Creating grievances

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by Tim Wappenhans, PhD candidate in Political Science at DYNAMICS and Research and Teaching Fellow at Humboldt-Universiät zu Berlin.

Democracy depends not only on free and fair elections but also on effective governance that improves people’s lives. When governments fail to deliver, political trust erodes, creating opportunities for anti-system challengers. Radical right parties (RRPs) have been particularly adept at turning voter frustration into electoral success. However, do RRPs merely exploit government failure, or do they actively create it? In particular, Tim Wappenhans argues that RRPs strategically obstruct governance, targeting highly visible policy outcomes to weaken incumbents. Local infrastructure projects are particularly vulnerable: while voters may struggle to monitor legislative processes, they readily perceive delays and deterioration in public investment. Using data from 400 German counties between 2006 and 2019, the author shows that county councils with representatives from the radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD) invest substantively less in infrastructure projects. Applying a combination of Difference-in-Differences designs and a Matrix Completion approach, he finds that the presence of AfD representatives substantially reduces annual county real investment. Additional evidence from elite interviews and county council protocols suggests this decline stems from the AfD’s obstructionist tactics, such as introducing excessive proposals and demanding time-consuming voting procedures. These findings demonstrate how RRPs can exert substantial influence over policy outcomes and democratic governance, even without direct control of executive offices. 

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.