On February 20, 2018, Annika Steinbach (FU Berlin, JFK Institute) and Dr. Branko Woischwill (FU Berlin, JFK Institute) had the chance to interview Mr. Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele on the topic of power and politics. Mr. Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele is one of the best-known and most experienced German politicians who can look back on many decades of active political influence.<\/p>\n
Question:<\/strong>\u00a0Power\u00a0in politics: how would you define it?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0Power is the ability to influence.\u00a0In other words, what options do I have to make things to come true?\u00a0That’s political\u00a0power.\u00a0There are different types, e.g.\u00a0dictators or temporary power.\u00a0It’s relates to the position\/office you hold.\u00a0For me, being a member of the German Bundestag was\u00a0always the highest goal, given I\u00a0– detached from superordinate structures or a special system –\u00a0could achieve specific things.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> How do you see the topic of politic power in modern times?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0No doubt, we are currently experiencing times that are particularly challenging.\u00a0The level of complexity and the difficulty of the challenges is very unique.\u00a0And the voters can feel that we are in a difficult phase.\u00a0And if problems are not solved, serious consequences will follow.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> Can it be that political power can be composed of the\u00a0components resources, knowledge, and networks?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0One can see it that way. In the end, these three components play a vital role.\u00a0It’s about specific knowledge, as you said, then about necessary resources, for example money for an election campaign, and of course, networking in politics is\u00a0very important.\u00a0And it certainly has always been; not just for the past 100 years.\u00a0Regarding power, knowledge depends on who can do something, when and where.\u00a0This is a special knowledge that is linked to networking at the same time.\u00a0And the\u00a0relevance of the\u00a0topic of resources we were able to observe nicely during former Chancellor Kohl\u2019s donation scandal.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> There is also the phrase „knowledge is power“.\u00a0On the other hand, there are always politicians who have less knowledge about specific knowledge.\u00a0Can you reiterate this conflict even more specifically?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0When it comes to knowledge, different perspectives are possible. Expert knowledge as proficiency often means for politicians to have assistants and experts\u00a0who\u00a0impart this knowledge.\u00a0However, apart from special questions or specialist topics, we also live in a time when you constantly need to be informed and able to inform yourself.\u00a0Wherever we go, we have access to news, especially via the internet.\u00a0And it is simply expected that you have already heard about certain topics.\u00a0To be informed \u2013 this is also a unique pressure of our time.\u00a0At the same time, this results in the opportunity to cleverly combine certain information from the well-founded knowledge of news and thus make a name for oneself in public.\u00a0This is another way power can be established.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong>\u00a0Let’s look at the electoral system:\u00a0In which respect is the system of the first and second votes significant in Germany?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong> Well, in general, I find the possibility of mixing the first and second vote interesting.\u00a0Plus, of course, the point is that through the second vote, concrete parties with their majorities receive corresponding power.\u00a0And: the secondary vote always surely allows certain politicians enter the Bundestag, who would otherwise have had no chance\u00a0to be elected,\u00a0and which are just about indispensable for parliamentary work.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> What role play political\u00a0parties\u00a0in\u00a0this?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0Political parties, without doubt, hold a certain regulatory function and are thus quite meaningful.\u00a0But, political power establishment does not\u00a0necessarily have to depend on parties.\u00a0So apart from a party-democracy,\u00a0there are certainly other ways.\u00a0We Gr\u00fcne\u00a0for example, and I was a founding member, did not want to be a party in the beginning. Power and influence should come from the movements for peace, the environment, gender justice. The Gr\u00fcne understood themselves as their mouthpiece in parliament.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> What is more difficult: political power creation or\u00a0political\u00a0power retention?<\/p>\n Hans Christian\u00a0Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0In my experience, gaining political power is much more difficult than maintaining political power. Especially my biography has shown this impressively: There was the improbability, to be elected, at the beginning in the first election and then there were the easier re-elections afterwards. In the general election campaign in 2002 as a direct candidate, my main opponents were the media, which wrote that unfortunately it will not work out with me. Overcoming this was and is quite difficult. Once in the mandate, it is relatively safer to succeed again. However, on Election Day, there you are always already insecure, I do not want to deny that.<\/p>\n Question:<\/strong> What role do\u00a0digital worlds play\u00a0in political power building?<\/p>\n Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele:<\/strong>\u00a0In politics, today digital ways are simply part of the game.\u00a0Digital strategies also open up interesting possibilities, and we are certainly only just at the beginning of this development. For example, I use Twitter very intensively and experience intensive feedback via Twitter. However, for a very long time I have refused to jump on that train. But, the employees in my office then convinced me, almost forced me to change my mind. It started with getting a cell phone and then I wrote a lot on Facebook until it became too much for me. So now I’m very involved with Twitter. This digitization is a revolution in communication. It is about knowledge transfer but also about direct political influence in the political will formation by digital media. Nevertheless, I see the digital ways as additional to the classic, for example demonstrations on the street. In this sense, however, digitization in politics is becoming indispensable. I generally see that in the political power question, that is, the seizure of power and the exercise of power. Trump proves it to us: Conducting the world via Twitter – to exaggerate a bit. But the digital world also brings dangers such as the spread of fake news.<\/p>\n Thank you for the interview Mr. Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On February 20, 2018, Annika Steinbach (FU Berlin, JFK Institute) and Dr. Branko Woischwill (FU Berlin, JFK Institute) had the chance to interview Mr. Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele on the topic of power and politics. Mr. Hans Christian Str\u00f6bele is one of the best-known and most experienced German politicians who can look back on many decades … \u201eGerman Politician\u201c<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3149,"featured_media":0,"parent":250,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-227","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/227\/revisions\/261"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}