Transnational Populism in Austria and Germany? Comparing the Austrian Freedom Party and the Alternative for Germany

Populists are defined by structuring their discourses around an antagonistic relationship between ‘the people’ and (corrupt) elites. Moreover, these discourses and their underlying programmatic positions are said to be characterized by ambivalence and opportunism so as to allow populist actors to adapt to changes in political competition and opportunities of cooperation. No claims are more central than that about ‘the people’ and their vulnerabilities and possibilities. While the literature often implies that radical right populist notions about ‘the people’ and their ‘enemies’ are same across countries especially in similar contexts, we wonder to what extent they adapt these concepts strategically and even diffuse them transnationally. To investigate this question, this paper compares the populist and nativist policy positions and discourses of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – two radical right populist parties with very similar cultural and institutional contexts. Using qualitative text analysis of these parties’ manifestos, we investigate whether the FPÖ and AfD construct ‘the people’ and the threats they face in similar ways, including whether this construction has a transnational Germanic dimension, and compare their policies ‘for the people’. We take party life cycle effects into account by comparing these parties’ manifestos in 2017 and also include the FPÖ manifestos from 1990 and 1993, which signify its turn into a populist radical right party. By comparing the manifestations of populism and nativism of two parties that should most likely have a transnational dimension, our findings will shed light on the realities of whether a transnational populism exists and what it might look like.