Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW): Left-Wing Authoritarian—and Populist? An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Germany’s relatively stable party system faces a new left-authoritarian challenger: Sahra Wagenknecht’s Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party. First polls indicate that for the BSW, election results above 10% are within reach. While Wagenknecht’s positions in economic and cultural terms have already been discussed, this article elaborates on another highly relevant feature of Wagenknecht, namely her populist communication. Exploring Wagenknecht’s and BSW’s populist appeal helps us to understand why the party is said to also have potential among seemingly different voter groups coming from the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and far left Die Linke, which share high levels of populist attitudes. To analyse the role that populist communication plays for Wagenknecht and the BSW, this article combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative analysis covers all speeches (10,000) and press releases (19,000) published by Die Linke members of Parliament (MPs; 2005–2023). The results show that Wagenknecht is the (former) Die Linke MP with the highest share of populist communication. Furthermore, she was also able to convince a group of populist MPs to join the BSW. The article closes with a qualitative analysis of BSW’s manifesto that reveals how populist framing plays a major role in this document, in which the political and economic elites are accused of working against the interest of “the majority”. Based on this analysis, the classification of the BSW as a populist party seems to be appropriate.