Extra-Parliamentary Opposition within a Transforming Political Space: The AfD and FDP under Merkel III between 2013 and 2017

Abstract

The federal elections of 2013 generated an unusual situation for the German party system: a very strong extra-parliamentary opposition. The liberal FDP and the newly emerging AfD, with 4.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively, of the votes, ended up as the extra-parliamentary opposition, although both parties were ultimately successful in entering the German parliament in 2017. What strategies did these parties apply? How did they manage to get into parliament in 2017? The German case presents a unique situation, with the FDP, an experienced mainstream government party, and the AfD, a challenger party, belonging to the extra-parliamentary opposition. Clarifying first the concept and function of an extra-parliamentary opposition, the article describes, using manifesto data, the transformation of the German political space and the growing salience of the new cultural divide. The AfD contributed to establishing this divide by applying populist rhetoric. By contrast, the FDP succeeded by using a party-elite-led re-branding and re-framing of economic issues in the times of digitalisation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is part of the German Research Foundation funded project ‘The influence of opposition in established democracies’. I am grateful to Anna Halstenbach, Anne Gerstenberg, Simon Miksch, and Sabine Nerlich for their support working on the manuscript.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon T. Franzmann is currently Assistant Professor (pro tempore) for Comparative Political Science and Methods at the Heinrich-Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf. He holds a PhD from the University of Cologne in political science and attained his habilitation at the HHU Düsseldorf in 2017. His research is devoted to empirical studies of opposition, party systems, populism, comparative studies of democracies and theories of party competition. Among others, his work has been published in journals such as Electoral Studies, Party Politics, West European Politics, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.

ORCID

Simon T. Franzmann http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3568-2537

Notes

1 Challenger parties are parties that have never participated in a government (cf. Hobolt and Tilley 2016).

2 As shown by Fabian Engler, Svenja Bauer-Blaschkowski, and Reimut Zohlnhöfer in a contribution within this special issue.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of the German Research Foundation funded project ‘The influence of opposition in established democracies’. I am grateful to Anna Halstenbach, Anne Gerstenberg, Simon Miksch, and Sabine Nerlich for their support working on the manuscript.