The Politician

I. The Path

The typical career path of a German professional politician follows a remarkably uniform pattern. Joining the party during university or shortly after — often through the youth organisation: Junge Union, Jusos, Junge Liberale. Work in the local party branch. Municipal politics: city council, county council. State level: a seat in the state parliament or a party office. Then, if everything goes smoothly: the Bundestag. And for the most successful: state secretary, minister, parliamentary group leader.

The whole process typically takes fifteen to twenty-five years. It is what Germans call the "Ochsentour" — the ox trail — a term the participants themselves use, partly with pride, partly with resignation.

What is striking about this path is less what it contains than what it does not: virtually no phase of substantial professional activity outside politics. Someone who joins the party at twenty-two, sits on the city council at twenty-six, in the state parliament at thirty-two, and in the Bundestag at thirty-eight has never run a business, never operated a machine, never worked in a hospital, never managed a construction site, never run a farm, never served customers, never been responsible for a balance sheet. They have also never experienced what it means to be laid off, to pay off a loan, or to argue with a tax office about an audit.

II. The Selection

The decisive question is: What type of person does this path select?

The Ochsentour is fundamentally a loyalty test. Anyone who endures fifteen years of local branch meetings, puts up posters, hosts chapter evenings, distributes leaflets, forges compromises they do not believe in, gives speeches they do not mean, and defends positions they do not understand — has proven that they function. Not that they think. Not that they lead. Not that they understand. That they function.

The qualities this process rewards are predictable. First: adaptability. Those who contradict are not nominated. Those who voice the wrong opinion too loudly too early are not promoted. The system rewards those who sense which way the wind is turning before it turns. Second: endurance in idleness. Endless meetings, endless repetitions, endless tactical conversations about personnel rather than substance. Those who endure this without losing their minds — or who reduce their minds enough that it no longer hurts — advance. Third: networking ability. Not in the sense of productive collaboration, but in the sense of: Who knows whom? Who owes whom what? Who can harm whom? Politics as permanent relationship maintenance, whose currency is favours. Fourth: risk avoidance. Those who expose themselves become vulnerable. Those who say nothing that can be attacked soon say nothing that means anything at all. But they survive.

More revealing are the qualities this process punishes. Subject expertise: the expert who knows the material better than their colleagues is not admired but perceived as threatening. They make the others look bad. Independence: those with a mind of their own are considered unpredictable. Unpredictable is the worst thing one can be in a parliamentary group. Directness: those who say what they think, in the language in which they think it, do not survive two legislative periods. The language of politics is a language of avoidance, and those who do not speak it are labelled "difficult." And finally, excellence outside politics: the successful entrepreneur, the brilliant scientist, the experienced engineer — to pursue a political career, they would all have to take the same path as the law student who joined the local branch at twenty-two. The same fifteen years of Ochsentour. Why would they?

III. The Type

The result of this selection is a human type that political science rarely describes as it should be described.

The German professional politician is typically above average in communication skills and below average in subject knowledge. They can survive a talk show without saying anything that could be used against them the next day. That is an ability. But it is not the ability a country needs when it faces structural decisions.

They have a fine sense for power relations within their party and a crude understanding of conditions outside it. They know who holds which position on the state executive, but not how a mid-sized manufacturer calculates. They know the rules of procedure of the Bundestag, but not the reality of a licensing process from the perspective of the person who needs the licence.

Perhaps most telling is what they read. Or do not read. Most members of the Bundestag read press reviews, parliamentary briefings, and position papers prepared by their staff. Very few read books. Least of all books that challenge their basic assumptions. Franz Oppenheimer is a good example: a senior civil servant with a doctorate in sociology did not know the name. Not because Oppenheimer is unimportant — he was Ludwig Erhard's teacher and thus the intellectual grandfather of the Social Market Economy — but because the career path requires no intellectual engagement with the foundations of one's own policy field.

IV. The Displacement of Expertise

One structural problem deserves particular attention: the appointment of ministers. In most democracies, a ministry is led by a specialist politician — someone who knows the subject, at least in principle. In Germany, it is led by someone who received the ministry as a reward for inner-party loyalty or as a result of coalition arithmetic.

