This paper examines the link of political participation and employment status in a dualized labor market. Both insiders and outsiders can actively take part in political decision-making, e.g. by voting for a certain party. Insiders only have the resources to also provide financial donations to...

We study whether the experience of losing one's job due to the Treuhand activities in the early 1990s affected long-term political behavior among citizens of the former German Democratic Republic. During the German Reunification process, the Treuhand coordinated the privatization of former GDR...

Do politically administered mass layoffs undermine trust and political interest? During the German reunification, formerly state-owned socialist firms in East Germany were privatized by the Treuhand, which came at the cost of massive job losses and public protest. I demonstrate that these...

Why should political parties say what they do not want instead of saying what they want? In this paper, we introduce the concept of negative positioning into spatial models of voting and discuss its relevance as a campaigning tool in European multiparty systems. By negative positioning, we refer...

This paper investigates the effect of aggregate-level information shocks regarding support for a populist right-wing party on the individual disposition to report a respective political preference in survey interviews. Despite controversial debates about the social acceptability of its...

Despite controversial debates about the social acceptability of its nationalist program, the rightwing populist AfD has recently entered all state parliaments as well as the federal parliament in Germany. Although professed AfD voters faced a likely risk of social stigmatization, electoral...

We empirically examine the relationship between shares of foreigners in a district and the share of votes cast in that district for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the major anti-immigrant party in the 2017 German parliamentary election. The classic theory on the political economy of...

We empirically examine the relationship between shares of foreigners and shares of votes cast for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the major anti-immigrant party in the 2017 German parliamentary election. The classic theory on the political economy of migration supposes that immigration...