Date: 2023
Type: Article
Does radical-right success make the political debate more negative? : evidence from emotional rhetoric in German state parliaments
Political behavior, 2023, Vol. 45, pp. 243-264
VALENTIM, Vicente, WIDMANN, Tobias, Does radical-right success make the political debate more negative? : evidence from emotional rhetoric in German state parliaments, Political behavior, 2023, Vol. 45, pp. 243-264
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/70695
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Political rhetoric has important effects on the quality of democracy, but we know very little about what causes variation in the tone of the political debate. We investigate how radical-right success affects the way the remaining politicians discuss political issues. Using an original dictionary, we measure different positive and negative emotions in a newly collected dataset of speeches in German state parliaments. Taking advantage of variation in the timing of elections when radical-right politicians enter these parliaments, we find that politicians of other parties respond to radical-right success by using more positive, instead of negative, emotions. The analyses suggest that this finding may be the result of a strategy by the remaining politicians to distance themselves from radical-right discourse. Our findings highlight how radical-right success can create incentives for other politicians to enforce democratic norms that radical-right politicians breach.
Additional information:
First published online: 24 March 2021
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/70695
Full-text via DOI: 10.1007/s11109-021-09697-8
ISSN: 0190-9320; 1573-6687
Publisher: Springer
Sponsorship and Funder information:
This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Springer Transformative Agreement (2020-2024)
Succeeding version: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/71915
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