Navigating between Scylla and Charybdis: Assessing Angela Merkel's Leadership Skills under the Grand Coalition and "Majority Rule"

Angela Merkel has not only been ranked multiple times as “the world’s most powerful woman” (Forbes); she is also the only Chancellor since 1949 to have successfully led her party to a “normal” conservative-liberal victory after a full term heading a Grand Coalition. Her ability to “lead” has nonetheless been shaped by coalition politics. Merkel thus provides a “one-woman-laboratory” for exploring the impact of Grand Coalition politics on the Chancellor’s powers and limitations on her ability to rule under a CDU/CSU-FDP coalition of her own making. This two-level comparison of her first-term performance with the first, male-dominated Grand Coalition (1966-1969) as

well as with her own second term in office (2009 to 2012), requires us to “bring the institutions back in” when considering the skills a Chancellor must possess in order to manage divergent coalition types. Certain coalition configurations may, in turn, require men to adopt leadership behaviors usually ascribed to women in order to prove effective cross-party managers.