German Federal Elections 2021: Leadership and Party Politics in Focus

“Sie kennen mich” (You know me), with these words of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Vaut opened the talk with the introduction remarks to look back at Chancellor Merkel’s last 16 years as Chancellor of Germany and an overview of the German Political Sphere that is designed to decentralized power as much as possible and give the German States the ability to build strong political unions and political culture.

Mr. Vaut then proceeded in his introductory remarks to build upon Prof. Grimm’s curriculum and learning outcomes of the Management and Leadership Module to describe the German Chancellery Candidates using the three Ps method: People, Party, Programs. The speaker juxtaposed the candidates using the method and introduced their agendas and the platforms they are running on for the German federal elections.

The discussion following Mr. Vaut’s introductory remarks saw Brandt School Students making the most out of Mr. Vaut’s presence among them, and touched on multiple themes of Political Leadership and current affairs such as: Female Leadership in Politics, The Grand Coalition in German Politics, Singularities of Society, Comparisons of the German Experience to the two-party political systems, Election Monitoring Tools, the importance of Foreign Policy in Political Campaigning, the role of Political Foundations in shaping political agendas, Digital Campaigning among other topics relevant to the discussion.

~ summary written by Brandt School student Houssein Al Malla ~

About the Speaker:

Simon Vaut is a senior civil servant for the Federal Government in Berlin, Germany. He served as a speechwriter for Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy. In addition, he has four years of international work experience at the Liaison office of Deutscher Bundestag to the European Union in Brussels and at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD in Paris. For the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, he has trained more than 500 young political leaders and activists in South Africa, Armenia, Kosova, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. His own political career was solitary, brutish, and short. Simon Vaut had the honour to give the keynote-speech at the "Bridging Gaps Conference 2017" in Erfurt on the invitation of the students of the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy.