Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, Thüringen’s Minister for Culture, Federal and European Affairs speculates on where Germany goes next post-Jamaica breakdown.  After almost eight weeks, the Liberals (FDP) have declared the exploratory talks about forming a government with the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the Greens a failure.  “It is better not to rule… Read More Minority Government or New Elections?

The dust has now settled on the most recent German regional election in Lower Saxony, so now is perhaps a good time to stand back and reflect on what we can learn from the results.  Benjamin Hoff, Minister for Cultural, Federal and European Affairs in the Land government of Thueringen and Practitioner Fellow at the Sussex… Read More The Lower Saxony Regional Election; History, Data and Analysis

Germans went to the polls on 24 September, but there’s no real indication that the dust is yet settling. Indeed, there could be a fair few twists and turns before its clear which politicians will occupy which posts in the next government. More pressingly it is also going to take a number of months before… Read More In every problem lies an opportunity

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has won a resounding victory in a regional election in Germany’s most populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW). The CDU is now in pole position to be the largest party when Germany next goes to the polls in September. But Merkel won’t be taking anything for granted just yet. The impressive… Read More Merkel’s way looks clear after German regional elections derail her main rival

How much ‘authority’ do local authorities have when it comes to climate policy-making? And how does this relate to the reasons why local government was set up in the first place? The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change will come into force on 4th November 2016. However, persuading national governments to sign and then ratify… Read More Peter Eckersley: Why are English and German councils addressing climate change in different ways?

The Brexit vote should prompt researchers to forge a new understanding of how the EU works and a new vision of what it should achieve, says Henrik Scheller. The Brexit referendum has laid bare the peculiar interplay of integration and disintegration that has been a core feature of EU politics since at least the outbreak… Read More Henrik Scheller: Rising populism shows the need for fresh thinking on the EU

Otto von Bismarck once quipped that “if the world ends, I’m going to Mecklenburg: everything happens there fifty years later.”  Long known as something of a backwater, it’s a rare thing indeed that Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (MV) would come to international attention. Yet stunning results in its state election on September 4th have shone a spotlight… Read More Jon Olsen: The Landtagswahl in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MV); What did we learn?

Any Brits reading German newspapers this week may well have felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Germany has its very own parliamentary expenses drama to deal with, and it has echoes of the 2008 episode that shook the UK’s political establishment. No matter how the so-called ‘Montblanc Affair’ pans out, a number of former… Read More Dan Hough: German MPs and the politics of fountain pens

The conference takes place under the auspices of H.E. Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven, the Ambassador of Federal Republic of Germany to the Czech Republic and H.M. Tomáš Zima, the Rector of Charles University in Prague 42nd Annual Conference  Goethe-Institute Prague, Masarykovo nábr. 32, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic  16th– 17th June 2016  Annual Conference of the… Read More 2016 programme for the IASGP conference in Prague