Unpacking action repertoire of right-wing political parties: Findings from Germany Open Access

Recent studies of right-wing political parties have stressed importance of ‘internal supply side’ of these parties leading to more party-centric explanations. Following this lead, the present paper uses an ethnographic approach to empirically explore micro-mobilisation endeavours of a German right-wing party called Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The paper draws upon social movement studies to highlight the constitutive role of grass root AfD members in creating a position of strength for their party in Saxony. Based on original, extensive fieldwork, I argue that one of the important reasons AfD has emerged as a significant player in the eastern German state of Saxony lies in party’s skilful appropriation of standard political action repertoire. Party members not only draw upon resources embedded in their social surroundings, but by using organisational forms as frame, they are also able to shape and create favourable political opportunities for their party.

More than 20 years ago, political scientist Sheri Berman famously argued that political parties were not hapless victims of external demand and supply factors but active shapers of their own fate (Berman, 1997). Since then, with regards to right-wing political parties, a number of scholars have heeded her call and acknowledged the constitutive role of organisational structures in right-wing parties’ trajectories (Carter, 2005; Mudde, 2007; Norris, 2005). Many have drawn upon social movement scholarship to illuminate the so-called supply-side of right-wing politics pointing to factors such as party ideology and leadership, as well as political opportunity structure as networking field of right-wing parties (Art, 2011; Caiani, della Porta, & Wagemann, 2012; Klandermans & Mayer, 2006; Rydgren, 2018). As important as this drive towards party-centric explanations is, it has nevertheless failed to fully realise the implications of Berman’s argument. Sociologically oriented studies have certainly challenged the orthodoxy of the so-called demand-side explanations of party performance, yet their supply-side analysis seems to suffer from the same ‘structural bias’ that Goodwin and Jasper accuse many social movement scholars of (1999). Often determined by the prerogatives of large-scale cross-country frameworks prevalent in comparative politics, such studies feel compelled to treat some of their most crucial variables like the quality of right-wing activists, their political legitimacy in host societies as fixed and unchanging. However, issues of lifeworld, legitimacy, and agency are not static but constantly shifting in our increasingly unpredictable world. They are not mere independent variables affecting parties’ growth and future but are themselves susceptible to changes triggered by activism and discourses constructed by members of those very parties.

In this paper, I foreground the nature and impacts of precisely these practices, strategies, and discourses of right-wing politics. The paper is based on ground-up ethnographic exploration of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a German right-wing political party. Recalibrating the scholarly gaze from international or national to a regional and local level focused on a single right-wing party allows one to better capture the non-structural forces of agency of party activists that impact the performance of the party. I argue in this paper that, like social movements, right-wing political parties too are active shapers of their own fate and their activists play a crucial role in determining the trajectories of their organisation. Through strategies of resource mobilisation, networking, a broad action repertoire and skilful framing of their narratives party members on the ground shape their party’s course. The paper is divided in six parts. Part 1 briefly discusses the theoretical premise of the analysis. Part 2 details methods of data collection. Part 3 provides a brief introduction of the party and situates it in the national and regional political context in Germany. Part 4 and 5 entail the empirical core of the argument. Part 4 also illuminates the variety of resources AfD members bring to the party. Part 5 focuses on engagement strategies of party activists and their organisational dimensions. Part 6 summarises the findings and reaffirms the need to develop fine-tuned, in-depth studies of right-wing organisations for rigorous, better informed explanations of their performance.

As previously stated, applying concepts from social movement studies to right-wing collective action is not novel. Scholars have drawn upon social movement theory to examine political opportunity structures (Koopmans, 1996, 2005), action repertoire (Caiani et al., 2012), and networking avenues (Klandermans & Mayer, 2006), as well as framing exercises (Rydgren, 2005) of right-wing parties. In this paper, I deepen this application by looking closely into AfD’s efforts of mobilising resources and organisational forms on the ground. In the history of social movement studies, resource mobilisation approach made a decisive break with grievance-based conception of social movements and underscored the importance of initiatives taken by movement activists in mobilising support, reducing costs of action, developing external consensus, and forging specific actions to convey their messages (della Porta & Diani, 2006, p. 15). Assets, capacities, and strategies of aggrieved groups lie at the core of this approach. The resources can be tangible (money, skills, networks) and also intangible (solidarity). Meso-level groups, formal networks, and informal social ties are considered the collective building blocks of social movements (McAdam, 1988). Based on their capabilities and resources, movement activists pursue action strategies and organise discontent. These action forms are defined as ‘repertoire of collection action’ (Tilly, 1978, pp. 151–159). The concept of action repertoire implies a range of forms of actions available to activists to make socio-political claims and effect change. Tilly also reminds us that the action forms are multiple yet they are path-dependent and constrained by concerns of their suitability to host societies. The forms of organising protest or discontent are thus contingent and embedded in particular historical and geographical settings (1978, pp. 151–153). Only those action forms that operate within the normative boundaries of given social environment are likely to be accepted by the society and rendered effective. Taking the argument further, sociologist Elizabeth Clemens speaks of ‘organisational repertoire’ which she defines as a ‘set of organisational models that are culturally or experientially available to the movements’ at any given time and space (1993, p. 758). Social movement scholars have long noted that both individuals and organisations seek to justify their activities within a broader normative system using a register of actions that are historically and culturally appropriate. The organisational forms function much like a ‘bricoleur’, as Clemens calls them, who reshuffle and tinker familiar forms of organisation to mobilise challenges to existing institutions (2008, p. 206). In the process, the form of organisation itself becomes a frame to effect change.

