Is the traditional people's party a thing of the past? The real reasons for the dramatic decline of the SPD

From the common good to the hunt for likes: What is truly destroying our democracy

Dangerous trend: When the algorithm displaces sound government policy

Modern democracy is mired in a profound crisis of confidence – but the true causes extend far beyond day-to-day political squabbles. Anyone wanting to understand why traditional mainstream parties like the SPD are experiencing historic election debacles while radical fringes are gaining strength must look at a fatal imbalance. Increasingly, genuine political responsibility, which focuses on the long-term common good, is being supplanted by short-sighted party calculations and a downright toxic opportunism fueled by social media. Whether through institutional cronyism, as in Rhineland-Palatinate, the tactical dismantling of governing coalitions, or the unprecedented pursuit of the next viral click: when politicians prioritize the logic of algorithms and their own hold on power over the well-being of the country, the foundations of our society erode dramatically. This is a well-founded analysis of the dangerous triad of state policy, party loyalty, and digital sensationalism – and of why sensible governance is often a societal imposition today.

State politics, party politics, opportunism: A triumvirate with differing weight

Three ways to govern – and why one of them endangers democracy

Anyone analyzing politics inevitably encounters a fundamental tension as old as democracy itself: the conflict between the common good and the interests of the individual. This tension was already present in ancient philosophy, in the works of Plato and Aristotle, as a structural dilemma of political action, and it has by no means been resolved in modern democracy – rather, it has intensified and expanded to include a third, more dangerous dimension.

Broadly speaking, three patterns of thought and action can be distinguished that coexist and often conflict within a democratic society. The first is state-political thinking: it is oriented towards the common good, long-term institutional stability, and the interests of the state as a whole, independent of election cycles and party convention resolutions. The second is party-political thinking: it is legitimate, unavoidable, and part of democratic competition—each party represents interests and values ​​and strives for majorities and power. The third pattern, finally, is opportunistic attention-seeking, which is increasingly gaining ground via social media: short-sighted pronouncements that do not aim for impact on the community but rather for maximum reach, maximum outrage, and maximum clicks.

The three patterns are not mutually exclusive. Every party and every politician switches between them depending on the situation. However, the relationship between these three orientations ultimately determines the quality of a democracy. If state-political thinking dominates, the system remains capable of action and trustworthy. If partisan calculation dominates, gridlock and a loss of credibility arise. If opportunism of the social moment dominates, the foundation of democratic discourse erodes.

The Nature of Political Responsibility – What Governing Really Means

Political thinking cannot be summoned by a simple declaration. It is an attitude that arises from a profound understanding of the functional logic of democratic institutions. The constitutional scholar Josef Isensee precisely described this in his fundamental analysis of the concept of the common good: the common good is not identical with the well-being of a majority, but rather refers to the well-being of the general public in a holistic sense that transcends mere particular interests. A politician acting in the spirit of statecraft knows that governing for a limited time means building for posterity. They think not only about the next election, but also about the generation after that.

The history of the Federal Republic has seen such moments: Konrad Adenauer's decision to embrace the West despite massive resistance within his own party, Helmut Schmidt's steadfastness in the NATO modernization debate, and the SPD's approval of Agenda 2010 under Gerhard Schröder despite the foreseeable political cost. State policy means accepting short-term pain to avert greater damage. It requires the courage to risk the applause of one's own supporters.

The Basic Law itself is an expression of this fundamental political stance. It protects democracy not only externally, but also internally – from the tyranny of majorities, from the short-sighted whims of the moment, and from the abuse of state institutions for partisan interests. The principle of the constructive vote of no confidence, the strength of the Federal Constitutional Court, the autonomy of the Bundesbank – all these are institutional safeguards against an overly strict dominance of partisan politics.

The legitimate business of party politics – and where it finds its limits

Party politics in itself is not a flaw. It is the driving force of democratic competition. Parties unite interests, articulate societal conflicts, and mobilize citizens for political participation. Without parties, there is no parliamentary democracy – this is an analytical truism that is nevertheless often forgotten when party politics is morally discredited. The Federal Republic of Germany has explicitly recognized parties as necessary actors in the formation of political will in Article 21 of its Basic Law.

