COUNTERRIGHT | Heike Klüver

summary

A central focus of my current research is how democratic resilience can be strengthened and support for the far right reduced. Rather than only diagnosing the causes of far-right support and democratic backsliding, we aim to identify evidence-based strategies that can effectively counter these developments. Using field and survey experiments as well as comparative causal inference, our research currently focuses on three main approaches.

First, we study whether correcting false beliefs and widespread misperceptions can reduce grievances that fuel far-right support. In a large-scale experiment in East Germany, we show that citizens substantially overestimate how many fellow East Germans feel like “second-class citizens.” Correcting these misperceptions reduces collective grievances and ingroup identification, increases trust toward out-groups, and lowers support for the AfD.

Second, we examine institutional strategies toward the far right. In particular, our comparative research tests the widespread argument that allowing far-right parties into government may “tame” them by exposing their inability to govern. We find the opposite: government participation strengthens rather than weakens far-right parties electorally, while providing little evidence of systematic ideological moderation.

Third, we investigate whether historical and civic education can strengthen democratic resilience among young people. In cooperation with ZWEITZEUGEN, we evaluate an intervention built around survivor testimonies and encounters with the experiences of victims of National Socialism. A multi-country school field experiment examines whether these interventions can reduce xenophobia, antisemitism, and susceptibility to far-right appeals, and whether their effects extend beyond participating students to their families.

Together, these projects examine interventions at different levels—from individual beliefs and historical learning to the institutional treatment of far-right parties—with the overarching goal of identifying which strategies can effectively strengthen democratic resilience and reduce support for the far right.

Project title:: Counteracting the far-right (COUNTERRIGHT)
Principal investigators:: Heike Klüver, Anselm Hager
Funding:: German Research Foundation (DFG), 04/2024–03/2028

related publications

2025

Taming the Far Right? Government Inclusion Strengthens Rather Than Weakens Far-Right Parties

Annina Hermes and Heike Klüver

Nov 2025

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Can inclusion in government break the appeal of far right parties? This question is critical given the global rise of far-right parties which makes government formation increasingly difficult. Commentators and pundits alike increasingly argue that the appeal of the far right could be broken by including far-right parties in government. The idea is that taking over government responsibility, dealing with the constraints of day-to-day politics and making policy compromises would make it difficult for far-right parties to maintain their popular appeal. We test this argument by analyzing 1,237 cabinets in 57 democracies from 1976 to 2023 by relying on a difference-in-differences design. We find no evidence that executive participation weakens far-right support. On the contrary, far-right parties gain in popularity, increasing their vote share by an average of about six percentage points in the next election. Thus, government inclusion does not break the appeal of the far right, it consolidates their electoral position.
@misc{hermes_taming_2025, title = {Taming the {Far} {Right}? {Government} {Inclusion} {Strengthens} {Rather} {Than} {Weakens} {Far}-{Right} {Parties}}, shorttitle = {Taming the {Far} {Right}?}, author = {Hermes, Annina and Klüver, Heike}, year = {2025}, month = nov, doi = {10.31235/osf.io/3mtxs_v1}, url = {https://osf.io/3mtxs_v1}, urldate = {2025-11-13}, language = {en}, }

2024

How to Break Populist Parties’ Appeal? An Experimental Evaluation of Communication Counter-Strategies

Heike Klüver, Ferdinand Geissler, Felix Hartmann, Johannes Giesecke, Lukas Stoetzer, and Petra Schleiter

