Does Right-Wing Violence Affect Public Support for Radical Right Parties? Evidence from Germany

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231169021
• Author: Werner Krause,Miku Matsunaga
• Date: 01 December 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(14) 2269–2305

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231169021

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Does Right-Wing

Violence Affect Public

Support for Radical Right

Parties? Evidence from

Germany

Werner Krause

1

and Miku Matsunaga

2



Abstract

This article examines whether citizens’political preferences toward radical

right parties (RRPs) change after right-wing extremist violent attacks. It in-

vestigates this question in two ways. First, it presents a time-series study on

public support for the RRP Alternative for Germany (AfD) between 2013 and

2019. Second, the article employs a quasi-experimental research design to

examine the effect of a right-wing terrorist attack on citizens’attitudes toward

immigrants. Both studies indicate that public support for the AfD and its

programmatic core positions increased after right-wing extremist attacks.

Subsequent analyses suggest that former voters of the mainstream right, in

particular, drive this effect. These f‌indings shed light on the determinants of

radical right party support, contributing to the long-standing debate on the

consequences of political violence.

Keywords

radical right parties, voting behavior, right-wing extremism, political violence

1

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

2

The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Corresponding Author:

Werner Krause, Department of Government, University of Vienna, Rooseveltplatz 3, 1090

Vienna, Austria.

Email: werner.krause@univie.ac.at

How does right-wing extremist (RWE) violence affect the attitudes of voters

toward radical right parties (RRPs)? In the face of mounting fatal attacks

committed by members of far-right movements around the globe, this

question has become increasingly crucial to examine. Tragic examples of such

violence include the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya (2011), Florence

(2011), Charleston (2015), Munich (2016), Charlottesville (2017), Pittsburgh

(2018), Macerata (2019), Christchurch (2019), El Paso (2019), Halle (2019),

Hanau (2020), Buffalo (2022), Paris (2022), or Bratislava (2022). Further-

more, between 2014 and 2019, EUROPOL documented the arrests of

142 right-wing terrorists in the European Union—more than triple the arrests

from 2008 to 2013.

1

According to numbers published in the 2020 Global

Terrorism Index, the number of far-right attacks in North America, Western

Europe, and Oceania increased by 250% since 2014 (Institute for Economics

& Peace, 2020). However, the consequences of RWE violence for RRPs’

electoral support are unclear.

One perspective holds that such attacks might increase sympathy for

immigrants and reduce RRP support (Allern & Karlsen, 2014;Jakobsson &

Blom, 2014). Especially, populist RRPs have gained electoral ground by

presenting themselves as “true”democrats. Their policy programs are more

moderate than those of less successful extreme right parties; they also abstain

from openly advocating the use of violence to achieve their political goals

(e.g., Art, 2011;Carter, 2005;Minkenberg, 2000;Mudde, 2007,2019;van der

Brug et al., 2005). Therefore, if voters associate these RRPs with RWEs, it is

expected that their support will decline.

However, another concerning view posits that, as election trends suggest,

RRPs have not suffered electorally despite increasing levels of RWE violence.

As put by Ohlemacher (1994, p. 234), violent right-wing attacks can act as the

starting point of a “spiral of speaking out”and thus increase anti-immigrant

sentiment in the population. In this vein, right-wing violence can increase the

salience of RRPs’core issues, such as immigration and cultural protectionism,

in the public debate. In addition, right-wing attacks frequently trigger in-

creasing elite polarization over the causes and implications of these attacks. In

particular, RRPs use immigration as an “omnibus issue”(Williams, 2006,

pp. 54–63) and frame it as the alleged “root cause”of right-wing violence.

Both these factors—issue salience and elite polarization—can mobilize voters

prone to anti-immigrant views in favor of RRPs.

The relationship between RWE violence and RRP support is tested by

focusing on the case of Germany between 2013 and 2019. Since the beginning

of the 21st century, Germany has experienced an increasing number of high-

prof‌ile deadly right-wing attacks (e.g., the National Socialist Underground

murders, the murder of Walter Lübcke, or the attacks of Halle, Hanau, and

Munich). Moreover, the increased inf‌lux of migrants since 2015 has been

associated with numerous stabbings, shootings, and arson attacks against

2270 Comparative Political Studies 56(14)

refugees, their accommodations, religious buildings, and pro-migrant and left-

wing politicians. Several characteristics, such as the frequency of violent

incidents, the historical legacy of right-wing extremism, or the increasing

immigration numbers, make Germany, to some extent, an exceptional case to

investigate the political consequences of RWE attacks (see Section A1 for a

detailed discussion of the case selection). That said, looking at Germany has

crucial implications for understanding right-wing violence beyond the case

under study. If the hypothesis that RRP support rises after RWE attacks is not

supported in Germany, we have reason to assume that right-wing violence will

not have a mobilizing effect on RRPs in other countries.

The analysis proceeds in two parts. First, we utilize a data set that combines

weekly survey estimates with information on incidents of RWE violence. By

employing time-series models and Granger “causality”

2

tests, we analyze the

impact of increasing right-wing violence on public support for the RRP Alter-

native for Germany (AfD) between 2013 and 2019. This approach accounts for

possible dynamics that run counter to the expected relationship, that is, that public

support for RRPs inf‌luences the number of violent RWE incidents. Second, a

quasi-experimental setup is used. The German f‌ieldwork period of the Euro-

barometer survey 91.5 covered the arrest after a major right-wing terror attack: the

politician Walter Lübcke’s assassination. Lübcke, a member of the center-right

German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was murdered for his aff‌irmative

stance on welcoming refugees to Germany. This setting allows for estimating the

treatment effect of the right-wing terrorist’sapprehension comparing respondents’

attitudes toward immigration prior to and subsequent to the arrest. Moreover, the

combination of the time-sensitive estimation technique of the f‌irst study with the

quasi-experimental design of the second helps to isolate the effect of RWE

violence on public opinion. Combining both will reduce the risk that biases dueto

omitted variables or problems related to potential endogeneity will interfere with

interpreting the results.

The empirical results indicate that anti-immigrant sentiment and RRP

support have increased after RWE attacks. Although the identif‌ied effects are

moderate in magnitude, this article’sf‌indings suggest that right-wing violence

can be a driver rather than a consequence of the rise of the radical right. Hence,

increasing RWE violence does not necessarily contradict public approval of

RRPs. Supplementary analyses indicate that former voters of the mainstream

right drive these shifts in public opinion. This f‌inding contributes to the

growing literature on right-wing violence, which has mostly treated it as a

dependent variable (e.g., Ravndal, 2018). The study is also a signif‌icant

contribution to existing scholarship on the consequences of terrorist and

violent events (e.g., Abrahms, 2006,2012;Gould & Klor, 2010;Helbling &

Meierrieks, 2022;Thomas, 2014) by extending current discussions to the

increasingly widespread form of right-wing extremism.

Krause and Matsunaga 2271