The Saxony-Anhalt Election: German Federalism Under Yet More Strain?
By Davide Vampa,
The Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt is not only another chapter in the rise of the far right in Europe. With around 44 per cent of the vote, more than double its 2021 result, the party has become by far the largest force in the Land, while the Christian Democrats (CDU) have fallen to 17 per cent. Yet the AfD’s 39 seats leave it short of the 42 needed for an absolute majority in the 83-seat Landtag (state parliament). At the time of writing, whether it will enter government therefore remains unresolved.
Much of the reaction will understandably focus on the strength of the far right in eastern Germany and its implications for national and European politics. But the election raises another question: what happens to German federalism when dramatic electoral shifts make Land governments harder to form and less predictable?
This matters because the Länder are integral components of the federal state. Their governments participate directly in federal law-making through the Bundesrat, Germany’s federal upper chamber, while the Länder themselves implement much federal legislation. Political instability within a Land can therefore affect the functioning of the federal system as a whole.
Saxony-Anhalt provides an unusually sharp test of how German federalism operates under conditions of growing party-system instability.
Germany’s ‘managed instability’
For much of the post-war era, cooperative federalism rested on a remarkably stable party-political foundation. The centre-right CDU/CSU and centre-left SPD dominated federal and Land politics, with a limited number of smaller parties providing relatively predictable coalition alternatives. Different governments existed across the Länder, but they operated within a strongly integrated national party system.
That world has gradually disappeared. Electoral volatility in German Land elections has increased, particularly since the 2010s. This has been accompanied by growing party fragmentation: the electoral landscape has become less concentrated around the two traditional large parties and a small number of coalition partners. At regional level, this has produced not simply greater electoral change but a much more varied and fluid governmental landscape.
The evolution of Land coalitions illustrates the shift. In the early 1990s, governments were still concentrated around a relatively limited menu: single-party SPD, CDU or CSU governments, conventional centre-right CDU–Liberals coalitions, centre-left SPD–Green coalitions, with grand coalitions providing the main cross-bloc alternative. Since then, the range of combinations has expanded dramatically.
Germany has therefore experienced something that might be described as managed instability. Electoral competition has become more volatile and fragmented, while governments have become more politically heterogeneous. Yet these changes have continued to be channelled through institutions designed around negotiation and coordination. The Länder have acted as laboratories of coalition innovation, finding new governmental formulas as older ones became arithmetically impossible.
This adaptability is one of the strengths of German federalism. But it also has costs. Greater coalition diversity means more negotiation within Land governments before negotiation between increasingly different governmental constellations can even begin. The price of absorbing instability may therefore be slower decision-making and more lowest-common-denominator compromise.
Saxony-Anhalt may expose the limits of that capacity.
From coalition innovation to coalition constraint
Until now, growing fragmentation has often expanded the range of coalition possibilities. Saxony-Anhalt presents a rather different problem.
The AfD won 39 seats, while the CDU has 15 and the SPD, Greens and Left eight each; the newly represented Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) has five. The CDU, SPD, Greens and Left have so far ruled out governing with the AfD, while the BSW has been more open to discussions. A majority government excluding the AfD would therefore require all five other parties represented in the Landtag, unless some form of minority government or external support can be arranged. An AfD-led majority government is likewise impossible on the current numbers, although Saxony-Anhalt’s constitutional rules leave open the possibility of a minority government.
The problem is consequently shifting from coalition innovation to coalition constraint. Governments may have to be assembled across increasingly wide ideological distances, not because the parties share a particularly coherent political project but because few other viable combinations remain.
That matters directly for the Bundesrat, which does not represent Land parliaments but Land governments. Its members are ministers and minister-presidents, and every Land must cast its votes as a single bloc. Before a Land can take a position on federal legislation, its coalition partners must therefore agree what that position is. The federal system requires bargaining within Land governments before those governments can bargain with one another.
Coalition diversity has always been part of Bundesrat politics and is not inherently dysfunctional. Indeed, because the chamber does not divide neatly into government and opposition blocs, cross-cutting Land coalitions can encourage compromise. But as governing combinations become more heterogeneous, they multiply potential disagreements within Länder and widen differences across Land governments. Where coalition partners cannot agree on a Bundesrat position, abstention may follow.
And abstention in the Bundesrat is consequential. The chamber counts affirmative votes: proposals normally require at least 35 of its 69 votes, while constitutional amendments require 46. Abstentions and negative votes therefore have the same effect when an affirmative majority is required.
The consequences of electoral instability can thus travel through the federal system: changes in votes reshape parliamentary representation; fragmentation constrains government formation; and the resulting governmental combinations affect coordination in the Bundesrat.
This is where electoral instability becomes more than an electoral phenomenon.
The firewall also has a federal dimension
The Brandmauer – the firewall separating the AfD from the other parties – adds another layer.
As long as the AfD remains outside Land government, even a result of 44 per cent gives it no direct representation in the Bundesrat. The chamber represents governments, not Land parliaments. In this sense, the firewall also prevents the AfD from entering one of the central institutions of the federal state through the Länder.
But maintaining that firewall becomes institutionally more demanding as the AfD grows. If keeping it outside government requires ever broader coalitions or minority arrangements, the consequences are felt not only in regional policymaking but also in federal coordination.
If, on the other hand, the AfD eventually enters or leads a Land government, the implications change. The AfD would become part of the Land government that determines its position in the Bundesrat, with its ministers able to participate directly in the chamber and its committee system, placing the party directly inside the machinery through which federal and Land governments coordinate legislation and administration. One AfD-led Land could not dominate the Bundesrat – Saxony-Anhalt has only four of its 69 votes – but several such governments would significantly alter the political environment in which cooperative federalism operates.
This points to an important paradox. The AfD is not a regionalist party: it competes throughout Germany and seeks power at federal level. Yet its support is highly uneven territorially. Federalism gives such territorial concentrations of support institutional consequences by providing routes into governmental power below the federal level and, from there, into federal decision-making.
The limits of managed instability
None of this means that the Saxony-Anhalt election has produced a crisis of German federalism. The resilience of the system should not be underestimated. Germany has absorbed reunification, the decline of its traditional large parties, rising electoral volatility and an extraordinary diversification of Land coalitions without institutional breakdown.
But resilience is not unlimited. The Saxony-Anhalt result suggests that the challenge may be changing. German federalism has been remarkably successful at accommodating fragmentation through coalition innovation. It may find it harder to manage a party system in continuous flux, particularly when a very large political force remains outside the coalition space and leaves the remaining parties with increasingly constrained options.
While the firewall holds, this may require broader and less predictable Land governments, potentially complicating the unified positions on which Bundesrat politics depends. If it breaks, the AfD gains direct access to the institutions through which the Länder participate in governing Germany.
The significance of Saxony-Anhalt therefore extends beyond the familiar question of how far the far right can rise. It also asks whether German federalism can continue performing one of its central political functions: turning electoral instability and fragmentation into workable governments and negotiated coordination.
For the past decade, it has largely succeeded, although under increasing strain. Saxony-Anhalt suggests that this task may now be becoming considerably more difficult.