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American Political Science Review (2021) 1–20
doi:10.1017/S0003055421001040 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political
Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
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The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism,
and the Alternative für Deutschland
LUKAS HAFFERT University of Zurich, Switzerland
C
ontemporary political behavior is often affected by historical legacies, but the specific mechanisms
through which these legacies are transmitted are difficult to pin down. This paper argues that
historical political conflicts can affect political behavior over several generations when they trigger
an enduring organizational mobilization. It studies how the oppression of German Catholics in the
nineteenth century led to a regionally differentiated mobilization of political Catholicism that still affects
political support for the radical right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) today. Using newly collected
data on historical oppression events, it shows that Catholic regions where oppression was intense saw
greater mobilization of Catholic lay organizations than Catholic regions where oppression was milder and
show lower support for the AfD today. The paper thus contributes to the literature on the historical
determinants of political behavior as well as to the question of which regional context effects strengthen or
weaken the radical right.
INTRODUCTION a factor that has heavily influenced the structure of the
W
German party system and has inhibited people from
hy are people in some regions more willing voting for authoritarian parties (Falter 1991; Spenkuch
to support the radical right while people in and Tillmann 2018). This uniform effect of Catholicism,
other regions are more reluctant to do so? A however, masks important regional variation in the
growing literature argues that such differences are historical development of political Catholicism. In
partly driven by long historical continuities underlying some parts of Germany, particularly in Prussia, Cath-
political behavior (Cantoni, Hagemeister, and West- olics were oppressed by the state and developed a
cott 2019; Hoerner, Jaax, and Rodon 2019; Homola, coherent and closed “milieu”—a dense network of
Pereira, and Tavits 2020; Ochsner and Roesel 2017). Catholic clubs, associations, newspapers, and educa-
Where other studies emphasize contemporary eco- tional activities (Lepsius 1966)—in response to this
nomic or cultural grievances (Colantone and Stanig oppression. In most other German states, by contrast,
2018; Gidron and Hall 2017; Inglehart and Norris there was no comparable oppression and a similar
2016), these contributions seek the explanations for milieu did not develop.
variation in radical right support in the past. Against this background, I argue that the mobiliza-
An important challenge for such arguments about tion of the Catholic milieu provides the mechanism that
historical persistence is pinning down the mechanism links the regional history of oppression to contempor-
by which historical experiences are transmitted to ary AfD vote shares. Where Catholics were oppressed,
later generations (Neundorf and Pop-Eleches 2020; they developed a tight-knit Catholic milieu whose
Peisakhin and Charnysh 2021). How does a historical remainders still form a social context that affects polit-
event affect people who are separated from this event ical behavior and reduces Catholics’ propensity to vote
by more than a century? Transmitting attitudes over for an authoritarian party. Where they were not
such a long period usually requires some form of oppressed, a comparable milieu did not develop and
institutional stabilization. In this study, I emphasize Catholics remained much more open to vote for such a
the role of organizational mobilization as an important party.
source of such stabilization. I argue that political A look at the regional distribution of Catholics and of
conflicts can trigger the creation of persistent social AfD results in West Germany in the federal election of
and organizational structures that continue to shape 2017 provides some provisional support for this argu-
people’s behavior long after the original conflicts have ment (Figure 1). The AfD has its strongest results in
been assuaged. highly Catholic regions (in southeastern Bavaria).
To examine this argument empirically, I study the However, it also has its weakest results in regions where
relationship between the historical mobilization of Catholicism is strong (along the Dutch border). One
Catholic lay organizations and the strength of the main difference between these regions is that the latter
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the German fed- historically belonged to Prussia, whereas the former did
eral election of 2017. Catholicism has historically been not.
In the rest of the paper, I present more systematic
Lukas Haffert , Senior Researcher, Department of Political Sci-
evidence for this association. I measure historical
ence, University of Zurich, Switzerland, haffert@ipz.uzh.ch. oppression using two different strategies. First, I distin-
guish between places that historically belonged to Prus-
Received: January 04, 2021; revised: June 18, 2021; accepted:
August 11, 2021.
sia and those that did not, as Catholics mainly
1
Lukas Haffert
FIGURE 1. Prussian Borders in 1866, Share of Catholics in 2011, and AfD Vote Shares in 2017
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experienced oppression in Prussia. Second, I have col- This study thus contributes to the question how
lected data on about 500 specific events of Catholic historical legacies are being transmitted. Moreover, it
oppression during the Kulturkampf in the years 1875 also addresses the literature on the role of regional
and 1876. These events were chronicled by the Frank- context effects for the electoral success of the radical
furter Zeitung for the entire German empire and show right (Fitzgerald 2018; Harteveld et al. 2021). In line
huge regional variation in the intensity of oppression. with this literature, the study finds that the decision
Using these alternative measures, I employ three (not) to vote for the radical right is strongly influenced
different strategies to analyze the links between histor- by regional context factors. However, it emphasizes
ical oppression and contemporary voting. First, using that the role of this context is always historically spe-
municipal-level election results across West Germany1, cific. Living in a region that is majority Catholic can
I demonstrate that the AfD performs significantly have very different effects on political behavior,
worse in Catholic regions where Catholics were depending on the region’s historical trajectory.
oppressed than in Catholic regions without oppression. In the following pages, I first explain how the histor-
Second, I analyze this relationship within the state of ical oppression of Catholics led to specific forms of
Rhineland-Palatinate, exploiting the discontinuity at political mobilization and why this mobilization may
the former Prussian-Bavarian border within this state. still affect voting patterns today. In a second step, I
Third, I also find evidence of a stronger rejection of the explain the data and the empirical strategy. I then show
AfD among Catholics in historically oppressed regions that the association between historical oppression and
in individual-level survey data. Catholic AfD support holds at different levels of ana-
Finally, I provide evidence of the mechanism under- lysis before I analyze the mechanism behind this asso-
lying this relationship. Using data on the intensity of ciation. The final section discusses the implications of
Catholic civil society mobilization in the early twentieth my findings and argues that understanding the vari-
century, and on the Catholic lay milieu today, I show ation in radical right voting requires analyzing not only
that the intensity of oppression predicts the strength of the factors that attract certain people to the radical right
Catholic mobilization at the regional level and that but also those that inhibit others from voting for these
mobilization levels in turn predict electoral behavior: parties.
