Can Coalitions Contain the Far Right? France, Germany and Europe’s Democratic Paradox
By Matthew Parish
Tuesday 27 October 2026
One of the peculiarities of contemporary European politics is that the far right can simultaneously be extraordinarily successful at elections and remarkably unsuccessful at acquiring power. Parties once confined to the fringes of political life now command a quarter, a third or sometimes more of the electorate, yet the complicated arithmetic of parliamentary democracy frequently ensures that they remain outside government. Other parties combine against them, coalitions are assembled across ideological divisions that would once have seemed implausible, and governments emerge whose principal point of agreement is sometimes little more than that the far right must not be permitted to govern.
France and Germany provide particularly interesting variations upon this phenomenon. France’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have both transformed themselves from insurgent political movements into major electoral forces, yet neither has succeeded in translating its popularity into national executive power. The mechanisms by which they have been excluded are different, reflecting the constitutional and political traditions of the two countries, but the underlying principle is similar: a democratic majority may be constructed not because its constituent parties agree with one another, but because they agree about whom they wish to keep out.
The question is whether this works, although there are actually two quite different questions concealed within that apparently simple inquiry. The first is whether coalition politics can prevent radical political programmes from being implemented, and the answer to that question is plainly yes. The second is whether excluding radical parties from government causes their political ideas to become more moderate, or their supporters gradually to abandon them. The evidence for that proposition is much weaker, and there are reasons to believe that prolonged exclusion can have precisely the opposite effect.
Germany represents the most systematic European experiment in political containment. Her post-war political culture was consciously constructed around the proposition that democracy must be capable of defending itself, and the memory of Weimar is never far beneath the surface of German constitutional politics. Democracy in the Federal Republic is not merely a procedure by which votes are counted. It is also a constitutional order possessing substantive commitments that political actors are expected to respect.
Hence the Brandmauer, or firewall, surrounding the AfD. Germany’s mainstream parties have generally refused cooperation with it, even as its electoral strength has increased, because cooperation is regarded not merely as an ordinary question of coalition arithmetic but as one concerning the permissible boundaries of democratic politics. This strategy has proved remarkably effective at keeping the AfD away from national executive power, even while the party has established itself as one of Germany’s principal electoral forces.
This demonstrates both the strength and the weakness of the firewall. It works extremely well as an instrument for preventing the AfD from exercising executive authority, but it works considerably less well as an instrument for preventing people from voting for the AfD. Indeed the continuing strength of the party suggests that institutional exclusion and electoral persuasion are quite separate things. Coalition politics can moderate governments without necessarily moderating electorates.
Germany’s proportional electoral system makes coalition government normal, and a party entering government typically has to bargain away substantial parts of its programme because its coalition partners possess different priorities. This has historically been one of the Federal Republic’s great stabilising mechanisms. German governments have usually represented negotiated settlements between competing political traditions rather than revolutionary mandates obtained by temporary electoral pluralities, and the institutional culture of compromise runs unusually deep.
If the AfD were eventually admitted to a coalition, therefore, one might imagine that the same process would operate upon it. A party demanding radical restrictions upon migration, fundamental changes to Germany’s relationship with the European Union or a dramatically different foreign policy would discover that coalition agreements, constitutional constraints, the Bundesrat, the Constitutional Court, European law and the permanent machinery of government all impose limits upon political enthusiasm. Government is an exceptionally effective machine for converting slogans into compromises, because slogans do not themselves balance budgets, negotiate treaties or administer public services.
There is nevertheless another possibility: instead of the coalition moderating the radical party, the radical party may transform the coalition. This is the anxiety underlying the German firewall, because a mainstream conservative party that depends upon AfD votes may gradually adopt AfD positions. What begins as cooperation upon one issue becomes cooperation upon another, while policies previously regarded as beyond the democratic consensus become ordinary subjects of negotiation. The boundaries of respectable politics can shift without any formal coalition agreement ever announcing that they have done so.
This is why apparently small incidents of local or regional cooperation between mainstream conservatives and the AfD acquire disproportionate significance in German political debate. Each such episode raises the question whether the firewall is a permanent constitutional convention or merely a temporary political arrangement that will become increasingly difficult to maintain as the AfD grows. A firewall is easiest to defend when the political force behind it is marginal; its democratic legitimacy becomes more complicated when the excluded party represents millions of voters.
France presents the same problem in a different constitutional costume. The French Fifth Republic was not designed primarily as a coalition-building machine, but by Charles de Gaulle as a remedy for the parliamentary instability of the Fourth Republic. The presidency was supposed to provide political direction and parliamentary elections were expected, particularly after later constitutional reforms aligned presidential and legislative terms, to furnish the President with a workable majority.
