The Recent History of Populism in Germany

The rise of right-wing populists continues across the west, leaving many wondering why. Here. I summarize my explanation for the rise of the right-wing populist AfD in my home country —Germany.

Germany before the rise of the AfD

In 2013, Germany had no notable right-wing populist party. Alternative for Germany (the AfD) did already exist, but it was neither populist nor strongly anti-immigrant. It was mainly a Euro-sceptic party, but even then described as nationalist by the established parties and journalists alike.

Immigration was already a big issue for many Germans, most of which demanded lower rates. This wish was mostly confined to asylum seekers, i.e. those who claim to flee war or persecution. International treaties bind Germany to host these people as long as they claim asylum, independent of whether they are able or willing to contribute anything to the society. Moreover, even if the claim for asylum is rejected, as is frequently the case, it is usually very difficult to deport these rejected asylum seekers. As a consequence, the asylum system can be easily exploited by low-quality migrants who try to abuse the high living standard and strong social security nets of European countries such as Germany.

It is therefore no wonder that many Germans demanded less immigration through the asylum system when, in the years prior to 2013, several hundred thousand asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East entered the country each year. However, not one of the major political parties was willing to offer such policies. The public and the parliament, supposedly the peoples’ representatives, were already on a different page.

To measure this disagreement, researchers asked representative samples of German parliamentarians and ordinary citizens the following question in 2013: “Should it be easier or harder for foreigners to immigrate?”

They could choose from 11 responses, ranging from “0 – immigration for foreigners should be much easier” to “10 – immigration for foreigners should be much harder”.

The results show that most Germans wanted to restrict immigration in 2013. Despite this public demand, nearly all parliamentarians from all the four major parties wanted to facilitate immigration, a shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Immigration attitudes of citizens (bars) and mean parliamentarian by party (dots) in 2013. Own calculation based on this data. For details, read this paper.

The “refugee crisis” and the rise of the AfD

Two years later, in 2015, the refugee crisis began. I became clear that the German people were not only ignored but mocked by politicians across the political spectrum. After public announcements by Chancellor Merkel to take in more asylum seekers, over the course of just a few years, two million asylum seekers entered Germany. In response, Germans viewed immigration as an increasingly important issue and increasingly voted based on their attitudes towards immigration. Because most Germans wanted lower immigration, this increased the demand for an anti-immigration party.

During this time, the AfD changed its policy platform to become Germany’s only party that was clearly calling for much lower immigration, as can be seen in Figure 2 (which resembles Figure 1 but refers to the year 2017). As a result, the AfD became the only party to represent the will of many Germans on the issue they considered most important.

Figure 2: Immigration attitudes of citizens (bars) and mean parliamentarian by party (dots) in 2017. Own calculation based on this data. For details, read this paper.

From this perspective, it is not surprising that the AfD strongly increased its vote share in the 2017 election and became the first party to the right of the conservatives to ever enter the federal parliament.

Beyond Germany

In my research, I found similar patterns are evident across Europe. In 27 countries, most political mainstream parties are much more in favour of immigration than the majority of their voters and citizens demand.

The representation gap is not only systematic across countries but also across political issues and voter subgroups. On nearly all cultural issues, such as multiculturalism or gender relations, I found that voters are more conservative than their parliamentarians.

Across Europe, the difference between the average voter and parliamentarian is as large as the difference between the average conservative and socialist parliamentarian.

Even voters with the same level of education, or voters who are well-informed about politics, are much more culturally conservative than their representatives. Even immigrants themselves are much more opposed to immigration and multiculturalism than the average parliamentarian.

While these cultural representation gaps have existed for a long time, it is the increase in their salience and perceived importance that contributes to the rise of right-wing populism. This is most strongly driven by the increased importance in immigration.

Lessons

When discussing these findings with other scientists and journalists, by far the most frequent question is: how can mainstream parties win back voters, how can populists be defeated?

In my view, this question missed the forest for the trees. These academics are usually afraid of populist rule because they fear that populists will establish a dictatorship, to then ignore the citizens’ opinions and implement policies that are bad for the people. But we already have a situation in which politics ignores the majority opinion on the issue people find most important.

In my personal view, the main lessons of my results are therefore that (i) the defining claims of populists are largely correct and that (ii) mainstream politicians should try to better represent their citizens’ attitudes, not because that defeats populists but because this will likely increase the citizens’ well-being.

Regarding (i): populists are usually defined as those who claim that the “elite” does not represent the will of “the people.” Recently, some theoretical papers have assumed this claim to be wrong. However, in my view, my results suggest that populists may be very well correct in their assessment. In most countries, the representation gap is huge. The difference in attitudes between the average European parliamentarian and the average voter is as large as the difference between the average socialist and conservative parliamentarian. This gap is not just the result of demographic differences and even well-informed voters are much more conservative than parliamentarians. Most strikingly to me, even immigrants themselves are much more conservative on immigration and assimilation/multiculturalism than parliamentarians. The attitudes of citizens, as well as the representation gap, are very stable over time and if you ask voters what a parliamentarian should do, most state that he should follow the opinions of voters, even if his personal opinion is a different one. All of this is hard to bring in line with mainstream parliamentarians acting in the interest of ordinary people. In contrast, this fits very well with them enforcing their own attitudes on the rest of society, against the will of most citizens. This is exactly what populists are claiming.

Regarding (ii): right now, citizens in most Western countries can only choose between populists, who are often untested and therefore risky choices, and mainstream parties, who do usually not only ignore citizens’ attitudes, but actively act against them. Citizens therefore do not have good voting options, which explains the widespread and unprecedented frustration with politics we see in many Western countries. In my view, mainstream parties should focus less on criticizing the shortcomings of others (populists) and focus instead more on taking care of their own shortcomings, chief among them their failure to be even close to the median voter’s attitudes on the most important issues.

There is much else to unpack here and I will do so in my next contributions. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions, and thanks a lot for taking the time to read!