Why did Merkel shake Sarkozy’s hand more warmly than at the last summit? Does that mean she’s softerning her stance on a Greek bailout? And did you overhear what a friend of a friend of mine thinks he overheard in a cloakroom in the Bundestag? These are the sort of parlour game questions to which the ongoing Euromess is driving many Germany-watchers.
Hans Kundnani notes the parallels to a prior era, and coins a word to describe it:
It strikes me that it’s all a little like Kremlinology – that is, the study of the Soviet leadership during the Cold War. Back then, the lack of reliable information forced Western analysts to attempt to understand possible shifts in Moscow by decoding what they thought were secret signs such as the position of leaders at parades. We now seem to speculate about what is really going on in Berlin in almost the same way – what you might call Kanzleramtology.
Minor typo in headline — “amt” is “office”.
Danke!
Why go abroad? US presidential primaries provide enough material for all the tea-leaf reading you may ever want to do.
We should stick to one root language at a time, especially given the pariah status of Greece in Berlin: so Kanzleramtwissenschaft.