In Germany, the center can hold

Germany’s once stable and drearily predictable politics are in disarray. At the end of last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government collapsed, triggering the country’s first early elections in 20 years. Then, in late January, Friedrich Merz, the head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the leading candidate for chancellor, pushed a hard-line motion tightening Germany’s immigration policies through parliament. To do so, he relied on the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), breaking for the first time a federal “firewall” imposed by Germany’s centrist parties against working with the AfD.