Party politics crosses the line into dysfunctionality, however, when it begins to instrumentalize state resources and institutions for its own purposes. When the boundary between party and state blurs, a phenomenon arises that, in German political terminology, is known as cronyism, patronage, and a self-serving mentality. This transition is not uncommon in the history of democratic systems. It marks the point at which party politics ceases to be a legitimate representation of interests and becomes a systemic problem that destroys citizens' trust in the functioning of state institutions.

Political science distinguishes between a competition-oriented and an office-oriented understanding of democracy. In the first model, parties compete for voters and majorities – this is normal. In the second model, state offices, authorities, and public resources become the spoils of whoever currently holds the majority – this is patronage. Patronage systems not only undermine the impartiality of state administration but also the quality of state action because they replace competence with loyalty.

Corruption as a systemic flaw – The example of Rhineland-Palatinate

Few recent examples illustrate the transition from legitimate party politics to systemic cronyism more succinctly than the special leave scandal in Rhineland-Palatinate, which came to light shortly before the state elections of March 21, 2026. Investigations by the Rhein-Zeitung and the Trierischer Volksfreund revealed that the current State Secretary of the Interior, Daniel Stich (SPD), received special leave from the SPD-led Ministry of the Interior for almost seven years, from 2014 to 2021, to work first as the state managing director of the SPD Rhineland-Palatinate and later as the party's general secretary.

What makes this case particularly serious is the structure of the process: Stich not only retained his civil servant status during his party work – his pension entitlements continued to increase unhindered, and he was even promoted as a civil servant in his absence. He managed the SPD's election campaigns in Rhineland-Palatinate in 2016 and 2021 and subsequently returned to a key position in the state administration, responsible for the police, domestic intelligence, and disaster relief. The Ministry of the Interior confirmed the information. Constitutional lawyers publicly spoke of a possible violation of the state's duty of neutrality.

This was not an isolated incident. Another state official had also been suspended for party work. The CDU parliamentary group summarized the structure of the scandal in one sentence: state, administration, and party – for the SPD-led state government, everything had been one and the same for years. Minister-President Alexander Schweitzer initially saw no moral problem in this – an attitude that would prove politically costly. The pattern that emerged here is not trivial. It shows how an institutional logic of self-enrichment can develop over years, one that is no longer perceived as a violation by those involved because it has become the norm internally.

The biggest political own goal – when political responsibility is sacrificed to party strategy

The term "political own goal" has a precise meaning in political theory, extending beyond its sporting metaphor: it describes a situation in which a political party, through its own actions, causes the very damage it claims to be preventing. For the SPD, the collapse of the traffic light coalition on November 6, 2024, was such an own goal of historic proportions.

That evening, Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), thereby breaking up the three-party coalition. From Scholz's perspective, this was the logical consequence of Lindner's breach of trust, as he had repeatedly blocked legislation for partisan reasons. From a national political perspective, however, the timing was disastrous: Germany was in the midst of an economic downturn, the war in Ukraine was raging unabated, and Donald Trump's return to the White House was imminent. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) himself described the end of the coalition as a historic mistake. Scholz later admitted that he should perhaps have recognized earlier that the cooperation was no longer viable.

The result: The snap election and the complete failure to communicate the party's record in a defensible way led to the SPD's worst electoral defeat in its history. With 16.4 percent of the second votes – a drop of 9.3 percentage points – the party achieved its worst result ever in a federal election. Around 3.75 million voters turned away from the SPD, 1.76 million of them alone in favor of the CDU/CSU. The miracle of 2021, which had been based on Scholz's personal trust, was completely squandered. Only 27 percent of those surveyed believed he was capable of leading the country through a crisis – four years earlier, that figure had been 60 percent.

