On 6 September, Saxony-Anhalt elects a new state parliament; Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania follows a fortnight later. Both elections could mark a historic rupture, because voters could, for the first time, open the door to AfD participation in—possibly even leadership of—a state government in Germany, and/or force the Christian Democrats (CDU) to choose between the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the dogmatic left (Die Linke) in order to build a majority. The CDU would then face the most difficult, potentially existential, strategic challenge in their party’s history.
Against this backdrop, the September issue of the Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik features the German-language article ‘Populistische Versprechen und ökonomischer Verrat’ (‘Populist promises and economic betrayal’) by our Managing Director, Jan-Peter Olters. It analyses why a policy mix of tax relief for capital owners, welfare chauvinism, and the rejection of a rules-based international order finds electoral support. According to the paper’s argument, this discrepancy has been bridged since the days of the German Empire by channelling economic insecurity into identity-based loyalty—ranging from the political exploitation of deliberately racially defined anti-Semitism to the algorithmically amplified narratives of threat in the present day.
The article closes with three criteria for a democratic counterstrategy, ranging from economic security and state capacity to an institutional architecture of belonging. It thereby brings together two analyses that OLTERS GmbH has published in recent months: the German-language policy paper ‘Vor dem zweiten Scheitern? Die Landtagswahlen, die Brandmauer und das Von-Papen-Risiko’ (‘Before the second failure? The state elections, the firewall, and the von Papen risk’, OPWP № 2026/01) examined the strategic constellation of this election year and the historical parallels to the self-abandonment of the conservative centre; the commentary ‘Tilting at windmills: Far-right illusions and real-world costs’ did the arithmetic, using energy policy as its example, on what the AfD’s programmatic promises would actually cost. The Blätter article provides the political-economy frame that holds these strands together and explains why this arithmetic has so far failed to reach the party’s voters.
Read the article in the Blätter: Populistische Versprechen und ökonomischer Verrat | Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik
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