Alternative to the German party came to second place in the federal election On Sunday, he doubled his share of votes from four years ago, in the strongest exhibitions for the German far right party since World War II. Some segments of the party, known as AFD, the German intelligence service is classified as an extremist.
How could this happen in Germany, a country whose history has learned a bitter lesson about the dangers of right -wing extremism?
Many experts pointed to The role of immigrationParticularly a rush of Muslim refugees from Syria and other countries of the Middle East in the mid-20110s, which persuaded many people to leave the long-standing party of the Center-Live and Central Right.
But new research suggests an additional factor. The AFD has published its biggest victories in former East Germany, where young people departed from former industrial regions and rural areas to seek opportunities in cities.
These poorer regions have entered the demographic downfall: the self -absorbent cycle of the tie and aging of the population, overthrowing government services and slow economic growth, which created fertile soil for AfD. And since the extreme right-wing party is a strong anti-immigration, its increase has created pressure to reduce immigration levels-which further exacerbates the problems of the festive, old population.
Similar trends can be played in most of the developed world.
Left regions
For years, there has been a very strong connection between the level of migration and the support level of AFD, especially in the eastern part of the country, where the party has entered most of the constituencies on Sunday in most constituencies.
(The chart below shows data from 2021, but Sunday results have mostly followed the same trend.)
In decades after the country was reunited in 1990, much of the population in eastern Germany began to go to cities and rich Western regions that offered better opportunities. Many people from eastern Germany also expected a peace dividend after in a stake that never came true.
“I studied in East Germany, so I saw it firsthand,” said Thiamo Fetzer, a professor of economics at Warwick University in England and University of Bonn, Germany, who studies how to study how Austerity measures And the reduction of local services trigger support for the extremely right populist party.
Unlike other Eastern European economies such as Poland, which had been having a few years to adjust their economy before joining the European Union in 2004, East Germany received the equivalent of “shock therapy,” he said. “People with human capital would leave, and the people who stayed behind them somehow remained literally.”
People who have moved away from these regions are inclined to lean younger and women, and are more likely to have advanced diplomas – all the characteristics that also statistically, make people less likely to vote for the far right. The people who stayed were disproportionate to the demographics that most likely supported the AFD.
If this sorting effect was everything that happens, may not really make a big difference in a political system like Germany, which is conceived to be strongly proportional: the parties are represented in the German parliament based on their percentage of the national vote so that it should not be too important whether party voters are grouped in cities or evenly distributed throughout the country.
But not all that is happening. AND New paper They found that emigration reduces the quality of life in the “left” regions in Europe, the locals blame the National Government and the main political parties for Pad-I even more turns to the far right.
“There is a feeling on a lot of left -wing lefts,” said Hans Lueders, an associate at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who works on the book about internal migration and German politics.
He discovered that the mainstream campaign parties less in the left regions and employs fewer candidates there, which further reduces the sense of connection between local issues and national policies.
“This is being brought to this all this end right -wing populist narrative that the main parties are leaving these areas,” Lueders said. Parties of the far right, which are usually positioned as populists committed to ordinary people against corrupt or cooled elite, are well placed to appeal to people who have lost their faith in the status quo.
‘Doom loop’ strikes a higher gear
AFD, like other extreme right -wing parties, explicitly blames immigrants for Germany problems. He demanded restrictions on the new immigration and called for “return” and “repatriation” of immigrants.
There were proposals for improving the quality of life and economics in left areas. But most experts say immigration is one of the few solutions for Growing problems From aging, a decrease in population – not only in Germany, but also around the developed world. So the success of AFD and other extreme right-wing parties threatens to create self -preservation cyclein which the political reaction to left -wing regions ends with the deterioration of these problems.
In the long run, this could make the whole of Germany start more to resemble the left regions: aging, decreased population struggling to maintain public services and economic growth. Immigration limitations make it difficult to find the workers needed to provide health care and other basic services to reduce and aging the population.
“They are just the places that would most benefit from immigration in terms of getting older care, children care, you know, any other job of care and job sector’s jobs-which seems to be the most opposed to that,” Lueders said .
And while the division between the former East and the West makes this issue particularly great in Germany, a similar process is played in most of the developed world.
“This is valid in Europe and in the USA to many other advanced economies. In these peripheral regions, people from working are leaving in these countries,” Rafael Dancygier, a political science professor at Princeton University and the leading author of the new work on the consequence Internal migration. As in Germany, the trend stimulates an increase in the extreme right and causes the main parties to occupy Anti-immigration attitudes in attempted-uniquely unsuccessful-to defeat those dissatisfied voters.
“Loop Doom continues,” she said.
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