Party Competition and the Probability of Various Coalition Options in the 2021 Federal Election

Abstract

The growing complexity of the federal German party system and the alignment in the strength of the parties in recent elections leads to a more complex coalition and government formation process at the federal and state level. This contribution presents the policy profiles of the parties represented in the Bundestag on the basis of their 2021 election manifestos. Furthermore, we present – on the basis of the determinants of government formation in Germany at the state and federal level since 1990 – the most likely coalition using different scenarios of the distribution of seats in the 20th German Bundestag, including the election outcome. The findings show that government formation in Germany is determined by office- and policy-seeking coalition theories and by institutional-contextual factors. A coalition between the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) is the most likely outcome of the 2021 government formation process if another “grand coalition” between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats is considered as rejected.