Vol. 21 · No. 1 · Issue 66 · Spring 2003
Party Finance Scandals and their Consequences in the 2002 ElectionPaying for Mistakes?
Susan E. Scarrow
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Abstract
The issue of political finance crucially shaped German political dynamics in the first three years of the 1998-2002 legislative period. By the year 2000 political finance scandals were being labeled the "dominant theme in German politics." Scarcely a year into the first red-green government, the national political mood was crucially transformed by the repercussions of a political finance scandal that unseated leading figures in the CDU. These scandals, and the ensuing upheaval within the CDU, gave the faltering red-green coalition a chance to regroup after its weak start in office, so that at one point it seemed that the CDU's ongoing embarrassments all but guaranteed a victory for the red-green coalition in 2002.