Right-wing political groups like AfD operate and devise their strategies along similar lines. Art’s (2011) influential analysis of European right-wing parties shows that the quality of party activists is of paramount importance in parties’ electoral performance. Like social movements, right-wing political parties gather strength from resourcefulness of their activists, their skill sets, and formal and informal social networks. Contrary to their popular image, right-wing political activists are not innately authoritarian or irrational but purposeful, rational actors, who carefully weigh cost and benefits of their actions (Blee, 2002; Klandermans & Mayer, 2006). They hail from various backgrounds, professions, levels of political experience, and networks. Based on their resources, right-wing party activists (much like movement activists) devise strategies to engage with the wider public and mobilise manifest as well as potential supporters. They often do so by resorting to tried and tested action forms that have established themselves in the host societies over a period of time termed as action repertoire in social movement studies. Like social movements, right-wing groups’ choice of action strategies is path-dependent, contingent, and embedded in the broad normative register of the societies they operate in (Caiani et al., 2012). Within the realm of organised politics, right-wing groups draw upon well-trodden, legitimate means of political claim-making including election campaigns, lobbying, or representation in local self-government bodies. By drawing upon a standard political repertoire, they seek to raise their profile as a serious political player and strive to gain societal legitimacy – a factor of crucial importance for stigmatised political groupings. Their choice of organisational forms can thus act as a frame to maximise their appeal. As much as they draw upon resources embedded in their socio-political opportunity structure, they can also shape and even create opportunities based on their activism, when they use their organisation as frame. As Gamson and Meyer (2008) perceptively note, political opportunities are not just an independent variable but are themselves subject to formation and change. They do not merely exist as structurally given but are also cognitively constructed by actors. The authors denounce a uniform, static conception of political opportunity as absent or present. Instead, they speak of relative opportunities or smaller issue-based opportunities that are perceived as such by activists and seized upon to create change (2008). Building on these valuable insights, my exploration of AfD members’ activism at local level focuses on agency of grassroots party members and the impact it brings to bear upon the political opportunity structure. Right-wing activists’ credentials and strategic choices play a far more important role in deciding the fate of their parties than is it commonly acknowledged. To be sure, AfD operates in Germany in a political context whose contours were drawn much before the party came into existence. Party members thus indeed show path-dependent traits but the ways in which they appropriate historical legacies, political opportunities and networking capacities determine the success or weakness of the party they support and work for. An ethnographic exploration of the micro-mobilisation contexts of AfD members reveals some of these unacknowledged mechanisms of gaining influence.

This paper is primarily a qualitative study of party organisation. It draws heavily upon data from a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork which I undertook to interact with and observe AfD members in Saxony. During the period of fieldwork, I met with 41 party members from party’s 10 district branches (Kreisverbände) in Saxony, namely those in Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Vogtlandkreis, Erzgebirge, Mittelsachsen, Nordsachsen, Görlitz, and Zwickau. The fieldwork lasted from September 2018 to October 2020. The inquiry began in form of semi-structured interviews exploring members’ motivations, backgrounds, and experiences in the party. However, the format soon evolved into more informal lines of interaction in form of lengthy, one-to-one chats with party members that took place in various locales, including their homes, party offices, their private offices, cafes, and on the side of major party events. Along with gaining primary contacts from direct respondents of my emails (nearly half of total respondents), an informal referral network (snowballing) emerged, when party members introduced me to their colleagues in either their own branch or other local branches, who were otherwise almost inaccessible to approach as an outsider, given their profound skepticism towards the academic community. The inaccessibility of statistically randomised data in contacting hidden, hard-to-reach communities like stigmatised right-wing parties is well noted (Blee, 2002; Klandermans & Mayer, 2006), which made snowball sampling nearly inevitable. Once familiar, these members also granted me access to intra-party group meetings and informal members meet-ups, as well as party’s public outreach events and members-only brainstorming sessions. Access to these meetings and events opened the party’s lifeworld to me: it allowed me to observe over two hundred members during party’s internal meetings as well as public events spread over nearly two years. Indulging in lengthy, unstructured conversations with party members, observing them while at work in party offices, during campaign events, reaching out to members of public and socialising among party members has thus helped me explore the inner world of the party at close range. A ground-up ethnographic exploration of their mobilisation activities based on in-depth conversations with party rank-and-file and participant observation thus inform my empirical findings.

AfD was founded in 2013 by prominent West German economists primarily as a Eurosceptic force. The party positioned itself explicitly and vehemently against the bailout deals passed by the German parliament to resolve the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone area. However, it soon adopted an increasingly anti-immigrant and nationalist tone after Germany took in nearly one million asylum seekers from the war-torn regions of the Middle East and the Arab world from 2015. By 2016, the party had converged its agenda with that of anti-immigrant, right-wing populist parties elsewhere in Europe. It enjoyed a streak of success in various regional and consecutive national elections in Germany. Its success in eastern Germany (particularly in the state of Saxony) has remained unparalleled since its foundation and the state is widely considered as an AfD heartland.

