Political Entrepreneurship in the Age of Dealignment

This book traces the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from its inception in 2013 to its re-election to the Bundestag in 2021, emphasising the partys nature as a populist issue entrepreneur and covering the three major crises that have shaken European party politics the Eurozone crisis, the so-called refugee crisis and the COVID pandemic. Currently, books on the AfD are largely limited to historical accounts and surface-level analyses of the party. This volume is both empirically rigorous and conceptually nuanced: it seeks to understand the partys political trajectory and its appeal to its supporters by using advanced quantitative methodologies to analyse voter behaviour, as well as by interpreting the partys communication strategies through mixed empirical methods. It embeds this account within a well-grounded theoretical argument. The argument emphasises three important explanatory conditions a favourable political opportunity structure, issue entrepreneurship, and the partys stages of political development.