Working paper with Isabela Mares, Yale University.

Abstract: Does the parliamentary presence of extremist parties change parliamentary norms? We argue that the presence of strong lines of normative demarcation towards extremist parties create, at the same time, political opportunities for legislators from mainstream parties to engage in strategies that violate parliamentary norms. As such, one finds ‘spirals of erosion’ of democratic norms in parliaments with a sizeable number of representatives of extremist parties. In attacking repre- sentatives of extremist parties, legislators from mainstream parties try to minimize their electoral costs. These considerations result in strategies whereby legislators from mainstream parties target nonproximate extremist parties. We document these dynamics using a novel dataset of over 25,000 speeches held during the 19th German Bundestag that convened between 2017 and 2021.

Draft and data will be uploaded soon.

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