Political Mobilization in Germany
By: Johann Sonnenburg
Feb 20, 2025
Germany is a post-WWII democratic success story, but is its foundation now under threat? This week’s graph shows the development of political mobilization between 1924 and 2023.
The indicators “Mobilization for democracy” and “Mobilization for autocracy” measure the frequency and size of events of mass mobilization that are either pro-democratic or pro-autocratic on a scale from 0 (no events) to 4 (many large events).
Reactionary politics, the Nazi Party’s rise, and the Great Depression led to pro-autocratic mobilization by the late 1920s. Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on 30th January 1933, ended the Weimar Republic and paved the way for World War II and the Holocaust.
Post-war, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) established a firm democratic foundation and major spikes in pro-democratic mobilization occurred during the 1960s student movement, the 1980s peace movements, and around the 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Following reunification, pro-autocratic mobilization was nearly non-existent until 2014, when it reemerged, coinciding with the rise of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). By 2020, pro-democratic opposition began to mount.
As we await the V-Dem data for 2024, news headlines suggest that the trend of intensifying political mobilization is continuing. Ahead of the snap election on 23rd February 2025, hundreds of thousands protested against the AfD. Nonetheless, the AfD maintains substantial support despite its anti-pluralist rhetoric.
Is the long-standing consensus on democracy in Germany being challenged?
Note: The current V-Dem dataset covers until the end of 2023. The respective graphs do not
reflect developments after those years.
