Lamentations over the demise of a culture of compromise in German politics are as commonplace as they are insincere. What their authors are really mourning is the end of an era in which political disagreement could still be neutralised through elite consensus, with dissent safely confined to the margins.
One of these authors is the British journalist and Germanophile John Kampfner, who, in an article titled “Germany’s Politics of Compromise Has Been Compromised,” laments the end of what he sees as a specific and desirable German political culture—one in which the words ‘coalition’ and ‘negotiation’ were writ large, and where select committees pored over political details behind closed doors. It is a political style he describes as “reassuring,” “rational,” and grounded in the virtue of compromise.
In a similar vein, former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) recently made headlines by deploring that “the desire for compromise is being torn apart.” Her party colleague, former Hesse Minister-President Volker Bouffier, echoed the sentiment: commenting on the CDU’s dire poll ratings—now trailing the right-populist AfD—he lamented the new culture of polarisation. The CDU, he claimed, had promised too much in the 2025 election campaign and failed to adequately defend the value of compromise, thereby damaging the democratic centre.
It is hard to take such calls for a politics of compromise seriously—not least because political reality has changed so much in recent years.
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