European Integration meets National Politics: Crisis, Europeanisation, and the rise of the AfD
(2017) STVM23 20171Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- Since the Financial and Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2009/2010, Germany has seen the rise of a new populist radical right party; the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the years after its establishment in 2013, this party has experienced many electoral successes and entered not only thirteen federal state parliaments, but also the European Parliament in 2014. This development is atypical for Germany, where a strong stigma against populist radical right parties has so far prevented any such forces from entering the national parliament and limited their electoral successes to very marginal events on the regional level. Hence, this thesis seeks to investigate why the AfD has emerged at this particular point in time. It focuses primarily... (More)
- Since the Financial and Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2009/2010, Germany has seen the rise of a new populist radical right party; the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the years after its establishment in 2013, this party has experienced many electoral successes and entered not only thirteen federal state parliaments, but also the European Parliament in 2014. This development is atypical for Germany, where a strong stigma against populist radical right parties has so far prevented any such forces from entering the national parliament and limited their electoral successes to very marginal events on the regional level. Hence, this thesis seeks to investigate why the AfD has emerged at this particular point in time. It focuses primarily on the possibility that European integration could have had a decisive influence, because the AfD mobilised first around the Eurozone crisis and then the refugee crisis – and both issues are intricately linked and conditioned by the existence of the European Union. In other words, this thesis seeks to investigate whether European integration has enabled the rise of a populist radical right party in Germany. It will do so by drawing extensively on Europeanisation research, as well as on concepts of party system change and rational choice theory. Based on these, it formulates four hypotheses which are mainly derived from Peter Mair’s work in this field and which allow for an actor-centred approach to the issue area. Thus, it will show that a link between European integration and the rise of the AfD can be traced and conclude with some remarks regarding the consequences this development implies for representative democracy in the EU. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8907511
- author
- Wohsmann, Vivien LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- STVM23 20171
- year
- 2017
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Europeanisation, European Union, party system change, populist radical right parties, Alternative für Deutschland, rational choice institutionalism
- language
- English
- id
- 8907511
- date added to LUP
- 2017-06-27 15:05:38
- date last changed
- 2017-06-27 15:05:38
@misc{8907511,
abstract = {{Since the Financial and Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2009/2010, Germany has seen the rise of a new populist radical right party; the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the years after its establishment in 2013, this party has experienced many electoral successes and entered not only thirteen federal state parliaments, but also the European Parliament in 2014. This development is atypical for Germany, where a strong stigma against populist radical right parties has so far prevented any such forces from entering the national parliament and limited their electoral successes to very marginal events on the regional level. Hence, this thesis seeks to investigate why the AfD has emerged at this particular point in time. It focuses primarily on the possibility that European integration could have had a decisive influence, because the AfD mobilised first around the Eurozone crisis and then the refugee crisis – and both issues are intricately linked and conditioned by the existence of the European Union. In other words, this thesis seeks to investigate whether European integration has enabled the rise of a populist radical right party in Germany. It will do so by drawing extensively on Europeanisation research, as well as on concepts of party system change and rational choice theory. Based on these, it formulates four hypotheses which are mainly derived from Peter Mair’s work in this field and which allow for an actor-centred approach to the issue area. Thus, it will show that a link between European integration and the rise of the AfD can be traced and conclude with some remarks regarding the consequences this development implies for representative democracy in the EU.}},
author = {{Wohsmann, Vivien}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{European Integration meets National Politics: Crisis, Europeanisation, and the rise of the AfD}},
year = {{2017}},
}