The Policies of the First Green-Red Government in the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, 2011–2016

Abstract

In recent years, green parties have gained, at least in some Western democracies, access to government at different levels. In 2011, a coalition between the Green Party under Winfried Kretschmann and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) came to power in Baden-Wurttemberg (BW) following 58 years of predominantly Christian Democratic (CDU) government in the state. The present paper analyzes whether this change of government has led to a corresponding “green–red” policy change. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to 12 different policy sectors, we find evidence of remarkable changes in policy in some key areas related to Green politics, and evidence also of both Social Democratic reforms and path dependence in many other sectors. The results of our fsQCA show that the responsibility of Social Democratic politicians for the ministries in the respective policy sectors in financially relevant policy sectors was enough reason for the implementation of far-reaching reforms. Social Democratic ministries in financially relevant policy sectors with a rather low degree of political leeway brought in Social Democratic policy solutions. Moreover, a sufficient reason for some Green policy manifestations was the combination of Green Party ministries in more regulatory policy sectors with a rather high degree of political leeway.