Are there good histories of the origin of the social democrat/green split? Because these days those parties are extremely similar throughout Europe (and in the Netherlands they just merged), and generally they prefer to govern with each other when possible.
@Alon The Greens did not originate as a split from social democrats. They saw themselves sometimes as to the left of the social democrats, sometimes as transcending left-right divisions. The Green founders came more often from ultra-left sects than from social democrats.
@Alon Your question is really why did the Greens succeed in cutting into the Social Democrats' voting base.
That's part of the bigger question of SDs' loss of working class votes and shift to a base of the educated middle class. The Greens cut into the new base, not the old base, and in many ways their platform fits their constituency better than the SDs'.
You could even argue that the rise of the Greens has benefited SDs by pushing them back toward their labor base (see Australia).
@BenRossTransit@Alon The Greens have a New Left ideology so in a way they are the feminist party. They're at the forefront of demands for gender equality, and they do things like electing two co-presidents, one man and one woman (the German Greens do this too, right?).
I think it's easier to brand your party as Green but you also do other New Left activism than branding it Feminist but you also care about the environment. There is or was a feminist party in Sweden and it didn't grow much?
@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit Yeah, the Greens only transitioned to having one leader in advance of the 2021 election, when it looked like they might get the chancellorship. Then they didn't and Habeck elbowed his way into a co-leadership, on a specious "I would have won" platform (he wouldn't have).
@Alon@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit I think anyone can make their case in a close election, if they would have helped as the leader or not, but Greens got 15% and SPD got 25%. Like 1/8th of the combined SPD/green vote would have flipped? Sounds unlikely to me.
@Colinvparker@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit CDU/CSU ran a negative campaign focused on Baerbock herself, so people switched away from the Greens, and SPD, as the party that was not subject to such negative campaigning, gained. Habeck pretends they wouldn't have done the same to him; judging by how he got turned into Public Enemy #1 last year, his pretense is not based on reality.
@Colinvparker@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit SPD and the Greens are so ideologically similar that there's a large number of voters who are SPD/Green undecided; I'm one and I'm on the record that I'd be voting SPD in Berlin elections if it had a leader who didn't personally suck.
@Alon@Colinvparker@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit Isn’t Scholz a big step up from Schröder? Or is this about the Berlin SPD leader (which politics is too far removed for me to worry about)?
@Colinvparker@DiegoBeghin@BenRossTransit It's the Berlin SPD leader, the one whose degree was revoked for plagiarism and whose personal politics is tough on crime shit.
@BenRossTransit@Alon Australian Greens are NIMBY isolationists, and Labor is not inherently to the left of the Liberals. The Teals are an interesting split from the Liberals in the cities — hiving off groups that care a bit more about CO2 and women’s issues. (Moving rump Libs rightward). RCV vs FPTP is really important.
@Transportist@Alon Nimby seems to be a common trait of Green parties world-wide. Australian Greens have both left-sectarian and woodsy-middle-class factions. Canadians & French tend more toward latter (probably because sectarians drawn more to NDP & Insoumise), US Greens more ultra-left.
@BenRossTransit@Transportist FWIW, there are some exceptions in Germany; on net SPD is YIMBY and the Greens are NIMBY, but there are some inversions, e.g. on the Y-trasse high-speed rail line. Then, because the two parties are used to governing together, the Greens are used to making deals to allow more housing but just opposing some specific high-rises or redevelopment projects. Die Linke is way NIMBYer here.
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