Structural crisis instead of a workplace accident – ​​The deeper causes of the social democratic decline

It would be analytically unsatisfactory to attribute the SPD's decline solely to tactical errors or personnel failures. The SPD's own Fundamental Values ​​Commission admitted in an internal analysis that the causes are structural and deeply rooted. Political scientist Fritz W. Scharpf, one of Germany's most renowned analysts of the political system, even described the SPD as a potential relic of the past. This is a harsh, but entirely justified, assessment.

The SPD's structural crisis stems from a twofold alienation. First, during the years of the traffic light coalition, the party failed to adequately represent its core constituency—middle-income workers, industrial laborers, and the socially disadvantaged—either economically or symbolically. Instead, the government's term was dominated by publicly aired coalition disputes, which cemented the image of an ineffective government. Second, the SPD failed to develop a coherent narrative that also resonated emotionally with voters. Instead of a clear vision, the party presented a hodgepodge of bullet points from the coalition agreement.

The realignment of the German electorate, which manifested itself in the 2025 federal election, is not a cyclical phenomenon that will resolve itself with the next economic upswing. It is a profound and potentially permanent reorganization of voter allegiances. The parties of the political center—the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, and FDP—together garnered only slightly more than 60 percent of the vote; the extremes of the political spectrum gained exactly the same amount as the parties of the coalition had lost. This structural shift poses existential questions, particularly for the Social Democrats, because their traditional base of support continues to erode without the emergence of new ones.

The state elections of 2026 ruthlessly confirmed this trend. In Baden-Württemberg, the SPD garnered only 5.5 percent of the second votes in March 2026 – its worst result in the southwest and simultaneously its weakest result nationwide in any state election. In Rhineland-Palatinate, where the SPD had governed for decades, the CDU won decisively with 31.0 percent, well ahead of the SPD with 25.9 percent – ​​a change of power after 35 years. Political scientist Karl-Rudolf Korte spoke of a defeat of historic proportions.

The third actor: When the algorithm displaces state policy

In addition to the tension between state and party politics, a third force has established itself in recent years, overshadowing and distorting both: the algorithmically amplified opportunism of social media. This development is not merely a matter of communication. It touches upon the very nature of democratic decision-making.

74 percent of young people in Germany primarily obtain political information via social media – more than via school, family, or traditional media combined. Political influencers far surpass party channels in this regard: 60 percent of young users follow political influencers, but only 38 percent specifically follow parties or politicians. This shift has a structural consequence: Political action is increasingly shaped by the logic of the algorithm, rather than by the logic of the common good.

The logic of the platform rewards emotion, provocation, and escalation. Attacks on political opponents are viewed, on average, around 40 percent more often than calm, factual content. Complex political considerations—virtually forced upon thinking about state policy—are structurally disadvantaged in this environment. They are difficult to compress into 30-second clips, they don't generate outrage-driven virality, and they disappoint those segments of the following who expect clear-cut enemies. The result is an increasing adaptation of political rhetoric and political positions to the needs of the digital echo chamber.

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Memocracy and mass manipulation – The new grammar of insincerity

Communication scholar Wolfgang Ullrich analyzed this phenomenon in his 2026 book "Memocracy." He demonstrates how memes are used by strategic actors not as harmless internet humor, but as industrially manufactured instruments of political mobilization. The political meme condenses diffuse experiences of hurt—fear of social decline, perceived injustice, feelings of cultural marginalization—into a visual format that requires no argumentative engagement and is therefore so powerful.

This creates a structural imbalance. Politicians who act in a state-oriented manner, defending complex compromises and refraining from short-term emotional appeals, are systematically disadvantaged in the public perception – not because their position is wrong, but because the channels through which politics is perceived today do not favor their style of communication. The result is political pressure to conform: Democratic parties have begun to think in terms of reach, potential for outrage, and viral spread, rather than in terms of impact on the community.

