The ‘Greening’ of German Foreign Policy in the Iraq Case: Conditions of Junior Party Influence in Governing Coalitions

Abstract

The special characteristics of parliamentary systems and coalition politics play an important role in the German foreign policy decision-making process. Power in the current German government is shared between a larger, senior party (the Social Democrats) and a smaller, junior party (the Greens/Alliance ’90). Throughout the history of democratic Germany, small parties like the Greens have exerted significant influence on German foreign policy, partly through the control of the German Foreign Ministry. This paper assesses the conditions of influence of the Greens, a left-of-center party in the current government (1998-present), compares this to the influence of the Free Democrats, a smaller centrist party, in coalition with the Christian Democrats (1982–1998), and analyzes how these conditions of influence came into play in the German position in the international debate over Iraq in 2002–2003. We argue that the ideological position and the internal disunity of the junior party were critical in this case, although in counter-intuitive ways. This study raises important questions about some of the neo-realist, cultural, and public opinion interpretations of contemporary German foreign policy.