The results of the German federal election of 2017 demonstrate the success of the radical right populist party (RRPP) the Alternative for Germany (AfG). Elections led to the creation of a six-party system including this strong RRPP which managed to become the third largest political force and the real opposition to the mainstream parties. The AfG almost tripled its share of votes in comparison to previous 2013 federal election: from 4,7% to 12,6%. These results fit the common trend of populism growth in European democratic societies at the national and the EU institutional levels and represent a case in point to study the mechanisms of their support.
The question of what drives the success of populist parties in elections has received increasing attention of social scientists. Although scholarship still argues about the definition of the concept of populism, it is possible to track some core characteristics such as anti-elitism, exclusionism, and people-centrism (Rooduijn, 2014). Populist parties present people as a homogeneous entity and match them against the corrupt elites. This framing of society structure pretends to work well in the context of attracting votes because populist parties are not representing an ideology as such but trying to fill in the gaps of the political spectrum (Loew & Faas, 2019).
Trying to measure the whole society with the ambiguous term the people as so-called ‘catch-all’ parties (the Christian Democratic Union of Germany/the Christian Social Union in Bavaria – CDU/CSU– and the Social Democratic Party of Germany – SDP) intend to do, nevertheless, put on the question which social groups RRPPs claim to represent. Representation can be constructed by the claim maker but only works if the claim object recognises the claim (Heinisch & Werner, 2019). This article aims to find out which social groups the AfG claim to represent and then compare it with the electorate, which cast votes for them. Finally, it would be possible to analyse why some social groups accepted the claim while others resisted.
Representation claims in the political program
A systematic way of empirical investigation of representative claims was proposed by De Wilde (2013) and identifies three components: claim maker (the AfG in our case), claim object (social groups), and claim frame (the idea of how claim maker stands for the claim object). With the purposes to study the representation arguments of the AfG, their Manifesto (2017) has been scrutinised and the main social groups have been identified (Table 1, Diagram 1).
Table 1. Representative claims in the Alternative for Germany Manifesto (2017)
Diagram 1. Frequencies of claim frames in Manifesto (2017)
The AfG Manifesto (2017) explicitly demonstrates the theoretical considerations about the predominance of the people concept in the populist political program. The AfG claims to represent the people almost twice as much as any other specific category. Under this notion, the AfG categorises the people against corrupt political elites and alien migrants. They attribute to the people traditional values, German language as the dominant part of the society, and German identity which is based on Christianity, Renaissance heritage, and Roman law. Interestingly, the exclusionism is manifested in the preservation of German identity and representing citizens without a migration background.
Families are the main concrete social group to claim. The AfG claims to stand for traditional family values, extensive support for families with children, and consider them as the main source of resolving demographic problems and mass migration. The clear link between traditional family values and traditional values of the people is established.
The rest of the social groups received equal attention in the Manifesto. Pensioners are promised to be ensured with higher state financing, stabilisation of old-age pension scheme, and pensions are to be depended on working experience rather than age. Farmers will receive land security and development of rural areas. University workers would enjoy increased research funds and the freedom of research, however, gender studies should not be supported. Unemployed would have a basic income and low-income workers are guaranteed with minimum wage. Private entrepreneurs, as well as SME, would benefit from a new taxation system and fewer regulations. Finally, social provisions for military servants and police are secured.
Representation of specific groups of people to some extent contradict with the populist notion of homogeneous people. However, political parties seek to establish links to specific social groups to secure votes (Thau, 2019). The AfG Manifesto analysis demonstrates that when addressing the whole society the AfG uses right-wing ideas but referring to a particular social group they propose concrete left-wing proposals. The AfG seeks to fill in the representation gaps and take over the electorate from the mainstream parties.
Voting behaviour
The AfG strategy is highly ambitious. As far as we can see from the table and the diagram, the AfG does not appeal particularly to the working class and pay equal attention to them and, for instance, pensioners and private entrepreneurs. However, according to research done by Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, on a federal level 34% of the party voters are workers – the highest percentage among political parties (Nier, 2017). The SDP that traditionally attracts the working class has only 17%. From September 2015 to August 2016 workers were the dominant social class in the electorate structure (Bieber, Roßteutscher, & Scherer, 2018). As for regional specifics, at the latest elections (September 2019) in eastern lands Saxony and Thuringia workers are to be regarded as the key group to support the AfG (Suhr, 2019).
During land elections in eastern Germany a number of pensioners who backed the AfG was low: 23% in Saxony and 15% in Brandenburg (Sahr, 2019). Among the party electorate only 19,4% of the AfG adversaries are pensioners. Moreover, 5,5% within the group of retired prefer the AfG to other political actors in Germany (Heinisch & Werner, 2019, p. 486).
