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Abstract Based on the theory that explains the neoconservative upsurge of the 1980s as a reaction against the post-materialist changes in values of the preceding decades, this paper analyzes the relationship between neoconservatism and the rise of the New Right parties in West Germany at the end of the 1980s. Secondary analysis of survey data demonstrates the differentiation of the political spectrum into the Old Politics and New Politics dimensions and related variants of conservatism. The New Right and in particular the Republicans are neither a ‘radicalization of the centre’of German society nor a simple mobilization of right-wing extremists. Rather, they are the product of the disintegration of the established parties which are in the process of losing voting support to the parties of the New Left and the New Right in an almost symmetrical fashion.
Michael Minkenberg (Wed,) studied this question.