Chart 1: Regional unemployment rates vs. AfD second vote share
Source: Federal Statics Office / Bloomberg
While this is far from being a unitary picture in terms of unemployment and the AfD strongholds, it does underline just how disparate the unemployment picture is across the whole of Germany, but above all between East and West. It also speaks to the point that for many in the east of the country (and the Ruhrpott), the benefits of reunification and the loosely termed ‘boom’ of recent years have been meagre. It is little wonder that populists on both the right (AfD) and left (Die Linke) get so much support in these regions, and indeed that that spectre of a huge influx of migrants only reinforces a sense of being left behind, or indeed ‘thrown on the scrapheap’. Seen through the prism of the budget surpluses that the Federal government has been running in recent years, and will likely continue run in the near future, this is a clear failing, even if it is a phenomenon that is all too visible elsewhere, save for the fact that most other populous developed nations are not running budget surpluses. But it also speaks to the point that if Germany cannot move to a better system of redistributing its budget from the richer states to the poorer ones in the Federal Republic, then the prospects for strengthening the poor and uneven fiscal position of the Eurozone look rather dim.
In Merkel’s defence, many would probably argue that the Eurozone crisis and the many other international crises, be that Russia and the Ukraine, Brexit and latterly Trump inspired trade tensions have placed enormous demands on her time, and restricted her from addressing domestic issues. Indeed, it could be said that this was also exacerbated by France going largely “missing in action” as far as playing a leadership role in Europe, both under Sarkozy and even more so Hollande. But this is a rather naïve if not disingenuous line of argument, above all in light of what one might term the signature domestic policy initiative of her era in government, the ‘Energiewende’ (the exit from nuclear energy and move away from hydrocarbons to alternative green’ energy).
WHAT HAS BEEN
ACHIEVED IN DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG IS EQUALLY IMPRESSIVE, BUT A CLOSER LOOK AT THE HINTERLAND.
5 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | November/December 2018
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