Shaping Competition: Allies’ Party Licensing and the German Extreme Right

In the years of democratic reconstitution in the Western regions of Germany (1945-1950), political parties needed the authorization of the Allies’ military governments in order to form and compete in local and regional elections, as well as – for the first Bundestag elections in 1949 – at the federal level. Like in other aspects of their transitional administration, the US, UK and French military authorities exercised their party licensing power largely autonomously from each other in their respective zones of occupation. In particular, they showed different degrees of leniency towards parties of the extreme right. Through a subnational analysis of voting patterns, the paper analyzes the medium-term effects of the three Allies Powers’ different licensing strategies on party competition, and in particular on the organizational and electoral viability of the extreme right, in different areas of West Germany.