Party-Movement-Interaction on the Far-Right from the Perspective of Movement Elites and Supporters

Political parties and social movements often foster complicated relationships - from distrustful rivalry to occasional collaboration to strategic symbiosis. While these relationships have attracted scholarly attention – most notably on movement parties and co-optation strategies – the respective focus is mostly party-centred. The (electoral) outcomes of party strategies, however, crucially depend a) on movement elites’ lasting willingness and ability to align the movement with party goals and use their resources for campaigning and b) on movement supporters not just constructing barricades but also casting ballots. For this paper, I thus shift the perspective towards movement elites and supporters and analyse their (strategic) decision-making vis-à-vis political parties. To address when, how and why different far-right movements (do not) support far-right parties, this paper uses three novel data sets on German far-right protest. Based on digital communication from selected public Telegram channels in the digital ecosystem of the German far-right, the first data set quantifies the campaign activity of movement elites during the national general election in 2025, while the second compiles their calls to action for qualitative analysis. The third provides qualitative data on the deliberation of (non-)cooperation strategies as well as (strategic) voting rationales among movement supporters. Initial results suggest considerable variation in campaign activity by movement elites as well as controversial debate on movement strategies and diverging (non-)voting rationales among movement supporters. Differences in all three are partially rooted in ideological proximity and organisational rivalries, while concerns for movement independence distinguish proponents of non-cooperation and generalised political distrust distinguishes self-identified non-voters. Taken together, these results hint towards an explanatory mechanism for electoral gains of far-right parties through successful party-movement interaction. They inform research on far-right mobilisation in general, on differences in institutional and non-institutional participation by far-right supporters and on the organisational element of a general re-alignment of political conflict in Western Europe and beyond.