Why Democratic Parties Struggle to Develop Strong Leaders - What Germany’s struggle with the AfD reveals about a neglected democratic capacity

 

Why Democratic Parties Struggle to Develop Strong Leaders

What Germany’s struggle with the AfD reveals about a neglected democratic capacity

R.M. Westerink; September 2026 

The rise of the authoritarian right exposes more than public anger or policy failure. It reveals a weakness in how democratic parties develop Leadership. People continue to look for recognition, protection, belonging, and direction, especially when social change feels threatening or government appears unable to act. Authoritarian movements offer direct answers to those needs. They define a threatened community, identify who supposedly endangers it, and present a leader who promises to restore control.

Democratic Parties usually respond with policy proposals, warnings about extremism, or promises of better administration. All three may be necessary. Together, however, they still leave a gap. They do not necessarily give citizens a convincing sense of who “we” are, what binds us together, what future we are trying to build, and who will take responsibility for getting us there.

Germany’s confrontation with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) provides an urgent test. The question is not simply whether the Christian Democratic Union should maintain its firewall against cooperation with the AfD. The deeper question is whether the CDU and other democratic parties can offer a more credible form of Leadership than the AfD: strong without becoming authoritarian, protective without becoming exclusionary, and imaginative without abandoning facts or constitutional restraint.

The desire for Leadership is not Authoritarian

Citizens do not make political choices by comparing complete policy programs as if they were technical specifications. They also rely on political identity, prior experience, trusted people, perceived competence, and judgments about whether a party understands people like them. Political heuristics are not simply evidence of irrationality. They are practical ways of making decisions under limited time, knowledge, and attention.[1]

Under conditions of uncertainty or perceived threat, the need for orientation can become more important. People may look more strongly for protection, social order, group cohesion, and Leaders who appear able to act. Research on authoritarian attitudes supports a relationship between threat, uncertainty, and receptiveness to authoritarian responses, but the outcome is not automatic.[2] Stress can also produce solidarity, civic participation, or renewed support for democratic institutions. Much depends on how events are interpreted and what kind of Leadership is available.

This distinction matters. The desire to be seen, protected, and guided toward a recognizable future is not inherently antidemocratic. It becomes dangerous when political Leaders translate it into obedience, unequal citizenship, permanent enemies, or personal control over institutions. If Democratic Parties treat the need itself as suspect, they leave authoritarian Leaders in possession of the language of strength.

What Authoritarian Leadership supplies

Authoritarian movements rarely present themselves as constitutional theories. They tell a story about a community. The people have been neglected. The country has lost control. Established elites refuse to see what ordinary citizens experience. Outsiders or internal enemies receive protection while the authentic community is abandoned. Renewal therefore requires a decisive break and a Leader willing to act.

This political offer joins several functions that democratic politics often separates. It recognizes emotion, supplies an explanation, defines a collective identity, identifies danger, promises protection, and concentrates responsibility in a visible person or movement. Its power lies not only in the individual claims, but in the relationship it creates between Leader, Followers, and Community.

Germany’s AfD has built such an offer around immigration, national identity, distrust of governing institutions, resentment toward established elites, and a particularly strong sense of neglect in the eastern states. In the September 2026 state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the party won about 44 percent of the vote. Reported exit polling also found exceptionally high dissatisfaction with the national government.[3] A result of that scale cannot be explained by one issue or dismissed as a temporary protest. The AfD has become, for many voters, an organized political identity.

The Democratic Leadership Weakness

Democratic systems do produce officeholders. Elections select representatives; parties develop programs; parliaments authorize governments; courts and constitutions limit their power. These are major democratic achievements. Yet the same system does not reliably produce Leaders who can recognize social experience, create a shared interpretation, express a common direction, organize delivery, and remain visibly self-limiting.

Democratic Parties often select for other valuable abilities: policy knowledge, internal reliability, negotiating skill, coalition management, media discipline, and administrative experience. A politician can possess all of them and still fail to establish a meaningful Leadership relationship with citizens. Government is organized; Resonant Leadership is left largely to emerge from an uncertain combination of personality, circumstance, public need, and communication.

This helps explain why Democratic Parties can be institutionally competent yet politically unconvincing. Their Leaders explain separate measures while authoritarian challengers describe a common predicament. They defend procedures while their opponents embody purpose. They distribute responsibility while their opponents claim it. The democratic caution is often justified, but citizens may experience the result as absence.

The problem is therefore not that Democracy lacks Leaders altogether. It is that Democracy is better at constraining Leadership than at intentionally cultivating Leaders who combine resonance, direction, action, and restraint.
The United States gives individuals more room to build personal electoral movements, but also creates greater risks of personalization and Leader worship.
European Parliamentary Systems contain those risks more effectively, yet often fragment Leadership across parties, coalitions, and institutions.

