Research

Publications

Work in Progress

Going Local? How Mainstream Parties React to the Local Framing of Migration by the Radical Right.
Draft available upon request

Abstract: The radical right has played a crucial role in the politicization of migration, particularly on the national level. Despite stark regional differences in the electoral appeal of radical right parties, there is a lack of research of the local dynamics of this phenomenon. Consequently, this article challenges the prevailing national perspective on party competition by investigating how the discourse on migration plays out at the local level. In a first step, this paper analyses whether radical right parties adjust their communication to the local context. While these parties portray migration mainly as a cultural threat, it is expected that they highlight economic aspects of migration in economically deprived constituencies. In a second step, this paper zeroes in on the consequences of radical right’s communication on migration for local party competition. I contend that the more electorally threatening radical right candidates are, the more centre-left and centre-right candidates adopt the cultural ‘master’ frame of the radical right. The empirical analysis draws on a newly compiled dataset consisting of Twitter posts by candidates running in the 2017 and 2021 German parliamentary elections, as well as state-level members of parliament. The framing of these posts is identified with the help of large language models and matched with contextual data of candidates’ constituencies. The results show that the radical right often relies on a nationalist and identity-based framing of migration, which becomes more pronounced in districts with high migration levels. While the cultural context affects their framing of migration, radical right parties do not react to economic grievances by using more economic frames of migration. In constituencies where the radical right has become electorally successful, centre-left parties put more salience on migration whereas centre-right parties increasingly adopt cultural frames of migration. The findings of this article contribute to the literature by emphasizing the importance of local party competition in an era of growing party system fragmentation.

Who should tell them? The effect of social group cues on political persuasion
Draft available upon request

Abstract: Can parties shape the acceptance of a policy by selecting spokespersons who are presumably affected by the decision? Although policy justifications take an important role in political communication, we know relatively little about how the politicians issuing them influence public opinion formation. Against this background, I contend that citizens are more willing to accept policy justifications if they are delivered by a representative of a social group that is directly affected by a proposed policy (e.g., politicians with a migration background justifying migration policy). Moreover, I expect that this effect is conditional on an individual’s view about the group and the policy under debate. Following a 2×2×3 factorial experiment in Germany, this article finds that social group cues shape how citizens react to policy justifications. While there is no general effect of a politician being affected by a policy, for some issues, the politician’s background influences citizens’ opinion formation. Further analyses of heterogeneous effects demonstrate that the influence of social group cues hinges on group affect and issue salience. Group sympathizers are more likely to support policies whenever a policy is believed to extend group’s rights and a politician affected by it serves as a spokesperson. In contrast, group adversaries support policies they consider harmful for the group if they are exposed to an affected politician. Furthermore, the salience individuals put on an issue moderates the effect of being affected by a policy. The more important citizens consider an issue, the less persuasive are politicians affected by the proposed policy. Overall, these findings directly speak to our understanding of descriptive representation in policy justifications and its potential for strategic manipulation.

Reminiscing the good old days. How far-right parties deter the female losers of technological change.

with Leon David Küstermann

Draft available upon request

Abstract: Being considered the losers of technological change, parts of male industrial workers have become an important vote base for far-right parties. Contrarily, although female routine occupations such as office clerks have also shrunk, female routine workers have not voted for the far-right to the same extent as their male counterparts. The dominating explanation for this gendered voting pattern is a greater societal status loss among male routine workers. Our paper tests an alternative explanation arguing that far-right parties have unequally addressed male and female routine workers. Therefore, we ask the following question: Is the effect of technological change on far-right voting for female workers moderated by far-right parties? We test our theoretical arguments with a measure of state-level party strategies constructed from politicians’ social media data in Germany. These data are combined with longitudinal GSOEP data and occupation-level measures of technological change. Our findings indicate that women in general and female routine workers in particular refrain from supporting the radical right when it uses traditionalist gender appeals. Instead, they are mobilized by the center-left when it campaigns on a more progressive gender portfolio. Consequently, our results demonstrate the importance of taking supply-demand side interactions into account when studying the political outcomes of technological change and gender differences in political behavior more broadly.

The Things That Unite Us. Intra-Party Cohesion and Issue Engagement.
Draft available upon request

Abstract: This article investigates how niche parties’ intra-party cohesion affects their divergent issue engagement in social policy issues. Following theories on party cohesion, this article argues that parties take their internal disagreements into account before engaging into an issue. Relying on survey data from the Comparative Candidate Survey and parliamentary speeches from the ParlSpeech dataset to measure intra-party cohesion, the analysis establishes that radical right parties behave contrarily to expectations of existing theories on the role of intra-party cohesion for issue engagement. While Green and mainstream parties avoid social policy issues once they are characterized by higher levels of preference heterogeneity, internal preference heterogeneity does not prevent the Radical Right to engage in welfare-related issues. Furthermore, the empirical analysis indicates that radical right parties use their speeches in parliament strategically to appeal broadly. By showing that Green and radical right parties extend their narrow issue set in different internal contexts, this article contributes to the understanding of niche parties’ issue diversification.