What are the political consequences of long-term population loss? In a new paper for German Politics @benjaminhoehne.bsky.social, Hendrik Träger and I find that East German places more affected by depopulation provided stronger support for the AfD in recent state elections.🧵👇 shorturl.at/cujwa - ThreadSky

juliusk.bsky.social • 3 days ago

What are the political consequences of long-term population loss? In a new paper for German Politics @benjaminhoehne.bsky.social, Hendrik Träger and I find that East German places more affected by depopulation provided stronger support for the AfD in recent state elections.🧵👇
https://shorturl.at/cujwa

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tuttyfrutty.bsky.social•2 days ago

That's very interesting.
May explain how far right parties talk about high fertility rate, but often act against policies that would actually help people having more kids.

fvielfalt.bsky.social•2 days ago

Muss man nicht mittlerweile untersuchen, ob es nicht umgekehrt ist. AfD Support triggert Abwanderung?

themrbibby.bsky.social•3 days ago

Fascinating and I would love to see this done with places in the UK that have strong Reform support

diaeter.bsky.social•3 days ago

@skyview.social please unroll

daniflorean.bsky.social•3 days ago

Very striking results... out of personal curiosity, have you tried to see if the relationship holds also in the west german states? (asking as someone who lives in an electoral district in Bayern where the AfD was the second party)

widescape.com•2 days ago

Testing this with Japanese data could be very interesting, since Japan is very good at keeping economical and social structures in municipalities with dramatic population loss.

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

Background: Since German reunification in 1990, East Germany experienced a severe population loss of around 3 million inhabitants, primarily due to out-migration. Although this population decline affected all of East German society, it was especially pronounced in rural and peripheral areas.

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is also reflected on the map of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, where key state elections were held last year. While many rural communities have lost up to 50% of their population since the 1990s, population growth is mainly limited to large urban centers and surrounding areas.

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

Although it is often suggested that greater local exposure to this long-term depopulation might account for the exceptionally strong support for anti-establishment and far-right parties in many areas of eastern Germany, this hypothesis has rarely been tested empirically.

vdocspace.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think you should also take into consideration of the socialization in the former GDR. People were trained to not be self-responsible. EVerything came from above and this is why they have trouble adapting to a free society, where they are responsible themselves. Thus, they still blame others, i.e.

vdocspace.bsky.social•3 days ago

the "upper people" aka the government and of course "foreigners". https://volkerswelt.wordpress.com/2023/07/15/das-hassliche-haupt-des-nationalsozialismus-hebt-sich-wieder/

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

But why is this hypothesis plausible in the first place? Similar to work by Dancygier et al. on emigration in Sweden, we argue that two potential mechanisms may explain why local population decline enhances electoral preferences for parties such as the AfD & the newly formed BSW.
https://shorturl.at/KrADV

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

On the one hand, population loss leads to a shift in the socio-demographic composition of local electorates. Individuals deciding to emigrate are typically younger, better educated, and more often female, whereas those who remain tend to be older, male, and less educated.

juliusk.bsky.social•3 days ago

This change in the frequency of certain socio-structural characteristics then also corresponds to a change in the prevalence of political preferences: socio-demographic groups more inclined toward populist and nativist preferences, and parties campaigning on them, become more dominant.

tbroekel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Great paper. Congratulations. As a reviewer I would have suggested to do a counter-example study on those municipalities in WestGermany that received the most EastGermans. There, one would expect the extremists performing relatively worse.

darlingultra.bsky.social•2 days ago

ALT Text missing.

piotrmarczynski.bsky.social•3 days ago

Cool work! Makes me think of the argument made by Ivan Krastev in 'The Light That Filed' that cites concerns emigration of the youth from smaller agglomerations in CEE as the driving force of the pushback against liberalism.

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