Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary German Politics and Policy

Germany has undergone more change in the past two years than it has experienced in decades. In the fall of 2021, the Social Democratic Party unexpectedly surged to first place in the Bundestag elections, going on to lead a coalition of SPD, Greens, and Free Democrats that promised to ＂dare more progress＂ domestically. Then just two months after the new government was installed, Russia invaded Ukraine. The contributions in this volume investigate the altered state of German politics and predict the trajectory of Europe’s leading power in the transformed geopolitical environment.

Eric Langenbacher is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Since July 2019, he is also a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Society, Culture and Politics Program at the American-German Institute in Washington, DC. Recent publications include The German Polity, 12th ed. (Lanham, 2021), Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (Berghahn Books, 2019) and Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Berghahn Books, 2015). He is also Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies.