Radical-right parties – A threat for (even militant) democracies? The German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its strategy towards Germany’s militant democracy.

The recent rise of radical-right parties in Europe and beyond has led to extensive public debates and academic research about potential consequences for liberal democracies around the world. This proposed paper argues that whether radical-right parties constitute a threat for liberal democracy can be evaluated by tracing radical-right parties’ interactions with liberal democracies’ safeguarding mechanisms in militant democracies. To do so, the author presents a single-case study and explores the AfD’s strategy towards Germany’s militant democracy. As Art (2010) points out, radical-right parties in Germany face a particularly hostile environment – not only due to the vivid culture of remembrance and the common understanding of Germany’s responsibility for the horrors of the Second World War, but more importantly due to Germany’s militant democracy, a direct outcome of the latter. Right after the Second World War, the Weimar Republic’s failure in their minds and with the clear goal to make any future attack against Germany’s new democratic order impossible, the founders of Germany’s constitution did not only protect certain principles of liberal democracy with an eternity clause, but also established the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC). Up until today, this institution has the task to monitor potential threats to liberal democracy – such as political parties with an aggressive, combative attitude towards liberal democracy – and to collect information for potential actions against these threats, such as party-bans. Hence, when investigating whether radical-right parties must be considered a threat for liberal democracy, Germany should be considered a hard case – if radical-right parties can become a substantive threat to liberal democracy in Germany, they can become a substantive threat anywhere. This paper will therefore present an analysis of the AfD’s strategy towards Germany’s OPC. It will rely on twenty interviews with radical-right politicians, officials within Germany’s OPC, journalists and scholars as well as a thorough analysis of primary sources about the AfD’s strategy towards the OPC. The analysis reveals that the AfD was aware that the party would receive the OPC’s attention and was highly alert that public steps taken by the OPC could have a negative and serious effect on their electoral trajectory. However, the party refused to be a passive recipient of such steps. Instead, its officials built a multifaceted strategy to undermine militant democracy’s defence mechanisms: The party publicly denounced the OPC as a political institution acting in the government’s favour, it offensively threatened the OPC with legal counteractions, and it taught its officials to shift statements pointing towards an aggressive, combative attitude towards Germany’s liberal democracy to the party’s backstage. By doing so, the AfD found a way to lever out a significant safeguard of Germany’s liberal democracy. Considering Germany’s role as a hard case for radical-right parties potentially being a threat to liberal democracies, these findings should be a wake-up call for liberal democracies’ advocates around the world. Bibliography Art, David (2010): Memory Politics in Western Europe. EUI Working Paper MWP 2010/01. Max Weber Programme, Italy: European University Institute.