Populism and propagation of far-right extremism

Abstract

Under which conditions does populist success propagate far-right extremism? This paper examines how an information shock about the acceptance of xenophobic positions spurs an increase in far-right protests in more liberal areas in Germany. Using staggered state elections between 2014 and 2017 as a quasi-natural experiment and leveraging novel data, I show that far-right protests are unleashed in more liberal areas which were “shocked” by the surprising state-level results of the newly emerging right-wing populist AfD party (“Alternative für Deutschland”). The effect is sizeable, but depends on surprise. When success of the populist party is severely underestimated, a municipality with a populist vote share 10 percentage points below state average faces a roughly 30 percent increase of the mean likelihood of an additional far-right protest. The effect materializes only after the rightward shift of the AfD and vanishes when polling institutions correctly estimate the populist party’s success.