Jugendlicher rechtsextremismus: Zur bedeutung von schulerfolg und elterlicher kontrolle

The study presents empirical material on risk factors for and protection factors against school vandalism and right-wing extremism among adolescents, focusing primarily on the role of school success and parental control. Within the theoretical framework of Coleman's social capital approach and Elder's interactionist approach to socialization, a model is presented that sees the leisure style of delinquent drift as the most important risk factor for school vandalism and right-wing extremism. Anomie in times of societal and economic crises is seen as a secondary risk factor only. School success and parental control are viewed as the primary protection factors against school vandalism and right-wing extremism, because they prevent juvenile tendencies to act out a pro-delinquent leisure style. School success, however, has individual and systemic facets. Students can have success in the school system by going to the most prestigious school type (Gymnasium), and they can have individual success, by getting good grades in any school type. Both types of success have to be distinguished. The model is tested by studying a socially heterogeneous panel (N = 590) of seventh to tenth graders from East and West Berlin in 1992 and 1993, replicating a study conducted the year before. Analyses only partially confirm our model. Delinquent drift proves to be a decisive risk factor for school vandalism, but not directly for right-wing extremism. Individual school success is a protection factor against school vandalism, whereas success in the system school is a protection factor against right-wing extremism. Parental monitoring is less important than expected. Only for students with less systemic school success it serves as a protection factor against anomie, and by that indirectly against a leisure style of delinquent drift.