The question is: On what is disaffection with parties based? To answer this it is important to mention all the causes: The way in which people participate in politics has changed in this post-materialistic age, the tendency toward individualism is holding firm and politics have become more complicated and complex. Political parties have no hammered-out concepts to offer the voters. In actual fact, the parties themselves are responsible for creating some of the circumstances that have led to this disaffection and low regard for parties among the electorate. Included among these are the well-known affairs surrounding party financing, salaries and corruption. Much more serious, however, is the fact that while in full bloom - and continuing today to a lesser degree - political parties created the impression that they were both all-responsible and that they held a monopoly on the forming of a political will. Political parties in Germany expanded their political activities into areas which did not concern them. Examples here include the well-known and notorious TV and Radio councils, in which not only are decisions made from a party-political angle, but also in which "circles of friends" from differing party fractions meet before the councils convene officially. Parties are also guilty of too much expansion of patronage into the public sphere: Parties are not only at a loss to explain to the public why party membership should play a role in the appoint of theatre and opera directors, but also to explain why in some German states promotion from head teacher to senior head teacher depends on party loyalty. At a local level, political parties seemed or, indeed, seem to be omnipresent: They get involved in all manner of clubs and associations: In the local sports club, choral society, rifle association and even the voluntary fire brigade. This omnipresence, however, increases the impression that they are all-responsible. And it is here that the crux of the problem lies. By creating the impression that they are responsible across a wide range of areas, political parties have bred expectations to which they cannot live up to in Germany's political and social reality. In actual fact this claim of having a monopoly on the forming of a political will means that they are held responsible for many things for which they have nothing to do with. In clear terms: Individual parties cannot be held responsible for globalization of the capital markets, the internationalization of the labor market, deficits in the state budget or, indeed, the pressing need to restructure the welfare system.

Another contributory aspect to party disaffection is the fact that the large political parties in Germany have a great deal of difficulty coping with their own fragmentation and segmentation, with their own variety and incompatibility. This is something that is currently being experienced more by the SPD than the CDU, also for structural reasons. In contrast to the image held by the public and several political scientists, the SPD and CDU are not huge hierarchical or oligarchic organizations. They actually represent what we have described as "loosely detached fragments" as "loosely detached anarchy".

German political parties have decentralized and fragmented organizations offering a large amount of autonomy for individual associations, from local associations to state associations, for a wide range of inner-party interest groups, the SPD's working syndicate and the CDU's union, and for the differing party fractions, from the local council to the Bundestag (German parliament); party activists, members and voters are colorful and varied, and parties do a kind of splits between very different sections of society; they are held together by a will to achieve power, by patronage, by traditional symbols, rituals and program planks taken from history and - if it still exists - by charismatic and/or skilful leaders. It may be said that parties do not present one uniform, harmonious image to the outside world - and this contributes to disaffection. 

In addition to this, the negative historical connotations, which made party activity in the parliamentary system of government more difficult, remain to be completely resolved. It would seem that anti-party emotion is raising its ugly head again both among voters and social scientists. And finally another contributory factor to disaffection is the continual process of change in which parties find themselves; while party names remain, their political content changes. This leads to confusion and annoyance.