SCoRE and the geography of radical right resentment in Germany

The good folks at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin have invited me for a talk about our ORA project on subnational contexts and the Radical Right in general, and some findings on the German case in particular. [su_box title="Update"]This research has become an open access journal article. Click on the DOI to read it! [bibtex file=ka.bib sort=year order=desc…

Germany’s AfD 2013-2022: much, much stronger in the eastern states

My piece on the role that Germany’s eastern states – the territory of the former GDR – have played for the breakthrough and rise of the radical right Alternative for Germany has been “forthcoming” for a while. So long indeed that it was necessary to update this graph, which shows how (and where) electoral support…

What we are reading: Causal Effects on Mainstream Parties’ Positions

Does radical right success lead to mainstream re-positioning? Radical right parties have existed for decades now, but most of them are still seen as challengers, because they aim to disrupt the (liberal democratic) consensus in their respective societies. Existing parties can react by digging their heels in, or by accommodation. As I have argued elsewhere,…

What we are reading: Do PRR Parties Improve Representation?

Something good in everything? Could radical right-wing populism be a (whispers) good thing? Of course it all depends on what we mean by “good”. Backlund and Jungar have a modest proposal: they suggest that radical right success could improve the representation of policy preferences in parliament. Using data from both expert and voter surveys in…

Secularism and genetic testing in Germany – new research video

Just for the fun of it, I have turned my recent article on Germans’ support for pre-implantation genetic diagnostics (PGD) into a short video. If you want to know why Germans would rather have laws along the lines of Belgium or the UK, and why they don’t get them, but do not want to read the full 8,000 piece, look no further – just click on the video below.

Secular citizens, pious MPs: Attitudes about genetic testing are more permissive than German laws