Award for WZB-Researcher Fabio Ellger

We warmly congratulate our researcher Fabio Ellger: together with Heike Klüver (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) he has won the Gordon Smith and Vincent Wright Memorial Prize 2025 for their article “Adopting restriction: how coalition governments respond to radical right parties”.

The prize is awarded by Taylor & Francis and the editors of West European Politics and is valued at €500. It recognizes outstanding contributions to the journal West European Politics, Volume 48, 2025. Any of the major areas of comparative European politics, government and public policy, including the analysis of single countries from a comparative perspective, were considered.

The awarded study demonstrates that radical right parties shape immigration policy even when they are not part of government. Using data from 24 European democracies (1980–2015), it shows that coalition governments shift to more restrictive immigration policies when faced with radical right parties in the parliament.