To Enfranchise or Not to Enfranchise? - Citizens’ Attitudes Towards Foreigners’ Voting Rights in Germany

The permanent exclusion of a group of people from the processes of political decision-making can harm the democratic quality of a country and lead to alienation from the political system. While democratic decision-making processes have become more inclusive in many countries (e.g., in terms of women's suffrage), debates on broadening the demos are ongoing. One institutional change at the center of current debates in various countries is the extension of voting rights to all residents, regardless of citizenship, at least at the local level (Earnest, 2006, 2015). In Germany, noncitizens from outside the EU are generally disenfranchised, while noncitizens from other EU member states are enfranchised at the local level as a result of the Treaty of Maastricht. While there have been normative and legal debates on the possibilities of enfranchising noncitizen residents from outside the EU, there has been a lack of analyses of citizens’ attitudes towards this enfranchisement of noncitizens. Thus, this study examines the differences in citizens’ attitudes towards noncitizen enfranchisement between EU foreigners and non-EU foreigners in particular, using data from the 2024 German GESIS Panel. It also examines citizens’ attitudes towards noncitizen enfranchisement within the German multi-level political system, identifying differences in the willingness to enfranchise noncitizens at the local, state, and federal levels.