Extremism

This project speaks to literatures on the causes and consequences of extremist behavior in democracies: research on why hate crimes occur and how they spread, studies of radical‑right party entry and its effects on voter polarization and democratic norms, and work on spatial and contextual drivers of extreme party support.

While prior research has typically examined either the micro‑level triggers of hate crimes or the macro‑level dynamics of extremist party emergence in isolation, no single effort has integrated these behaviors to understand both their origins and their downstream effects on democratic societies. A comprehensive account of how extremist actions—ranging from individual hate crimes to the parliamentary entry of radical parties—arise and reshape political polarization and social stability is still missing.

How we addressed it

• Temporal RDD: Regression‑discontinuity‑in‑time design matching geocoded immigrant‑attributed crime events to subsequent hate crimes against refugees.
• Spatial analysis: Dialectal‑distance measures linked to county‑level radical‑right voting across Germany during the 2017 federal election.
• Grassroots mobilization: Web scraping of over 200,000 geo‑coded Movimento Cinque Stelle local branch activities in Italy (2005–2018) to estimate hyperlocal campaign effects on the 2016 referendum.
• Longitudinal & cross‑national models: Panel surveys and Eurobarometer time‑series analyses assessing short‑ and long‑term voter polarization following first‑time radical‑party entry into parliament.

Key Findings

1. Vicarious retribution: Local crime events attributed to immigrants trigger a 65 % increase in xenophobic hate crimes against refugees in the immediate aftermath.
2. Peripheral voting: Regions with greater historical dialectal distance to standard German see significantly higher radical‑right support, especially during periods of large refugee inflows.
3. Place‑based impact: Decentralized, grassroots mobilization by the Movimento Cinque Stelle produced substantial, hyperlocal boosts in referendum opposition.
4. Polarization cascade: First‑time entrance of radical parties into parliament leads to immediate legitimization‑and‑backlash effects and enduring ideological polarization among voters.

Implications

For practice: Policymakers and campaign strategists should anticipate local conflict triggers and backlash dynamics, design interventions to mitigate intergroup violence, and harness transparent grassroots engagement—while guarding against polarization when extremist voices gain legitimacy.

For social science: A pluralistic, mixed‑methods toolkit is essential: integrating event‑history designs, spatial econometrics, digital trace data, and longitudinal voter models to capture the multifaceted consequences of extremist behavior for democratic stability.

Publications

• Riaz, S., Bischof, D., & Wagner, M. (2024). “Out‑Group Threat and Xenophobic Hate Crimes: Evidence of Local Intergroup Conflict Dynamics between Immigrants and Natives.” The Journal of Politics.
• Ziblatt, D., Hilbig, H., & Bischof, D. (2023). “Wealth of Tongues: Why Peripheral Regions Vote for the Radical Right in Germany.” American Political Science Review.
• Bischof, D., & Kurer, T. (2023). “Place‑Based Campaigning: The Political Impact of Real Grassroots Mobilization.” The Journal of Politics.
• Bischof, D., & Wagner, M. (2019). “Do Voters Polarize When Radical Parties Enter Parliament?” American Journal of Political Science.

Working Papers

• Haass, F., De Juan, A., Bischof, D., & Thomson, H. (2024). “Parliamentary Representation and Right‑Wing Violence: Evidence from Nazi Street Brawls in the Weimar Republic.” Working paper.
• Bischof, D., & Valentim, V. (2022). “The Consequences of Punishing Political Ideologies in Democracies – Evidence from Employment Bans in Germany.” OSF Preprint.

Funding

• SNSF Ambizione Grant “Extreme Entrance” (Grant No. 179938): € 700,000 (2019–2023)