Up until recently, the conspicuous absence of any politically meaningful national right-wing party in Germany was regarded rather exceptional and unusual (Arzheimer, 2015). A variety of supply-side explanations are cited to account for this. David Art has characterised ‘containment of the radical Right’ as hallmark of German politics (2018). He, along with other scholars, points to factors (such as sustained negative media attention, persistent lack of coalition options, effective campaigns of civil society groups against far-right views, and institutional arrangements including a domestic intelligence agency) to pre-empt extremist activities that have deterred anti-immigrant, far-right parties in Germany (Art, 2018; see also Ellinas, 2010; Patton, 2017). Given the unfavourable opportunity structure for right-wing parties, AfD’s electoral success is indeed remarkable. Although the party has a national presence, it is particularly strong in the former east German region. The party’s stronghold in eastern German states including Saxony is often attributed to east Germany’s communist past. Scholars have observed legacy effects of the communist dictatorship in post-communist countries in terms of institutional and cultural variations that have shaped different forms of competition, coalition, and also different value orientations towards democracy and political parties (Kitschelt, Mansfeldova, Markowski, & Toka, 1999; Minkenberg, 2017, 2019). These societies were relatively closed and multi-party systems were non-existent. Minkenberg contends that these regions continue to be affected by ‘volatility of political landscape, absence of stable cleavage patterns and under-institutionalization of party systems’ (2019, p. 476). After unification, Saxony became a stronghold of a mainstream conservative party named the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The conservative establishment in the state was relatively lenient towards right-wing organisations. Yet, although contextual factors are important, they are insufficient to account for varying degrees of success of right-wing parties in Saxony. The permissive climate towards right-wing actors in Saxony has not translated into strong electoral results of all parties on the political right. The west German extreme right parties such as the Republiknar or Deutsche Volkspartei (DVU)¹ never gained foot in the state despite conducive conditions. The extreme right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) has enjoyed a longer history of parliamentary representation in Saxony and deep roots in Saxony’s extremist subculture. Yet, after the emergence of the AfD, it was quickly marginalised and reduced to a predominantly local, non-parliamentary political force with few strongholds in rural regions such as Sächsiche Schweiz and Erzgebirge. Other right-wing parties in the state including Pro Chemnitz and der Dritte Weg have also remained highly localised and failed to scale up their activities. On the contrary, AfD in Saxony managed to maximise its influence predominantly in rural Saxony but also in urban regions of Dresden Chemnitz and Leipzig. I contend that the causal mechanisms of the party’s success go beyond the contextual peculiarities and lie, in no small part, in the agency of AfD activists. As my fieldwork findings below reveal, party rank-and-file in Saxony persistently strive to harness conducive circumstances in regional political culture, find cracks and fissures in unfavourable political opportunities and build up party strength through extensive mobilisation. To these aspects I now turn my attention.

As a white German male in his late 60s, Frank did ‘fit the demographic’³ of a typical right-wing party, yet these ascriptive qualities fall well short of telling the full story. Frank, a long-standing local politician and an AfD member along with his wife Marine were a friendly, elderly couple and loving grandparents of three. Their house was nestled neatly in a quiet neighbourhood surrounded by pristine green landscape of a charming small town in southern Saxony. Almost everybody in the town knew him and he was well-received not only by lay residents but also by fellow local politicians from other parties. The owner of a small Bed and Breakfast in a neighbouring town, where I had stayed, knew him too and had worked with him on a city development project. The couple had travelled extensively over the world, their most recent visit being to Kenya.

Owing to his enduring political engagement and a rooted family life in the region, Frank brought along with himself a wealth of political experience and relational resources to a party that is desperate to recruit quality adherents and constituents in its organisation. Being a political newcomer, the AfD in Saxony has a large number of party activists, who were not formerly member of any political party or had no previous experience of running a political office. However, there was a sizeable and influential minority of members like Frank who had been former members of established parties. A few had played prominent roles in their previous political engagement, which included heading the women’s wing of the CDU and co-founding regional conservative parties such as the Deutsche Soziale Union (DSU). Out of fifteen AfD politicians, who won constituency seats in Saxon parliament in 2019, five had formerly belonged to either the CDU or SPD parties which have traditionally dominated constituency seats in state and federal elections in Germany. Among the first 30 party list candidates for state election, more than 25 per cent of the aspirants had previous political affiliations with parties ranging from conservative (CDU, DSU), social democratic (SPD), and economic liberal (FDP) milieus.⁴

Unlike Frank, membership in other parties prior to AfD had not always led members into political office. Many explained it away as Irrweg (wrong track) or even Jugendsünde (follies of youth), nonetheless exposure to a political organisation meant that they were not suddenly awakened middle-of-the-roaders. In their pasts, they had gone beyond voting to more active engagement with politics. Now that the AfD enters the eighth year of its political existence, the party has produced its own batch of politicians with some experience of doing politics for AfD. These were party members who managed to get into city/county council or even in state parliament since 2013 and since then have represented the party in law-making bodies. This pool of so-to-say first generation AfD politicians with ‘home grown’ political expertise complements the seasoned politicians in the party. Moreover, like any other party, local party executive committees (Kreisvorstände) as well and state party board (Landesvorstand) provide standard intra-party avenues that groom grassroots members in skills required for competitive party politics such as public relation, networking with other regional branches, and campaign management, making them better equipped to take on responsibilities of a public office. Throughout my fieldwork experience, I found that political training via membership of local party executive (Kreisvorstand) leading to election in city/county council and furthermore at state level was a standard practice (known in German political discourse as Ochsentour)⁵ although it was not a pre-requisite. At party conventions, inquiry regarding contribution to local party activity constituted one of the mandatory questions for all prospective electoral candidates for nomination at local or regional level. Aspiring candidates were routinely grilled over their level of participation in party activism by attendees. A large number of nominees in AfD’s (originally proposed) 61 member strong state party list could bank on at least two to four years long engagement in local party committees or council bodies. This underlines the pivotal role of intra-party platforms and their capacity-building functions.