The portrait of a typical AfG voter includes one basic description – mostly men. According to the combined statistics of three data sets (ALLBUS 2016, GLES 2016, and ESS 2016), 53,4% of men advocate the AfG policy (Tutić & von Hermanni, 2018, p. 280). Nevertheless, some studies suggest that the party draws voters from across groups regardless of gender (Hansen & Olsen, 2019).
As for the level of income, the average income of people who cast their vote for the AfG is €2,600 (Nier, 2017). It is higher than the Left Party (€2,391), but a bit lower than, for instance, the SDP (€2,700). The highest number pertains to the Free Democratic Party – FDP (€3,400). Considering the level of income, evidence has been ambiguous. Scholars claim that the AfG voters have low income (Bieber, Roßteutscher, & Scherer, 2018; Tutić & von Hermanni, 2018) while some data gives counterarguments (Heinisch & Werner, 2019, p. 486).
Religion has had a significant influence on the electorate mind-set. Church affiliation and church attendance are considered as a vaccine against voting for RRPPs (Siegers & Jedinger, 2020). The AfG enjoys its highest levels of support in the former German Democratic Republic lands, especially in rural areas described by brain drain (Decker, 2018).
Social groups’ affiliation with the party
What causes social approval of the right-wing populist party? As empirical evidence we will refer to responses received from local party chefs in eastern (Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia) and western (Rhineland-Palatinate) Germany in late 2018.
In the Manifesto the working class is not outlined specifically but the AfG could be named the new workers’ party. A representative of Dresden district in Saxony reckons that social democrats no more satisfy hopes of their basic clientage – workers, especially under medium social level. Another respondent (Pirmasens/Südwestplatz district) highlights the same problem. The AfG uses the opportunity to draw new electors from the working sphere with income below average. The case of the AfG and the party’s progress reflect domestic policy shifts. German politics witnesses a crisis of ‘catch-all’ parties. The SDP gradually loses its electorate owing to a lack of a new efficient party program and a poor personnel structure. A representative of Saalekreis district points out that ‘the SDP is no more social’. An AfG member from Mansfeld-Südharz district answers to the question “What does the AfG undertake to defend German workers in your district?” that the district is one of the structurally weakest in Germany, that there is a huge loss of working force and workers tend to leave.
Farmers/rural inhabitants are not the main party’s claim object. However, many AfG adversaries live in rural areas in eastern Germany. To a certain extent, the AfG popularity is grounded on economic factors. People who live in eastern Germany feel uncomfortable from the economic point of view. Eastern lands are financially weaker, therefore, there is a sufficient imbalance between two state parts. The AfG successfully employs this contradiction. Apart from economic explanation, psychological one is to be taken into consideration. In Germany two political cultures confronting each other exist, and eastern Germans perceive themselves as a sort of ‘second-class’ people. Political panorama in eastern federal lands can be characterised as an arena of struggle between the AfG and the Left Party. The AfG mobilises former voters of the Left Party, as a respondent from Westthüringen district confirms. One of the reasons why former protagonists of the Left Party give preference to the AfG is a nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic. The AfG left-wing rhetoric while addressing particular social groups may contribute to the party’s success among former advocates of the Left Party. Another reason why left-wingers switch to the right is a lack of choice in terms of the mainstream parties’ crisis.
As statistics displays, the AfG is a men-oriented party. It can be explained by the fact that the party is against positive discrimination. As for the issue of religion, in eastern Germany many citizens consider themselves as non-religious. It is correlated with evidence that all dimensions of religiosity are positively linked to identification with established parties and that religiosity increases identification with religious parties.
Conclusion
The AfG fulfilled the long-established vacuum of non-representative right-wing parties in Germany. The migration crisis, the SDP party crisis, the rise of Euroscepticism, and the positioning of the AfG as an alternative to grand coalitions are among many reasons to explain their electoral success. However, these internal and external reasons could not work without the representation claims made by the party towards particular social groups.
The results suggest that the AfG put considerable attention to claim the people and families with children. In fact, these groups are very ambiguous to be represented because “the ‘pure, innocent, always hard-working people’ which the populists pit against the elite do not exist in the real world; they are an imaginary construct, created for political purposes” (Müller, 2014, p. 485). Even though the claims have been made towards a wide range of social groups, it would not be correct to label the AfG as pretending to be a ‘catch-all’ party. The difference is that the AfG is not only claiming social groups to represent but also explaining which social groups they do not stand for.
The notion of the people is too generalised and the attention to other social groups is much lower than the declarative part of the program. The AfG is a very young political party and it takes time to build up trust relationships with the electorate who used to vote for the mainstream parties like pensioners whose particularly small margin in the AfG share of votes can be explained by this fact. The AfG is taking advantage of current systemic shifts and crises but it has no clear representation of the population. Without a more systematic approach to social groups, the AfG is unlikely to increase its electoral base in the next Bundestag elections.
References
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