Election in Saxony-Anhalt: a test for democracy

Rostock-Lichtenhagen, summer 1992: I was a young teenager when images of burning row of flats – home to Vietnamese contract workers and asylum seekers – were seen around the world. A jeering crowd applauded. The question of how people could do such a thing to other people stayed with me and shaped my career. I studied political science – a discipline that emerged in Germany after 1945 partly out of a need to understand the downfall of democracies and to find ways to prevent it.

Far-right extremism and the bridge to the middle-class camp

As a schoolgirl, and later as a student, I took to the streets to protest against the NPD, a right-wing extremist party, when the party tripled its membership and sought to demonstrate its strength through marches. Our resistance had an effect, partly because the NPD remained rooted in an openly neo-Nazi milieu – a taboo for the middle classes. As the Federal Constitutional Court confirmed in 2017: the NPD pursues anti-constitutional aims; yet it was not banned because, according to the court, it lacked the political clout to ever realise these aims. In 2024, in a separate proceeding using a newly created legal instrument, the court instead excluded the party – which now calls itself “Die Heimat” – from state party funding for six years.

This teaching has not been learnt by the AfD. Its history is regarded by researchers as a “history of radicalisation”: from a party of professors critical of the EU and the economy in 2013 to a force that is, to a large extent, ethno-nationalist. The Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena shows how the NPD paved the way for the AfD: combative terms such as “population replacement”, “established parties” or “passport Germans” originate from the NPD’s lexicon, and even the demonstrative walkout from the plenary session during Holocaust commemorations was first practised by the NPD as early as 2005 in the Saxon state parliament. The difference is that, unlike the NPD, the AfD has built a bridge to the centre-right and is mobilising support in the political centre. A joint study by Philip Manow (University of Bremen) and Hanna Schwander (University of Zurich) shows that the AfD’s electorate is successful in areas where there was already a tradition of voting for the right, rather than primarily amongst those economically disadvantaged.

This may trigger an obvious reflex among centrist parties: to align their policies in order to win back voters. However, political science research shows that this backfires. If established parties move closer to the radical right in terms of policy, this paradoxically strengthens the original movement rather than winning back voters. According to a major comparative study by Denis Cohen, Werner Krause and Tarik Abou-Chadi (2023) covering twelve Western European countries and fifty years, the loss of votes to the far right was greatest precisely among those parties that focused most strongly on the far right’s core issues.

Government power and the lack of moderation

Some therefore hope that the AfD will lose its allure as soon as it is actually required to solve problems while in government. Yet a look at Italy serves as a warning against excessive optimism: Giorgia Meloni, who has been Prime Minister of a post-fascist party since 2022, has moderated her stance primarily in areas where she is structurally dependent on doing so – in foreign and fiscal policy, she adheres to the EU and NATO line, not least because Italy relies on EU funding. In domestic policy, by contrast, there is continuity or even a hardening of stance: restrictions on sea rescues, the expansion of executive powers, and the authorisation of neo-fascist marches.

In Germany, education and policing are matters for the federal states, as is oversight of the state offices for the protection of the constitution. What this might entail is set out in the AfD’s 2026 government programme for Saxony-Anhalt: abolishing the role of the independent police commissioner; replacing critical educational programmes with “politically neutral” teaching staff; creating new state-directed research institutions; and scrapping equality programmes at universities. Added to this is a domestic intelligence service that no longer “persecutes the opposition” but merely “protects the constitution”. Sooner or later, an AfD state government would oversee the very authority that is currently monitoring it.

What the comparison with the SVP reveals – and what it does not

What can we learn from looking at Switzerland? In comparative party research, the SVP has long been classified as part of Europe’s right-wing nationalist family of parties. Indeed, it shares key topics with the AfD: criticism of migration, EU scepticism, a confrontational communication style, and the same self-portrayal as the champion of “ordinary people” against the urban elite. However, the Zurich-based political scientist Simon Bornschier points to structural differences: the SVP lacks comparable ethno-nationalist ideologues such as Björn Höcke in senior positions; members who have been found by the courts to hold racist views are usually expelled.

And at first glance, the answer also seems reassuring: the SVP has been one of the country’s strongest political forces for decades and, at the same time, a part of the federal government. Its integration into the concordance system is seen by many as an example of how institutions can transform political polarisation into cooperation: because the main political forces are generally involved in forming the government and share responsibility, the Swiss system increases the incentive to seek compromises, to resolve conflicts through institutional channels – and to tone down radical demands.

However, it does not follow that the inclusion of a polarising party automatically leads to its moderation. As early as 2015, political scientists Daniel Bochsler, Regula Hänggli and Silja Häusermann noted in their study that the concordance model of shared responsibility was largely a thing of the past: as a governing party, the SVP was increasingly resorting to referendums itself, even against compromises for which its own Federal Councillors bore joint responsibility. The Swiss experience shows that institutions present political actors with certain incentives – and that what matters is how these actors deal with them. The strength of democratic institutions thus lies not solely in their design, but also in whether their rules are respected and utilised by political actors.

What matters on Sunday

So, what determines how resilient a democracy is? Institutions are only as strong as the people who uphold them: judges who rule independently, civil servants who refuse to be exploited, and citizens who take a stand rather than look the other way when fundamental rights and the protection of minorities are called into question. Democratic institutions are not resilient simply because they exist. They are resilient when people defend their independence, enforce their rules and make use of their opportunities. How resilient a democracy is, therefore, is determined not only at the ballot box, but within its institutions and by the people who stand up for them.

This report reflects the author’s personal opinion, not the position of the University of St.Gallen.

Image: Keystone

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