Catholics are more heavily opposed to the AfD in
regions where Catholics were highly mobilized in the
past and in the present.
ARGUMENT
1
I restrict my analysis to former West Germany, as my argument Theory: Mechanisms of Historical Persistence
about the transmission of historical experiences relies on the con- and the Role of Regional Contexts
tinuity in the organizational and institutional context. In former East
Germany, the combined effect of 56 years of fascist and socialist rule The rapidly growing literature on attitudinal legacies
was to systematically dismantle this context. argues that a regionally specific history of political
2
The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
conflict can still affect political behavior decades or is more effective when families live in like-minded
even centuries after the original event (Acharya, Black- communities.”
well, and Sen 2016; Peisakhin and Charnysh 2021; Organized religion, both through religious practices
Putnam 1993). While this literature studies a wide as well as through its role in the social life of a commu-
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range of empirical phenomena, a number of recent nity as a provider of social services, education, and
contributions specifically addresses historical patterns associational networks, is one of the most important
underlying the success of right-wing authoritarian par- integrative institutions. Several studies have shown that
ties (Ochsner and Roesel 2017; Voigtländer and Voth organized religion in general, and Catholicism in par-
2012), including the AfD (Cantoni, Hagemeister, and ticular, can be a source of persistent socialization effects
Westcott 2019; Hoerner, Jaax, and Rodon 2019; (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2017). Jason Wittenberg
Homola, Pereira, and Tavits 2020). (2006), for example, has analyzed how the Hungarian
There is thus wide agreement that regional historical Catholic Church reinforced and protected traditional
legacies can affect political outcomes today. Where this partisan affiliations, which then reemerged once Com-
literature has made less progress so far is in identifying munism had been dismantled. Here, I go beyond these
the specific mechanisms by which historical experi- studies, which focus on Communism in Eastern Eur-
ences are transmitted to future generations—“the ope, by analyzing persistence over a much longer time-
mechanisms underlying the persistence of political span of about 150 years. Moreover, my argument does
traits remain understudied” (Peisakhin and Charnysh not focus on the Church itself but on the lay-based civil
2021, 3). Neundorf and Pop-Eleches (2020), who share society organizations at the heart of the Catholic milieu.
this assessment, seek to systematize potential mechan-
isms by identifying three “socialization agents” that The Empirical Case: Support for the
play an important role in forming political attitudes Alternative für Deutschland
and can be a source of attitudinal persistence. These
“socialization agents” operate on the micro level (the The empirical case I use to study the persistent effects
family), the macro level (the state), or the meso level of meso-level organizations is the regionally differenti-
(societal organizations). ated success of the radical right Alternative für Deutsch-
This paper emphasizes the role that meso-level land in former West Germany. West Germany is a good
organizations such as unions or churches can play for case for studying these effects, as neither macro- nor
long-term persistence. While families clearly have an micro-level factors are likely to explain long-term leg-
important role in explaining vertical transmission of acies. On the macro level, West Germany experienced
attitudes from one generation to the next, they can four different political regimes over the last 150 years.
hardly explain horizontal transmission to people whose On the micro-level, there was a lot of internal migra-
ancestors did not yet share these attitudes. Similarly, tion, in particular after 1945 (Cantoni, Hagemeister,
states clearly have an important role in attitudinal and Westcott 2019), which makes it unlikely that leg-
transmission, in particular through the school system. acies can be explained by transmission in the family
However, macro-level mechanisms should typically alone.
generate a uniform pattern of transmission and thus The rise of the AfD in a country that long seemed
have difficulties in explaining regional differences in immune against the radical right has, naturally,
historical persistence. attracted a lot of attention. Most analyses follow the
To explain a regionally specific form of persistence broader literature on support for radical right parties by
that is transmitted both vertically and horizontally, focusing on one of two main explanatory approaches:
this paper thus focuses on the role of meso-level an economic approach, which argues that “moderniza-
organizations as an important element of regional tion losers” are the basis for these parties’ electoral
social contexts. These organizations can be under- support, and a cultural approach, which attributes their
stood as “integrative institutions” that play an import- success to a “cultural backlash” (Colantone and Stanig
ant political role “as sites of mobilization and 2018; Gidron and Hall 2017; Inglehart and Norris
education” (Gingrich and Lynch 2019). Compared 2016). As a growing number of studies have argued,
to micro- or macro-level socialization agents, these however, such general approaches need to be comple-
integrative institutions better ensure a vertical trans- mented with regionally differentiated explanations that
mission since they are typically more enduring than are sensitive to the role of social context (Fitzgerald
individual families and outlast specific political 2018; Harteveld et al. 2021).
regimes. The prime example of this persistence is The existing literature on the AfD also points to the
Churches, but it also characterizes unions or even importance of historically determined regional context
political parties. Moreover, integrative institutions effects. Richter and Bösch (2017, 12) find that the AfD
can potentially transmit attitudinal legacies horizon- was particularly strong where the right-wing extremist
tally to individuals whose own ancestors did not live in NPD had performed best in 2013 and conclude that a
a region. The children of newcomers, for example, “specific political-cultural climate … promotes the suc-
may pick up a regionally specific set of attitudes cess of the AfD in these districts.” Similarly, Bergmann,
through their integration in civil society organizations. Diermeier, and Niehues (2018) identify four socioeco-
Finally, integrative institutions may also aid the micro- nomically very different regional AfD strongholds and
level mechanisms of transmission. As Peisakhin and conclude that the AfD’s success results “more strongly
Charnysh (2021, 3) argue, “the transmission of values from—probably cultural or historical—differences
3Lukas Haffert
between the respective regions than from economic AfD (Arzheimer and Berning 2019; Siegers and Jedin-
indicators” (2018, 261).2 ger 2021), studies based on regional election results
These studies demonstrate that an explanation of the have not found any correlation between Catholicism
AfD vote should account for regional differences with and AfD vote shares (Jäckle, Wagschal, and Kattler
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deep historical roots. At the same time, they also point 2018; Richter and Bösch 2017).
