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Accommodation of Right-Wing Populist Rhetoric: Evidence From Parliamentary Speeches in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Emilio Esguerra

    (LMU Munich)

  • Felix Hagemeister

    (Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien)

  • Julian Heid

    (LMU Munich)

  • Tim Leffler

    (LMU Munich)

Abstract

We provide novel evidence on how right-wing (populist) rhetoric spreads. Using several thousand speeches from the German parliament, we show that exposure to politicians from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) leads mainstream politicians to adopt a more distinctively right-wing populist language. We measure similarity to right-wing populist rhetoric via cosine similarity to both parliamentary speeches by the AfD and extremist speeches at far-right rallies, as well as using a populist dictionary method. To induce individual-level variation in exposure to AfD politicians, we exploit a quasi-exogenous allocation rule for committee members in the German parliament. Comparing a politician with the highest to one with the lowest relative AfD exposure increases the cosine similarity to right-wing populist speech by 0.1 of a standard deviation. Our results seem specific to right-wing populism and suggest strategic motives related to local electoral competition behind rhetorical changes among individual politicians.

Suggested Citation

  • Emilio Esguerra & Felix Hagemeister & Julian Heid & Tim Leffler, 2023. "Accommodation of Right-Wing Populist Rhetoric: Evidence From Parliamentary Speeches in Germany," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 435, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:435
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

    right-wing populism; AfD; Germany; NLP;
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