New preprint, whose main point can be summarized by 3 maps: the share of Catholics in Western German regions (center) strongly correlates with AfD vote shares (right) when taking into account whether the region historically belonged to Prussia (left). Why? #polisciresearch (1/12) 
The argument in a nutshell: the historical oppression of Catholics in Prussia led to a specific form of political mobilization and this mobilization still inhibits people in these regions from voting AfD. Just compare the districts Münster (4,9% AfD) and Deggendorf (19,2%) (2/11)
The same relationship exists in Rhineland-Palatine, a “hyphen-state” created from a formerly Prussian North and non-Prussian South after WWII. The more Catholic a region (center) in former Prussia, the weaker is the AfD (right). No such effect exists outside of Prussia. (3/11)
So how does this relationship come about? My argument is that Prussian Catholics were historically treated very differently than Catholics outside Prussia. Prussian Catholics were oppressed during the entire 19th century, in particular during the Kulturkampf of the 1870s. (4/11)
This oppression triggered a political countermobilization in the form of a dense network of Catholic clubs, associations, newspapers, etc.– in short: the Catholic milieu – whose remainders still affect voting behavior today. Importantly, this milieu only emerged in Prussia (5/11)
To analyze this argument empirically, I use the “Kulturkampf Kalender” published by the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1875/6, which chronicled oppression events in the German empire. In total, the newspaper catalogued about 500 specific instances of state oppression of Catholics. (6/11)
Using this data, I estimate an index of regional oppression intensity, which I link to current AfD results in Western German municipalities. Indeed, the share of Catholics in a municipality is negatively related to the AfD vote share in regions where oppression was high. (7/11)
Moreover, I measure the historical mobilization of Catholics by using membership data from the “Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland”, which had up to 800k members before WWI. Where oppression was intense, the Volksverein was strong, and the AfD is weak today. (8/11)
Finally, I use contemporary data on participation at the bi-annual Katholikentag festivals. The more Catholics from a diocese attend these festivals, the more negative the association between Catholicism and AfD vote shares in that diocese. (9/11)
In the paper, I also provide additional evidence for the historical Prussian-Bavarian border region within Rhineland-Palatine and with individual level data. (10/11)
The preprint is available here: osf.io/preprints/soca… May be of interest to students of #historicallegacies, #socialcapital, regional context effects and the #radicalright. Looking forward to comments and suggestions! (11/11)
Thanks for the many excellent comments! Two things that came up repeatedly: What about Eastern Germany? And what about the 1930s? (1/n)
According to my results, more Catholic muncipalities in the former East generally show lower support for the AfD (think of the Eichsfeld), but there is no meaningful difference between Prussian and non-Prussian municipalities. (2/n)
Regarding the 1930s, the best current research that I am aware of is this paper by @jspenkuch and Tillmann: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… They do not find a difference with regard to Prussia - Catholics were generally less likely to vote NSDAP. The main difference is that ...(3/n)
they investigate an elite-based mechanism, whereas I study civil-society mobilization. To reconcile these findings, I argue that elites have much less sway over Catholic voters today. In fact, aggregate church attendance is positively related to Catholic AfD support (4/n).
