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Michael Zürn präsentiert seine Forschungen zum neuen Populismus. Es wird zwischen einem linken und potentiell demokratisierenden sowie einem rechten und undemokratischen Populismus unterschieden. Diese Sichtweise verkennt aber den Kern der echten Herausforderung für die Demokratie. Es sind primär autoritäre Populisten, die an die Macht gelangen und die Demokratie untergraben. Autoritäre Populisten besitzen eine umfassende Ideologie, die die Schwächen der existierenden Demokratie angreift. Sie sind besonders gefährlich, wenn sie das liberale Wahrheitsregime in Frage stellen.

The rise of right-wing extremism (RWE) is often attributed to citizens’ economic and cultural grievances. We know less about how the state facilitates RWE in contemporary democracies, despite commonly voiced claims that state actors help RWE flourish due to their biased treatment of political extremism. How valid is this critique? Analyzing thousands of documents covering the behavior of political parties, intelligence agencies, and the police in Germany over many decades and across states, we demonstrate that state actors have systematically downplayed RWE. This bias is not a feature of the state per se; it only emerges consistently among center-right actors.

Across the liberal-democratic world, ties between radical-right parties and civil servants have raised concern about the loyalty of the state apparatus. Drawing on the concept of militant democracy, we propose that states can counter the infiltration by the far right by publicly denouncing extremist organizations and threatening to impose disciplinary measures on civil servants who associate with them. We test our argument in Germany, a post-war militant democracy that is now facing a challenge from the far-right AfD party, which counts a significant number of civil servants among its members and tries to undermine the state from within.

There is growing concern over the electoral support for far-right parties among security forces, particularly police and military personnel, given their role in upholding the state’s monopoly on violence. This affinity is seen as especially dangerous due to the potential for ideological alignment with far-right principles to influence law enforcement. Existing explanations often emphasize authoritarian values and a preference for law-and-order policies as drivers of far-right support. Using data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Manifesto Project, our analysis tests a range of potential explanations for far-right voting, including law-and-order preferences and immigration attitudes.

This project was inspired by the large wave of protests against the AfD in early 2024. What was particularly striking in this context were the ambivalent reactions of conservative elites, especially politicians from the CDU/CSU, to these protests. While Friedrich Merz, the CDU chairman, praised the protesters for their engagement `for democracy, our rule of law, and our freedom', he and other CDU politicians also criticized the demonstrations for being dominated by left-wing extremist Antifa-groups (among other things), who excluded CDU politicians from speaking at some demonstrations.