In their extensive ethnographic study of Tea Party republicans in the United States, political scientists Skocpol and Williamson (2012) go beyond the narrow definition of political experience and speak of civic engagement of Tea party activists. The authors compellingly argue that active participation in voluntary organisations as well as local chapters of civic movements enabled many Tea Partiers compensate for their relative inexperience of party politics and gain skills that they readily transferred to political life (Skocpol & Williamson, 2012, pp. 40–42). If one is to adopt such broader notion of activism, it would certainly bring many more AfD members to the fore, especially those who are long-term members (in some case also leaders) of several professional organisations, before AfD came into existence. Membership in local sports clubs and honourary engagement in community organisations helped many strike deeper roots in their communities and establish credibility. Membership in local trusts dedicated to conservative themes like Heimatschutz (protection of Homeland) or Denkmalstiftung (Trust for Monument Protection) enabled them to tap into pre-existing preference structures and sentiment pools (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; see also McCarthy, 1986). Given the overwhelming presence of Mittelständler (small and medium entrepreneurs), many were plugged into various professional organisations, from tourism boards to forestry organisations and from the Technical Society of Glasswork to business incubators. A few had played an active role in anti-government protests and reformist movements in the final years of German Democratic Republic (GDR) and thus accumulated first-hand experience of protest politics. Given the broad spectrum of voluntary associations in Germany in general, many members could successfully draw upon diverse forms of civic engagement and hone soft skills that helped them in political life and consequently contributed to professionalisation of the party.

Apart from the political competence, party members can also bring in intellectual resources appealing to wider members of public and raise the profile of the party they represent. Drawn on my fieldwork experience and public records, a majority of the AfD politicians in the Saxon state parliament and local councils were members of the educated bourgeoise class. Many of them belonged to highly esteemed professions such as lawyers, professors, and doctors, confirming the image of the party (particularly in its early years) as a Professorenpartei (Party of Professors). Furthermore, those who were public sector employees and engaged, for example as police officers, schoolteachers, or professors, enjoyed as Beamte (career civil servant) high social status coupled with high-income levels and job security. People like them, as McCarthy and Zald (1977) observed, have more discretionary resources such as time and money at hand to get active beyond the pale of their personal and professional life. Moreover, existing research suggests that a considerable amount of AfD supporters come from well-educated groups who earn moderate to higher-than-average income (Bergmann, Matthias, & Judith, 2016, pp. 2–3; Brähler, Kiess, & Decker, 2016, p. 73; Niedermayer & Hofrichter, 2016, p. 273).⁶ A majority of the party members I engaged with could confirm this finding.

Many of the Saxon AfD members I saw in action were either self-employed professionals or service providers belonging to the famous German Mittelstand (medium-sized, mostly family-owned businesses specialising in a product or service) – a finding affirmed in a recent survey on AfD politicians (Schroeder, Weßels, Neusser, & Berzel, 2017, pp. 15–17).⁷ Party members I interacted with showed an impressive plurality of occupations, from taxi drivers to typographers, plumbers to schoolteachers, lawyers to army personnel, and dog trainers to environmental auditors. Some had a calling for art and music, though these creative souls represented a small minority. My fieldwork suggested that economic worries had not entirely escaped the party members, yet they did not necessarily consider themselves as economic ‘precariats’. Their fervent opposition was directed against what they perceived to be the national government’s response to economic crisis. Many lived comfortable middle-class lives, which were better cushioned against economic upheaval than many young Germans are confronted with economic challenges in a ‘risk society’, as Ulrich Beck puts it (Beck, 2013, p. 36). Such cushioning has undoubtedly affected their engagement in the party in a favourable manner. They brought on board a variety of discretionary resources – time, skills, professional networks, and last but not the least, money, playing a constitutive role in party building on the ground.

Apart from the core group of party members and local, regional, and state leaders (Spitzenpolitiker), the party was supported by a second tier of so-called Parteimitarbeiter or party workers who fitted somewhere in between party adherents and constituents. Party workers could be party members but not necessarily so. Nonetheless, they were party sympathisers, who were an active component of grassroot party activity. Regardless of their membership status, they were plugged in the party circle by their shared belief in the party’s ideas about family, education, climate change, and immigration. Many ran the front desk of party offices, coordinated the distribution of publicity material such as flyers and pamphlets, ran errands during campaign time, and in sum they were deeply involved in the ground game of party outreach. Some with university degrees and research orientation brought in their professional expertise to work in an advisory capacity for the local and state-level politicians. Nicole was one such dedicated party worker. Working as a staff member in local party office in a small Saxon town, she took lead in arranging my meeting with the AfD legislator in the Bundestag from her region. She was an ex-student of the AfD politician, who was a university professor. As his focus shifted to politics from academia, she decided to step up as his assistant, despite not being an AfD member herself. As she drove me to his house a few miles away from the university campus, Nicole spoke very fondly of her mentor who inspired her with his ‘incredible energy to fight for things he believed in’ Upon arrival at his elegant, detached house located in quiet residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of the small university town, Nicole affectionately greeted the professor’s wife, offering her two crates of eggs that she had brought from her own farm. Later on, during our way back to the train station, Nicole candidly talked about her experiences of working at the party office. Given party’s tainted image, she anticipated some backlash from the local community when she assumed the new role at the AfD office. Yet, she had not prepared herself for social shaming in most mundane daily interactions:

