26.06.2023

Departmental Seminar on socio-economic positioning of the Radical Political Right

With Dr. Floris Biskamp (Univ. Tübingen), Wednesday, 28 June 2023, 16:00 – 18:00 c.t. Institute of Political Science, room 124

Floris Biskamp "Market radicalism, welfare chauvinism, and positional blurring. Internal struggles on social policy in the AfD“, Wednesday, 28 June 2023, 16:00 – 18:00 c.t. Institute of Political Science, room 124

What socioeconomic positions do far right parties in Europe take? This question has been intensively discussed over the last years with some scholars arguing that these parties remain dedicated market radicals while others claim that they are increasingly taking “patriotic-solidaric” positions promoting a strong but ethnically exclusive welfare state to mobilize the “white working class”. The empirical picture is mixed, raising the questions why the different members of this party family take such different positions. The presentation addresses this question with the example of the German AfD, arguing that the party’s socioeconomic positioning is a contingent result of internal struggles focused on other areas.

Floris Biskamp is a political scientist and sociologist and currently working in a research project on the remembrance of racism and anti-Semitism in civil society. He is also an associate postdoctoral researcher in the Graduate Program Right-Wing Populist Social Policy and Exclusive Solidarity at the University of Tübingen. His work focuses on political theory, political economy, political education, the far right, and racism.