Using data from a recent nationwide survey, we provide the first analysis of the supporter base of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) since the party's split and ideological re‐orientation in mid‐2015. Hypotheses are derived from the literature on Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) in Western Europe. Our findings indicate that AfD support—despite the party's euro crisis origins and rapid organizational and ideational changes—is by now due to largely the same set of socio‐economic, attitudinal and contextual factors proven important for PRRP parties elsewhere. Right‐wing political attitudes concerning immigration, political distrust, fears of personal economic decline, as well as gender and socialisation effects are the most relevant explanatory variables. However, some of our findings – the importance of right‐wing economic policy preferences, the strong support by certain immigrant groups, and the role of the long‐term regional political context – stand out and distinguish the AfD from other Western European PRRPs.

Because they are now members of most Western European parliaments, Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) have the potential to influence the formulation of socio-economic policies. However, scholarly attention so far has nearly exclusively focussed on the impact of PRRPs on what is considered their 'core issue', that is migration policy. In this paper, we provide the first mixed methods comparative study of the impact of PRRPs on redistributive and (de-)regulative economic policies. Combining quantitative data with qualitative case studies, our results show that the participation of PRRPs in right-wing governments has noteworthy implications for socio-economic policies. Due to the heterogeneous constituencies of PRRPs, these parties not only refrain from welfare state retrenchment but are also less inclined to engage in deregulation compared with right-wing governments without PRRP participation.

In this article, we address the question of whether the policy statements of political parties with regard to migration affect the link between individual anti-immigrant sentiment and support for redistributive policies. While the effect of political parties “playing the race card” is well documented and repeatedly discussed in the American context, it has received little attention in comparative studies. We test our measurements of issue-salience with regard to migration and welfare-related matters by conducting multilevel models for a sample of 14 European countries. We also control for the potential effects of the countries’ welfare regimes—which is so far the most prominent contextual variable. Our results strongly indicate a moderating party-effect: The more parties accentuate crucial migration issues, the less general support there is for welfare programs by native anti-immigrant groups. In contrast, we find no effect of the repeatedly discussed welfare regime on this relationship, once controlled for party statements.

In recent years, several international-comparative studies have analyzed the relationship between migration and native populations’ decreasing support for redistributive policies. However, these studies use cross-sectional designs and aggregate the number of foreign-born residents at the national level. Both aspects are theoretically and methodologically problematic. We address these shortcomings by investigating cross-sectional as well as longitudinal effects in the case of Germany, using a combination of individual- and regional-level data for several time points from 1994 to 2010. Our results suggest that native-born populations become more reluctant to support welfare programs when the proportion of foreigners at the regional level increases. This effect is particularly strong in the initial phase of immigration, and it is further moderated by the economic context: the higher the unemployment rate, the more negative is the effect of foreigners on natives’ attitude toward providing welfare.

Previous studies on the electoral fortunes of extreme right parties (ERPs) have pointed to the importance of variables of party competition for the success -or failure -of ERPs. These studies vary greatly when it comes to describing the political opportunity structure of the extreme right. Apart from their methodological differences, existing studies differ especially with regard to the assumed underlying dimension of party competition. This article tests the impact of three frequently discussed variables in the political opportunity structure of ERPs (mainstream party convergence, position of the established right and party system polarisation) on the vote share of ERPs in Western Europe. In addition to examining previous studies in this field, it focuses on the interplay between the economic and the cultural dimensions as part of the political opportunity structure. The authors show that a decrease in polarisation with regard to economic questions is accompanied by a growing salience of ERPs' core issues, leading in the end to an increase in ERPs' vote share.