she narrated. Nonetheless, her commitment to the party and her loyalty to her professor has remained intact. The passion of this young university graduate was remarkable and I discovered such dedicated party workers more than once, who shared an unmistakable bond with the party officials they worked for. Many wanted to maintain their independence by not becoming a member. Refraining from membership may well have been a cautious career calculation (as one of the party workers confided in me), but for some party workers it provided the necessary flexibility to be critical, which they firmly believed was in the best interest of the party. The party workers appeared to be indeed more forthcoming in their assessment of party strategies and personnel. Their role varied from office staff to campaign manager and from grassroot volunteer to Referent (scientific adviser), but they exhibited the same combination of candid criticism and ideological proximity with the party line. By and large, party members and workers collaborated well with each other, drawing strength from each other and working on shared ideological premises. In reality, the boundaries between party workers and party members have always been fluid, although a de jure distinction exists. Even though censorship was less stringent, alongside the rank-and-file party members, party workers were certainly a crucial component of AfD’s hidden taskforce on the ground. Most of them were socialised in party circles, felt committed to the party’s objectives and assiduously provided administrative assistance behind the scenes.

For AfD, party solidarity was a crucial resource that helped members mitigate the impacts of discursive stigmatisation. A public display of support for party leaders and events could send a strong signal of unity and strength to political opponents. During my fieldwork, I chatted with many foot soldiers of the party, who attended cross-party podium discussions to support the party’s top candidates at European or state elections. Held typically in academic settings such as Volkshochschulen (institutes offering continuing education to adults) in the large university towns of Dresden or Leipzig, such high-profile discussion forums usually attracted university students or local residents from left-liberal milieu, who were less likely to warm to AfD’s political messages. Sitting through such events and rooting for party candidates during discussions at such events was more than a matter of mere attendance for party members. Party members usually sat together as a bloc in the audience, cheering and clapping loudly when their candidate made a forceful point while the rest of the audience remained silent. The contrast was often stark and it came across as a counter-attack launched by spurned AfD members to offset the disapproving jeers of liberal audience members. Such resolute shows of solidarity were much less required at campaign events in rural, conservative pockets of the state. However, in urbane, liberal milieu the logic of numbers and show of a united front certainly assumed paramount importance.

Group solidarity however, is not only a resource but also a task and creation of sustained mobilising efforts. Strong interpersonal links among party members and supporters had an outward and inward function. They conveyed a position of strength to the party’s external opponents and simultaneously helped generate solidaristic frameworks for party actions, often beyond regional borders. Just as national leaders participate in campaigning of high-profile regional or local elections, ordinary members also travel to other states in order to support their fellow members in campaign work. A few members I interacted with had travelled to Bavaria and Brandenburg during the respective state elections in 2018 and 2019 and worked alongside local party members. Some offered car-sharing to take more members with them. Upon return, they happily fed back their experiences in party forums, drew comparisons between situations on the ground in Saxony and other states, and brainstormed campaign strategies.

Supporting each other during and beyond electoral campaigns forged a sense of community among members, who felt their standpoints and views were socially validated. The interpersonal communication with party members in local and other branches facilitated elaboration and validation of their worldviews and self-understanding. The support networks within the party also meant that one was not alone but could count on social support and solidarity of other in-group members. During the monthly intra-group meetings called Parteistammtische, members would regularly donate a Euro or two to the money pot that was floated around towards the end. The money collected was used for venue hire and other administrative expenses the meetings incurred.

Efforts like these sought to instil a sense of wish and felt responsibility to do something about ‘problems’ such as immigration, preference for renewable energy or media bias. They not only helped forge a sense of agency among members, but also conveyed the sense that they belonged to a distinct group that provided them with mutual respect, a validated understanding of their social world, and the collective strength to act in that world. Their conceptualisation of ‘problems’ can certainly be a matter of debate but their endeavours to energise the grass root were undoubtedly remarkable. Speaking of their fieldwork among ultra-conservative Tea Party activists in the United States, Skocpol and Williamson candidly admit, ‘ … should the focus not be on politics, the Tea Party meetings we attended could easily bring to mind a run-of-the-mill meeting of a homeowners association, or a Bible study group or a get-together at VFW hall or the Elke’s club’ (2012, p. 15). In the case of AfD, a community-building exercise was certainly underway and consciously targeted by local leaders as well as ordinary members of the AfD, and by all means, it contributed to a politicised collective identity.

