January 2025, for the first time in the postwar history of Germany's national parliament, a mainstream political party (the Christian Democratic Union) relied on the support of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to pass a motion. This prompted intense public debate as many Germans worried that...

Nachdem im Deutschen Bundestag Ende Januar 2025 erstmals eine politische Mehrheit mit den Stimmen der AfD zustande kam, sind viele Deutsche besorgt, dass es bald weitergehende Kooperation mit der AfD geben könnte. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht unsere Studie den Stand der Brandmauer in...

Seit Jahresbeginn 2024 finden deutschlandweit Proteste gegen Rechtsextremismus großen Zulauf. Doch ist es tatsächlich eine "schweigende Mehrheit", die hier für Demokratie aufsteht? In diesem Policy Paper stellen wir die Ergebnisse einer Befragung dreier Protestveranstaltungen vor und...

Der scharfe Ost-West-Unterschied, welcher in der kartografischen Darstellung regionaler Wahlergebnisse zum Vorschein tritt, verändert sich deutlich, sobald man regionalspezifische Charakteristika berücksichtigt. Die höhere Präferenz für die AfD ist nach Berücksichtigung der Merkmale...

Beeinflusst zunehmender Rechtspopulismus die Attraktivität von Wirtschaftsstandorten? Um dieser Frage nachzugeben, wird zum einen ein Überblick über die dazu bestehende Fachliteratur gegeben. Zum anderen werden Ergebnisse eines laufenden Forschungsprojektes vorgestellt, in dem untersucht...

Seit Jahresbeginn 2024 finden deutschlandweit Proteste gegen Rechtsextremismus großen Zulauf. Doch ist es tatsächlich eine "schweigende Mehrheit", die hier für Demokratie aufsteht? In diesem Policy Paper stellen wir die Ergebnisse einer Befragung dreier Protestveranstaltungen vor und...

Der scharfe Ost-West-Unterschied, welcher in der kartografischen Darstellung regionaler Wahlergebnisse zum Vorschein tritt, verändert sich deutlich, sobald man regionalspezifische Charakteristika berücksichtigt. Die höhere Präferenz für die AfD ist nach Berücksichtigung der Merkmale...

A possible re-election of Donald Trump as US president in November 2024 could entail a significant upheaval for the world trading order, if he fulfills his announcements to raise tariffs, mainly in order to reduce the US trade deficit. Such steps would not only have a negative effect on the...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: “Persecution Perpetuated” (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

We study how anti-fascism during Mussolini's dictatorship in Italy affects support for right-wing parties at 1948-2022 democratic elections. Using newly-digitized historical data, we construct a measure of anti-fascism from the universe of recorded regime opponents, and we resolve simultaneity...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: "Persecution Perpetuated" (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

Xi Jinping has been pushing to make his thought a major addition to China’s ideology, which guides China’s direction of travel. No other Chinese leader apart from Mao Zedong had their theoretical contributions elevated to this status. This book provides a contextualized reading of Xi Jinping...

This paper investigates the consequences of immigration, crime and socio-economic depriviation for the performance of right-wing extremist and populist parties in the German city state of Hamburg between 1986 and 2005. The ecological determinants of voting for right-wing parties on the district...

Right-wing extremism is a serious problem in many societies. A prominent hypothesis states that unemployment plays a crucial role for the occurrence of right-wing extremist crime. In this paper we empirically test this hypothesis. We use a previously not used data set which includes all...

Western European Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) have addressed the dispersed socio-economic status of their electorates by blurring their economic positioning. This contribution analyses the rise of the German PRRP Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between 2013 and 2017 and the role of...

Though we usually think of the German Nazi Party as a relic of a tragic past, the rise of Nazismcontinues to hold significant relevance to the modern global environment. In the last few years, there has been another increase in the popularity of fascism in the United States and throughout the...

Exploiting differences in occupation status in East Germany in the last days of World War II and shortly thereafter, we find that regions which – due to their occupation status – experienced a drastic supply problem caused by the influx of great numbers of refugees fleeing from the Red Army...

Does the presence of immigrants in one's neighbourhood affect voting for far right-wing parties? We study the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) which, under the leadership of Jörg Haider, increased its vote share from less than 5 percent in the early 1980s to 27 percent by the end of...

In this paper we document the impact of immigration at the regional level on Europeans' political preferences as expressed by voting behavior in parliamentary or presidential elections between 2007 and 2016. We combine individual data on party voting with a classification of each party's...

In this paper we document the impact of immigration at the regional level on Europeans' political preferences as expressed by voting behavior in parliamentary or presidential elections between 2007 and 2016. We combine individual data on party voting with a classification of each party's...

Kinder und Jugendliche sind bei Bundestagswahlen nicht wahlberechtigt. Dies wird zumeist mit fehlender politischer Reife begründet. In diesem Artikel simulieren wir, wie die Bundestagswahl 2017 ohne das Mindestwahlalter von 18 Jahren ausgegangen wäre („Kinderwahlrecht“). Wir nutzen Daten...

Die Partei „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD) hätte bei einer Bundestagswahl im Dezember 2016 mehr Stimmen bekommen als alle anderen Oppositionsparteien in Deutschland. Die Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V. weist in ihrem Politbarometer für Dezember 2016 eine Zustimmung zur AfD von 12 Prozent...

The current historical consensus on the economic causes of the inexorable Nazi electoral success between 1930 and 1933 suggests this was largely related to the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression (high unemployment and financial instability). However, these factors cannot fully account...

We study the link between fiscal austerity and Nazi electoral success. Voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 shows that areas more affected by austerity (spending cuts and tax increases) had relatively higher vote shares for the Nazi...

Mit zunehmender Flüchtlingsmigration nach Deutschland haben SPD-Chef Sigmar Gabriel und andere Politiker mögliche Verteilungskonflikte thematisiert. Besonders die sozial Schwachen würden vernachlässigt und in die Arme rechter Parteien getrieben. Zwischen Sorgen über die Zuwanderung auf der...