German Politics and Society

Germany's 2017 elections marked the first time since 1949 that a far-right party with neo-Nazi adherents crossed the 5 percent threshold, entering the Bundestag. Securing nearly 13 percent of the vote, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) impeded Chancellor Angela Merkel's ability to pull together a sustainable national coalition for nearly six months. Violating long-standing partisan taboos, the AfD “victory” is a weak reflection of national-populist forces that have gained control of other European governments over the last decade. This paper addresses the ostensible causes of resurgent ethno-nationalism across eu states, especially the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 and Merkel's principled stance on refugees and asylum seekers as of 2015. The primary causes fueling this negative resurgence are systemic in nature, reflecting the deconstruction of welfare states, shifts in political discourse, and opportunistic, albeit misguided responses to demographic change. It highlights a curious gender-twist underlying AfD support, particularly in the East, stressing eight factors that have led disproportionate numbers of middle-aged men to gravitate to such movements. It offers an exploratory treatment of the “psychology of aging” and recent neuro-scientific findings involving right-wing biases towards authoritarianism, social aggression and racism.

The emergence of new parties, especially of populist radical-right parties, has generated considerable scholarly as well as media attention in recent decades. German exceptionalism since the 1950s has come to an end with the electoral successes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), formed in 2013. Comparative studies, however, provide caution about quick pronouncements of party system transformation. Party organization is an important factor in a new party's coping with changing external circumstances. Accordingly, this article concerns itself first with the formative circumstances of the AfD compared to those of the Greens and the Pirates, earlier new parties that challenged the established parties. Second, the article focuses on the institutionalization of the AfD as a party organization since 2013. To what extent has it followed the design of successful populist radical-right parties, such as the Austrian Freedom Party (FPӦ) and the Italian Northern League (ln)? Third, the article considers the prospective relationships between the AfD and established parties. Such challenger parties have agency and may switch from government-mode to opposition-mode and back again without lasting electoral harm. In conclusion, the AfD seems likely to survive its first term in the Bundestag, but it seems unlikely soon to be mainstreamed by its participation in electoral and parliamentary politics.

Using the 2017 Chapel Hill Expert Survey of party positions, this study compares the AfD with other European parties outside the political mainstream across several ideological/attitudinal dimensions. The paper explores the changing character of European party systems and multiple axes of party competition. It regards populism and nativism as distinct political phenomena, but as ones that are symbiotic and coupled together provide a particular powerful narrative. The paper finds that the AfD shares a close affinity with radical right parties in Europe but also emerges as one of Europe's most populist and nativist parties. This explains the AfD's affiliation with the Identity and Freedom Group in the European Parliament; it also supports the argument it is the blend of populist anti-elitism and nativist alarmism that has made the AfD the potent force in German politics that it is today.

In September 2017, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to join the Bundestag in nearly seventy years. Yet, it was not the first time that a challenger party entered the parliament to the chagrin of the political establishment. After introducing the AfD, the bhe, the Greens, and the Party of Democratic Socialism (pds), the article analyzes how established parties treated the newcomers and why they did so. This comparative perspective offers insights into the AfD's challenge, how distinctive the policies toward the AfD have been, and why the established parties have dealt with the AfD as they have.

Next to the Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s nationalism and anti-immigrant attitudes, natalism and support for traditional gender roles are key components of the party's far right categorization. Women are not absent from parties like the AfD, though they support them at lower rates than men and at lower rates than they support other parties. In light of women's lower presence in far-right parties, how do women officeholders in the AfD explain their party affiliation, and how do their explanations differ from men's? An answer is discernible at the nexus between AfD officeholders’ publicly available political backgrounds and the accounts that they offer for joining the party, termed “origin stories.” Empirically, this article uses an original dataset of political biographical details for all the AfD's state and federal legislators elected between 2013 and late 2019. This dataset shows that AfD women at the state level are less likely than their men counterparts to have been affiliated with a political party, and they are less likely to have been politically active, prior to their participation in the AfD. Regardless of the facts of their backgrounds, however, women more than men explain their support of the AfD as a choice to enter into politics, and men more than women explain their support of the AfD as a choice to leave another party. The article argues that these gendered origin stories can be contextualized within the party's masculinist, natalist, and nationalist values.