Alter Pre-Print: Die Bundestagswahl 2013 in Ost-West-Perspektive

 Political Science  No Responses »
Apr 132019
 
Free Book Chapter

Drei Jahrzehnte nach der Wiedervereinigung unterscheiden sich Lebensumstände, Erfahrungen, Einstellungen, Wertorientierungen und politische Verhaltensweisen von Ostdeutschen und Westdeutschen immer noch deutlich. Im Wahlverhalten zeigt sich dies unter anderem darin, dass in den neuen Ländern Nichtwähler- und Wechselwähleranteile höher sind als im Westen. Auch bei der Wahlentscheidung gibt es fast schon klischeehafte Unterschiede: im Westen schneiden die “Bonner Parteien” besser ab, im Osten die Linkspartei und seit 2014 auch die AfD.

Als ich den Pre-Print zur (vermeintlichen) Stellung der AfD als ostdeutsche Regionalpartei online gestellt habe, ist mir aufgefallen, dass der Vorgängerbeitrag zum Wahlverhalten bei der Bundestagswahl 2013 in Ost-West-Perspektive im digitalen Nirwana gelandet war. Das ist nun korrigiert.

bundestag photo

Photo by LoboStudioHamburg

AfD scandals, leftist coalition dreams, and Germany’s thoughts on Brexit: three links I liked

 Links  No Responses »
Mar 262019
 

The co-leader of the right-wing populist “Alternative for Germany” finally admits that the received assistance from a Swiss media agency (in German). The price tag? About €90,000. Find the juicy details here (in German) or read my short summary of the many AfD scandals.

Sarah Wagenknecht was one of the main obstacles to a closer co-operation amongst Germany’s left-wing parties. Now that she is stepping down, there is speculation about a “red-red-green” (rather: “green-red-red”) coalition in Berlin. The main problem with that? The Green’s gains are (largely) the SPD’s losses.

Here is an interesting Politbarometer poll from mid-March 2019: 73% of Germans are sorry to see UK leave the EU, but 72% think further negotiations are pointless and will still lead to no deal. 83% believe Brexit will cause major problems for UK, vs 50% in EU.

Interview with Political Observer on Populism about Radical Right Parties

 media  No Responses »
Mar 122019
 

Last year, I did an interview with Luca Manucci for the Populism Observer blog. Luca had some great questions, and I did my best to answer them, based on other people’s and my own research. Though this is certainly not “all you need to know about radical right parties”. All in all, it was a very good experience.

The interview was well received on the interwebs, but I somehow never managed to link to it. Time to correct this omission!

Interview #30 – All you need to know about radical right parties
Interview #30 – All you need to know about radical right parties

It is time to hear Prof. Kai Arzheimer — one of the major experts on radical right parties — talking about Germany, AfD, Great Recession, populism in Portugal and Spain, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, …

POP POP

Gespräch mit dem Handelsblatt über den Zustand der AfD und einen möglichen Rückzug Gaulands

 media  No Responses »
Feb 282019
 

Mit dem Handelsblatt habe ich über einen möglichen Rückzug Alexander Gaulands von seinen Ämtern gesprochen.

Es ist fraglich, ob es in der AfD noch einen in irgendeiner Form organisierten gemäßigten Flügel gibt.

Bei Gauland-Rückzug: Parteienforscher sehen die AfD vor neuen Machtkämpfen
Bei Gauland-Rückzug: Parteienforscher sehen die AfD vor neuen Machtkämpfen

Alexander Gauland denkt offen über einen Abschied aus der Politik nach. Sollte er abtreten, drohen der AfD stürmische Zeiten, sind Experten überzeugt.

www.handelsblatt.com www.handelsblatt.com

Mit Gauland verlöre die AfD eine der letzten Persönlichkeiten, die nicht auf Grundlage ihrer Positionen, aber doch wenigstens auf Grund ihrer Biographie und ihres Habitus für Medien und Politik als satisfaktionsfähig gilt.

Video: local living conditions, anti-immigrant sentiment, and radical right voting

 Political Science  No Responses »
Feb 252019
 
local living conditions and radical right voting

How do people in cities & the countryside react to the presence or absence of immigrants? How does local decline further radical right mobilisation? Are immigrants becoming convenient scapegoats for developments that have nothing to do with them?

Or does the daily interaction between immigrants and the native population foster positive contacts that lead to pro-immigration attitudes? And what role do self-selection of liberal-minded individuals into multi-cultural neighbourhoods on the one hand and “white flight” on the other play?

These are (I think) fascinating questions that have occupied me for a long time. Thanks to my fantastic colleagues in the SCoRE project, we are a bit closer to answering them. Tomorrow, we’ll present first findings and a couple of policy recommendations at an EPC event in Brussels. If you can’t/couldn’t make it to Belgium, watch this short video and read either the full policy brief or the executive summary.

Local living conditions, immigrants & the Radical Right in Europe

Video: the radical right & 4 critical elections in Western Europe in 2017

 Political Science  1 Response »
Feb 102019
 
AfD results in 2017 federal election in Germany (map of districts)

As (West) European election years go, 2017 was quite something. The French party system changed beyond recognition. The radical right entered Germany’s national parliament for the first time. UKIP was wiped out, but May still managed to lose a comfortable majority. And very high fragmentation resulted in a coalition that looks improbable even by Dutch standards.

