Duels Without Guns: National Debates in Germany -- A Guest Post by Professor Christoph Bieber

Christoph Bieber is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Giessen, Germany. His research focuses on political communication, Internet and politics, and Media Democracy.

In Germany, when it comes to a face-off between campaign front-runners prior to state or national elections, it´s not just a debate – it´s a duel. Although a relatively young phenomenon in German election campaigning, the series of staged discussion events quickly has grabbed attention of both politicians and citizens.

The first national debate in 2002, widely announced by television networks as “TV-Duell” between candidates Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and Edmund Stoiber (CSU), was flanked by advertising campaigns which could have easily been mistaken as promo for a boxing event. Each of the two 90-minute debates drew an audience of about 15 million viewers, establishing a true “national public,” otherwise only equaled by the national soccer team matches (yes, we do indeed favor soccer over other team sport events). In 2005 the advertisements weren´t that hard-hitting, mostly because the male chancellor had to face a female challenger – thus the constellation Schröder vs. Merkel somehow spoiled the metaphorical setup as a sports event.

From its beginnings the German debate format adapted basic elements of what was perceived as the typical presidential debate, yet with a couple of mistranslations. First, there is the parliamentary system – Germans cast their votes to elect the Bundestag, not their chancellor. Thus, there actually shouldn´t be too personalized a contest among the leading candidates – it´s the parties and the candidates in each of the near 300 precincts that are on the ballot. Installing the so-called “Fernsehduell” (TV duel) or “Kanzlerdebatte“ (chancellor debate) led to a more personalized, presidential-style of campaigning, emphasizing a constitutionally non-existent competition between the leading candidates of the two most popular parties, SPD and CDU.

But who “installed” the debates in Germany? That simple question is hard to answer, since organization and preparation of the debates are a well-kept secret, shared only by party officials and campaign teams of CDU and SPD, as well as the editors-in-chief of the largest television networks in Germany. When translating the essentials of televised presidential debates to the German setting, the focus clearly was on everything visible on the screen: lecterns, national symbols, camera positions, sequences of question, statement and rebuttal. As a role model for the discussion, the television networks adapted the rather ancient “press panel”-setup with a number of journalists questioning the candidates, but without installing a moderator in between. This form of debate organization especially hurt the only debate held in 2005: every participating network delegated one anchorman or anchorwoman to the debate panel. Thus, journalists outnumbered politicians 4-2. As a consequence, the 75-minute-session was limited to an effective hour of debate between Schröder and Merkel; the rest of the time went to questioning and interludes among the anchors.

To make things worse, not only did the televised debates suffer from its “back room”-organization, overseen exclusively by two political parties and four networks: there were no fixed criteria for candidate selection. Only two discussants are allowed – otherwise the duel-character of the event would be gone. This is definitely a problem for organizing debates within the five-party-system Germany has developed after the emergence of the socialist Linkspartei, completing the spectrum formerly constituted by Social Democrats (SPD), Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU), Liberal Democrats (FDP), and the Green Party. In some state-elections there have been experiments with separate debate-sessions, bringing together front-runners of either major or minor parties, but there still is no consistent regulation of debates in sight.

In turn, this may establish a new perspective on the Commission on Presidential Debates, which in the US usually is looked at as a relatively weak player, cornered by mighty campaign teams (the recent McCain-maneuver adds a new twist to this perception). Compared to the organization of debates in Germany, this view cannot be maintained: televised chancellor debates in Germany are highly exclusive events to the two leading parties and four TV-networks (either two public service and private networks), blocking access to key questions of debate organization. This limitation already has lead to misrepresentations of minor parties during the debates, because the “reigning system“ denies candidates of minor parties the right to compete or put them off to the minor league of less visible television shows. Also, debates in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe, i.e. in France, Italy, Poland or Austria) are completely television-based media events. There is almost no significant activity to enrich this key format of modern media democracies with New Media features.

To sum up: the Commission on Presidential Debates may face some difficulties when organizing debates and may be reluctant in developing debate technology, but it still is a role model for other countries, which mostly renounce even setting up such an institution.