With the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), established parties must decide on countering strategies against the populist radical right actor. While officially continuing a cordon...Show moreWith the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), established parties must decide on countering strategies against the populist radical right actor. While officially continuing a cordon sanitaire and criticizing its extremist policy positions, especially the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) increasingly cooperates with the far-right party on federal levels. Differentiating between dismissive, accommodative, and adversarial countering strategies, this paper investigates changes within the 20th Bundestag. It seeks greater differentiation between established parties and within tactics, as well as updating changing dynamics. The applied frame analysis indicates an overall shift towards accommodative strategies: parties increasingly converge their policy positions closer to the AfD. Such tactics are more prevalent among demand-side tactics and center-right parties. Niche and mainstream parties display little differences.Show less
This thesis analyses regional variation in the communication of the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). A discourse analysis of party programmes and speeches for...Show moreThis thesis analyses regional variation in the communication of the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). A discourse analysis of party programmes and speeches for federal state election seeks to explore differences in the way issues such as national and regional identity, the EU as well as the past are framed. The results suggest that in the East German federal states that constituted the German Democratic Republic (GDR) a distinct regional identity and cultural memory are stressed and economic grievances are mobilised, which reinforces the persisting East-West divide in Germany.Show less
Motivated by the dramatic outcomes of the 2017 German federal election, this thesis essentially investigated how the significant discrepancies in the electoral support of the right-wing populist...Show moreMotivated by the dramatic outcomes of the 2017 German federal election, this thesis essentially investigated how the significant discrepancies in the electoral support of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) across the sixteen German federal states in this election can be explained. In particular, it could be observed that the party could attain exceptionally high electoral results predominantly in the eastern states of the country while its electoral performance in large parts of the West was significantly weaker. In the search to explain this pattern, the ‘losers of modernisation’ theory generally appears as a promising approach as it highlights the factor of socio-economic deprivation as one of the main causes for the success of right-wing populist parties, such as the AfD. And, indeed, when evaluating the geographic patterns of the party’s results in the respective election, it stands out that the electoral strongholds of the AfD in the eastern states of Germany appear to be less wealthy and economically productive than their Western counterparts. As a consequence, in order to test the explanatory validity of the ‘losers of modernisation’ theory in understanding the electoral success of the AfD in 2017 German federal election, this thesis poses the following research question: To what extent do factors of socio-economic deprivation explain the electoral success of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election? In a nutshell, however, the findings of this thesis emphasised that the ‘losers of modernisation’ theory does not possess the explanatory validity to explain the electoral results of the AfD in the 2017 German federal elections and that the factor of socio-economic deprivation had no significant impact on the party’s electoral performance in this respective election.Show less
