Opening the event, Mr. Rimmele, Country Representative of KAS in India, underlined the convenient timeframe of Dr. Schüler’s visit during the election phase in India. As an experienced political strategist for over 30 years, he was part of Dr. Helmut Kohl’s and Dr. Angela Merkel’s team. He participated at the event together with Julia Carstens, who has been the personal assistant to Dr. Schüler for over two years and was also part of CDU’s election team in 2017.
Dr. Schüler started his remarks with stressing the importance of young people being active and involved in politics. Additionally, he expressed his admiration for India for organizing free and fair elections for 1.3 billion people. While Germany and India are very different nations with respect to size, economy and society, their representatives, Dr. Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, face similar challenges of federal democratic systems in the 21st century.
He addressed the positive relationship of the two countries in terms of political, economic, cultural and linguistic aspects. The fast development, for instance of technology, would affect every aspect of life and would lead to geostrategic shifts. This would automatically go hand in hand with challenges and the demand for constant adaptions. This global phenomenon visible right now would be of crucial importance for those working in party politics. Due to that, Dr. Schüler recommended that politicians need to continuously adapt to the feelings and demands of their people.
He further elaborated on the fact that the political order after the Second World War would have no longer been capable of managing the problems of the 21st century. One of the current challenges would therefore be to establish this new order including rules determining how to cope with current problems. According to him, all states sharing the same democratic values should now enter into a new phase of democratic cooperation that is unrestricted by geographic limitations.
The next part of the event consisted of a Q&A session between the participants and Dr. Schüler. One issue addressed was the election strategies of the two countries and their use of social media. Thereupon Dr. Klaus Schüler referred to the different demography’s of the two countries. In Germany, over one third of the electorate is over 65 years old and only a small amount of young voters exist – as opposed to India. Social media would therefore be an increasingly useful tool, but traditional means such as TV, radio and newspaper would continue to remain important. On account of this, he would apply a mixed strategy for his election campaigning. Additionally, the tonality of German and Indian election campaign would seem very different as being part of the cultural differences. One state cannot simply copy an election strategy as it would depend too much on culture and other circumstances. He explained that it would not be about the way itself but rather by which rules an election campaign is conducted. Adding to this, he highlighted the necessity of strengthening democratic institutions.
Building upon a related question, the election expert demonstrated the major steps of planning a campaign: Research about the voters, definition of a strategic goal and a strategy on how to reach that. Another part of the discussion dealt with the question, which values should be supported and how to implement those. Dr. Schüler pointed out that values such as equality, tolerance and freedom cannot be taken for granted. That could be seen on the basis of many authoritarian systems which execute policies that undermine the mentioned values. A world order characterized by nationalism would in his opinion, lead to a war of all against all; a multilateral system therefore is more desirable. Dr. Schüler underlined environmental values as well – fresh air and clean water being naturally part of everyone`s individual freedom. These would have been forgotten in the past and need to be the guiding factor for a political solution now. The environment clearly would be one of the aspects, winning or losing elections in the future.
Other questions were posed regarding the role of China and India as emerging powers as well as the German and European view on it. Dr. Schüler sees a geostrategic shift from the West to the East where the question remains as to what extent China will rise. He also affirms that the world order of the 21st century will not be without India. India is already a major player and even become more important in the future.
From a European and German point of view, this would be positive due to India having the same set of believes and values. The new world order should therefore not only be discussed between China and the United States but also by nations such as India and Germany. Brexit is a phenomenon of the ongoing changes in international politics and shows the direction, political challenges are headed for currently. Same can be seen in the USA, where policies of isolation being implemented.
Another topic addressed was Europe’s migration crisis in 2015. Dr. Schüler highlighted that it would be a mistake thinking Europe suffered the most from the migration wave but that the refugees fleeing from the Syrian war mostly fled to the neighboring countries in the region. Besides that it would not have been one specific crisis only but an ongoing crisis demanding the tackling of root causes. It was an illusion to think that closing borders would be a solution; a rule-based national and international management of the problem is needed, Dr. Schüler elaborated. The failure of doing so led to the evolvement of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) changing the political scenario of Germany significantly. To the normally rather moderate discourse in German politics, the AfD would add a new aggressive one, supported by the intensive use of social media.
Concluding, Julia Carstens summarized that the current global order is defined by transition which is why democratic nations, such as India and Germany should build closer relations. Especially stable democratic institutions would be needed in order to ensure the further strengthening of democracy, as a form of governance. Mr. Rimmele officially closed the event by reminding the participants that the EU originally is a peace-project – not only a trade block.