Rise of right-wing populism in Europe?: The case of alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2297037 (Table of contents)

This study analyzes the recent rise of extreme right/ right-wing populism in Germany in the case of Alternative for Germany (AfD) from a critical political economy perspective. Through mainly focusing on ‘political’ realm, the mainstream literature on populism analyses the rise of populism as a threat to liberal democracy by establishing an external relationship between two concepts without referring to the impact of neoliberalism and global capitalism as indispensable components of liberal democracy on its rise. Main argument of this study is that AfD’s recent success in Germany is an outcome of ongoing legitimacy crisis of neoliberalism. In this respect, this thesis argues that rise of right-wing populism is emerged within the problems and contradictions of liberal democracy in the context of neoliberalism and globalization. While assessing this, the issue is discussed in a historical perspective without treating political and economic realms as ontologically exclusive entities. Historical perspective proposed in this study analyses (i) how neoliberalism has transformed the relations between the state, capital and labor in Germany starting from German Reunification; (ii) how left-wing politics in Germany has moved towards identity-based politics while distancing itself from class-based politics under neoliberalism and (iii) how the European Union impacted this transformation. Under these conditions, this study asserts that people who are exposed to negative impacts of neoliberal policies are more prone to get under the political influence of AfD in the absence of a meaningful left-wing alternative