Cause or Effect? The AfD and Attitudes toward Immigration

• In Event: Migration, Populism and Democratic Politics in Europe

Abstract

Is support for immigrants and immigration affected by the far-right? While we know a great deal about immigration’s role in populist support for the far-right, we know surprisingly little about the inverse. In this article, I address this question; exploring the extent to which far-right governance shapes public immigration attitudes. I specifically consider the case of Germany, whose 2017 election resulted in a sharp exodus of voters from mainstream parties to the soundly anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD). In doing so, I exploit Germany’s seat allotment formula to compare constituencies on either side of the 5% threshold necessary for a political party to obtain seats in Germany’s first vote. Using a difference in difference design, this comparison provides the necessary causal leverage to compare regions with a narrowly elected AfD representative to those who narrowly escaped AfD representation. Combining this regional variation with individual panel data across the country and over two years, I find electoral success of the AfD did not lead to an overall increase in xenophobic attitudes. Instead, citizens appear significantly more favourable toward immigrants and immigrations over time in the aftermath of a successful AfD election. Citizens therefore appear to increasingly reject the anti-immigrant rhetoric once these far-right parties come to power. Further, citizens appear to feel less attached to Germany as a whole when residing within a successful AfD electorate. Together, these findings illuminate the role of immigration salience in governance and the improve our understanding of the longitudinal consequences of the far-right in democratic society.

Author

• Hannah Marie Alarian, Princeton University