to an important research gap: while they measure My argument focuses on the dimension of religious
historical persistence, they often fail to explain it, involvement. However, involvement may affect polit-
instead attributing it to rather vacuous “cultural” fac- ical behavior through different mechanisms: an elite-
tors. By looking more closely at the oppression and based mechanism and a civil-society-based mechanism.
political mobilization of Catholics as a specific histor- The elite-based mechanism runs through the clergy:
ical mechanism, this study seeks to help fill this gap. bishops and priests take a stand against authoritarian
parties and thus inhibit Catholics from supporting
them. This mechanism was at work in the 1930s. As
Catholicism and Radical Right Voting Spenkuch and Tillmann (2018) show, Catholics did not
That Catholicism may be a factor that inhibits people support the NSDAP when being instructed to do so by
from voting for the extreme right is a prominent the local priest. In parishes with “brown priests,” by
hypothesis in the German context. It typically builds contrast, they became more willing to vote NSDAP.
on the observation that Catholics were particularly There is evidence that the Church still affects the voting
reluctant to support the NSDAP (Falter 1991). Because behavior of individual Catholics (Immerzeel, Jaspers,
AfD results correlate with historical NSDAP results and Lubbers 2013; Siegers and Jedinger 2021). How-
(Cantoni, Hagemeister, and Westcott 2019), this would ever, it is unlikely to have major effects on aggregate
suggest that Catholicism could play an important role in electoral results anymore, given the low rates of church
explaining the AfD’s regionally differentiated success. attendance. In 2019, only 9% of Catholics attended
Theoretically, however, it is not clear a priori church on regular Sundays (Katholische Kirche in
whether Catholics would be more or less likely to vote Deutschland 2020).
for authoritarian or radical right parties. On the one Therefore, I focus on a different, potentially equi-
hand, Catholicism can be seen as having a natural final form of involvement that is more likely to affect
affinity with illiberal and authoritarian politics, as they the behavior of a substantial number of Catholics:
share an emphasis on hierarchy and tradition (Bruce integration in the Catholic civil society. I argue that
2003; Minkenberg 2018). On the other hand, Catholi- the Catholic civil society creates a form social integra-
cism can also be seen as providing a bulwark against tion that reduces Catholic support for the AfD. The
such politics by creating a strong attachment to Chris- organizations at the heart of the Catholic civil society
tian Democratic Parties (Minkenberg 2018) and by have about six million members (Katholische Kirche in
fostering values of solidarity and compassion (Siegers Deutschland 2020). However, the mobilization of the
and Jedinger 2021). Indeed, comparative studies of Catholic civil society varies substantially across Ger-
European countries have found that religiosity can many for historical reasons. Specifically, I argue that
work as a “vaccine” against radical right voting there was strong regional variation in the intensity of
(Arzheimer and Carter 2009). At the same time, it is Catholic oppression by the state, that this variation
possible that denominational Catholics become more triggered differences in the intensity of Catholic coun-
susceptible to anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim agitation as termobilization, and that these differences still affect
their “religious integration” declines (Immerzeel, Jas- voting behavior today. I briefly explain each of these
pers, and Lubbers 2013; Meyer 2013). arguments in turn.
As this literature emphasizes, it is necessary to dis-
tinguish between three different dimensions of Cath- Historical Background: State-Church Conflict
olicism: formal denomination, actual involvement, and in Nineteenth-Century Germany
individual belief structures (Arzheimer and Carter
2009; Siegers and Jedinger 2021). These dimensions After the Reformation, there remained two majority-
may have quite different effects on political behavior. Catholic regions in Germany: most parts of Southern
Whereas religious involvement is said to generate a Germany, including Bavaria, and large parts of North-
form of “social integration” that makes the support of a Western Germany, including the Rhineland and West-
radical right party less likely, orthodox beliefs may have phalia. Until the French Revolution, confessional bor-
the opposite effect (Immerzeel, Jaspers, and Lubbers ders and territorial borders were largely identical;
2013). Simple denomination, finally, may have lost therefore, almost all Catholics lived in Catholic states
most of its historical effect on voting behavior. and there were no systematic differences in the rela-
This multidimensional perspective may help to tionship between Catholics and their states (Scholz
explain why existing studies of Catholic support for 2016, 104). Therefore, the mobilization of Catholics
the AfD have generated inconsistent findings. While did not differ systematically between regions before
analyses based on individual-level survey data have the nineteenth century.
found that Catholics are less likely to support the This changed after mediatization and secularization
in 1803 and, more importantly, after the Congress of
Vienna, when the Rhineland and Westphalia became
2
All translations from German are my own. part of Prussia. After 1815, most Southern German
4The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
Catholics still lived in Catholic states, whereas most activities in regions where less than 15–20% of the
Catholics in Northern Germany lived in Protestant population was Catholic.
