Drivers of radicalisation? The development and role of the far-right youth organisation ‘Young Alternative’ in Germany
| Published date | 01 January 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231221961 |
| Author | Anna-Sophie Heinze |
| Date | 01 January 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231221961
International Political Science Review
2025, Vol. 46(1) 108 –124
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/01925121231221961
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Drivers of radicalisation? The
development and role of the
far-right youth organisation ‘Young
Alternative’ in Germany
Anna-Sophie Heinze
Trier University, Germany
Abstract
Today, many far-right parties maintain youth wings, providing opportunities to mobilise members and future
party leaders. However, they are often neglected in the study of the far right’s organisation. This article
explores the development of the ‘Young Alternative’ and its ambivalent relationship with the ‘Alternative for
Germany’. Theoretically, it argues that far-right youth wings can act as important drivers of radicalisation.
It also tries to understand conflicts between far-right youth organisations and parties by discussing the
interactions between organisational development and radicalisation. Empirically, it opens the ‘black box’ of
the German case by drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including semi-structured
interviews with high-ranking ‘Young Alternative’ members, (social) media communication and official
documents of the ‘Young Alternative’, ‘Alternative for Germany’ and intelligence services. Overall, the
article underlines the importance of far-right youth wings as part of the broader party organisation and
offers substantial theoretical and empirical research perspectives.
Keywords
Far right, youth organisation, party organisation, radicalisation, Germany, Alternative for Germany
Introduction
Although far-right youth organisations can be crucial for the far right’s broader mobilisation and
radicalisation, knowledge about their development and role is scarce. Studies have only recently
devoted more attention to the far right’s party organisation (Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016; Van
Kessel and Albertazzi, 2021), although it is considered a key factor for electoral persistence (De
Lange and Art, 2011). Even less attention is paid to (far-right) youth wings, which are part of the
broader party organisation and can fulfil important recruitment and socialisation functions for par-
ties. They mobilise young members, introduce them to the party’s ideology and create networks
Corresponding author:
Anna-Sophie Heinze, Trier Institute for Democracy and Party Research, Trier University, Universitätsring 15, Trier,
54296, Germany.
Email: heinzea@uni-trier.de
1221961IPS0010.1177/01925121231221961International Political Science ReviewHeinze
research-article2024
Original Research Article
Heinze 109
and starting points for political careers (Hooghe et al., 2004). Moreover, far-right youth wings can
act as important drivers of radicalisation. However, we know very little about their development
and relationship towards parties.
This also applies to the ‘Young Alternative’ (Junge Alternative (JA)), the youth wing of the
‘Alternative for Germany’ (Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)). Although studies have already
investigated the AfD’s ideological as well as organisational development (Arzheimer, 2019; Heinze
and Weisskircher, 2021), we know very little about the JA’s development and role for the AfD. In
general, there is almost no research on the JA (Herkenhoff, 2016; Knopp, 2017). We need to tackle
this research gap to understand the far right’s broader mobilisation and radicalisation, which has so
far mainly been studied from a (narrow) party and electoral perspective (Castelli Gattinara, 2020).
This article explores how the JA developed organisationally and ideologically, and to what
extent it can be seen as a driver of radicalisation. I focus on the JA as a crucial case (Gerring, 2007)
that – just like the AfD – has achieved success in a country post-World War II where several other
far-right organisations failed before. Studying this new and poorly explained case allows me to
develop the sparse theory in this area.
Methodologically, I carry out process tracing (Bennett and Elman, 2006; Collier, 2011) to iden-
tify critical junctures in the JA’s development and to discover the causal mechanisms of its radicali-
sation processes. In doing so, I draw on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including
official documents of the JA, AfD and intelligence services, media articles and social media com-
munication. I combine this data with original semi-structured interviews with high-ranking JA
members, which allowed me to gain a strong internal perspective on these processes. Based on this
rich data, I am able to provide a fine-grained reconstruction of the JA’s radicalisation and a deeper
understanding of its links with the AfD.
Overall, the article’s contributions are twofold. Conceptually, I focus on the role of far-right
youth wings, bridging the literature on party organisation and the far right. Empirically, I open the
‘black box’ of the JA by providing original insights into its development and role for the AfD. My
findings show that the AfD’s recognition of the JA should be understood in the light of the party’s
own organisational development as well as radicalisation. However, the threat of surveillance (and
thus legitimacy losses) caused conflicts even after recognition. In the light of their radicalisation,
both JA and AfD began to delegitimise the intelligence services and present themselves as the only
‘true opposition’. Finally, I discuss the implications of my findings more generally and point to
important research perspectives.
Far-right youth wings as drivers of radicalisation
To date, there is hardly any research on (far-right) youth wings. Although some studies focus on
individuals’ motivations for joining a youth wing, their attitudes and behaviour (e.g. Bruter and
Harrison, 2009; Pirro and Róna, 2019), the organisations’ development and relationship towards
parties is often neglected. This is a blind spot, as about 80% of parties in Western Europe have a
youth organisation, making it the most common party sub-organisation – this is also true within the
far right (Allern and Verge, 2017).
Today, most far-right parties maintain youth wings. This applies to older ones, like the
Norwegian Progress Party and the Sweden Democrats (Jungar, 2016; Jupskås, 2016) as well as
rather young ones, like the Dutch Forum for Democracy (De Jonge, 2021). In the following, I
argue that far-right youth wings can act as important drivers of radicalisation, especially if they
are well organised. Previous research has shown that today’s far-right parties are not stable enti-
ties but have a high degree of heterogeneity in political actors and positions (Mudde, 2019). This
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