Research Papers

Euroscepticism still remains a vague empiric phenomenon that lacks a comprehensive conceptualization. Whereas most of the current approaches try to categorise Euroscepticism with respects to the intensity of critique on the EU (i.e. hard or soft Euroscepticism), this paper argues that euroscepticism can be better approached analytically by applying existing concepts derived from populism research. Based on the concept of populism of Cas Mudde (2002, 2007) and the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), euroscepticism will be perceived as a particular type of populist discourse that takes the European Union as a discursive nodal point. This concept can be transferred into an analytical framework that will be applied in a comparative case study design analysing the discourses of allegedly “euroscepticist” parties in the European Parliament during the last EP election campaigns (2009) (Die Linke, ODS, Fidesz, Conservative Party, Lega Nord etc.). The main focus of the analysis is the question how the different actors frame their discourses on the European Union and how they articulate their scepticism against it. Therefore, the contribution of this paper is twofold: First, it provides an analytical framework that can be applied in comparative research. Second, it presents first results of a comparative empirical analysis of euroscepticism.