In recent years Germany has been presented as the exemplar western liberal democracy. Their recent election saw increased turnout, almost 10% higher than the 2019 UK General Election. Chancellor Merkel’s Conservative CDU/CSU party has led ‘GroKo’ – Grand Coalition governments with the Social Democrats for twelve of the last sixteen years. This coalition between the largest parties is difficult to imagine elsewhere, especially in the UK. Finally, in response to the 2015 Refugee Crisis, Germans accepted over a million refugees, whilst the UK pledged to take 20,000. Thus, it’s easy to assume Germany’s engaged, consensus politics and democratic culture as permanent and inevitable
