After the German federal election in September 2017, a right-wing populist party has successfully entered the German Bundestag. With 92 MPs, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is now the third largest party group in the newly elected parliament. But what does this success mean and imply? Does the party fill a gap of representation in the policy landscape of Germany? Or is a more deeper dissatisfaction with the proceedings of liberal democracy the reason? Stated differently: Is the AfD’ success the product of policy or politics considerations? Which one of these two stories prevails, has crucial implications for the future of democracy and hence the normative evaluation of populists’ current successes.
With this paper we want to clarify which kind of representation the AfD supplies, based on the perceptions and preferences of their constituency. There is still an ongoing debate among scholars of populism when it comes to the question whether Populism could have a positive impact on (liberal) democracy or not. The wide range of positions reaches from populism is the only true form of democracy to the position that populism is a perversion of liberal democracy and eventually must lead to its erosion. For the German case there are two possibilities: Either the AfD received votes from its constituency because of its policy positions (especially pertaining to migration policy). In that case the populist vote could have a positive effect for democracy because it includes an otherwise not represented cleavage. On the other hand, the vote for the AfD could be motivated by a systemic discontent with the procedures of liberal democracy. In that case there could be negative consequences for democracy.
Based on the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP) – i.e. a representative online post-election survey of n= 3236 voters – we test these hypothesis for the German general election 2017. Despite some recent studies, the degree to which populist attitudes influence voting behaviour remains a puzzle (Stanley 2011). Based on the existing research for measuring populist attitudes we test the latter hypothesis through a battery of items with the dimensions of Anti-Elitism and people centrism. Both dimensions embody a challenge for democracy in its representative appearance. The first hypothesis, considering the inclusion of so far not represented issue positions, is tested through a substantial set of value and issue positions. This Operationalization leads us to two independent variables (populist attitudes vs. policy cleavages), that should be tested for their influence on the vote choice for a populist party. We also test moderating variables like internal and external efficacy or satisfaction with democracy. A great advantage of the CNEP data is the possibility to scrutinize for this influence in different societal subgroups and compare East and West German voting behaviour. Given the different socialisation situation with democracy in East- and West Germany, the inner German comparison could give interesting insights in which context the vote for a leftist or right-wing populist party is motivated by a procedural criticism or policy preferences.
