Reactions of the Mainstream Parties towards their Right-Wing Populist Challengers – Dealing with the AfD in German Federal States

Since the 1980s, there has been a lot of research on right-wing populist parties (RPPs), especially on their conditions for success, policies and voters, though the academic discourse on their influences and the political reactions on them has been slow to start. The same applies to the ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ (AfD), which was founded only in 2013 and which is already represented in all German state parliaments, the German Bundestag and the European Parliament. Whereas there is already a lot of research on the party itself and its voters, there is almost none on the question how the established parties can, should and actually deal with the new challenger in parliament and how effective these reactions are. Experience from all over the world shows that it is crucial how the established parties deal with those new challengers from the very beginning. The research question of this PhD thesis therefore is: ‘How do the mainstream parties react on the AfD in parliament, and why?’ Theoretically, I work with different ‘formal’ strategies (legal restrictions, cordon sanitaire, direct or indirect collaboration) and reactions related to issues and positions (ignore, demonise, defuse, hold, adopt). The cases (Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Wuerttemberg) are selected on a MDCD logic by two main criteria: the level of ‘radicalness’ of the RPPs and different parliamentary constellations. Methodologically, I combine media analysis, parliamentary document analysis and guided interviews with all mainstream parties in those countries. It is thus possible to show that all of them have changed their reactions over time. This ‘learning process’ can be explained by different factors such as the increasing understanding of the way the AfD works in parliament, how the party has changed itself and if a mainstream party finds itself in government or opposition. In contrast, other factors such as experiences with former ‘new’ challenger parties or agreements between the parties, maybe even across German federal states or in other European states, only play a marginal role. All in all, the work contributes to classifying and operationalizing party reactions on RPPs in parliaments and deriving specific recommendations for action.