Does Radical-Right Success Make the Political Debate More Negative? Evidence from Emotional Rhetoric in German State Parliaments

Abstract

Political rhetoric has important effects on the quality of democracy, but we know very little about what causes variation in the tone of the political debate. We investigate how radical-right success affects the way the remaining politicians discuss political issues. Using an original dictionary, we measure different positive and negative emotions in a newly collected dataset of speeches in German state parliaments. Taking advantage of variation in the timing of elections when radical-right politicians enter these parliaments, we find that politicians of other parties respond to radical-right success by using more positive, instead of negative, emotions. The analyses suggest that this finding may be the result of a strategy by the remaining politicians to distance themselves from radical-right discourse. Our findings highlight how radical-right success can create incentives for other politicians to enforce democratic norms that radical-right politicians breach.

Die Landesparlamente im Zeichen der Emergency Politics in der Corona-Krise

“…5 Der aktuelle Forschungsbedarf für die Landesparlamente resultiert jedoch nicht nur aus einer akademischen Randlage (für Ausnahmen mit komparativer Ausrichtung vgl. Appeldorn und Fortunato 2021 ; Atzpodien 2020 ; Valentim und Widmann 2021 ), die für sich genommen eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung nicht hinreichend rechtfertigen kann, sondern zweitens aus deren Bedeutung als regionale Hochburgen der föderalen Demokratie in Deutschland: Die Landesparlamente sind die einzigen direkt durch Wahlen legitimierten Institutionen der politischen Systeme der Länder (vgl. Mielke und Reutter 2012 ; Sturm 2020 ).…”

Fear, Hope, and COVID‐19: Emotional Elite Rhetoric and Its Impact on the Public During the First Wave of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Existing studies investigating the emotional framing of messages in political communication suggest that political parties use emotive content in a strategic manner, depending on their policy positions (Kosmidis et al, 2019 ), the economic situation (Crabtree et al, 2020 ), the success of political competitors (Valentim & Widmann, 2021 ), or the temporal direction of statements (Müller, 2022 ). Moreover, research has found that emotional appeals are dependent on the incumbency status and the position in the political space.…”

“…A growing strand of literature researches the affective side of political communication. These studies argue that politicians use emotional rhetoric strategically (Crabtree et al, 2020 ; Kosmidis et al, 2019 ; Müller, 2022 ; Valentim & Widmann, 2021 ). Furthermore, the general pattern found is that incumbents make more use of positive emotional appeals, while opposition parties (and especially challenger parties on the fringes of the political spectrum) make greater use of negative emotional language.…”

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