The above except from my fieldnotes in October 2018 marks the political mood of Saxony at that time, when parties started preparing to mobilise support ahead of the state’s super election year (Superwahljahr) in 2019. In their ground-breaking articulation of resource mobilisation in social movements, McCarthy and Zald (1977) distinguish between non-adherents, by-standers, adherents and constituents of a grassroots movement. While adherents and constituents of a movement are more attached to the movement and differ in their type of commitments, non-adherents and by-standers are relatively detached from the movement field and need to be first convinced of the movement’s aims and actions in order to secure their support (1977, p. 1221). Although most movements strive primarily to bind adherents and constituents closely together, at some point they are compelled to convert non-adherents to adherents in order to broaden their reach. The above described interaction between the AfD councillor and his constituent reflected party’s earnest efforts to increase its sphere of influence by tapping into the concerns and aspirations of their constituents who felt neglected and let down by politicians of ‘old parties’ – AfD’s mocking shorthand for established centrist parties. The man from the countryside was not a party member, nor did he have any plans to become one. His quest to make the portraits (featuring members of Saxon royal family) adorn Dresden’s townhall was humble yet passionate. The AfD politician disappointed him in this regard but offered him a chance to become a representative himself. The farmer remained unimpressed, but the councillor had shown him a real possibility to contest for political mandate with his party’s support. His efforts did not bear fruits with the farmer, but not always are such opportunities lost on eager members of public who aspire to have an active political life. In a different citizen’s bureau I attended, such possibility was received favourably by another unassuming local resident. One independent candidate who narrowly lost to a rival CDU politician in local elections narrated to me enthusiastically how he had impressed a local AfD politician with his political ideas and was subsequently asked to contest a seat in the council with party support.

Bürgerbüros were the party’s primary contact points between the party and local residents. They were also local hub for party actions that stretched well beyond the intense phase of electoral campaigning. Mobile Bürgerbüros were put in effect to compensate the absence of a permanent party office in typically rural surroundings or outward rings of residential suburbs. They could be something as mobile as a moving van with party literature and a party member holding drop-in sessions inside the vehicle or they could be held in local community centres such as village hall or sport centre hired for a couple of hours, as in case of the citizen’s bureau mentioned at the start of the chapter. Outlets like party offices formed an important part of the networking arsenal possesses by the party. Party members actively tapped into these resources and developed micro-mobilisation strategies to engage voters, sympathisers and possible recruits. They brought the so-called demand and supply sides together and turned a potentiality into actuality by mobilising people to join the movement and become party activists.

Given the large support base of AfD in the state, it has become exceedingly difficult for mainstream political parties to overlook AfD and keep up with their unwritten norm of cordon sanitaire, namely the mutual understanding among mainstream parties on non-cooperation with parties with far-right views. As a result of the policy of cordon sanitaire, AfD faces a consistent lack of coalition options, therefore participation in government is unlikely. Nevertheless, representation in local and regional law-making bodies has been instrumental for the party to increase its influence. Although prospects of state or national level power-sharing seem unrealistic for the party, norms of local political governance have certainly created a relative opportunity for party rank and file.

At the local political level, the party factions in city (Stadtrat), county (Gemeinderat), and regional council (Kreistag) build the main nodal point of action for all parties including the AfD. In many places, there is a considerable overlap between members of party’s executive committee and party representatives in local government bodies, although this is hardly a party-specific feature (D’Antonio, 2015). Furthermore, in recent decades, the modern local self-government in Germany has undergone profound changes in its institutional design and arrangement of its local political and administrative leadership. Since the 1970s, local self-government bodies have moved increasingly in the direction of consensual decision-making free from partisan considerations (D’Antonio, 2015; Wollmann, 2005). The gradual de-coupling of administrative decisions taken by elected party representatives in the council from broader, ideological commitments of the parties they represented was considered not only inevitable but also desirable for the efficient and smooth resolution of locally specific matters (D’Antonio, 2015, pp. 562–563). This gradually established a practice of consensual (rather than competitive) politics at the local level, which has made an outright rejection of AfD councillors on ideological grounds rather difficult though not impossible. This possibly explains, why non-partisan circumstantial cooperation – at times also with the votes of AfD – was the reality of daily business in many city and county councils. Such ad-hoc collaboration with AfD may sound abhorrent and incomprehensible for outsiders, as it surely was,⁸ but it had the elementary language of the repertoire, which was ‘obvious, natural’ and ‘familiar as the day to its users’ (Tilly, 1978, p. 156). The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s incisive survey of AfD’s participation in local governance bodies in Saxony (Gorskih, Hanneforth, & Nattke, 2016) has also observed sporadic, tactical cross-party alliances with AfD in Saxony. The survey authors found that in certain Saxon local bodies, particularly those in Görlitz and Mittelsachsen, AfD representatives took part in cross-party voting collaborations that were ad-hoc and issue-based (Gorskih et al., 2016, p. 9). As an AfD councillor from Görlitz stated self-assuredly

Within the framework of organised politics, parties on the conservative spectrum could be seen as AfD’s closet ideological allies. As far as the more mainstream parties like the CDU or FDP were concerned, things were complex. Many local politicians of other parties in Saxony (CDU councillors in Saxony for example) did not appear to be fundamentally averse to the idea of making ad-hoc voting alliances with those of the AfD, however they were surely mindful of the political costs of a potential alliance with the tainted AfD. For the AfD, on the other hand, ideological overlap with the CDU was identifiable and affinities with Merkel’s critics within the Union were palpable. In Saxony, sporadic mutual recognition between the two in the public eye was not uncommon, yet the relationship often became problematic even for AfD functionaries on the ground.

