This article responds to the debate about the political outcomes of structural economic change (e.g., automation, China shock) by demonstrating how workers’ political reactions depend on how their employers manage these transformations. This is because how firms adjust to structural change can signal an ongoing commitment to workers or create resentment that can be exploited by far-right parties. I test this argument by using a new link between German firm-level register data and longitudinal survey data. This overcomes the problem of connecting the firm to the political behavior of its workers. I show that experiencing restructuring of the workplace only increases support for the AfD in firms that additionally increase their reliance on atypical workers. If firms, instead, uphold their commitment to prioritizing permanent workers, restructuring has no radicalizing effect. Therefore, my findings advance the current understanding of how to mitigate political radicalization in periods of structural economic transformation.
Leon Küstermann (Sat,) studied this question.