Tomorrow 10:45: I'll be presenting a working paper with @lennartschuermann.bsky.social which shows that effective state action against the far right increases public support for democracy. This is part of the great panel by @larboe.bsky.social , @javidibad.bsky.social & @sldelange.bsky.social

4/ Our study sheds light on:
🧠 Protest (non-)mobilization
✊ Party-movement dynamics
⚖️ Political realignment in two-dimensional issue space

And 🙏 to Priska Daphi, @jacobgunderson.bsky.social ‬, @sophiahunger.bsky.social, @dasalgon.bsky.social, @kanol.bsky.social and @tevoelker.bsky.social

3/ ❓Why the failure?
Protest sympathizers held economically left + culturally nationalist views.
But no major party or union spoke to both.
Except... one 👀

➡️ Enter: Sahra Wagenknecht (not yet BSW)
🧩 Her left-nationalist policy package matched the protest potential —
📢 And actually mobilized it.

2/ We combine protest event data 🪧 + a survey experiment 📊
What we find:
➡️ Huge sympathy for protest goals
➡️ Very little actual participation
➡️ Traditional actors (existing parties and labor unions) failed to mobilize