Jul 2024

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Right-wing populists are on the rise all over Europe. How can mainstream parties effectively counter right-wing populist parties? While prior research has predominantly studied the drivers of populist support, little is known about how to effectively counter populists. We test the effect of four communication strategies to populist rhetoric: Highlighting the role of mainstream parties in representing citizen interests, emphasizing the performance of mainstream parties, revealing the self-interest of populists and appealing to alternative identities. We test the effect of these strategies through a large-scale survey experiment that we fielded among more than 24,000 respondents in Germany by relying on real-world messages of mainstream parties identified in social media, manifestos and press releases of political parties. Overall, the results show that exposing populist parties as self-serving is an effective counter strategy for mainstream parties, particularly among voters who initially showed high support for right-wing populists
@misc{kluver_how_2024, title = {How to {Break} {Populist} {Parties}’ {Appeal}? {An} {Experimental} {Evaluation} of {Communication} {Counter}-{Strategies}}, shorttitle = {How to {Break} {Populist} {Parties}’ {Appeal}?}, author = {Klüver, Heike and Geissler, Ferdinand and Hartmann, Felix and Giesecke, Johannes and Stoetzer, Lukas and Schleiter, Petra}, year = {2024}, month = jul, publisher = {Open Science Framework}, doi = {10.31219/osf.io/h5prv}, url = {https://osf.io/h5prv}, urldate = {2025-05-09}, copyright = {https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode}, }

2023

Can Wedge Strategies by Mainstream Parties Cross-Cut the Anti-Immigration Far Right Vote?

Violeta I. Haas, Lukas F. Stoetzer, Petra Schleiter, and Heike Klüver

Electoral Studies, Jun 2023

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Anti-immigration campaigns have helped far right parties to establish themselves in party systems around the world. We examine whether mainstream parties can employ wedge issue campaigns that divide the far right anti-immigration vote to win back electoral support. Wedge issues that cross-cut the anti-immigration vote may enhance the electoral support of mainstream parties, as long as they do not simultaneously alienate pro-immigration voters. We evaluate this expectation using a panel survey experiment conducted during the 2021 German federal election. The first wave allows us to identify wedge issues that the mainstream CDU/CSU can stress to cross-cut the anti-immigration vote. The second wave raises the salience of these issues by manipulating the perceived issue agenda of the CDU/CSU using hypothetical campaign posters. While our results show that wedge issue strategies are not effective on average, exploratory analyses reveal the potential of strategically targeted messaging in winning back support of some anti-immigration voters.
@article{haas_can_2023, title = {Can {Wedge} {Strategies} by {Mainstream} {Parties} {Cross}-{Cut} the {Anti}-{Immigration} {Far} {Right} {Vote}?}, author = {Haas, Violeta I. and Stoetzer, Lukas F. and Schleiter, Petra and Klüver, Heike}, year = {2023}, month = jun, journal = {Electoral Studies}, volume = {83}, pages = {102617}, doi = {10.1016/j.electstud.2023.102617}, issn = {02613794}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379423000392}, urldate = {2025-06-05}, language = {en}, }

2020

Responding to Far Right Challengers: Does Accommodation Pay Off?

Jae-Jae Spoon and Heike Klüver

Journal of European Public Policy, Feb 2020

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Right-wing populist and far right parties are on the rise across Europe. While established parties are suffering dramatic electoral losses, right-wing parties are celebrating one electoral victory after another. To address their radical right challengers, many established parties have adopted a so-called ‘accommodative strategy’ by taking a more immigration-skeptical policy position. However, it is unclear whether such a strategy yields the expected benefits or whether such a position shift in turn hurts a party electorally. In this article, we find that mainstream left parties benefit from ‘going tough on immigration’ whereas it neither helps nor hurts mainstream right parties electorally. We arrive at this conclusion through an analysis of 16,811 vote choices in 15 elections in six countries from 1998 until 2013. Our findings have important implications for understanding what explains the rise of far right parties and the changing nature of electoral competition across Europe.
@article{spoon_responding_2020, title = {Responding to {Far} {Right} {Challengers}: {Does} {Accommodation} {Pay} {Off}?}, shorttitle = {Responding to {Far} {Right} {Challengers}}, author = {Spoon, Jae-Jae and Klüver, Heike}, year = {2020}, month = feb, journal = {Journal of European Public Policy}, volume = {27}, number = {2}, pages = {273--291}, doi = {10.1080/13501763.2019.1701530}, issn = {1350-1763, 1466-4429}, url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2019.1701530}, urldate = {2025-05-15}, language = {en}, }