Democracy must Sense its Community and Imagine its Future

Political imagination must begin with sensitivity to how citizens experience their community. A large political community cannot depend on personal acquaintance among its members. Citizens must be able to imagine themselves as participants in a shared society with a history, a character, mutual obligations, and a possible future. Leaders, institutions, public language, and political symbols help make that imagined community recognizable.

National Socialism demonstrated the destructive power of political imagination. It offered an organic and racial people, a mythologized past, national humiliation, internal enemies, rebirth, sacrifice, and a leader who claimed to embody the nation. The lesson should not be that democratic politics must avoid imagination. It should be that democracy needs a fundamentally different kind of imagination: civic rather than ethnic, plural rather than homogeneous, historically responsible rather than mythically pure, and centered on equal citizenship rather than obedience.

The democratic answer to authoritarian imagination is not the absence of imagination.
It is a stronger and more inclusive account of the community.

Such an account must answer basic questions. Who are we? Who belongs? What have we learned from our history? What do we want to protect? What changes must we manage? What future can we build together? Democratic leaders cannot answer these questions once and impose the result. They must articulate answers that grow from public experience, survive disagreement, and remain open to correction.

Social identity research helps explain why this matters. Leaders gain influence when they are seen as representing, advancing, and shaping a shared “we.” Effective identity Leadership is not merely a personal attribute; it is a relationship in which Leaders and Followers construct a sense of common membership and collective capacity.[4] The democratic test concerns the boundaries of that “we.” Does it enable different citizens to belong, or does it require some of them to disappear?

Keeping Citizens In while keeping Authoritarian Power Out

The distinction between membership, needs, behavior, and power can seem abstract. A brief comparison with smaller groups helps. A parent can make clear that a child belongs to the family without permitting that child to dominate or harm others. A coach can take dissatisfied players seriously, adjust roles or methods, and still enforce rules that apply to the whole team. A Democracy is neither a family nor a sports team, and citizens are not children. The relevant parallel is the ability to preserve membership while setting behavioral and institutional boundaries.

Applied to Germany, this means that AfD voters remain full members and co-owners of the democratic community. Their experiences must be investigated and their legitimate needs addressed. But their membership does not make every interpretation correct, every proposal acceptable, or every party automatically entitled to government power. Equal citizenship is unconditional; access to power is subject to constitutional conduct.

This distinction corrects two inadequate strategies. Moral exclusion can allow the AfD to claim that the democratic establishment despises its voters. Programmatic imitation can confirm that the AfD defined the problem correctly and was needed to force action. Comparative research finds little support for the expectation that mainstream parties generally weaken the radical right by adopting its positions. Accommodation can instead increase the salience and legitimacy of the radical right’s agenda.[5]

What a Resonant CDU could do differently

A CDU with imaginative and resonant Leadership would not promise to make the AfD disappear. Economic stagnation, regional inequality, immigration pressures, demographic change, distrust of institutions, and separate media environments cannot be solved through Leadership alone. Nor should resonance mean repeating what AfD voters already believe. It means understanding what citizens experience and giving those experiences an independent democratic interpretation.

On immigration, for example, the CDU could recognize that citizens expect the state to control entry, make asylum decisions promptly, distribute local burdens fairly, and enforce decisions. It need not accept the claim that equal citizenship or German continuity requires ethnic homogeneity. Its answer could join control with constitutional confidence: a Democratic State decides who may enter, expects integration, protects social cohesion, and treats lawful citizens as equal Germans.

In eastern Germany, recognition would have to go beyond campaign visits. A resonant CDU would make eastern German experiences part of the national account of reunification, leadership, investment, and institutional representation. It would acknowledge loss, outmigration, unequal influence, and repeated disappointment without telling citizens that resentment excuses authoritarian politics. Local and regional Leaders would be essential because national imagination cannot be credible if it is experienced as another message from outside.

The CDU would also need a democratic-conservative image of Germany strong enough to compete with the AfD’s closed nationalism. It might describe Germany as a historic, cultural, and constitutional community that has the right and capacity to protect its security, continuity, prosperity, and social order. All citizens who share its laws and responsibilities belong within that community. Germany regains control through competent government, managed change, civic cohesion, and European capacity, not by ranking citizens according to ancestry.

This approach would also make the firewall more intelligible. Noncooperation with the AfD would no longer stand as the CDU’s main answer. It would become one boundary within a larger democratic strategy. Voters are included. Problems are addressed. Proposals are judged on their merits and constitutional effects. Government cooperation remains conditional on respect for equal citizenship, independent courts, free media, political opposition, and peaceful transfers of power.

