Now they are booming again, the ten-point immediate programs.

Five weeks before the general election, hardly anything goes without them.

The Greens are the market leaders.

That is why there are two of them this year: an immediate climate protection program in ten steps and, as an addition, “10 points for green governance”.

Rainer Hank

Freelance writer in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Let's take a quick look at the texts of the Greens: 1. Expand renewable energies faster. 2. Bring the coal phase-out to 2030. 5. Accelerate the mobility transition. 10. Advance climate foreign policy. The principle becomes clear. Nothing really comes as a surprise, a verbal accelerator is built in every time. That means: We are pushing the pace. Not ineptly done, I think, especially after the most recent urgency tremolo of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Compared to the climate program, the “10 points for green governance” tends to decline. It says, for example, under point 6: "Create social security". Who would be against it! But how? Or under point 10: "Fighting the causes of flight". That is what the American and German military tried to do in Afghanistan for just twenty years. In the end, we must now expect a new wave of refugees. The others' lists are no better. For example the “Ten Points” from the #teamLaschetSpahn under the heading “For an innovative and livable Germany”. I was particularly impressed by the last two points with their many capital letters: 9. Cohesion STIFTEN. 10. BEING a future party. Thunderstorm.

In any case, all parties have the welfare state on their list. The left makes it "safe", the Greens want to create it first, they probably didn't realize that it already exists. The CDU wants to "modernize" it. Incidentally, the SPD does not have a ten-point plan, but rather "twenty points against tax evasion". The FDP ran out of breath after three points. Both could take revenge on September 26th.

It should have been clear to me from the start that it was a wasted effort to try to get help with the content of a ten-point plan for a voting decision.

That is not the purpose of this genre of literature, which must remain redundant and indeterminate, regardless of the political-ideological corner from which the texts originate.

But why do the parties even provide us with such lists of ten?

My favorite quote comes from the Badische Zeitung on June 2, 2012: “The new Federal Environment Minister Peter Altmaier has a plan.

He doesn't know the content yet, but there will be ten points. "

Nothing new since Moses

An explanation for such absurdities can be found in a book by the Bremen political scientist Philip Manow, which bears the beautiful title "The central minor issues of democracy". The ten-point plan is an essential part of the “repertoire of political decision-making simulation,” writes Manow: Basically, politicians know how powerless they are (see climate, see Afghanistan). But they also know that, following the motto of a legendary Ford advertisement, they have to give the impression: “They're doing something!” Lists of ten are, in Manow's words, instruments for “regaining the appearance of sovereignty, instruments from the rich box of political incompetence compensation ".