The German Greens: Established Collective Leadership

The German Alliance 90/The Greens are a prototype of collective leadership. With their roots in the new social movements of the 1970s and their grassroots ideology, they experimented with novel ways to set up party leadership. The multimember leadership as one element of their alternative style of politics proved dysfunctional, but did not impede their establishment in the German party system. Even after a prolonged process of moderation and a transition to dual leadership, the capacity of the party leadership depended on the extent of factionalism and the governmental status of the party. During the participation in a federal government from 1998 to 2005, the Green ministers were the most influential actors as part of a broader power-sharing arrangement. In the last decade, the Greens experienced several effective and complementary duos, and the current party chairs are very successful in their planful alignment of leadership functions and roles, as well as division of tasks. Despite their formally equal status, the analysis of popularity and visibility demonstrate a skewed position, that typically favors one of the chairpersons and which has to be resolved in order to create an efficient mode of operation.