The Anti-Internationalists: Political Parties and Globalization Backlash

• In Event: International Economic Integration in Domestic Contestation

Abstract

In the wake of the global financial crisis and the subsequent euro crisis, populist parties have risen to prominence across Europe. A key feature most of these parties share is the foregrounding of opposition to international economic integration – in the form of free trade, European integration, and/or immigration – within their platforms and rhetoric. In this paper, I argue that these anti-internationalist populist parties have played an instrumental role in promoting opposition to international economic integration among European electorates. By linking anti-establishment rhetoric to opposition to international economic integration, these parties have created new political identities based on both populism and anti-internationalism that affect attitudes toward international economic integration. In order to test this argument, I exploit variation in the timing of state elections in Germany to compare public opinion on international economic integration in states that had experienced a state election in which the new anti-internationalist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) competed by 2015 to public opinion in states whose last state election was prior to the founding of the AfD. I find that AfD campaigning in state elections had a negative effect on attitudes toward the EU among the most disillusioned members of the German public, but find no evidence of an effect on attitudes toward immigration. These findings have implications for our understanding of both the current backlash against globalization in Europe and the broader relationship between parties and public opinion.

Author

• Nina Obermeier, Cornell University