Notwithstanding episodes of ad-hoc tactical alliances with established parties like the CDU, such cooperation was bound to damage the staunch anti-establishment image AfD had cultivated. As a long-standing governing party at the local, regional, and national level, the CDU for example embodied the very incarnation of ruling elites – a political class AfD attacked so viciously in its political narrative. On the ground, AfD’s position frequently oscillated between cooptation and opposition to mainstream parties. At the local level, party functionaries of AfD walked a tight rope to maintain a principled oppositional stance, although exposure to parliamentary politics compelled many to look for less confrontational attitude with the establishment. The tactical considerations of AfD Dresden branch on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Dresden bombings serves here as an illuminating example of such predicaments. The Allied bombing of Dresden (Saxony’s capital) in February 1945 is one of the most controversial Allied acts of the Second World War and its anniversary has long served as a politically charged date in Germany, attracting national and international media attention. In a country where ritualistic public expressions of grief over German casualties in the Second World War are almost entirely absent, Dresden’s status as a victim of Allied bombing is bitterly debated and preserved. Dresden has a unique place in the narrative of Germany’s victimhood: it has been instrumentalised by all parties to reinterpret it in wider context. The deep-rooted sentiments of German suffering, once bolstered by mainstream conservative politicians and readily propped by right-wing parties created a favourable political space for AfD to fill. In the days ahead of the 75th anniversary of the bombing of the city in February 2020, the party’s stand to official commemoration engagements became a sensitive topic among local party members. This became clear in one of the intra-party meet-ups, when the party’s policy on attending the city’s official commemoration ceremony at Dresden’s Altstadt came up for discussion. In February 2020, federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was going to deliver a public address to people in Dresden and afterwards line up in the human chain encircling the old town. The interaction between Steinmeier and AfD in past years has been all but harmonious. On more than one occasion, the president has presented himself as an outspoken critic of AfD and its leadership. In his barely concealed verbal attacks on party’s political agenda, Steinmeier has blamed the party for radical rhetoric, hate speech and anti-democratic attitude. AfD, in turn, accused the president of political bias and lack of neutrality while commenting on political parties. Although the German constitution does not explicitly forbid presidents to make political statements, they are expected to be non-partisan and largely seen as moral authority in debates of national and international importance. In his one of the recent speeches, on the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War in September 2019, Steinmeier spoke out against attempts to relativise the crimes of the Nazis or German responsibility for them. Although he did not mention AfD by the name, it was a clear reference to the party and its leader, Alexander Gauland, who had infamously described the Nazi era a ‘bird’s speck’ in a thousand years of glorious German history (AfD Bundestag, 2018). Against this background, Steinmeier’s presence at Dresden’s signature commemoration event posed a predicament for the party leadership. In the group meeting, when a member asked whether they as a party were going to attend Steinmeier’s speech, the group leader at first seemed to be at loss. Unable to give a clear answer, he replied that one could go in individual capacity: ‘I think we should go. We are a democratically elected party and we should not deny ourselves a chance to make that clear. And the thirteenth of February is the occasion for that’, the member insisted. The group leader nodded passively. At this point, one of the city councillors raised her hand and came forward swiftly to make a statement:

she said firmly by citing a party councillors’ decision. ‘Well, in that case let’s at least issue a statement clearing our position on this. We have to make some statement and declare our position to this. Otherwise, we will be ridiculed in the press as we often are’, the member who had spoken before stroke a conciliatory note. Everybody seemed to agree with the discussion and the chair of the meeting considered the matter settled.

Although a policy for Steinmeier’s address was agreed upon, tensions did not wane away easily. After all, the party had dominated the state election results in Saxony and had lost to the ruling CDU by a narrow margin. It had managed to send 38 representatives in Saxon parliament in 2019 including 15 candidates, who were directly elected in their constituencies. Buoyed by this winning streak, many members were keen to present their party as a popular and accepted player in the regional political system. Indeed, the feelings of the member who wanted his party to be seen as part of political mainstream during official commemoration events were shared by many – both tacitly or overtly. However, aligning the party with the mainstream was a difficult proposition. The party undoubtedly craved respectability and acceptance in the state’s political establishment, yet its key commemorative message of the Dresden bombings was incompatible with the mainstream memory culture in Germany. Firmly embedded in the discourse of German victimhood, the party stubbornly refused to frame the sufferings of the city in the context of the Second World War – a war started by Germany – and continued to view the bombing in isolation. Although it avoided the jargon and association with the more stigmatised NPD on this theme, a non-cooperative attitude did not appear credible enough to become mainstream, because the party’s narrative did not depart from the view of ‘German victims’ and ‘Allied perpetrators’, instead remaining steadfastly rooted in the nationalist discourse. To resolve the seemingly intractable question of positioning, a distinction was suggested between personal and party level participation in the commemorative events. Those who wished to participate in official events could do so in personal capacity, but at the party level a more distinct positioning was sought, which would fit somewhere between the brazenly revisionist NPD-endorsed grief marches and official discourse of commemoration. Such manoeuvres of political positioning have become more frequent and inevitable for the party with its strong regional footprint in the state.

