The rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other radical-right parties is often treated as difficult to explain. Their supporters bring together different political currents, from libertarian to authoritarian, and their positions can shift across issues. The essay argues that a shared political logic helps explain their appeal: a promise of sovereignty and restored control.
The authors distinguish this idea from the radical right’s core ideology of ethnonationalism. Its political language, they argue, is captured by the AfD slogan “We are taking our country back.” The slogan presents the party as reclaiming the power to act after a perceived loss of control, while defining who belongs to the nation and who does not.
This appeal is framed as an answer to tensions in modern democracies between individual rights and collective decision-making. The radical right presents those tensions as a crisis of popular sovereignty, particularly in disputes involving the euro and bank rescues, migration, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Its version of sovereignty places the will of the people above constraints such as human rights and international agreements, the essay says.
The authors argue that this outlook is not simply a rejection of liberal principles, but a different way of defining them. Supporters may see the state as ineffective when it should serve those who work and take initiative, yet too powerful when it provides support to people they view as undeserving. This helps explain, the essay says, why some radical-right voters oppose expanded social benefits even when their own economic circumstances are insecure.
The same emphasis on control shapes views of national belonging. Where liberal approaches tend to expand inclusion, the radical right seeks to set its own criteria for who is part of the political community. It also distrusts institutions that mediate popular will, favouring a closer identification between the people and political leadership.
At the international level, the essay focuses on the European Union and other institutions that can limit national governments’ decision-making powers. It argues that criticism once associated mainly with the left’s concerns about “post-democracy” has also become part of the right’s case against what it sees as the erosion of national sovereignty.
The authors conclude that the radical right offers more than reactive protest: it presents a vision of political life organised around control rather than delegation, and sovereignty rather than intermediary institutions. They also cite Hannah Arendt’s warning that political sovereignty may be an illusion sustained only through force.
Sources: FAZ.