Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Unprecedented Success: How The Alternative For Germany Party Capitalized On Eastern German Economic Grievance And Euroscepticism In 2013 And 2014, Aidan J. Schwob

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The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has experienced a remarkably fast rise to state, federal, and European electoral success and has disrupted German politics. This paper investigates how the AfD achieved popularity in 2013 and 2014 and later became the first far-right German party since the Nazi Party to be represented in the Bundestag. I find that eastern Germany’s aging population and deficient economy engendered contempt for Angela Merkel and the Bundestag that transformed to euroscepticism when Germany committed to taxpayer bailouts of Greece during the eurozone debt crisis while ignoring domestic economic inequality. As such, the AfD’s single-issue platform …