A report by Maria Zubareva «Transformation of the German Political Party System at present stage»

On March 10, at the International Laboratory on World Order Studies and the New Regionalism, the report of the graduate student of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Maria Zubareva, “Transformation of Political Parties in Germany at the Present Stage”, was held.

The speaker drew attention to the fact that the problems of studying political parties and party systems are an urgent direction, both for studying political theory and for applied political analysis, and the problem of transforming parties and party systems is one of the central topics of modern political science.
 
By party transformation, the speaker understands the actual processes of transformation and change of the party’s internal structure, their aging, the loss of charismatic leaders, borrowing someone else’s agenda and losing their own, unjustified “logging” or “rule”, the loss of the traditional electorate, the formation of a platform for the emergence of new parties with a similar agenda, the formation of youth factions in favor of modernizing parties, the flight of members, the vagueness of programs, the loss of originality, party core, and much more.
 
Using the typology of P. Lucardi’s parties and Weber’s idea of ​​ideal types, the political parties according to the report were classified according to their goals into three types: prophet parties, pragmatist parties and guardian parties — ideological changes that represent a transition from mass parties to universal, that is, the process of rejecting any clear-cut beliefs in favor of increasing the number of votes.
 
After the report, a discussion was opened on the further development of the party system in Germany.