The Fraud of Compromise

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.

Kampfner’s 2020 book, for example—Why the Germans Do It Better—in which he contrasts a “compromise-affine” Germany so favourably with the democratic “chaos” of America and the UK, and speaks of a “grown-up country” looking on with wonder at Brexit and Trump, became outdated almost the moment it was published: Germany was already moving from a model of economic prosperity and technocratic liberalism toward one marred by deepening social cleavages and the threat of economic decline.

Responding to the claim that the politics of compromise was superior, the journalist Jasper von Altenbockum writes in FAZ that it is impossible to list every mistake stemming from what he calls the “excessive consensus culture” of past governments. His list includes the misguided decisions on migration that will preoccupy Germany—and Europe—for generations to come; the nuclear phase-out, which he calls a major error that will likewise cast a long shadow over energy policy; the failure to equip the Bundeswehr, even minimally, for a serious crisis, which he describes as a failure of the state; and a social policy that has spiralled out of control over the past twenty years, paralysing virtually every other policy area. He is, of course, right.

From the outset, however, the call for “compromise” from leading German mainstream politicians has run only one way: compromise within one’s own establishment circles, never with the populist challenge. Indeed, calls for compromise have become a rallying cry against this new opposition: “We know how to compromise” is one of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s favourite phrases when defending his coalition with the Social Democrats. While compromise is preached as a way of legitimising an unpopular coalition—one no longer even supported by a majority of voters—the firewall against the AfD is presented as having no alternative. In a deft verbal sleight of hand, the call for “compromise” has become a call for solidarity within one’s own camp, and for the continued exclusion of the AfD.

German politics has never been as consensual as some like to believe. Even as Kampfner and others were still full of praise for Merkel, the despair at her political style was palpable elsewhere: more honest and far-sighted journalists, such as Christoph Schwennicke, editor-in-chief of the magazine Cicero, were already describing a sluggish, exhausted era back in 2020. The commentator Gabor Steingart wrote of a “layer of mildew” spreading across the country as the administration stalled necessary reforms.

It was not compromise but the avoidance—even suppression—of critical debate that lay at the heart of the technocratic governing style for which Merkel and her successors stand. Considered too irksome and irrational for genuine democratic argument, decisions were increasingly delegated to a network of expert commissions, working groups, and advisory councils that met and deliberated behind closed doors (often the closed doors of the European Commission in Brussels). One of the defining images of the Merkel era is the chancellor at a press conference after a long night of negotiations, explaining how pleased she was that a compromise had been found—whether that compromise found favour with voters was evidently not considered important.

‘Asymmetric demobilisation’ was the term pundits coined for the ‘Merkelian’ strategy: in an era when the old ideological divide between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ was seen as overcome, muddling through and staying in power was all that counted. The goal, as the term is described, was to avoid unsettling one’s own electorate through a lack of polarisation, while simultaneously demotivating the opposition’s supporters—inducing a sense that there is no real alternative, simply boredom—so that they do not even go to the polls.

The strategy failed. Counting on voters’ phlegmatism and passivity was always built on arrogant assumptions and an underestimation of the public. As early as the euro zone crisis—but certainly by the 2015 refugee crisis, which alarmed many and left them feeling helpless—the moment had come for a new opposition to the rule of the elites. Over the years, the number of voters who felt pushed to the margins, their concerns either ignored or met with contempt, kept growing: workers who watched their jobs disappear as Germany’s energy and social security costs skyrocketed; farmers who resented ever more bureaucratic dictates decided in Brussels; opponents of the COVID lockdowns who saw expert bodies limit civil rights while parliamentarians were expected to nod along—and others besides. And so, among the many erroneous predictions made by consensus politicians was the claim that the AfD’s success would be short-lived, that the party would soon self-destruct—a prediction repeated tirelessly until very recently, when the AfD began to overtake even the governing CDU.

“The rule of the elite is based upon force and fraud. The force may, to be sure, be hidden much of the time, or only threatened; and the fraud may not entail any conscious deception.” This is one of the principles of political power set out by the American philosopher, sociologist, and political scientist James Burnham in his 1943 book The Machiavellians 

The talk of compromise promoted by our elites illustrates the enduring truth of that statement. As the pressure on the elites grows, and their confidence in their ability to persuade a clear majority of voters evaporates, the insincere use of the word “compromise” stands exposed. The new government under Merz has tried to continue the same politics of asymmetric demobilisation as his predecessor. It is not only yet another coalition with the SPD—a coalition Merkel led for twelve of her sixteen years in government—but it is also marked by an even greater delegation of decisions to expert bodies. “Germany is suffering from ‘consultantitis,'” as one article in the FAZ put it, describing the multitude of councils, committees, institutions, and personal advisers now supporting the federal government on everything from healthcare and pensions to economic growth and migration.

But force, too, is no longer hidden. In the early days under Merkel, it was internal dissenters—those who disturbed the picture of consensus and compromise—who found themselves increasingly isolated and pushed to the brink of expulsion from their parties: Wolfgang Clement (SPD), who opposed the nuclear phase-out; Thilo Sarrazin (SPD), who opposed migration policy; Wolfgang Bosbach (CDU), a critic of open-border policy; Hans-Georg Maaßen (CDU), a critic of the government’s narrative on the far-right threat; and others. This left the parties exactly as the CDU’s Bouffier, quoted above, described them: “compromise machines” in which a siege mentality reigned.

As pressure from populism grew, laws limiting free speech were either expanded or newly introduced—most notoriously, Paragraph 188 of the penal code, which punishes insults against politicians and has led to thousands of charges over the past three years. AfD members have been barred from standing in elections, as happened in the 2025 Ludwigshafen mayoral race. And there are now calls to ban the party outright after Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which falls under the Federal Ministry of the Interior, has classified the party as “right-wing extremist.” 

As compromise is preached, intolerance of criticism has grown. In this paradoxical situation, challenging the culture of compromise has become a way of fighting for democracy.