Hostname: page-component-669899f699-2mbcq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T06:46:04.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political party contestation over Europe in the mass media: who criticizes Europe, how, and why?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2009

Paul Statham  and
Ruud Koopmans
Paul Statham*
Affiliation:
Centre for European Political Communications (EurPolCom), Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, UK
Ruud Koopmans*
Affiliation:
Research Unit Migration, Integration, Transnationalization (MIT), Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Germany
*
* E-mails: paul.statham@bristol.ac.uk, koopmans@wzb.eu
* E-mails: paul.statham@bristol.ac.uk, koopmans@wzb.eu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines political party contestation over Europe, its relationship to the left/right cleavage, and the nature and emergence of Euroscepticism. The analysis is based on a large original sample of parties’ claims systematically drawn from political discourses in the mass media in seven countries: Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. It addresses questions concerning parties’ mobilized criticisms of European integration and the European Union (EU), specifically: their degree and form; their location among party families and within party systems; cross-national and diachronic trends; their substantive issue contents; whether their ‘Euro-criticism’ is more tactical or ideological; whether claims construct a cleavage; and their potential for transforming party politics. Findings show that a party’s country of origin has little explanatory power, once differences between compositions of party systems are accounted for. Also governing parties are significantly more likely to be pro-European, regardless of party-type. Regional party representatives, by contrast, are significantly more likely to be ‘Euro-critical’. Overall, we find a lop-sided ‘inverted U’ on the right of the political spectrum, but this is generated entirely by the significant, committed Euroscepticism of the British Conservatives and Schweizerische Volkspartei. There is relatively little evidence for Euroscepticism elsewhere at the core, where pro-Europeanism persists. Finally, parties’ Euro-criticism from the periphery mostly constructs substantive political and economic critiques of European integration and the EU, and is not reducible to strategic anti-systemic challenges.

Keywords

political party contestationEuropean integrationEuroscepticismmass mediaclaims-making
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 435 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bourne, A.K. (2003), ‘The impact of European integration on regional power’, Journal of Common Market Studies 41: 597–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budge, I., Klingemann, H.-D., Volkens, A., Bara, J.Tannenbaum, E. (2001), Mapping Policy Preferences, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Díez Medrano, J. (2003), Framing Europe, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earl, J., Martin, A., McCarthy, J.D.Soule, S.A. (2004), ‘The use of newspaper data in the study of collective action’, Annual Review of Sociology 30: 65–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entman, R.M. (2004), Projections of Power. Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fligstein, N. (2008), Euroclash, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hix, S.Lord, C. (1997), Political Parties in the European Union, New York: St Martin’s Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, L., Marks, G.Wilson, C.J. (2004), ‘Does left/right structure party positions on European integration?’, in G. Marks and M.R. Steenbergen (eds), European Integration and Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 120–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, R. (2007), ‘Who inhabits the European public sphere? Winners and losers, supporters and opponents in Europeanised political debates’, European Journal of Political Research 46(2): 183–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, R.Statham, P. (1999), ‘Political Claims Analysis: integrating protest event and political discourse approaches’, Mobilization: The International Journal of Research and Theory about Social Movements, Protest and Collective Behavior 4(2): 203–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, R., Statham, P., Giugni, M.Passy, F. (2005), Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H. (2005), ‘How national political parties mobilize the political potentials linked to European integration’, unpublished manuscript, University of Zurich.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H. (2007), ‘The role of European integration in national election campaigns’, European Union Politics 8(1): 83–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S.Frey, T. (2008), West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Six Countries Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H., Koopmans, R., Duyvendak, J.W.Guigni, M. (1995), The Politics of Social Movements in Western Europe, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mair, P. (2000), ‘The limited impact of Europe on national political systems’, Western European Politics 23: 27–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mair, P. (2006), ‘Political parties and party systems’, in P. Graziano and M. Vink (eds), Europeanization: New Research Agendas, London: Palgrave, pp. 154–166.Google Scholar
Marks, G. (2004), ‘Conclusion: European integration and political conflict’, in G. Marks and M.R. Steenbergen (eds), European Integration and Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 235–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marks, G.McAdam, D. (1996), ‘Social movements and the changing structure of political opportunity in the European community’, West European Politics 18(2): 249–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, L. (1999), ‘Measuring party orientations towards European integration. Results from an expert survey’, European Journal of Political Research 36: 283–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, P. (1999), ‘Changing spaces of political communication: the case of the European Union’, Political Communication 16(3): 263–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statham, P. (2007), ‘Political communication, European integration and the transformation of national public spheres: a comparison of Britain and France’, in J.E. Fossum and P. Schlesinger (eds), The European Union and the Public Sphere: A communicative space in the making?, London: Routledge, pp. 110–134.Google Scholar
Statham, P. (2008a), ‘Making Europe news. How journalists view their role and media performance’, Journalism 9(4): 398–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statham, P. (2008b), ‘Political Party Contestation over Europe in Public Discourses: Emergent Euroscepticism?’. Arena Working Paper No. 8, March 2008, Oslo.Google Scholar
Statham, P.Gray, E. (2005), ‘Public debates over Europe in Britain: exceptional and conflict-driven?’, Innovation 18(1): 61–81.Google Scholar
Steenbergen, M.R.Scott, D.J. (2004), ‘Contesting Europe? The salience of European integration as a party issue’, in G. Marks and M.R. Steenbergen (eds), European Integration and Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 165–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swanson, D.L.Mancini, P. (eds) (1996), Politics, Media, and Modern Democracy: An International Study of Innovations in Electoral Campaigning and their Consequences, Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Taggart, P. (1998), ‘A touchstone of dissent: Euroscepticism in contemporary Western European party systems’, European Journal of Political Research 33(3): 363–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar