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PROFESSIONALISATION OF POLITICS IN GERMANY | 65

when the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor of the former GDR state
party, made it into parliament. In particular, the most recent national election in 2002
has shown that the two big players among the German parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, are
highly dependent on the electoral performance of the smaller parties that can help
either one into government.Christian Democrats and Social Democrats came out of the
election with exactly the same percentage points and the red-green coalition could
only continue to govern because of the success of the Greens.

At the same time, the election in 2002 has again confirmed the emergence of the
‘unpredictable voter‘. Voting decisions are made late in the campaign or are changed
during the course of the campaign. Since the beginning of the year 2002, the SPD had
been much less popular than their top candidate, the incumbent chancellor Gerhard
Schröder, and only made up ground during the final weeks of the campaign.Two weeks
before Election Day, the number of undecided voters was estimated at 25–35%. Finally,
the turnout rate, which traditionally had been high in German national elections, is
gradually decreasing. In 2002, 79.1% of the voters actually cast their vote, which was
3.1% less than 1998. Across the board, parties have lost partisanship. Although
somewhat later than in other Western democracies, dealignment has by now also been
diagnosed for Germany (Dalton, 2002, pp. 184–185). In addition, Germany – as many
other countries – suffers from a general disaffection of citizens towards the political
system:The image of politics has deteriorated, parties and politicians seem to be all the
system. The image of politics has deteriorated, parties and politicians seem to be all the
same,and voters express feelings of inefficacy.

Finally, the increasing dependence of the political system on the media, as well as the
media’s increasing economic pressure have led to changes in the relation between
politicians and journalists. Their close relationship has often been described as a
symbiosis, where both sides benefited from each other. The journalists got the
information they needed to fulfil their public task and also basked in their proximity to
power. Politicians, always in need of attention for their issues and for themselves, could
easily push their agenda and get their topics through to the media and framed in a way
that was beneficial to their own interests.In particular, after the German parliament had
moved from Bonn to Berlin, the fruitful symbiosis was diagnosed as having mutated
into a parasitic relationship, where one partner exploits the other for their own benefit.
Journalists started to lament being instrumentalised by politicians, whereas politicians
complained about the way they were treated by the media. The change in the
relationship between politicians and journalists was often attributed to the ‘new Berlin Professionalisation of Politics in Germany
Republic’, referring to the new conditions for political actors and the media in Berlin.
However, the emergence of the ‘Berlin republic‘ probably simply coincided with
broader developments as outlined here earlier: commercialisation of the media is one
sure reason for the rougher climate between journalists and politicians, changes in the
way politicians present themselves to the public and the journalists’ impression of
becoming part of the political staging game are another (cf.,Holtz-Bacha,2004a). 67