Soder's ecological fireworks and the greenification of the CSU: discourse networks in the bavarian issue competition

Environmental and climate policy has become an important issue in party competition in Germany in recent years, and it is easy to observe the significant role that specific issues and problems play in the competition for votes within this policy area. In this article, we demonstrate for the first time how the method of discourse network analysis can be used to analyse such issue competitions. Discourse network analysis combines qualitative content analysis of media reports with methods of social network analysis and thus allows to follow and compare the dynamics of an issue competition and the interaction of parties in detail over exact time windows. We demonstrate this potential using the example of issue competition in Bavarian environmental politics in 2018 and 2019. We place a particular focus on the mainstream party CSU, which in the 2018 state election campaign was still trying to lure away voters from the AfD with pronounced migration policy demands. A year later, on the contrary, Prime Minister and party leader Markus Soder, ignited a whole "firework" of environmental and climate policy proposals. How did this reorientation of the discourse come about? Using newspaper articles from the Suddeutsche Zeitung and comparing three discourse periods, we show how the salience of environmental policy changed over the course of the discourse. The extremely successful petition for a referendum "Save the Bees" played a decisive role in this process, as a result of which the environmental policy discourse intensified and diversified significantly. Our analysis shows that because of this dynamic, and the threat posed by the electoral successes of the Greens, the CSU felt compelled to enter into a competition with the Greens for the issue ownership of green issues.