The Short March into Radical Right-Wing Populism. Structural Conditions as Reason for the Political Shift of the AfD (PDF)

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2018 im Fachbereich Politik - Internationale Politik - Region: Westeuropa, Note: 1,0, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Geschwister-Scholl-Institut), Veranstaltung: Populist Parties and Anti-Establishment Politics across Europe, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The question of this work is: Why shifted the AfD itself onto the radical right-wing populism between 2013 and 2017?

It will be shown, that AfD changed itself through the change of issues which is reasoned in the close responsivity to their followers reasoned in the structural construction of a new populist party. It will be the aim to illustrate, that the use of the new social media (NSM) beside the media strategy formed this trend onto RRP. So, the shift to the RRP was mainly a result of structural conditions. The close responsivity to possible followers via NSM became the reason of the choice of the migration-issue and together with AfDs strategy of political communication, this brought the party step by step onto the radical right.

This work will contribute its part to answer the question of why this is happening and if CPP are more likely to shift onto right. The structural conditioned chain shall get unraveled, which is causing the radicalization process beyond personal power struggles, which are result, but not reason of this shift onto the right. Strong responsivity via NSM caused issue decisions, benefiting the national-conservative wing and media strategic decisions, promoting more radical streams. The therefore constructed party affiliation outside the mainstream as "pariah-party" additionally boosted the radical forces.

The Alternative für Deutschland is the most successful new-founded party on federal level in Germany since the 1950s. Being a single-issue-eurosceptical party in 2013, as widely accepted in political science because of the focus to the european financial policy and the german role in it, the AfD changed in the next years to a radical right-wing populist party, as it will get expounded. Presented as centrist populist party the AfD came with the success in a state of radicalization onto right, turning the "Professoren-Partei" into the "Wutbürger-Partei".

At the beginning, the party was active in an economist-liberal manner to deny the "there is no alternative (TINA)"-policy in terms of the european financial safety net, framing the european financial crisis as "euro-crisis" and the EFSN as "barrel without ground". Later, the party picked up early the migration-issue and turned itself step by step into radicalism by framing successful the migration-issue as "loss of control" instead of "task and chance".