Brand New Bundestag acts as a bridge between social movements and electoral politics. The overarching goal is to build a coordinated political front of progressive forces from different actors and social groups, intertwine grassroots activism and formal electoral politics, and redesign political processes towards more inclusiveness, sustainability, and future orientation. To reach this aim, Max’s strategy works on two levels – grassroots and institutional.
The first part of Max’s strategy is to activate a new generation of political changemakers, who are equipped and empowered to participate in politics. Therefore, he developed a grassroots engagement and talent scouting model, which is effective and simple to roll out nationwide. By initiating nationwide nomination campaigns, BNB scouts for diverse political talent that is traditionally underrepresented in political institutions. Thanks to its close ties to grassroots activists and groups, BNB is able to reach diverse communities across Germany and build political power from the bottom-up. After a thorough screening process, identified candidates go through a multi-stage assessment process with a diverse jury of prominent activists selecting the best-fitting candidates. There is no strict requirement regarding political affiliation, however, all selected finalists must agree with certain future-oriented policy positions on climate, social justice, sustainable business, and the future of Europe. Other important characteristics of successful participants include strong motivation, integrity, and a civil society engagement track record.
Once selected, BNB provides them with the training and support needed to stand as candidates for a party in the next regional or national elections. This ranges from strategic consulting, rhetoric workshops, networking events, and crowdfunding to press outreach. Max has strategically built trust and relationships across all political parties, which positions BNB as a source of new political talent and a bridge to grassroot civil society voices. Through his close links to party member elites, Max is able to advocate for BNB candidates internally. In doing so, he assists political parties in a mutually beneficial way to enhance the chances of success for BNB candidates, in particular, and more diverse political candidates in general.
In order to scale up these efforts, Max is creating a strong volunteer network of young people aged 18-30 who organize and conduct election campaigns for BNB candidates. By participating in BNB, young people are offered a new, low-threshold form of political engagement that not only gets them interested in politics but enables them to influence political processes actively. Moreover, the BNB candidates act as inspiration and role models, ensuring young people from similar backgrounds feel encouraged to participate in political life and ultimately make their voices heard. Overall, this will strengthen democratic processes as politics becomes more accessible, transparent, participatory, and diverse, and underrepresented groups are better integrated and represented.
The second strand of Max’s strategy lies in creating an impartial platform for collaboration inside the political structures, which is not based on ideology or party affiliation but rather on shared values and progressive motivations. Elected BNB candidates are at the core of this network, who call themselves the “BNB squad.” By employing joint strategies and engaging in common positioning for progressive, bold, pragmatic, and human-centered policies, the Squad leads by example in its commitment to greater collaboration and trust-building across political parties. To spread the reach of this fresh approach to a critical mass of politicians and connect the Squad to the broader German party political landscape, BNB has built a network of carefully vetted politicians from various political parties who are identified and recognized for their future-directed political action and thinking. Calling this group the “Top 50 Progressive”, BNB uses this exemplary list to showcase progress-oriented positions inside and across all parties, through broad public campaigns. During regular networking events, BNB brings together this group in an open and agile way to discuss shared political concerns and interests. Through BNB, Max provides a space where they can connect around issues rather than political positions, explore common ground for political action, and ultimately develop more effective policy interventions through collaboration. While doing so, he always ensures that civil society and grassroots groups are represented as well, to mainstream civil society participation in policy development processes. Finally, the Top 50 network gives its members a new sense of identity as a “progressive” politician, next to their primary party affiliation. As such, they become multipliers promoting a culture of tolerance and respect for others regardless of their party, setting new standards for democratic cooperation inside the parliament.
Max recognizes that the BNB talent scout model and the “Top50” group is an entry point for traditional political parties that are struggling to recruit and retain new talent. He knows that to anchor change in the political culture, the change effort itself must have brought positive results to the political parties. Max is growing and empowering a movement of diverse political changemakers, including party members, BNB candidates, civil society actors, and youth, who volunteer to blueprint the future functioning of democratic processes – making it more inclusive, transparent, and participatory – allowing BNB to use their growing publicity to showcase best practices. This position increases pressure on political parties, sending a strong signal that they cannot succeed without opening to diversity and equality if they want to sustain. As they become more aware of their structural deficits, they are encouraged to renew their HR and organizational structures in terms of transparency, participation, and especially the support of new talent from underrepresented groups. At the same time, BNB offers a very low-threshold, innovative form of political participation through the possibility of volunteering, connecting to concrete political candidacies in a non-partisan setting.
Within only two years, BNB has established itself as a recognized and accepted player in the German political landscape. During the first six months, Max managed to build a volunteer-led organization that supported ten selected BNB candidates during the German Federal election with approx. 200 volunteers. BNB creates an experience for these volunteers, where they can play an active role in shaping and influencing formal political processes and outcomes that felt previously distant and to them.
Three of the ten candidates (one from the Green party and two from Social Democrats) were elected as parliamentarians and represented marginalized groups in German society. This is considered a great success, given that these candidates had never run for office before. Since BNB started supporting candidates at the regional level as well, two more candidates have entered parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. All candidates stated that without the BNB’s support, they would not have won the election, nor would they have stood for elections in the first place. They also indicate that the close connection to civil society throughout the election campaign has impacted how they hold their political office today (i.e., working closely with civil society actors). Moreover, references, including a long-standing member of the German parliament, have confirmed that through the “Top50 Progressive” network, they have retrieved their self-efficacy as political leaders, built trust relationships with party members of the opposition, and already started building new cross-party alliances. Moreover, the BNB campaign has helped their standing inside their own political party. The meeting with the Top50 Progressives deputies, which now regularly takes place every third week of the session, is constantly well attended. Diverse representation within the German federal parliament was widely discussed during the electoral campaign up to the federal elections in 2021, with Max/BNB featured in various interviews and press pieces on the matter.
Since the successful implementation of the BNB talent scout model during the German Federal election in 2021, Max has scaled nationally. The model is now replicated at the federal state and local levels to support and connect political candidates in elections. In the medium term, Max envisions establishing decentralized “BNB communities.” The current BNB organization would serve as an umbrella organization that provides strategic and organizational guidance for local sub-chapters that build local ecosystems of political leaders, civil society, etc.
BNB carried out a successful crowdfunding campaign, reaching over 1700 supporters, in May/June 2022. A petition launched by BNB and members of the BNB Squad on term limits for MPs now have almost 75.000 signatories. These examples provide further evidence for the continuous growth of the BNB community and respective future potential. For his work, BNB received the EngagementGewinner 2021 award by the German Foundation for Commitment and Volunteering. They were nominated for the German Demography Award (Category “Lived Diversity”) and the German Engagement award.
In the long term, Max envisions replicating his model in other European countries and has been already approached by international civil society actors in this regard. Max sees BNB’s role in providing strategic guidance and know-how for other countries in establishing corresponding structures and building a network around them. Together this network would grow into a European movement that could, ultimately, help revitalize the vision of a “fit-for-the-future” European Union.
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