The consequence is so familiar that it barely registers: health ministers who have never worked in healthcare. Defence ministers who have never served. Economics ministers who have never done business. Transport ministers who cannot tell a bridge from a tunnel — at least not from experience.

The official answer to this objection is: "That is what the civil service is for." True enough. But the civil service advises the minister. It does not replace the judgement that only comes from experience. Someone who has never managed a construction site cannot assess whether the timeline their apparatus presents for an infrastructure project is realistic or absurd. They must believe what they are told. And that is exactly what they do.

V. Living off the Mandate

Max Weber distinguished those who live "off" politics from those who live "for" politics. In Germany, this distinction has been entirely resolved in favour of the former. Politics has become a profession like dentistry or tax consulting, with the difference that dentists and tax consultants must complete training that prepares them for their work.

The professional politician lives on parliamentary allowances, staff budgets, pension entitlements, and occasional side income. Their standard of living is tied to their mandate. If they lose it, they lose everything — because they have no profession to return to. This existential dependence on the mandate makes them not bolder but more fearful. Not more independent but more dependent. Not on voters — they change every four years — but on their party, which decides their position on the party list.

One must think this through to its full consequence. A person who entered politics in their mid-twenties, who sits in the Bundestag at forty, who possesses nothing beyond politics — this person will do anything to keep their mandate. They will abandon any conviction that endangers their list placement. They will represent any position their parliamentary group demands. They will support any compromise that secures their re-election. Not because they are a bad person. But because they are a person without alternatives.

VI. The One-Way Street

In the United States, politicians frequently come from business, the military, science, or medicine. This creates different problems, but it produces a different type. In France, the political elite passes through the Grandes Écoles — this produces technocratic arrogance, but also subject competence. In Switzerland, politics is traditionally a part-time office — the militia principle. Members of the National Council and the Council of States have real professions.

In Germany, the path into politics is a one-way street. Those who are in cannot get out, because they know nothing else. And those who are outside and know something have no reason to go in — the price, fifteen years of Ochsentour, is too high; the reward, dependence on party structures, too low.

This one-way street also explains why outsiders almost never succeed in German politics. They arrive with expertise but without a network. They arrive with ideas but without stamina for the process. They arrive expecting that competence counts — and encounter a system in which competence is suspect. Most leave after one legislative period, disillusioned and damaged. The few who stay are assimilated. The system tolerates no foreign bodies.

VII. The System

The result is a political class that is self-contained, self-referential, and largely disconnected from the lived reality of the population. It governs a country it does not know from its own experience. It makes decisions about industries in which it has never worked, about professions it has never practised, about life situations it has never experienced.

This is not individual failure. Most politicians are not bad people. Many are diligent, many mean well. But the system that produces them systematically filters the wrong people to the top and the right people to the outside. It rewards conformity and punishes competence. It promotes verbal facility and prevents subject knowledge. It produces generalists of nothing — people who can talk about everything and understand nothing.

And then we wonder. That the bridges are not being built. That digitalisation is not advancing. That the energy transition falters. That bureaucracy grows. That innovations fail to materialise. That inventors who develop groundbreaking technologies fail in a system steered by people who have never invented anything, never built anything, never risked anything.

It is no miracle. It is no bad luck. It is the system.

"The German model was premised on the idea that if something gets invented, it gets invented by Volkswagen."
— Wolfgang Münchau

Münchau's observation describes industry. But it describes politics equally well. What counts as good policy is defined by what the professional politician type considers it to be. And this type was produced by a system that can neither recognise nor produce good policy.

One could organise this differently. One could appoint ministers based on expertise. One could limit terms of office. One could introduce the Swiss militia principle. One could facilitate lateral entry instead of obstructing it. One could break the dependence on party list placements. One could make politics what it ought to be again: service for a limited time, performed by people who know something, can do something, and have something to lose — and who therefore dare something.

One could. But that would require the system to reform itself. And that is precisely what it cannot do. Because the only people who could reform it are the ones it has produced.