Uploading Strategies from the State to the Federal Level? How Mainstream Parties Learn to Deal with the AfD in Parliament

While Germany was long considered relatively immune to the far right, the ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ (AfD) has managed to establish itself very quickly at the local, subnational and national level. In 2014, it first entered various state parliaments and in 2017 the Bundestag. Past experience shows that mainstream parties’ responses play a crucial role in determining the impact of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) (Downs 2001; Meguid 2005; Art 2007; Mudde 2007; Bale et al. 2010; Heinze 2018). In Germany, too, mainstream parties at the state level have already been able to gather a wide range of experience with "their" AfD factions and adapted their responses over time (Heinze 2020). In this learning process, the AfD's ideological orientation and parliamentary work were particularly important. The more radical the party appeared, for example, the more strictly it was excluded. Moreover, mainstream parties increasingly understood that the AfD is hardly interested in active participation in the committees and in plenary. For instance, it has repeatedly tried to “blow up” parliamentary debates by provocation and reused parts of them in its social media channels. In this paper, I analyse to what extent mainstream parties at the federal level have been able to learn from their sister parties at the state level in dealing with the AfD or whether they have fallen into the same “traps”. Thereby, I analyse a wide range of data, namely semi-structured interviews with all mainstream parties represented in parliament (CDU, SPD, Greens, Left, and Liberals), content analysis of parliamentary documents, and media analysis. My results will show that the learning processes were only partially transferred and that some party responses have had the same effects as at the state level. For example, strict exclusion has enabled the AfD to stage itself as a "victim" and strengthen its power of discourse. Moreover, the parliament’s ability to act can be reduced or even completely obstructed this way (e.g. by the non-election of AfD candidates in parliamentary bodies). At the same time, if the parties simply ignore the AfD’s “breaches of taboo”, they also risk their normalization. It is precisely this area of conflict which makes the “right” way of dealing with PRRPs a constant balancing act for mainstream parties. Overall, the paper contributes with both theoretical arguments and empirical data to the literature on party responses towards PRRPs and their effects. It will not only enrich the understanding of how PRRPs pose a challenge to parliamentary actors and institutions, but also how to respond to them.