Prussia. This had major consequences for the intensity These differences in the formation of the Catholic
of state–church conflict and the political mobilization of milieu were also reflected in the two politically most
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Catholics in the different regions. In particular, the important forms of Catholic organization: Catholic
conflict between state and Catholic Church was much associations and the Catholic party. At the association
more severe within Prussia than outside of it. level, this is demonstrated by the katholischer Verein
This conflict saw several outbursts over the entire Deutschlands, which organized the Katholikentag fes-
nineteenth century. It reached an initial peak during tivals and was the “most important vehicle for mobil-
the so-called Cologne troubles (Kölner Wirren) in the izing popular dissent against Bismarck’s ecclesiastical
late 1830s. The Prussian government decreed that the policies” (Ross 1998, 129). While the organization
children of marriages between (Protestant) civil ser- targeted nationwide mobilization,
vants and women from the local (Catholic) elite had to
be educated in the confession of the father. When the membership varied a good deal from region to region […]
Archbishop of Cologne refused to bless these mar- most Bavarian Catholics were too particularistic to unite
riages under this condition, the Prussian government in a common enterprise of this sort with their coreligionists
imprisoned him for 18 months. This triggered a series of north of the Main River. The association also met with
riots in Rhineland and Westphalia and more generally little success in expanding its membership in southwestern
a political mobilization of Catholics as Catholics— Germany. (Ross 1998, 129)
something that had not been seen before (Lönne
1986). Naturally, this type of conflict could not occur Similarly, the biggest Catholic association, the Volks-
in majority-Catholic states. verein für das katholische Deutschland (People’s Asso-
The single most important conflict between Church ciation for Catholic Germany), which sought to
and state, however, was the so-called Kulturkampf, promote Catholic education and Christian social
which raged on between 1871 and 1887 but had its most reforms and attracted up to 800,000 members before
dramatic phase between 1871 and 1875. While this World War I, had the majority of its members in
struggle affected the entire German empire, it was Westphalia and the Rhine Province (Heitzer 1979;
much more intense within Prussia than outside of Klein 1996).
Prussia (Ross 1998, 6; Strötz 2005, 211ff., 245). The At the party level, the Catholic Centre Party always
“May laws,” through which the state sought to gain displayed weak national organization, in particular in
direct influence over the selection of priests and comparison to the Social Democrats (Nipperdey 1961).
bishops, were restricted to Prussia and some of Prus- The Party’s Reichstag faction was more a collection of
sia’s smaller neighboring states. The Prussian state also representatives from different regional parties than a
closed the Catholic seminaries (Strötz 2005, 308), tem- coherent national party. Indeed, its Bavarian branch—
porarily imprisoned five bishops (Ross 1998, 58), and the Bavarian Patriots’ Party—did not change its name
forced several thousand priests and members of reli- to the Bavarian Centre Party until 1887. Its interwar
gious orders into—often Bavarian—exile. successor, the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), dis-
solved the joint parliamentary faction with the Centre
The Formation of the Catholic Milieu Party in 1920. In the presidential election of 1925, the
BVP even supported the national-conservative candi-
These differences in the intensity of political conflict led date Hindenburg instead of the Rhenish Centre
to major differences in political mobilization. In politician Marx.
response to their oppression, Prussian Catholics devel- Historical literature thus shows that an organized
oped a dense network of Catholic clubs, associations, and politically strongly mobilized Catholic milieu
newspapers, educational activities, and a strong attach- mainly emerged in the Prussian part of Germany. Here,
ment to the Catholic party (Arbeitskreis für kirchliche political Catholicism developed in the form of the
Zeitgeschichte 2000). This dense network is known as mobilization of societal actors against the state. It was
the Catholic “milieu” (Lepsius 1966). But while litera- deeply interwoven with society through a network of
ture in political sociology has often implicitly assumed a associations and the Centre Party and it opposed an
single homogenous Catholic milieu in the Catholic authoritarian state. Moreover, as Margaret Anderson
regions of the German empire, more recent historical (1986) argues, the experience of the Kulturkampf and
research has clarified that the quintessential Catholic the political reaction to it led to an emancipation of
milieu only existed in Prussia, and even there it was not Catholic laity from the Church hierarchy. Outside of
fully developed in all regions. According to a systematic Prussia, by contrast, political Catholicism developed as
review of historical studies of political Catholicism a Church-affiliated clerical movement with much
(Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 2000), a weaker lay associations and was represented by a
full-fledged Catholic milieu developed mainly in West- political party much more closely associated with the
phalia, the northern Rhine Province, and the south- Church.3
western part of today’s Lower Saxony. In Southern
Germany, by contrast, there dominated a more trad-
itional, Church-focused form of Catholic mobilization. 3
This is necessarily a streamlined version of a multifaceted history,
Finally, there was no strong formation of Catholic which attempts to identify the patterns that are most important for
5Lukas Haffert
The Catholic Milieu as a Mechanism of may also foster skepticism toward authoritarian politics
Historical Transmission in general. Moreover, as milieu organizations, such as
youth organizations, may form an important social
My argument is that the formation of the Catholic context even for former Catholics or non-Catholics,
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milieu provides the mechanism by which historical especially during their formative years, these individ-
experiences of political oppression were transmitted uals may also refrain from voting AfD. In other words,
to later generations. Individual Catholics died, but the the milieu may have worked as a mechanism of not only
organizations they had created lived on. Indeed, vertical but also horizontal transmission.
milieus—not just the Catholic milieu but also the Where milieu-based lay movements played a smaller
social-democratic milieu—have had a crucial influence role in the development of political Catholicism by
on the development of the German party system contrast, its antiauthoritarian effect was much weaker
(Lepsius 1966). According to Lösche and Walter because it depended entirely on the Church. To put it
(2000, 472), within these milieus “the experiences of provocatively, not voting for authoritarians was in itself
primary conflicts were saved, intergenerationally an expression of obeying an authority.
bequeathed and organizationally solidified.” Thus, When the Church had a strong and immediate effect
they still affected voting behavior long after the original on Catholic voting behavior, the effect may still have
conflicts during which they were formed had been been the same as the milieu effect. When the Church
assuaged. The Catholic milieu even experienced a brief lost its capacity to inhibit Catholics from voting for
revival after World War II, when Catholic organiza- authoritarians, this elite-based mechanism of oppos-
tions were some of the few societal organizations that ition to authoritarians disappeared. In the regions
had survived the war relatively intact (Großbölting where Catholic lay organizations are strong, it could
2013), but has largely disappeared since the 1960s be replaced by an equifinal civil-society mechanism. In
(Lösche and Walter 2000; Ziemann 2000). Neverthe- regions where Catholic lay organizations are weak, by
less, its remnants still affect political behavior, as is contrast, Catholics should be much more open to sup-
evidenced by the fact that the religious cleavage still porting the AfD.
carries weight in explaining German election results
(Elff and Rossteutscher 2011).
