Who Benefits from the Firewall Against AfD, Comrades?
Germany's political firewall against the Alternative für Deutschland has backfired by strengthening the party to over 400 parliamentary seats while weakening centrist parties instead.
The so-called “Brandmauer” or firewall strategy — whereby established parties refuse any cooperation with the AfD regardless of voter preferences or policy overlap — has produced the opposite of its intended effect, as Junge Freiheit reports. While the AfD has grown into the most successful new party in postwar German history, the centrist parties maintaining the cordon sanitaire have declined precipitously.
Thomas Poguntke, a political scientist from Düsseldorf, stated in the Kölner Stadtanzeiger that the parties of the center, particularly the Union and SPD, have not profited from strict separation from the AfD but have instead grown weaker together. The firewall was never about policy substance, Poguntke noted, but rather a strategic decision to suppress a new competitive political force.
AfD Outpaces All Previous Newcomers
The comparison with Germany’s other successful new parties reveals the AfD’s remarkable trajectory. After the Federal Republic’s party system consolidated in the 1950s, only the CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP dominated parliamentary life until the late 1970s. The Greens first contested federal elections in 1980, achieving just 1.5 percent before breaking through with 5.6 percent in 1983.
Following reunification, the PDS — essentially a rebranded continuation of the East German regime party SED — entered as the fifth force. These five formations remained dominant for roughly two and a half decades before the AfD’s emergence after 2013.
Thirteen years after its founding, the AfD now commands more than 400 parliamentary mandates nationwide, including 150 seats in the Bundestag where it currently stands as the second-largest faction. The party holds 309 seats across state legislatures, absent only from Schleswig-Holstein, where it fell short of the five percent threshold, and Bremen, where it was barred from the ballot in 2023.
By contrast, the Greens currently hold 85 Bundestag seats and 283 in state parliaments, with no representation in Brandenburg, Saarland, or Thuringia. The Left Party has 64 federal mandates and 80 in state legislatures, missing from all western German states and Brandenburg.
Coalition Access: The Critical Difference
The stark divergence lies in governmental participation. Despite being the weakest of the three newcomers at comparable stages, the Greens reached the cabinet table within just two years of their first parliamentary entry — joining Hessen’s government in 1985 under SPD Minister-President Holger Börner. By 1998, they entered federal government as junior partners to the SPD under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder with a mere 6.7 percent of the vote.
Even the SED successor party gained coalition access remarkably quickly. The PDS was brought in to tolerate an SPD-Green minority government in Saxony-Anhalt in 1994 through the “Magdeburg Model,” just four years after entering the Bundestag. By 1998, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania formed the first red-red coalition. Bodo Ramelow became the first and thus far only Left Party minister-president in Thuringia from 2014 to 2024.
The Greens currently participate in six state governments, while the Left Party holds two. The AfD, despite its superior electoral performance, has been excluded from all governmental responsibility at every level.
Strategic Distortions and Political Consequences
The firewall creates what Poguntke describes as strategically disadvantageous conditions through severely restricted coalition options. This distortion has become increasingly evident as voters deliver majorities that cannot be implemented due to artificial political prohibitions rather than substantive policy disagreements.
The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), a Left Party splinter, achieved cabinet positions immediately after its first state parliament entries in Thuringia and Brandenburg in 2024, though the Potsdam coalition quickly collapsed amid internal strife. This demonstrates that coalition barriers are selectively applied based on political acceptability rather than consistent democratic principles.
The AfD’s exclusion represents a historic anomaly in the Federal Republic’s political development. No other successful new party has faced such systematic ostracism regardless of voter support or policy convergence with potential partners. The firewall has transformed from a temporary strategic measure into a rigid ideological barrier that increasingly contradicts democratic representation.
As Germany heads toward federal elections, the sustainability of this approach faces mounting questions. The AfD continues to gain strength while the parties maintaining the firewall fragment and decline, suggesting voters may ultimately force a reconsideration of this self-imposed constraint on coalition formation.
With information from Junge Freiheit
