How Democracy Works within a Populist Party: Candidate Selection in the Alternative for Germany

Abstract

Does the demand for more direct democracy by populist parties have any implications for their internal decision-making? To answer this question, a novel large-scale research project analyses the 2017 candidate selection of all Bundestag parties, including the populist Alternative for Germany. Some 1,334 individual nominations of seven parties are compared using quantitative indicators along three dimensions of intra-party democracy (IPD): competition between aspirants for candidacy, inclusion of members and nomination-related communication. It shows that the AfD is living up to its promise of practising grassroots democracy: in all results it ranks at the top by a wide margin. A new populist organizational model seems to have emerged following neither the classic hierarchical and leader-oriented mode of many other European right-wing populist parties nor the delegate assembly mode typical of German parties. Our further development of IPD concepts, newly elaborated measuring methods and surprising empirical evidence improve the understanding of democratic decision-making in populist parties.

Digitalization in Candidate Selection. Support and Resistance Within Established Political Parties in Germany

“…We could for example also hypothesize that for some members, the opposition might stem from the reluctance to have party culture be questioned and re-discussed. German established parties specifically rely on "consensus-oriented IPD" (Höhne, 2021), which members might have internalized as the only legitimate mode of internal decision-making, while digital tools could possibly be associated with a more plebiscitary kind of decision-making. It could also be argued that the reluctance for online consultations is related to the fact that members themselves do not wish to participate more (Schindler and Höhne, 2020).…”

“…Nevertheless, as in several other representative democracies, established parties in Germany have been in turmoil in recent years, as socioeconomic and sociocultural cleavages appear to be shifting while the traditional party affiliations of certain social groups are changing (Hutter et al, 2019;Borucki and Fitzpatrick, 2021;Casal Bértoa and Rama, 2021). The 2017 election saw the populist radical right party-the Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013 and relying on a style of IPD very much based on direct participation (Heinze and Weisskircher, 2021;Höhne, 2021;Kamenova, 2021)-entering the national Parliament for the first time. In more recent years, the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Left, and the Green Party all engaged in discussions about potential reforms of their internal decision processes.…”

No Strong Leaders Needed? AfD Party Organisation Between Collective Leadership, Internal Democracy, and “Movement-Party” Strategy

“…The AfD also had the strongest internal competition: Almost every place was contested. While still only 42 percent of its members were very satisfied with the opportunities for participation, this was more than for any other parties and about twice as high as for CDU and SPD (all data from Höhne, 2021).…”

The informal rules of candidate selection and their impact on intra-party competition

“…As a new party that has been represented in the Bundestag since 2017, incumbents could be renominated for the first time in the 2021 Federal elections. Therefore, future studies need to explore whether the AfD will adopt the incumbency rule in the future due to a process of socialization (see Poguntke, 2017 for such processes in the Green party), or whether it will reject it due to their advocacy of grassroots democracy (Höhne, 2021), and their rejection of professional politicians. 3.…”