Thus, the political mobilization of Catholics in the
nineteenth century may still affect voting behavior DATA AND EMPIRICAL STRATEGY
today. In the regions where Catholics historically
mobilized through a Catholic milieu and where Cath- To test this argument, my empirical analysis proceeds
olics are still socialized in the remainders of this milieu, in two steps.4 I first analyze the results of the German
they should be much more reluctant to support the AfD federal election of 2017 and show that the strength of
for several reasons. First, the milieu historically created the AfD differs between Catholic regions that have
a strong attachment to a Christian party. Indeed, experienced high and low levels of oppression. After-
between 1871 and 1933, the Centre Party commanded ward, I study the organizational strength of the Cath-
more than 50%—and up to 80%—of the Catholic vote. olic milieu in the early twentieth and early twenty-first
Since World War II, Catholics have overproportionally centuries and show that the empirical pattern of Cath-
supported the supraconfessional Christian Democrats, olic voting today can indeed be explained by differ-
who still have their best election results in the former ences in the historical mobilization of political
strongholds of the Centre Party. Second, remainders of Catholicism.
the milieu such as Catholic sports clubs and other Because a milieu is a social entity, I conduct most of
Catholic associations provide a form of social capital my analyses on the regional level, studying municipal-
that is often seen as fostering democratic values and as level election results. There are more than 8,000 muni-
inhibiting people from voting for the radical right cipalities in West Germany, allowing me to study elec-
(Coffé, Heyndels, and Vermeir 2007; Giuliano and tion outcomes on a fine-grained geographical level. The
Wacziarg 2020; Putnam 1993, but see Rydgren 2009). dependent variable in these analyses is the share of
Indeed, the Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken, AfD votes among all (valid) votes cast in the munici-
the umbrella organization of Catholic associations, has pality.
repeatedly attacked the AfD and called on all Germans I restrict my analysis to former West Germany for
not to vote for the party (Zentralkomitee der deutschen two reasons. First, there are simply very few Catholics
Katholiken 2018). Several Catholic associations have in former East Germany; thus, Catholicism can hardly
declared that a membership in these associations is contribute to explaining voting behavior in the East.
incompatible with an AfD membership (see Appendix More importantly, any mechanism of historical persist-
J). Finally, since the milieu emerged during conflict ence was severely disrupted in East Germany, as the
with an authoritarian government, milieu socialization combined effect of 56 years of fascist and socialist rule
was to systematically dismantle existing milieus, their
party structures, and their civil society foundations
(Kösters et al. 2009).
contemporary politics but cannot do full justice to the complexity of
Catholic history. Even in the Rhineland and Westphalia, the milieu
4
was not completely homogenous but characterized by internal con- Datasets and replication materials can be accessed at https://doi.
flicts, for example between different classes (e.g., Jones 2000). org/10.7910/DVN/MURIT2.
6The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
In the first part of the analysis, I focus on the persist- follow preexisting divides, as I explain below and in
ent effect of oppression. The main independent vari- Appendix E. To justify this assumption for all of West
able in this analysis is the interaction between the Germany, I provide additional historical references in
Catholic population share and different measures of Appendix D. Finally, in the same Appendix, I follow
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historical oppression. Since I seek to estimate the long- Barro and McCleary (2016) and study the geographical
term effect of political conflict in the nineteenth cen- distribution of beatification and canonization processes
tury, there is a danger of introducing posttreatment bias as an—admittedly very rough—indicator of Catholic
by including control variables. At the same time, there mobilization. The share of candidates for beatifica-
is also a danger of omitted-variable bias—for example, tions/canonizations coming from Prussian regions com-
because different Catholic regions have been differ- pared with non-Prussian regions increased
ently exposed to the “refugee crisis” of 2015. Accord- substantially after 1815. This indicates that the new
ingly, I always estimate two models, one with minority position indeed triggered a change in the
contemporary controls and one without them. mobilization of Catholics.
In analyses with control variables, I include several
potential explanatory factors that may correlate with Measuring Historical Oppression
Catholicism. The sociostructural composition of the
municipality is measured by the total size of the popu- I use two measures of historical oppression. The
lation and the population shares of foreigners, women, broader and more general measure is whether a muni-
and of people older than 65. To account for local cipality historically belonged to Prussia, since Prussia
economic structures, I control for the unemployment was the German state in which the conflict with the
rate, the share of regular employment, and the local Catholic Church was most severe. This measure does
share of marginally employed (see Appendix A for not rely on a specific point but captures an entire
descriptive statistics and a detailed discussion of the history of state–church conflict. However, it does not
controls’ rationale). I also add a dummy for universities distinguish its intensity within Prussia, nor does it dif-
(data from Apfeld 2019). Finally, a dummy for munici- ferentiate between non-Prussian states at all.