SCoRE is our multinational project that explores the link between local and regional living conditions on the one hand and radical right attitudes and behaviours in these four countries on the other. Sometimes, serendipity is really a thing. Because we had our individual-level data collection scheduled for this year anyway, we gained some unique insights into all four big Western European elections of 2017.

Accordingly, my colleagues have written up reports for France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, complete with beautiful maps. Who does not like maps?

Four 2017 elections that changed West European Politics: France, Germany, the Netherlands & the UK

But perhaps you’re pressed for time or not sure if you really want to read four (fairly short) reports? With the European Parliamentary elections on the horizon, I made a short explainer/teaser video about them to bring you up to speed in just over two minutes. I have a hunch that afterwards, you will want to read all four pieces.

My six takeaways from the AfD dropout’s report

 Politics  1 Response »
Oct 052018
 

Back in August, Franziska Schreiber made quite a splash with her memoir of the four years she spent inside Germany’s not-so-new-anymore Radical Right party. Schreiber was in her mid-twenties when she joined only weeks after the party was founded. She helped building up the AfD’s youth organisation – controversial even within the party – in the key state of Saxony and became a confidant of Frauke Petry, the former party leader. Appalled by the AfD’s radicalisation (to which she has contributed, albeit on a small scale), Schreiber left the party just before the 2017 federal election. Reviews of her inside story were mixed, but hey, does this sound like the perfect complement to a long day on the beach? Turns out the book is light and short reading, so here are my five random observations to cap off the day.

  1. Cheap opening shot: confidants were allowed to call Petry “little star” (a common term of affection in German). Yes, you read that right. A few pages later, we learn that Schreiber had a bit of a crush on Petry. No big surprise here.
  2. Schreiber estimates that in 2017, Neo-Nazis made up 15 per cent of the membership, whereas” liberals” comprised 50 per cent. The first number looks a bit off to me while the second number seems way too high. But she’s the insider, right?
  3. Schreiber mostly writes about individuals, and from the point of view of one of many warring factions. That makes for juicy bits and potentially dodgy analyses. But she’s adamant that the rank-and-file’s continous shift to the right has forced various people within the leadership to become ever more radical, lest they lose their credibility with the party faithful.
  4. She also claims that many in the AfD now aim for a revolutionary transformation, something that seems more plausible now than it did before the Chemnitz events.
  5. Schreiber (who apparently has some background in Political/Social Science) describes her own trajectory like an induction into a cult – the alienation from family and former friends, the confirmation biases, the gradual shifting of what is considered normal – it’s all there. This perspective may provide her current self with a very convenient excuse for things she did in the past and now regrets, but it’s nonetheless credible. She also highlights the importance of internal & external communication via social media, and the force of negative emotions, and something that squares with the motives of the AfD’s voters.
  6. And yes, there is the famous claim that the now former boss of Germany’s secret service advised Petry as to how to avoid the attention of his people.

So, all in all, this book provides some interesting background on persons and events, but nothing that is exactly new.

Four links on the Great German Refugee/Immigration Crisis Carnival

 Links, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 182018
 

I know that definitions are so 1996, but here are some that bear repeating:

Migrant
“A person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national” (UN Convention on the rights of Migrants)
Refugee
“someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence” (UNHCR)
Asylum seeker
someone who applies “to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material assistance (UNHCR)

In short, asylum seekers are refugees who apply for formal recognition. If this status is granted, they may or may not become migrants. Words matter. Having said that, here are some links:

Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration, in one picture

 Political Science, Politics  20 Responses »
May 142018
 

Update February 5, 2018

In March 2017, I posted a graph which shows how the AfD’s Facebook posts moved away from euroscepticism and Greece-bashing towards immigration and Islamophobia. But trends can change, and local regression smoothers have a habit of behaving strangely at the borders. So I downloaded another year’s worth of Facebook posts and reran the scripts:

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the new graph confirms for 2017 what we have seen for 2016: Muslims and immigrants are all the rage, whereas the Euro crisis is so 2014. I leave the old graph/post below as is for comparison.

Continue reading »

Hardliner Björn Höcke will not be expelled from the AfD

 Politics  4 Responses »
May 102018
 

What’s the matter with Höcke?

A party tribunal in his home state of Thuringia has ruled that Björn Höcke has not violated the party’s fundamental principles in his so-called “Dresden speech“. In January 2017, Höcke had demanded a “U-turn” in German memory politics, which he deemed “stupid”. In the same speech, Höcke called the Berlin Holocaust memorial “a monument of shame” that Germans had installed in their capital. He later claimed that “shame” had been a reference to the Holocaust, not to the monument, although this interpretation would contradict everything else he said on this occasion.

The old party executive under Frauke Petry had asked for Höcke to be expelled on the grounds that his views were akin (“wesensverwandt”, a judicial term) to National Socialism, and that his behaviour had been harmful to the party. Even then, the motion was controversial and may have contributed to Petry’s downfall.

What now?

In theory, the national executive has four weeks to appeal the tribunal’s decision and take the case to the federal party court. In practice, this is not going to happen. Gauland, and Meuthen, the new party leaders, have come out to support Höcke in the past. The AfD’s hard right is well-represented in the new executive, and while his views may not (yet) be mainstream, Höcke’s ability to speak to the ultra right is widely seen as an asset. In all likelihood, the leadership will just keep shtum and let it lie. Both Lucke and Petry have tried and failed to oust Höcke, and Höcke was instrumental in bringing down both. The tribunal’s ruling formally confirms his ongoing role as an evil spirit eminence grise.

 Older Entries