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Tom Mannewitz, Adriaan Ph. V. Kühn

Two different types of crisis have dominated the European Union’s political agenda over the past years: a combined economic, banking, and currency crunch (popularly known as the “Euro crisis”), which especially affected the southern member states; and a so-called “migration crisis”, which primarily hit the EU states located in the northern hemisphere of the continent. Whereas sky-high unemployment has been the main challenge for policy makers in Spain (and other South European countries), the arrival of almost 1 million asylum seekers in 2015 has dominated the political debate in Germany ever since.

Two types of crisis, two affected geographical regions, but just a single perspective: Both in the academic debate and in the media coverage, the economic and the social consequences of the crisis phenomena have monopolized discourses for the better part of the last years. Even political scientists have drawn their full attention to the political repercussions only lately. However, the political backlash of the economic and migration woes bears the greatest risk for European democracies and their liberal societies. Growing contempt against those who hold top positions in the economy and the political system, mounting hostility against refugees, citizen’s alienation from an allegedly unaccountable “Brussels” (and last not least from democracy itself) are some of the factors that explain the recent populist uprising across Europe. Different political “movements” – typically, they avoid calling themselves political parties – have managed to channel popular disaffection and, consequently, reaped electoral success in national elections held over the past years. Whether outfits on the left (like Podemos in Spain, Movimente 5 Stelle in Italy, Bloco de Esquerda and Coligação Democrática Unitária in Portugal, and Syriza in Greece) or on the right side of the political spectrum (AfD in Germany, PVV in the Netherlands, and Chrysi Avyi in Greece), populist parties challenge incumbent players in party systems across Europe. Be it the North or the South, the protest European citizens voiced has its roots in a perceived representational gap. A significant share of voters does not feel represented by its representatives anymore. The different crises, although not causal, did widen the gap between those in charge and the “man on the street”.

Some general conclusions may already be drawn from this recent populist success story: Populism contributes to a coarsening of political culture, negatively affects governability, destabilizes coalition agreements, and polarizes the political debate. It is not only for these reasons that populism is generally seen a potential threat to democracies: the populist discourse deliberately discredits parlamentarism and its political institutions.

While most Southern European states have witnessed the rise of new formations on the political left, the migration crisis triggered a “normalization” of Germany’s party system in a comparative perspective. Academics working in the field had considered the absence of a fringe party on the right as a distinctive German characteristic, which could be explained with the long shaddow of the country’s national-socialist past. The rise of a party on the ideological right side of the conservative CDU has been all but inconceivable until recently. The migration crisis, however, challenged these widespread assumptions in the same way as the appearance of the PEGIDA and LEGIDA phenomena. In Spain, on the contrary, the migration issue has played hardly any role in the populist discourse. On the Iberian Peninsula, the economic crisis marked the advent of increased fragmentation and polarization in the party system. Here the populist discourse is not only directed against the country’s political and economic elites, but challenges the very founding narrative of the Spanish democracy as well.

The aim of the conference and student workshops that have preceded this volume and been organized in Madrid in late spring of 2017 was to exemplify the origins, founding moments, and subsequent developments of the dominant populist movements in Spain and Germany, respectively. By limiting the scope of our approach to two cases, we intended to prevent a blurring of analysis; since indeed a variety of crises can explain the current “populist insurrection” in Europe (and elsewhere). The cases of Spain and Germany have been chosen following a most different case design, which allowed the conference’s participants to detect some fundamental differences regarding the political goals of populists in Spain and Germany, their sociological basis, and their genealogy; but revealed as well a series of similarities, e.g. the populist discourse, their Weltanschaaung and their tactics in day to day politics.

The conference proceedings presented in this volume are divided into two parts. The first part comprises a selection of the contributions that were made to the academic part of the conference. Part two reflects the result of the student workshop we held parallel to the academic conference.

Adriaan Kühn’s contribution addresses the puzzle of the unfulfilled “Second Transition” in Spain. Thanks to an economic crisis in combination with corruption scandals that affected virtually all political parties, trust in Spain’s institutions stands at an all-time low. However, despite the presence of new actors in the Spanish party system – most prominently the left leaning populist Podemos party – and citizen’s demands to rearrange long-standing power arrangements within the political system, attempts for institutional reforms have so far stalled. The article suggests that the unchanged structure of party competition offset the effects of party system transformation and public pressure.

In his chapter, Tom Mannewitz aims to explain the recent surge in anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany, for which the success of the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is just one indicator. He explores the changes in German political culture since reunification in 1990 and takes into account the persisting differences in attitudes in the Eastern and the Western part of the country. While he identifies the socialist legacy as one of the factors that explain why a growing number of (East) Germans feels at odds with key features of a democratic culture (not the democratic institutions), he generally perceives a blurring of differences in political attitudes between the two former German states. Mannewitz sees a lack of intercultural contacts in the East and misinformed expectations concerning the working of parliamentarian democracy in both East and West as main elements for the relative success of right-wing populism.

Mario Sznajder in turn provides the reader with insights into the broader geopolitical aspects that have triggered the so-called “refugee crisis” from the year 2015 on. He reflects on the “new wars” that are fought in the 21st century, their effect on the civil population and, in consecuence, on migration flows. He finds that regional conflicts, unlike in the past, tend to have (global) spillover effects. Sznajder also addresses the challenge of sustaining large refugee populations, be it in the (rich) Western states or in the (poor) neighbouring states of conflict zones. As a policy recommendation, he favours measures that aim at rooting out the push-factors that lie behind large-scale migration movements, especially supporting state building efforts in order to prevent failed state phenomena.

Eckhard Jesse’s subject is the – theoretical and practical – interaction between the concepts of “political extremism” and “militant democracy” in Germany, although his reflections turn out to be relevant for a wider range of cases: He distinguishes between “extremist”, “radical” and “populist” organizations and discusses whether they pose any threat to democracy. Jesse finds that dispite the broad consensus in Germany regarding the need to contain political right wing extremism, extremism from the other aile of the political spectrum is often downplayed.

The populist Spanish Podemos party is the subject of Angel Rivero’s contribution. His analysis eyes the phenomenon from different angles by reflecting on the party’s role as a new and disruptive actor within the Spanish radical left, giving insights in its (main) political project, aimed at overcoming the so-called “regime of 1978”, and finally conducting a sociological case study unveiling a generation clash between the protagonists of anti-Franco struggles and their offspring. According to Rivero, rather than the effects of the financial and economic crises that hit Spain from 2008 on, it was a wider European context of rising economic, social, and cultural insecurity that explains Podemos’ initial successes at the ballot boxes. While the Podemos leadership discarded socialism as an ultimate goal from its believe system, the fight against the Spanish democracy in its current liberal form is on.

During the conference, the Spanish and German student participants worked in small gropus on research papers, addressing problems related to the rise of populism in one of the two countries. While German students addressed issues like the 15-M movement as well as its relation with the Podemos party and discussed wheter the latter was already an established actor in the Spanish party system, the Spanish group concentrated on the AfD as the firstly genuine post 1945 populist outfit in German politics. The results were presented and discussed during the Madrid workshop. The final papers are now puplished in this book.

We are thankful to all students for their participation, as well as to the involved academic and administrative staff at both Technische Universität Chemnitz and Unversidad Francisco de Vitoria Madrid that made the event a success. We would also like to thank the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for granting the funding that made the conference as well as the workshop possible in the first place. We are convinced that the academic event in Madrid has laid the foundation for a fruitful future cooperation between our institutions.