palities within 30 kilometers of the Austrian or Czech To create a more fine-grained measure of oppres-
border controls for the argument that the AfD per- sion, I collected data on the intensity of the Kultur-
forms best in those regions where the most refugees kampf, the single most important confrontation
arrived in 2015 (Jäckle, Wagschal, and Kattler 2018), between the German state and the Catholic Church
which also happen to be highly Catholic. in the nineteenth century. The historical literature
In all regression models, I weight observations by the agrees that the Kulturkampf was most intense within
number of voters in the municipality. To control for Prussia but does not provide quantifiable measures of
spatial correlation across municipalities, I estimate its regional intensity. To approximate such a measure, I
Conley standard errors with a cutoff of 50km using rely on a contemporary newspaper source: between
the procedure developed by Colella et al. (2019). January 1875 and March 1876, the Frankfurter Zeitung
Results are robust to varying the cutoff (see Appendix published a biweekly “Kulturkampf Kalender” in
B). I include state-fixed effects to ensure that the results which it listed oppression events of the previous weeks.
are not driven by institutional or other differences In total, the newspaper catalogued more than 1,200
between German states that emerged after 1945. More- instances of state oppression in the German empire. Of
over, I also replicate the analysis solely for the state of these, 774 took place in West Germany. While about a
Rhineland-Palatinate. This state was created after third of these entries report measures taken against
World War II by merging a formerly Prussian North Social Democrats or against the secular press, 512 refer
with a non-Prussian South and thus enables me to test to cases of the oppression of Catholics. Of these,
my hypothesis while holding all state-level institutions 322 refer to the specific municipality of the event,
constant. In a further step, I restrict my analysis to the 159 refer only to the court district where a court deci-
historical border region within Rhineland-Palatinate, sion was made, and 31 refer to a diocese only. I aggre-
increasing the comparability of the treated and gate these data on the level of the 89 court districts that
untreated regions even more. existed in West Germany in the 1870s and count the
Finally, I also study individual attitudes toward the number of events per 100,000 inhabitants in each dis-
AfD to address concerns of an ecological fallacy. I use trict. In Appendix A, I explain the construction of the
data from the German Longitudinal Election Study measure in greater detail. In Appendix C, I show that
(GLES), which contains information on the electoral an alternative way to aggregate the data by normalizing
district in which people live and thus allows me to link it to the number of Catholics on the level of adminis-
their expressed attitudes to the level of historical trative districts leads to very similar results.
oppression and historical Catholic mobilization in their Figure 2 (left panel) shows the regional distribution
region. of my index. The pattern that emerges is reassuringly
My empirical strategy crucially relies on the assump- similar to the characterization of the Kulturkampf in
tion that the political mobilization of Catholics inside the historical literature. While 27 districts, mostly in
and outside of regions that became Prussian in the Southern and in protestant Northern Germany, did not
nineteenth century did not differ before 1815. This see a single oppression event, the strongest oppression
assumption is particularly plausible for the analysis of occurred in Prussian districts: for the district of Kleve, I
the historical border region because the border did not count 13 events per 100,000 inhabitants, while the
7Lukas Haffert
FIGURE 2. Intensity of Kulturkampf and Share of Catholics with Volksverein Membership in 1913
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respective number was eight for Münster, Hanau, and A contemporary measure of what remains of the
Düsseldorf. Catholic milieu is the participation in the biannual
In the following analyses, I rely on both measures of Katholikentag festivals, the biggest gathering of Ger-
oppression: the index of Kulturkampf intensity as well man Catholics.6 During the German Empire, these
as whether a municipality belonged to Prussia. The festivals were manifestations of Catholic opposition to
former measure is more geographically fine-grained Prussian oppression. They therefore have their roots in
and based on actual oppression events. However, it the mobilization of the Catholic milieu, even if they
only provides a snapshot from 1875 to 1876. Whether or have acquired a more event-like character today. The
not a municipality belonged to Prussia better captures last Katholikentag in Münster had about 90,000 parti-
the entire history of Catholic oppression in the nine- cipants. Katholikentag participation is a good indicator
teenth century but does not provide regional differen- of the persistent strength of the Catholic milieu because
tiation. Reassuringly, both measures generate very participants often do not attend individually but in
similar results. groups organized by local chapters of Catholic associ-
ations. Their ability to mobilize participants for the
Katholikentag thus proxies the more general strength
Measuring Catholic Mobilization of Catholic lay organizations.
The organizing committee provided me with data on
In the second step of my analysis, I study the mechan- the number of participants from each German diocese
ism that connects historical oppression to contempor- at the last 7 Katholikentag festivals. To calculate
ary electoral outcomes and seek to show that this effect whether a diocese is over- or underrepresented at the
is driven by differences in Catholic mobilization. To Katholikentage, I divide the share of participants from a
measure Catholic mobilization, I use the strength of diocese by the share of German Catholics living there. I
Catholic associations at the beginning of the twentieth then regress this relative participation rate on the
century. I use data on the regional membership of the distance and the squared distance between a diocese’s
aforementioned Volksverein für das katholische diocesan town and the Katholikentag location, as par-
Deutschland, the largest Catholic association, which ticipation strongly varies with geographic distance.7
was founded in 1890. I have data on the share of
Volksverein members among all Catholics on the dio-
6
cese level for 1913 and 1927 from the books by Heitzer I have also collected data on membership in Catholic associations,
(1979) and Klein (1996). At both points, the Volksver- but their regional patterns differ substantially between associations
ein consistently organized a higher share of the Catholic and it is unclear to what extent these differences already emerged in
the nineteenth century.
population within Prussia than outside of Prussia 7
The festivals were spread across Germany. One took place in East
(Figure 2, right panel).5 Germany (Leipzig), three in formerly Prussian West Germany
(Münster, Osnabrück, and Saarbrücken), and three in West German
cities outside of Prussia (Regensburg, Mannheim, and Ulm). For
5
For descriptive statistics, see Appendix A. descriptive statistics, see Appendix A.
