The AfD within the AfD: Radical Right Intra-Party Competition and Ideational Change

Abstract

The normalization of radical right (RR) politics fosters opportunities for RR parties, but can also facilitate intra-party conflicts over the ‘true’ version of the shared party ideology. Previous research has highlighted two factors that influence ideational change within RR parties: contextual conditions and the formal power of intra-party factions. Yet, surprisingly, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) progressively radicalized to the right and witnessed the increased influence of its extremist grouping Der Flügel, despite contextual normalization pressures and the grouping's lower formal power. Analysing three crucial conflicts within the AfD between 2013 and 2021, we show how intra-party competition additionally plays into nativist party radicalization. Flügel balanced contextual and ‘hard’ power disadvantages by fostering its ‘soft’ power as ‘the true party within the party’. Simultaneously, this power was cemented by more established AfD actors who used Flügel's ideas against other competitors for office. Our conclusions have important implications for comparative research on competition within and between RR parties.