The politicisation of European integration in Eurosceptic election campaigns - A multi-level analysis of the German party Alternative für Deutschland

Abstract: This cross-sectional case study investigates patterns of politicisation in election campaigns of the German Eurosceptic party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) by means of a comparative multi-level analysis. It adds to the existing literature by examining the Eurosceptic elements of the party’s campaign communication across various decision-making levels. It examines EU issue salience, the dimension of mobilisation, and immigration salience in AfD campaigns for the 2019 EP elections, the 2017 German Bundestag elections, and the 2019 state election in Saxony, based on a qualitative content analysis of the AfD’s respective party manifestos and all tweets posted on the party’s official Twitter account in the two months prior to each election day. The findings show that European integration is most strongly mobilised on the EU level, while EU issue salience is rather limited on the national and the regional level. Apart from in the European arena, the issue of immigration is more frequently mobilised than that of European integration. While immigration has become a continuously cued and politicised topic in AfD campaigns, issues surrounding the EU appear comparatively less frequently in domestic election campaigns. This work supports existing theoretical approaches arguing that both issues pertain to a “newly emerging cleavage of globalisation”. The findings for the dimension of mobilisation differ from the expectation in this study: overall, policy issues on the functional dimension are more strongly pronounced than fundamental polity concerns. These results offer scope for compelling future analyses, specifically with a refined coding system for the mobilisation dimension.