Unlike other stigmatised right-wing parties in Saxony (most prominently the NPD, Pro Chemnitz and Der Dritte Weg), AfD in Saxony made inroads in many established channels of political discourse. For example, during electoral campaigns party members in Saxony managed to insert themselves in high-profile podium discussions that had by and large remained inaccessible to their right-wing counterparts. This is no small feat considering that in Germany, invitations to right-wing party candidates for such talk shows is a matter of heated public debate and often subject to competing lawsuits. During my fieldwork I attended two podium discussions that were organised by local educational institutions ahead of important elections in the region. One of the discussion rounds brought together regional party candidates for European Parliament elections in 2019 and the other had invited candidates for the post of city mayor in a local election. AfD candidates were invited to both forums. The discussion forums had an unmistakable modern and liberal atmosphere, located in academic venues within Saxony’s urban hubs of Dresden and Leipzig, with professional moderators and middle-class audiences. The AfD candidates did not experience much resonance in the audience, as their radical stance on EU policies, climate change, immigration showed a conspicuous and overwhelming lack of support among the attending locals, and they were often admonished by fellow candidates. In the audience, there were occasional outbreaks of angry remarks towards party representatives. However, on both platforms AfD candidates were treated with same degree of civility and seriousness as other candidates by the on-stage moderators and event organisers. In fact, during the podium discussion on European politics, one member of the audience urged fellow candidates to show the same respect for everybody insinuating criticism of on-stage AfD bashing. While asking a question to candidates of the SPD and the Green party about their plans for youth, the resident appealed to them not to be aggressive and attack fellow candidates excessively. This public scrutiny did not go down well with the targeted candidates, as the politician from the Green party shrugged her shoulders in apparent disbelief, showing clear sign of disapproval on her face.

With its organisational repertoire, the party made an unmistakable cultural appeal. This aspect of organisation refers to the aspects of legitimacy of organisational forms, identities, and strategies within and outside the fold of activists’ group (Clemens, 2008). The formal – although grudging – acceptance of AfD’s presence in political discussion forums indicated a certain degree of ‘normalisation’ of the party in mainstream public discourse. It underlined the importance of organisational initiatives in the ‘process of creating contexts for political conversations’ (Clemens & Minkoff, 2004, p. 157). In contrast to the urban hubs, Saxony’s rural hinterlands offered party members a less inhibited access to novel and established channels of political action. At one party outreach event, a prominent AfD politician shared his experience of a hard-fought campaign for the mayoral post in rural Saxony. This shrinking small town was one of AfD strongholds in Saxony. The politician recalled his campaign memories fondly in following words:

The party candidate talked at length about his campaign repertoire, which comprised a playful combination of standard (podium discussions, info-stalls, campaign speeches) and innovative (handing out of breakfast bags, cooking in communal kitchen) channels. In his speech, he acknowledged difficult prospects of instituting these strategies in non-AfD milieu of big cities but stressed the importance of innovation in mobilising voters and sympathisers. His experience reaffirmed Clemens’ thesis about organisational innovations, that mobilisation strategies (innovative or not) would be successful in broadening party’s appeal only to the extent they draw on different but more or less ‘adjacent’ categories and culturally acceptable models (Clemens, 2008, p. 208). By using this toolkit, party members managed not only to substantially improve their electoral performance but also strengthened their claims to cultural legitimacy in the state of Saxony.

This paper dived deep into the internal organisational life of AfD to provide a ground-up, endogenous explanation of the party’s electoral persistence in the German state of Saxony. Macro-level explanations in terms of political opportunity structure in Germany (cordon sanitaire against the right, institutional barriers faced by extremist forces as well as eastern German legacy effects in Saxony) surely help us understand the development of AfD and the challenges it faces, but only to a certain extent. The agency of party members is a crucial factor determining the fate of the party: activists on the ground played a crucial role in perceiving, activating, shaping, and also creating political opportunities in the local context of Saxony. An unrecognised opportunity is no opportunity at all (Gamson & Meyer, 2008, p. 283). Conducive political culture surely existed in Saxony, yet it had to be seized upon and transformed into a powerful narrative to become politically relevant. Party rank-and-file successfully capitalised on the relative openings of political opportunities and staked a formidable claim on cultural legitimacy, actively tapping into parts of conservative-rightist milieu in Saxony to turn them to their own advantage. Using the analytical framework of resource mobilisation and action repertoire, this paper brought to the fore the rational, purposive, and norm-sensitive character of the action repertoire adopted by the party members. Their use of well-established political repertoire and organisational investments became a frame that was fine-tuned to the regional context and contributed towards consolidating party’s influence. Far from being acts of lone warriors, their endeavours were solidaristic and fostered collective identity. Solidarity was both a resource and a strategy to increase party’s influence on the ground, while party organisation made a conscious effort to forge a sense of solidarity. It provided members with mutual support system, validation of their world views, and motivation to act upon them.

To date, questions of ‘how’ for right-wing political forces have remained secondary to questions of ‘why’ and ‘for whom’. One is often tempted to tell a simple story of reciting large-scale structural transitions and inferring that right-wing political parties derive their strength primarily from the societal backlash resulting out of these grand transformations. While there are important and morally compelling reasons to put thrust on the larger motives of right-wing parties, given their record of inflicting some of the most horrible atrocities on racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in global history, a neglect of their organisational character can have far-reaching consequences not only for social theory but also for the real world. As it becomes harder to read off success and failure of right-wing parties from basic contours of societies (Brexit and the United States under Trump being prominent examples) a closer look into the organisational choices these groups make and the quality of the people they attract becomes ever so important. My paper reaffirms the newfound wisdom in political theory on the importance of ‘internal supply side’ of right-wing parties (Mudde, 2007). I believe to have not only shown that organisation matters in right-wing parties but also explained how it matters. With this research, I hope to contribute towards developing better informed, in-depth assessment of internal lifeworld of right-wing collective action, which in turn can help articulate a more nuanced, context-specific critique of contentious politics.

I am thankful to German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a research fellowship to support my research project from September 2019 to October 2020.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).