8The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
TABLE 1. AfD Vote Share on the Municipal Level 2017, West Germany
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
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DV: AfD vote share in 2017 Catholic Interaction Full model Intensity Intensity controls
þ þ þ
Share Catholics −0.010 0.029 0.022 0.029 0.025*
(0.013) (0.016) (0.012) (0.015) (0.010)
Prussia 1.468** 1.299***
(0.497) (0.360)
Prussia Catholic −0.080*** −0.053***
(0.019) (0.014)
Kulturkampf intensity 0.319þ 0.361**
(0.162) (0.109)
Kulturkampf Catholic −0.013*** −0.011***
(0.003) (0.002)
Unemployment 1.262*** 1.243***
(0.147) (0.130)
Marginal employment −0.345*** −0.314***
(0.096) (0.089)
Regular employment 0.202*** 0.192***
(0.037) (0.034)
Population −0.002*** −0.002***
(0.000) (0.000)
University −1.762*** −1.919***
(0.336) (0.334)
Share foreigners 0.006 −0.003
(0.035) (0.030)
Population > 65 0.071* 0.058þ
(0.035) (0.033)
Female population share −0.457*** −0.453***
(0.102) (0.088)
Close to border 1.582þ 1.530*
(0.808) (0.691)
Constant 8.384*** 7.271*** 21.724*** 8.144*** 22.951***
(0.391) (0.620) (5.698) (0.413) (4.544)
N 8,370 8,370 8,178 8,370 8,178
R2 0.260 0.318 0.536 0.326 0.546
Note: All models contain state fixed effects. Conley standard errors with a cutoff at 50km (Models 1–3) or clustered at historical court district
level (models 4 and 5) in parentheses. þp < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
I use the standardized residuals from this regression to Based on Model 2, Figure 3 shows how strongly the
calculate a diocese’s mobilization. According to this predicted AfD share diverges with a growing share of
measure, mobilization was strongest in the diocese of Catholics. While this predicted share is almost identical
Osnabrück and weakest in the diocese of Passau. for municipalities with few Catholics, the predicted
AfD result in Prussian municipalities becomes signifi-
cantly lower than the result in non-Prussian municipal-
ities when the share of Catholics approaches 40%. As
EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
the median municipality in West Germany has a Cath-
olic share of 35.1%, this affects a substantial number of
West Germany
municipalities.
I first analyze the relationship between Catholicism, Finally, in Models 4 and 5, I use my measure of
oppression, and AfD vote shares in all of West Kulturkampf intensity as a more fine-grained measure
Germany. When looking at the share of Catholics of historical oppression. I effectively replicate Models
in isolation, there is no correlation to AfD votes 2 and 3 but replace the Prussia dummy with the Kul-
(Table 1, Model 1). However, when interacted with turkampf index and cluster standard errors at the level
my simplest measure of oppression—whether a at which oppression is measured (these errors are very
municipality historically belonged to Prussia—Cath- similar to the Conley standard errors reported in the
olicism has a strong effect, which works in opposite other specifications, see Appendix B).
directions within and outside of Prussia (Model 2). As the analysis shows, there is indeed a significant
This effect becomes slightly weaker when control interaction between the regional intensity of the Kul-
variables are included but remains substantively turkampf and the Catholic population share today. In
important (Model 3). regions where the historical oppression of Catholics
9Lukas Haffert
FIGURE 3. Predicted AfD Vote Share in Municipalities within and outside of Former Prussia8
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FIGURE 4. Intensity of Kulturkampf and Marginal Effect of Catholicism on AfD Vote Share9
was strong, the Catholic population share is negatively of the population in order to reduce the risk of an
related to AfD vote shares. In regions where oppres- ecological fallacy. In this analysis of very Catholic
sion was weak, by contrast, Catholic population shares regions, the estimated effect of Catholicism remains
and AfD performance are not significantly related. statistically significant and becomes substantively
Figure 4 demonstrates this relationship based on the greater. Moreover, I study whether the effect of Prus-
results of Model 4. sian rule also holds for former East Germany. As
In Appendix C, I provide additional robustness expected, there is no such effect. In fact, there is a weak
checks. I replicate the regression for the 2,586 munici- negative direct effect of Catholicism but no significant
palities in which Catholics represent at least two thirds difference between Prussian and non-Prussian
8 9
The histogram shows the share of voters living in municipalities with The histogram shows the share of voters living in municipalities that
a certain share of Catholics. experienced a certain level of oppression.
10The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
FIGURE 5. Rhineland-Palatinate in 1866, Catholic Share in 2011, and AfD Vote Share in 2017
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Catholics. In additional analyses, I remove the state- received territorial compensation for losses or unful-
fixed effects from the regression or add historical con- filled promises in other parts of Germany. The neces-
trol variables. The results remain substantively sary territories were taken from the region between
the same. Prussia and Bavaria. The size of these compensations
In summary, these analyses show that Catholic was defined by the number of inhabitants: Oldenburg
regions where Catholics were oppressed during the received a territory with 20,000 inhabitants and so
nineteenth century have been much more resistant to on. Thus, borders were drawn to create the necessary
the AfD than Catholic regions where little oppression numbers and did not necessarily respect historical
occurred. Sociodemographic and labor-market related attachments. With the exception of the Oldenburgian
differences cannot explain these regional patterns. territory of Birkenfeld, these territories later went to
Prussia. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld sold his
territory to Prussia in 1834, while the Homburgian
Rhineland-Palatinate territory of Meisenheim was annexed in 1866. These
transactions generated the longest portion of the bor-
The models presented so far included state-fixed effects der between Prussia and Bavaria. This history suggests
to control for the possibility that idiosyncratic differ- that the borders that emerged in the nineteenth century
ences between German states that occurred after 1945 did not follow any systematic preexisting differences in
are the true reason behind the apparent Prussia effect. the behavior or treatment of Catholics.10
A second concern is that Catholic regions may have However, Catholics were treated very differently in
already differed before 1815 and that my analysis Prussia than in Bavaria after 1815. In Hesse-Darmstadt,
simply picks up these differences. To tackle these the third major region and a majority Protestant state,
issues, I seek to analyze two regions where Catholics Catholics also experienced heavy oppression. Wilhelm
experienced few systematic differences before 1815, Emmanuel von Ketteler, the Bishop of the Hessian
were subjected to a very different treatment after diocese Mainz from 1850 to 1877, was one of the most
1815, and became embedded in the same institutional prominent Catholic opponents of Bismarck and was
context after 1945. The best candidate for such a region imprisoned for two years starting in 1873.