Trust as a political resource – and how it can be squandered

Political trust is the scarcest of all political resources. It builds up slowly – through consistent action, credible communication, and keeping promises – and can be destroyed instantly by a few unwise decisions or scandals. The crisis of confidence in German democracy is not an abstract phenomenon: The 2024 Forsa trust ranking recorded historic lows in trust in politics. While voter turnout in the 2025 federal election was high at 82.5 percent – ​​a sign of political engagement – ​​trust in politics itself was simultaneously at an all-time low, which explains the high approval ratings for protest parties.

When civil servants are granted leave for party work while their state-funded pensions continue to grow and they are promoted on top of it; when a coalition collapses in the midst of a foreign policy crisis for tactical reasons; when political communication is primarily geared towards maximizing likes – then trust in the institutions of democracy itself erodes. Citizens are acutely aware of this discrepancy between the claim of state responsibility and the reality of partisan and opportunistic actions.

This erosion has systemic consequences. When trust dwindles, voters migrate to those parties that most loudly denounce the system's dysfunction—even if they themselves have no constructive alternative to offer. The rise of extremist parties in democratic societies is, to a considerable extent, a reaction to the failure of established parties to act credibly in matters of state policy. This is not an exoneration of extremism; it is a sober diagnosis of political causality.

State policy as an imposition – Why reason doesn't always garner applause

One of the toughest and most frequently misunderstood characteristics of government action is its social discomfort. Government policy is often the exact opposite of what broad segments of the population want to hear at the moment, and almost always the opposite of what partisan special interests would like to proclaim. Anyone who thinks in terms of government policy must expect to receive neither applause from their own party nor from their political opponents – and possibly be attacked by both at the same time. This is no accident. It is inherent in the nature of the matter.

This structural unease is nowhere more evident than in the question of how a state deals with the demands of solidarity and the limits of its capacity to act. The welfare state is not an infinite resource. It is a construct based on contributions paid in, tax revenue, and economic productivity – and one that doesn't simply grow when overburdened, but collapses. A 2024 survey by the German Civil Service Federation (dbb) revealed that 70 percent of the German population already considers the state to be overburdened – most strongly in the areas of asylum and refugee policy, education policy, and internal security. According to infratest dimap, the public's perception of injustice reached its highest level since 2008 at 62 percent at the beginning of 2026. These figures are not right-wing propaganda. They are an empirical finding about the perception of the state's capacity to function, which must be taken seriously by politicians – regardless of which party exploits it for political gain.

However much one might want to help people, political action requires the clear understanding that one cannot overextend oneself. A state that, with honest intentions, promises too much and takes on too much without keeping an eye on its capacity contributes to the destabilization of society. It creates fiscal crises, jeopardizes social cohesion, produces political unrest, and, in the long term, undermines trust in state institutions—precisely the infrastructure on which people in need are most urgently dependent. Federal spending on asylum and refugees alone amounted to approximately €29.7 billion in 2023, which corresponded to roughly 6.4 percent of the total federal budget. This is not an abstract figure. It represents real constraints on balancing competing political priorities: infrastructure, education, pensions, and defense. Those who ignore these constraints do not act more humanely—they act more irresponsibly.

This is precisely where another, particularly dangerous area of ​​opportunistic populism lies: the moralization of political debate as a weapon. Anyone who points to the fiscal, infrastructural, or societal limitations of state aid capacities is reflexively defamed in certain political circles as heartless, inhumane, or even racist. The so-called moral cudgel is a rhetorical tool that does not aim at substantive debate, but rather at attributing dishonest motives to the political opponent and thus excluding them from legitimate discourse. Those who wield the moral cudgel do not want to discuss—they want to dominate.

Political science has precisely described this dynamic: the moralization of political discourse is poison for democracy. It fails to distinguish between political judgments—what is best for the common good?—and moral condemnations—anyone who holds a different opinion is evil. Democracy, however, thrives on precisely this distinction. It presupposes that people with differing legitimate positions can work together to find solutions without one side discrediting the other as morally corrupt. Accusing someone of lacking humanity because they don't support a measure they find unacceptable is not practicing a politics of compassion—it is practicing intimidation.

