How Right-Wing Populist is the AfD?

Is the German AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) really right-wing populist? By Tanja Wolf, M.A. (University of Würzburg) Since the AfD’s rise 2013/2014 journalists and scientists were discussing how to label this new party: Is it conservative, right-wing populist, nationalist, right-wing extremist or something totally different? During the European Parliament elections 2014 German newspapers and news shows on television used at least ten different labels to describe the Alternative für Deutschland. Due to this confusion and insecurity some journalists even avoided a describing adjective while taking about the AfD, which is rather uncommon for journalists dealing with political parties. Moreover, within this year, the AfD had to cope with internal fights and a division of the party which led to the founding of a new party called Alliance for Progress and Making a New Start (Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch). These internal changes make it even harder to tell, whether the party is really right-wing populist. Some researcher, like Kai Arzheimer or Alexander Häusler, have already analyzed the AfD and then classified the party as right-wing populist. However, none of them has defined what right-wing populism means, before analyzing and classifying the party. This would be especially necessary in order to make sure that a certain party or phenomenon is definitely not ‘more’ or ‘less’ right-wing, than right-wing populist. In addition, none of them has so far explained, how they measure their understanding of right-wing populism. Therefore, this paper aims at defining the phenomenon, operationalizing the definitions and finally analyzing the AfD according to the necessary criteria. At the beginning, a short overview on the party’s history, political positions and its current development will be given. Then the method and the operationalization of the necessary criteria will be explained. In the next step, three different concepts to define and delimit right-wing populism will be introduced and afterwards applied to the Alternative for Germany. With Lars Rensmann’s division of the right-wing spectrum into two categories, i.e. right-wing extremism and right-wing populism, a rather ‘classical’ concept will be explained first. Next, right-wing populism and conservatism will be compared and distinguished from each other in order to reassure, that the AfD is not by any chance ‘less’ right-wing than right-wing populist. Before the final conclusion, my own rather extensive, three-level definition of right-wing populism will be introduced and applied to make sure that the AfD is not only right-wing populist in comparison to other concepts, but that the party is right-wing populist per se.