That model has substantially broken down as the French party system has fragmented. French politics is now divided between a nationalist right dominated by the RN, a diminished and fragile centre associated with Emmanuel Macron, and a divided left in which radical and moderate elements frequently struggle to cooperate. The traditional alternation between Gaullist conservatives and Socialists has largely disappeared. The institutional machinery of the Fifth Republic remains, but the party system upon which its later stability depended has collapsed.
The result is that France has acquired something resembling coalition politics without possessing much of the political culture necessary to make coalition politics comfortable. Parliamentary alliances are unstable, governments struggle to construct durable majorities and tactical voting is repeatedly employed to prevent the RN from converting its electoral popularity into power. The French political system increasingly requires compromises for which its constitutional culture was never particularly well designed.
Yet the RN continues to enjoy formidable popular support, and France therefore provides an especially powerful warning against confusing exclusion from office with defeat in politics. An anti-RN electoral arrangement can prevent a particular election from delivering power to the party, but it cannot eliminate the circumstances that cause people to vote for it. Indeed repeated tactical manoeuvres to prevent the RN from governing may strengthen the perception amongst its supporters that an entrenched political establishment will combine in virtually any configuration to deny them the consequences of their votes.
There is therefore a dangerous feedback mechanism inherent in the politics of exclusion. The larger the far right becomes, the broader the coalition necessary to exclude it; the broader that coalition becomes, the less coherent it may appear. Parties of the moderate left, centre and moderate right must suppress their differences in order to cooperate, and governments consequently find decisive action increasingly difficult. Voters become frustrated by political paralysis and turn towards parties promising radical change, whereupon the radical party becomes still larger and an even broader coalition is required to exclude it next time.
A mechanism designed to contain political extremism may thereby unintentionally contribute to its growth, although this does not mean that mainstream parties should simply invite the far right into government. There are powerful arguments for refusing cooperation with parties whose representatives challenge fundamental constitutional norms, indulge historical revisionism or attack the independence of democratic institutions. Germany in particular has historical reasons for taking those dangers extraordinarily seriously, and no sensible discussion of the Brandmauer can ignore the peculiar responsibilities imposed upon German democracy by the country’s twentieth-century history.
Political exclusion, however, is not the same thing as political argument. If millions of citizens are voting for nationalist parties because they believe immigration is excessive, public services are deteriorating, housing is unaffordable, European institutions are unaccountable or conventional parties no longer represent them, constructing an ingenious parliamentary coalition does not make those beliefs disappear. Nor does describing every such voter as an extremist constitute a serious democratic response to the underlying grievances, whether those grievances are well founded, exaggerated or occasionally imaginary.
This is where contemporary European centrism sometimes makes a serious analytical mistake, because it treats the rise of the far right principally as a problem of parliamentary arithmetic when it is actually a problem of political legitimacy. Parliamentary arithmetic may prevent a radical party from acquiring ministries, but legitimacy concerns the reasons why citizens increasingly want that party to acquire them. The former can be managed by coalition negotiations; the latter requires persuasion, policy and competent government.
There is nevertheless a more optimistic interpretation of coalition politics. Coalitions force parties to encounter reality, whereas an opposition party can promise almost anything because it bears few immediate consequences for being wrong. A governing party must prepare budgets, administer ministries, negotiate with neighbouring states and explain why promises made during an election cannot always be implemented. Responsibility itself can therefore become a moderating political force.
Participation in government may in some circumstances moderate radical parties more effectively than exclusion from government. Something resembling this has happened repeatedly in European political history: protest movements become parties, parties enter municipal or regional government, and their politicians acquire administrative responsibilities. Ideological purity then collides with sewage systems, school budgets, public procurement, pension obligations and bond markets. Politics becomes considerably less romantic once somebody has to make the trains run.
Yet this strategy carries obvious risks because government also confers legitimacy. A radical party admitted as a junior coalition partner may emerge stronger rather than weaker, claiming credit for popular policies while blaming its coalition partners for compromises. More importantly, it may use control of ministries to alter institutions in ways that cannot easily be reversed. Democratic institutions are not always destroyed dramatically; they may instead be weakened through a succession of apparently technical appointments, administrative reforms and changes to constitutional convention.
Hence there is no universal rule that admitting the far right to coalitions moderates it. Everything depends upon the strength of the surrounding institutions, the political culture of the country and the character of the party concerned. A radical party entering a robust constitutional order may find itself domesticated by government, while a sufficiently determined radical party entering a weaker system may instead discover that the machinery of government provides the means by which the constitutional order can be changed.
There is also an important distinction between moderating a party and moderating its policies. Mainstream parties across Europe have already adopted positions on immigration, borders, asylum and national identity that would have been considered substantially further to the right twenty years ago. This may represent democratic responsiveness, as politicians adjust policies because public opinion has changed, but it also means that far-right parties can influence government without participating in it. Political influence is not measured solely by the number of ministerial offices a party possesses.
