On Wednesday, the 29th of January 2025 Friedrich Merz, the leader of the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), broke a longstanding taboo in German politics, the so-called "Brandschutzmauer" (firewall) by passing a non-binding motion to tighten immigration rules with the backing of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a radical right party, with established links to Neonazi groups. Neither the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) nor the Greens supported the motion. In this episode, Prof. Patrick Kuhn will describe what happened, why this event sent shockwaves through German politics, and what political science research tells us about mainstream parties' likely success of such accommodative strategies.

To learn more about Prof. Patrick Kuhn's research, visit his website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/p-m-kuhn/

Literature referred to:

- Budge, Ian and Farlie D. 1983. Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-three Democracies. London/Boston: Allen & Unwin.

- Chou, Winston, Rafaela Dancygier and Amaney A. Jamal 2021. Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting. Comparative Political Studies 54(12), 2226–2260.

- Downs Anthony 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.

- Krause Werner, Cohen Dennis, Abou-Chadi Tarik 2023. Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties. Political Science Research and Methods 11(1), 172-179.

- Meguid, Bonnie M. 2008. Party Competition between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press.

Music: The Good News by SHANTI from https://tunetank.com/track/263-the-good-news/