is the former Prussian-Bavarian border region in the In summary, Rhineland-Palatinate is a good test case
state of Rhineland-Palatinate, which was created as a because Catholics in the northern and in the southern
“Bindestrich-Bundesland” (hyphen-state) after World part of the state were arguably not treated systematic-
War II. ally differently before 1815, were treated very differ-
The area that came to be Rhineland-Palatinate con- ently between 1815 and 1933, and were then again
sisted of dozens of independent territories before the treated equally after 1945. Finally, there is enough
French revolution and was occupied by France variation in the share of Catholics in both the Prussian
between 1794 and 1814 (see Appendix E). After the and non-Prussian part of the state to allow the estima-
congress of Vienna, the northern part of the state tion of an interaction effect.
became part of Prussia, the southern part was allocated
to Bavaria, and the Eastern region around today’s state
capital of Mainz went to Hesse-Darmstadt (Figure 5 10
Diocesan borders were also redrawn to fit the new political bor-
left panel). Moreover, three smaller German states ders.
11Lukas Haffert
TABLE 2. AfD Vote Share on the Municipal Level 2017, Rhineland-Palatinate
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
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DV: AfD vote share in 2017 Catholic Interact Full model Kulturkampf Kulturkampf controls
Share Catholics −0.088*** −0.050 −0.027 −0.033*** −0.018***
(0.013) (0.042) (0.027) (0.009) (0.005)
Prussia −0.658 −0.580
(1.125) (0.892)
Prussia Catholic −0.023 −0.016
(0.043) (0.029)
Kulturkampf intensity −0.520*** −0.339**
(0.083) (0.129)
Kulturkampf Catholic −0.004þ −0.004*
(0.002) (0.002)
Controls NO NO YES NO YES
N 2301 2301 2190 2301 2190
R2 0.233 0.269 0.530 0.412 0.583
Note: Conley standard errors with a cutoff at 40km in parentheses. þp < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Figure 5 already suggests that the results for West comparability of Prussian and non-Prussian municipal-
Germany also apply to Rhineland-Palatinate: the AfD ities. Following the discussion above, I focus on the
received its highest vote shares in the Bavarian Palat- Prussian-Bavarian border, which emerged through a
inate and its lowest vote shares in the most Catholic rather random historical process and separates two
areas of the former Prussian Rhine Province. To pro- regions where Catholics were treated very differently.
vide more systematic evidence for this relationship, I I thus restrict the analysis to the 356 municipalities
first replicate the analyses from above just for this state. within 25 kilometers of the Prussian-Bavarian border
Afterward, I restrict my analysis to the immediate (excluding municipalities in former Birkenfeld or
region along the historical Prussian-Bavarian border Hesse) and add an interaction with the distance to the
in order to exploit the discontinuity in the treatment of border to the “Prussia Catholic” interaction. The
Catholics that occurred at this border. average municipality in this sample has a Catholic
Table 2 reports the same regressions as already population share of 31% with a standard deviation of
presented, just restricted to Rhineland-Palatinate. In 14%. Because I am interested in an interaction effect, I
contrast to the analysis for West Germany, there is a cannot set the cutoff much lower, as I would otherwise
strong direct negative correlation between Catholicism lose too much variation in the share of Catholics on the
and the AfD vote. This is not unexpected, as Prussian Bavarian side of the border.
Catholics alone constitute 61% of all Catholics in This is not a clean RDD, as the municipalities on
Rhineland-Palatinate, whereas they make up only both sides of the border are not statistically indistin-
47% of all Catholics in West Germany. Together with guishable (those on the Prussian side are on average
the oppression of Hessian Catholics, this makes it more slightly more Catholic, see Appendix E), but it reduces
likely to find an aggregate negative effect. the differences between municipalities as much as pos-
Nevertheless, this direct effect masks important vari- sible. Moreover, I am not interested in the direct effect
ation in the behavior of Catholics in different parts of of the historical state but in the interaction effect
the state. However, simply adding an interaction with between state and Catholicism.
Prussia, as in the analysis for West Germany, just splits Appendix E reports the full model with and without
the effect of Catholicism into an insignificant direct controls. In Figure 6, I show the predicted values from
effect and another insignificant interaction effect the regression without controls for a municipality with
(Models 2 and 3). As Models 4 and 5, which include a Catholic population share one standard deviation
the continuous measure of Kulturkampf intensity indi- below the mean (17%, left panel) and for a munici-
cate, however, this is largely caused by the disparate pality with a Catholic population share one standard
treatment of Catholics in Hesse and Bavaria. If the deviation above the mean (45%, right panel). As the
level of oppression is differentiated between these figure shows, there is no discontinuity at the border
areas, the effect of oppression becomes significant. for municipalities with a low share of Catholics. In
The more intense the oppression, the greater the nega- municipalities with a high share of Catholics, by con-
tive relationship between Catholicism and the AfD. trast, the predicted AfD result is considerably lower
This suggests that the effect of Catholicism is not about on the Prussian side of the border. There is thus
Prussia as such but rather about the level of oppression. evidence of a persistent effect of oppression even in
These analyses include all municipalities within the a region that is as homogenous as possible and has
state. In a second step, I restrict my analysis to the been part of the same institutional structure for more
immediate border region to further improve the than 70 years.
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