From Unity to Disarray: The Erosion of the Fiscal Political Consensus in Germany’s Ampel Coalition

The Ampel (Traffic Light) Coalition set out to modernise Germany – economically and culturally. Despite their strong ideological divergence on government spending, the three parties agreed to overcome the severe economic underinvestment of the Merkel years while keeping fiscal policy quiet. Yet, the Russian invasion of Ukraine confronted the Traffic Light Coalition with an unprecedented external shock. This article compares the parties’ programmes with the coalition agreement and the actual policy work implemented. Initial differences in the parties’ fiscal positions, that had been set aside, became salient again as the revenue outlook soured and spending needs increased dramatically. The fiscal strain was further exacerbated by the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court on the debt brake. Using automated text analysis of four major German newspapers, we show that fiscal policy was more salient and associated with more negative sentiment than migration and climate policy throughout the 20th German Bundestag. The findings demonstrate that the traditional economic cleavage, rather than sociocultural divisions, was back on the societal radar and ultimately brought the coalition to a premature end.