellor and Schmidt took over, the latter would not become party leader, which lead to some problems later.

In the first 150 days of Gerhard Schröder's chancellorship, the SPD leader was minister of finance Oskar Lafontaine. It is well known how that went.

It is debatable whether the situation since 2018 is a convincing counterexample in favor of this system.

One could argue that the dualism party leader - chancellor candidate makes sense at least for the union as otherwise, the CSU would be automatically barred from gaining the chancellorship ever. In sum, however, this strategy seems to have more downsides than upsides.

Ah okay. Though we do have party chairmen as well in Britain who manage the party. I understand the CDU and CSU are separate parties but it seems as if the distinction affects other parties as well. Thank you both for your detailed responses.

[beesley]

Sorry if this has just been stated here, but when will the Union choose its candidate for chancellor?

Between Easter and Pentecost.

EDIT: A lot of CDU bigwigs are now saying it needs to be "soon" after Easter, while Söder insists there is no rush.

So the sooner they do it, the likelier Laschet is to be chosen, and the longer they wait, the likelier it’s Söder?

According to German pundits Laschet and the CDU establishment fear that the polls will become so bad that "the polling argument" (Söder polling much better) will become impossible to ignore, so they want a quick decision while Söder hopes to present himself as the only one who can turn a dire situation around. Right now the Laschet camp claims that it doesn't matter how the polls look right now, because things will be different in Autumn, but the further they drop the more untenable that argument becomes.

This far out, how much would you say Laschet being chosen would be damaging to the CDU at the election (if you can say)? Obviously it's hard to tell, but if he's lower-rated than Scholz and Habeck it becomes a big issue either way.