A democratic boundary becomes more credible when citizens can see what stands behind it: recognition, an alternative direction, and the capacity to deliver.

Leadership: From Accidental Emergence to Democratic Leadership Development

The practical implication reaches beyond Germany. Democratic parties should stop treating resonant Leadership as charisma that appears by chance. They cannot manufacture a Churchill, Mandela, or Obama, and attempts to do so would probably produce artificial candidates. They can, however, create conditions in which potential Leaders are more likely to emerge, be recognized, tested, and developed while remaining democratically constrained.

This requires an additional institutional capacity alongside policy development and preparation for government.

Capacity	Purpose	Practical methods
Leadership emergence	Find people who can connect social experience, common purpose, decision, and responsibility	Open recruitment, local assignments, crisis simulations, public problem solving, work across social groups
Democratic imagination	Develop an inclusive account of who belongs, what is protected, and what future is possible	Listening processes, historical and cultural work, narrative development, testing across regions and constituencies
Public testing	Determine whether leadership resonates beyond the party and remains democratic under pressure	Citizen dialogue, hostile questions, diverse evaluators, real responsibility, assessment of correction and recovery
Communication and enactment	Make the shared direction understandable and credible	Major speeches, repeatable public language, symbolic moments, milestones, transparent reporting on delivery
Democratic safeguards	Prevent resonance from becoming a personality cult or exclusionary movement	Shared leadership, internal dissent, term limits, independent facts, succession, constitutional review

The relationship among these capacities matters. Democratic imagination cannot be delegated to a communications agency after the program has been written. It should begin with social experience and help determine political direction. Communication then makes that direction intelligible, while government makes it credible. A compelling story repeatedly contradicted by policy failure will eventually deepen distrust.

Leadership candidates should therefore be tested on more than speeches or internal party advancement. Can they listen without merely affirming? Can they explain fear without exploiting it? Can they create a “we” that reaches beyond the existing base? Can they choose under uncertainty, organize implementation, accept correction, and defend democratic rules against their own supporters? Resonance without these tests can select the most effective demagogue rather than the strongest democratic leader.

Well-designed citizen participation can contribute to this development by exposing parties and leaders to considered public judgment rather than only polls, social media pressure, or activist intensity. OECD research on deliberative processes finds that representative public deliberation can improve the handling of complex tradeoffs and support public trust when it is tied to real decisions.[6] It should inform Leadership, not replace elected responsibility.

A stronger Democratic idea of Strength

Germany’s problem is not simply that the AfD is strong or that the CDU has communicated poorly.
The deeper weakness is that democratic politics has allowed the authoritarian right to claim ownership of recognition, protection, belonging, direction, and decisive Leadership. Policy improvement and administrative competence remain indispensable, but they will not close this gap by themselves.

Democratic Parties need Leaders who can imagine the community and allow citizens to recognize themselves within it. Those Leaders must connect public experience to a shared account of the country, translate that account into choices, and prove it through visible government. They must also remain accountable, correctable, replaceable, and unable to define inconvenient citizens out of the nation.

A resonant CDU would therefore be better equipped to respond to the AfD. It could separate voters from the party’s authoritarian interpretations, compete over the meaning of Germany rather than imitate AfD positions, and place the firewall within a positive democratic project. It would not eliminate the structural sources of radical-right support, but it would stop leaving their political interpretation largely to the radical right.

The broader lesson is that democratic Leadership should no longer be left entirely to accidental emergence. Parties can institutionalize the search for people who combine imagination, resonance, political judgment, delivery, and self-restraint. A stronger system for developing Leaders who can embody a shared future without claiming ownership of the people who must create it.

When democratic parties fail to develop resonant leadership and a compelling, inclusive image of the community, they leave the desire for recognition, protection, belonging, and direction open to authoritarian interpretation.

Appendix - CDU

What Democratic Leadership Development Could Look Like in the CDU

The argument of this article becomes meaningful only if leadership development can be translated into institutions. The following proposal is therefore not a blueprint for reorganizing the CDU, but a practical pilot that CDU politicians could adopt, test, and revise. It is designed to supplement policy development, candidate training, and preparation for government—not to replace them.

The suggested pilot proposition is deliberately limited: one year, three contrasting regions, twenty potential leaders, and three real public problems. A national mandate and common evaluation framework would give the experiment weight, while selected state and local associations would keep it connected to actual communities. The aim would not be to manufacture one charismatic figure. It would be to create an environment in which several potential leaders can emerge, assume responsibility, and demonstrate whether they can combine resonance, imagination, delivery, and democratic self-restraint.