The case of Angela Merkel and her famous phrase "We can do this" from August 2015 is the most well-known German example of the tension between human impulse and political responsibility. The statement was understandable on a human level, emotionally compelling – but politically incomplete. Not because accepting refugees was wrong, but because it suggested an obligation whose conditions and limits were never clearly defined. The result was not an unmitigated act of inhumanity, but an institutional overload at the municipal, rural, and federal levels, which poisoned the political climate for years and provided more fertile ground for political opponents than any carefully formulated political alternative could ever have offered. Well-intentioned actions and sound political judgment are not always the same.

As painful as this realization is, thinking about state policy in a time when social media dominates discourse, partisan cronyism destroys trust, and the political system is in a structural crisis of legitimacy, is not a romantic recourse to a glorified past. It is a practical necessity.

First, the ability to act effectively in government requires institutional clarity. The strict separation between civil service and party work is not bureaucratic pedantry, but a fundamental principle of the rule of law and neutrality. Civil servants serve the state, not the party that happens to be in power. The special leave practices in Rhineland-Palatinate are problematic not because they are unequivocally illegal – that may be debatable – but because they blur the institutional boundary between party and state to such an extent that they destroy trust in the impartiality of state institutions.

Secondly, political thinking requires communicative honesty. The willingness to communicate even uncomfortable truths—that defense spending costs money that is lacking elsewhere; that pension financing requires structural reforms; that economic structural change produces losers—is a condition for political credibility. Those who sacrifice this honesty for the sake of short-term popularity undermine the foundations of democratic discourse.

Thirdly, political action requires institutional resilience to the logic of social media. This does not mean ignoring the digital public sphere – that would be political suicide. It means developing an independent communicative language that is complex yet accessible, that avoids oversimplification and the construction of enemy images, without becoming abstract and detached from reality. This is an enormous communicative challenge for which there is no simple blueprint.

The role of the opposition as a matter of state policy – ​​What the SPD must now achieve

Following its historic defeats in the 2025 federal elections and the 2026 state elections, the SPD faces a pivotal moment that will determine its long-term relevance as a democratic party. The question is not merely programmatic – what should the SPD stand for in terms of policy? – but fundamentally a matter of character: What kind of party does the SPD want to be?

The SPD's Fundamental Values ​​Commission, in its analysis following the federal election, used strong language: Trust among many voters had been lost because the SPD had avoided confrontation in many areas and had expressed itself unclearly. This is a remarkable admission. It describes the failure of a party that attempted to be both a governing party and an opposition party simultaneously, that marketed Scholz as a statesman and a champion of ordinary people, and that ultimately failed to convincingly embody either role.

The role of opposition offers an opportunity for renewal – but only if it is embraced consistently and honestly. Opposition does not mean reflexively rejecting every government proposal. Opposition conceived as a genuine commitment to the state means constructive criticism, clear alternative concepts, and the willingness to agree even when the government is doing the right thing. This is uncomfortable. It disappoints those members of the base who expect outrage and a show of separation. But it is the only form of opposition that builds trust in the long run.

The silence of political reason – and the costs it generates

The three patterns of thinking – state-political, party-political, and opportunistic – will always be present simultaneously. No political system is so pure that it knows only one of them. But the relationship between them is crucial for the quality of a democracy.

What the analysis of the current situation in Germany reveals is a worrying shift in this relationship. Political thinking that requires long-term perspectives and the courage to embrace unpopularity has structural disadvantages in an environment that rewards short-term outrage, funds party apparatuses with state resources, and establishes the algorithm as the guiding principle of political communication. The costs of this shift are not abstract: they are evident in the 16.4 percent turnout in the federal elections, the 5.5 percent in the state elections in Baden-Württemberg, the change of power in Rhineland-Palatinate after 35 years, and a structural crisis of confidence that has gripped the entire democratic system.

Political reason is not a virtue of bygone eras. It is the prerequisite for democratic governance to function at all in a complex, crisis-ridden world. Parties that forget this—whether out of tactical calculation, institutional cronyism, or the greed for likes—leave not only themselves in political ruins, but also a damaged democratic society.