SOEP Brown Bag Seminar

A consistent finding in research on the success of right-wing populist parties is that they gain support in regions that are peripheralized. In such regions, the decline of manufacturing jobs, public services, and infrastructure is thought to lead to growing frustration with democratic institutions and mainstream political parties, providing opportunities for right-wing populist parties to capitalize on these sentiments and present themselves as a viable alternative.

In our study, we seek to examine this nexus between regional decline, satisfaction with democracy and support for populist right-wing parties. Regarding Germany, we ask three questions:
1. How does regional decline affect satisfaction with democracy?
2. How does a declining satisfaction with democracy affect support for the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)?
3. How does regional decline affect support for the AfD?

To answer our research questions, we combine longitudinal panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel with a unique longitudinal dataset on regionalized structural variables in Germany. Using this dataset, we first profile the trajectory of regions using latent class analysis. We then employ longitudinal mediation models and estimate the full causal effect as well as the natural indirect effect of regional decline on support for the AfD.

Preliminary results show that residents of declining regions are indeed more likely to support the AfD, but that both the overall and indirect effects of living in a declining region are rather small, especially compared to other determinants of populist right-wing support, such as anti-immigration attitudes.