German Democracy and the Rise of the New Right

April 4, 2018

The election of over ninety members of the new right-populist party the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the Bundestag in the recent national election has created a degree of political instability that has not been seen in the history of the Federal Republic. Recent polls have the AfD ahead of the Social Democrats and it will now be the main opposition party in the German parliament. This session will look at the implications of the rise of this new party for the state of German democracy with Dr. Yascha Mounk, a Lecturer at Harvard and Executive Director of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He is the author of Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany and the new book The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Dr. Mounk will be joined by Edward Luce, the Washington columnist and commentator for the Financial Times and author ofThe Retreat of Western Liberalism.