Fuelling Politicisation: The AfD and the Politics of Military Interventions in the German Parliament

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2017, for the first time in more than 60 years, a populist radical right party, the AfD, gained seats in a Bundestag election. While the AfD’s stance against immigration and European integration is well documented, its preferences towards other foreign and security policy issues are less clear. To overcome this lacuna, I investigate voting records and introduce an original dataset of the legitimising rhetoric in parliament, to grasp the AfD’s position on military interventions vis-à-vis other parties in the Bundestag. The analysis of voting patterns and rhetoric reveals the AfD as a distinct outlier within the German party system. Studying the AfD’s positioning on security issues also contributes to the emerging literature on partisan ideologies, populism and foreign policy. Together with the Left Party, military intervention policies are now contested at both ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, the AfD introduced novel discursive frames for the German context based on the party’s distinct populist radical right ideology. While the AfD has voted in favour of some smaller interventions, it regularly opposes deployments in the Middle East. Furthermore, its nationalist rhetoric breaks with Germany’s traditional ‘civilian power’ role and fuels the politicisation of foreign policy decisions in parliament.