Nevertheless, the general interest in foreign policy is high in Germany, and the increasing connections between domestic and foreign policy issues – particularly obvious during the pandemic – are a case in point for the need to address foreign policy issues more prominently than in the past. Only a concrete crisis situation – such as the opposition of Gerhard Schröder to the Iraq war – is actually beneficial in German election campaigns. Beyond the general argument about the limited importance for the everyday life of citizens and the difficulty to put complex issues into election slogans, some observers criticize a lack of vision and direction in German foreign policy. There are different explanations for the marginal role of foreign policy issues in German elections. When the Social Democratic Party (SPD) attempted a pro-European election campaign in 2017, the result was disappointing. Traditionally, foreign policy plays a limited role in German elections, which are dominated by domestic issues. Which role will foreign policy play in German elections? How do the main parties position themselves on key foreign policy issues and to what degree does this positioning constrain or enable the options for a governing coalition? Lastly, on which foreign policy issues are we likely to see a lame-duck effect in the next months until the election? Foreign Policy in German Elections The end of the era of Angela Merkel in German politics will reshape the German political landscape and promises the most open-ended parliamentary elections in September 2021 since the elections in 2005 – and all this against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a member of the European Leadership Network Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security and of Women in International Security. Fix received her MSc in theory and history of international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her PhD in political science from the Justus Liebig University Giessen. She is also a frequent contributor to international and German-language media.ĭr. Fix has contributed essays, policy papers, and articles to peer-reviewed journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Quarterly, among others. Fix worked as a Mercator fellow for international affairs at the German Federal Foreign Office, the EU Delegation in Tbilisi, and the Carnegie Moscow Center.ĭr. Fix was a doctoral fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. From 2018 to 2019, she was a fellow for global governance futures at the Robert Bosch Foundation Multilateral Dialogues. She was also a resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, and a DAAD/AICGS fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. Fix was program director for international affairs at Körber-Stiftung in Berlin. Fix’s work focuses on German domestic and foreign policy, the European Union, transatlantic relations, and Europe’s relations with Russia and China. She is also the author of A New German Power? Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She is a historian and political scientist, with expertise in German and European foreign and security policy, European security, transatlantic relations, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Liana Fix is a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
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