Strategic Gatekeeping in Germany: how mainstream parties blur responses to the far-right AfD

29 January 2025 was an infamously historic day in post-war Germany. For the first time, a resolution was passed in federal parliament with the votes of a far-right party. To pass its restrictive 5-point migration plan, the centre-right CDU relied on support from the far-right AfD, thus contradicting Germany’s anti-pacting norm, the Brandmauer (firewall), that no democratic party shall collaborate with the far right. The move sparked nationwide protest, party resignations, and even rebuke from former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel. The motion was eventually defeated in a second vote two days later as several CDU politicians abstained or voted against it. The case highlights the dilemma mainstream parties face when responding to far-right challengers. From party competition research, we know that mainstream parties strategically accommodate (Meguid 2008) and even collaborate with the far right (Akkerman and Rooduijn 2015) if they believe they can benefit from doing so. However, mainstream parties are also expected to act as gatekeepers and protect liberal democracies from illiberal challenges (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). If they are seen to be violating this gatekeeping role by aligning with far-right parties, they risk backlash. In this paper, I analyse how mainstream parties navigate this dilemma. To avoid backlash from engaging with the far right, I argue that mainstream parties act as strategic gatekeepers. They blur their position towards far-right challengers by alternating between strategic (accommodative/collaborative) and gatekeeping (rejecting) responses in different contexts. This allows them to accommodate and/or collaborate with the far right, whilst simultaneously signaling rejection and non-collaboration with the far right. I study the German case and examine how the centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD respond to the far-right AfD in 223 parliamentary debates on migration from 2013 to 2023. The study combines qualitative content analysis with OLS regression and corpus linguistics. I provide two main findings. First, in keeping with research on policy accommodation (Meguid, 2008), both CDU and SPD adopt more restrictive positions on migration when the AfD is performing stronger in election polls. Second, when the AfD introduces agenda items or legislative proposals, CDU and SPD signal gatekeeping behaviour by rejecting the AfD. This is done in two ways. Parties signal programmatic rejection by adopting contrasting (i.e., more positive) positions on migration, for example by highlighting benefits of migration or commitment to human rights treaties. In addition, they signal normative rejection by labeling the AfD as an illegitimate, extreme, and/or undemocratic party. Whilst initially CDU and SPD adopt both programmatic and normative rejection in these debates, the CDU gradually shifts towards a hybrid position where they normatively reject the AfD whilst increasingly aligning with their positions. This finding echoes research problematising the tendency to formally reject the far right whilst embracing their policy demands (Mondon and Winter 2020). The findings have broader application and provide insights into how far-right parties in liberal democracies are gradually mainstreamed (Brown et al. 2021), even when anti-pacting norms are seemingly being upheld.