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Internal democracy in populist right parties: the process of party policy development in the Alternative for Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2021

Valeriya Kamenova Open the ORCID record for Valeriya Kamenova [Opens in a new window]
Valeriya Kamenova*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Boston University, 232 Bay State Road, Boston, USA
*
*E-mail: vkamenov@bu.edu
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Abstract

For the past decade, populist left- and right-wing parties have been on the rise in Europe. Yet, there are only a few studies on the internal organizational dynamics of these parties. Drawing on a new and unique data from fieldwork observations and interviews with party members from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), this article examines the internal democratic mechanisms in policy formation. The AfD displays a high degree of internal participation – an important but contrasting addition to the comparative research on radical right parties, which fail to sustain a democratic internal organization and consistently adopt mechanisms to centralize power in the leadership. The findings from this field research suggest that populist parties may actually engage in meaningful intra-party democracy and internal deliberative practices to invigorate the connections between citizens and their party representatives.

Keywords

intra-party democracyparty organizationright-wing populismgrassroots activism
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 488 - 505
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

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