1  Community Sensing Unit

A small interdisciplinary team would connect local party branches with mayors, schools, employers, trade unions, social services, churches, associations, police, and citizens who no longer feel represented by established parties. Its task would be qualitative political diagnosis rather than another stream of opinion polling. Monthly briefs would distinguish among the lived problem, the human need expressed through it, the explanation citizens attach to it, the exclusionary interpretation offered by the AfD, and a possible democratic interpretation and response.

This distinction is crucial. It would allow the CDU to recognize experiences of insecurity, loss, cultural change, weak public services, or governmental disorder without automatically accepting the AfD's definition of their causes or solutions. The unit should report to the Leadership-development pilot rather than to the campaign or communications apparatus. Its findings should shape political judgment before messages are written.

2  Leadership Field Program

State and local associations would nominate participants, while an open route would allow mayors, civic leaders, professionals, and younger members outside the usual party ladder to apply. Selection would look beyond rhetorical performance and internal visibility. Candidates would need to show that they can listen across social divisions, formulate a direction, make decisions under uncertainty, organize implementation, explain constraints honestly, and accept correction.

Each participant would receive responsibility for a real regional assignment—for example asylum administration, housing, local transport, school capacity, economic renewal, or access to public services. The work would be conducted with the institutions and communities involved, not as a classroom exercise. Participants would have to define the problem, build a working coalition, establish measurable milestones, communicate progress, and account publicly for failure or delay. Political imagination would thus remain connected to governing capacity.

3  Democratic Imagination Studio

This would be the most distinctive component. Citizens, local leaders, historians, writers, cultural figures, policy specialists, and participating politicians would work on competing accounts of Germany's common future. The studio would not be a slogan workshop. It would examine who belongs, what Germans may legitimately wish to preserve, what obligations accompany membership, what the country has learned from its history, and how continuity and change can be joined within equal citizenship.

The output should not be one centrally imposed narrative. The studio could develop two or three formulations and test them across eastern and western Germany, cities and rural areas, generations, religious and secular communities, and citizens with and without migration backgrounds. A democratic-conservative account of Germany would succeed only if it were historically recognizable, emotionally meaningful, constitutionally inclusive, and capable of guiding actual choices. Communication specialists could later help express it, but they should not create it in isolation.

4  Public Leadership Tests

Potential Leaders would face mixed citizen assemblies, difficult town halls, hostile questioning, crisis simulations, and public reviews of their field assignments. Evaluation would include citizens, peers, implementation partners, and independent observers. The purpose would be to test whether a participant can recognize anger without flattering it, defend boundaries without excluding citizens, revise a position without appearing directionless, and retain authority when facts or implementation require an unwelcome answer.

These tests would also expose the principal danger in institutionalizing resonance: selecting the most effective performer or demagogue. Strong democratic Leadership must remain accountable and replaceable. The pilot should therefore develop several Leaders simultaneously, use transparent criteria, rotate assessors, protect internal dissent, and separate final evaluation from any single party sponsor or communications team.

From Pilot to Party Capacity

After twelve months, the CDU should be able to assess tangible outputs: a map of social stresses and underlying needs in three regions; two or three tested accounts of democratic belonging and direction; a pool of potential Leaders who have performed under public responsibility; three documented delivery cases; and evidence about which forms of leadership can reach citizens attracted to the AfD without imitating its authoritarian interpretation.

If the pilot works, the four functions could become a recurring party capacity rather than a temporary project. Community Sensing would inform program development. Field assignments would become part of Leadership selection. Democratic imagination would connect social experience to political direction. Public tests would make advancement depend partly on demonstrated democratic Leadership rather than only on internal career success. The result would not guarantee great leaders. It would make their emergence less accidental and give the party better evidence for recognizing them.

The institutional principle is simple:
Do not search only for a charismatic leader.
Build an organization in which multiple leaders can emerge, prove that they can represent a plural community, deliver under real conditions, and remain democratically constrained.

References

[1] Lau, R. R., and Redlawsk, D. P. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making.” American Journal of Political Science, 2001. https://doi.org/10.2307/2669334

[2] Nilsson, A., and Jost, J. T. “The Psychological Causes and Societal Consequences of Authoritarianism.” Nature Reviews Psychology, 2023. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/

[3] Reuters. “Far-right AfD wins historic victory in German state election.” September 6, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/germanys-far-right-afd-seeks-landmark-state-victory-saxony-anhalt-votes-2026-09-06/

[4] Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., and Platow, M. J. “Rethinking the Psychology of Leadership.” Daedalus, 2015. https://www.amacad.org/publication/daedalus/rethinking-psychology-leadership-personal-identity-social-identity

[5] Krause, W., Cohen, D., and Abou-Chadi, T. “Does Accommodation Work Mainstream Party Strategies and the Success of Radical Right Parties.” Political Science Research and Methods, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2020.26

[6] OECD. Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en