The Alternative für Deutschland in the Bundestag: A Threat to Legislative Procedures?

The 2017 Freedom House report warns that the global retreat of democracy does now also affect established democracies. In particular, the advent of radical national parties arguably increased the danger of ‘fragmented parliaments with no governing majority’. Against this background, this paper aims to analyse at the impact of the Alternative für Deutschland, arguably a radical nationalist party of opposition, on legislative procedures. It does so in a twofold comparison: First, a long-term analysis of the Bundestag which suggests that German legislators did indeed learn their lesson from the breakdown of (legislative) democracy between 1930 and 1933. Second, the paper compares the Bundestag to the Swedish Riksdag where a radical nationalist opposition emerged as early as 2006 (when the Sweden Democrats entered the Riksdag). This cross-case comparison suggests that procedural responses to radical oppositions are useless as long as the opposition party does not engage in legislative obstruction.