In this sense the AfD and RN have already exercised substantial political power, because power consists not merely in occupying ministries but also in changing what everybody else talks about. Every discussion within the German centre-right about migration policy, national identity or possible cooperation with the radical right takes place partly because the AfD exists and attracts a substantial electorate. The firewall may prevent institutional cooperation while remaining considerably more porous to political ideas.
France displays the same phenomenon, perhaps even more dramatically. The RN has spent years normalising subjects and formulations that once belonged to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s political margins, while Marine Le Pen’s programme of dédiabolisation has deliberately sought to make the party appear less revolutionary and more conventionally governmental. Her greatest political achievement has not yet been winning the presidency. It has been making the possibility of an RN presidency appear ordinary to millions of French voters who would once have considered the prospect unthinkable.
The central paradox of coalition democracy is therefore that it is extremely good at slowing political change and much less effective at eliminating the forces demanding that change. That may nevertheless be precisely its virtue, because democracy is not required to make political passions disappear. It is required to process them without allowing temporary passions to destroy the institutions through which political disagreements are peacefully resolved.
Coalition government places friction into the political machine, forcing negotiation, delaying radical programmes and requiring politicians representing different constituencies to accommodate one another. Friction can undoubtedly be frustrating, and sometimes it produces mediocrity, paralysis and governments whose principal achievement is survival. Yet friction is also one of democracy’s safety mechanisms. A political system in which a party obtaining 30 per cent of the vote cannot impose 100 per cent of its programme is not necessarily malfunctioning; it may be working exactly as intended.
The danger comes when the remaining 70 per cent combine solely to preserve the existing order while refusing to ask why the 30 per cent are angry. Coalition politics then becomes less a mechanism of moderation than an establishment defensive manoeuvre, and every new grand coalition appears to confirm the insurgents’ argument that all conventional parties are essentially the same. Opposition becomes concentrated in the one political force excluded from the arrangement, which can present itself simultaneously as victim, outsider and sole genuine alternative.
Germany may eventually confront precisely this problem if the AfD’s support continues to rise. A firewall is relatively easy to maintain around a party receiving ten per cent of the vote, but it becomes considerably more difficult when that party receives a quarter or more and dominates elections in parts of the country. At some point the mathematical combinations required to exclude it become increasingly strange, and coalitions that voters never imagined during the election become necessary afterwards simply to produce a government. The constitutional legitimacy of such arrangements may remain impeccable while their political legitimacy becomes increasingly difficult to explain.
France may reach the crisis by a different route because its presidential system ultimately demands a winner. Parliamentary alliances can prevent the RN from governing the National Assembly, but a presidential election cannot indefinitely be resolved through coalition arithmetic. The second round reduces politics to two candidates, and if one of them represents the far right while the old reflex of forming a front républicain against that candidate ceases to persuade enough voters, there is no third coalition partner available to rescue the political centre.
The experience of France and Germany therefore suggests a qualified answer. Coalition democracy is an effective mechanism for moderating the exercise of political power, but it is not, by itself, an effective mechanism for moderating political opinion. It can force radical parties to compromise if they enter government, prevent them from governing if they remain outside and protect institutions while electoral passions rise and fall. What it cannot do is persuade citizens that their grievances are mistaken merely because parliamentary arithmetic prevents their preferred party from acquiring ministries.
That requires politics rather than procedure, and the European centre must therefore do something more difficult than constructing coalitions. It must recover the ability to explain why its policies are preferable, acknowledge problems that nationalist parties have successfully identified without necessarily accepting their solutions and demonstrate that democratic institutions can still produce tangible improvements in people’s lives. A coalition that merely excludes may survive for a parliamentary term; a coalition that governs successfully may actually change minds.
Coalitions can therefore buy time, firewalls can contain power and constitutional institutions can slow political revolutions. These are considerable achievements and Europeans should not underestimate them, particularly upon a continent whose history provides abundant examples of what happens when political institutions fail to absorb radical movements peacefully. Yet time must eventually be used for something, because institutional delay without political renewal merely postpones the underlying confrontation.
If conventional democratic parties employ the breathing space created by coalition politics merely to preserve themselves, the far right may continue growing outside the walls until eventually the arithmetic no longer works. If they use it instead to address the economic, cultural and institutional grievances upon which populist parties thrive, coalition democracy may accomplish something more enduring. The distinction is between containment as an end in itself and containment as an opportunity for democratic renewal.
The real test, therefore, is not whether Europe can keep the far right out of government. France and Germany have demonstrated that, for considerable periods, sophisticated electoral arrangements, coalition arithmetic and political conventions can do precisely that. The more important test is whether democratic government can make enough citizens cease wanting to put it there, because no firewall can remain politically impregnable forever if an ever-growing proportion of the electorate is determined to cross it.
