Location
Presentation- College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis Presentation (Restricted to Georgia Southern)
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Jamie Scalera
Faculty Mentor Email
jscalera@georgiasouthern.edu
Presentation Year
2021
Start Date
26-4-2021 12:00 AM
End Date
30-4-2021 12:00 AM
Keywords
Georgia Southern University, Honors Symposium, Presentation
Description
The increasing success of Eurosceptic parties in national and European elections is undeniable. In the last twenty years, the European Union (EU) has faced economic, social, and political crises without much time in between. As a result, we are now the witnesses to an institutional crisis rendered even more real by the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU in January 2020. In this paper, I analyze the changes in rhetorical strategies employed by Eurosceptic parties to gather stronger electoral support.
Many scholars have now agreed that Euroscepticism and the parties representing it have become mainstream and accepted by the general public (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2018). The journey to that acceptance, however, is less clear. While most agree that the crises that shook the EU have served as catalysts of success for Eurosceptic parties, the strategies employed to gather and use that momentum is less evident.
Based on the cleavage theory and its subsequent adaptations, I argue that the distinction between domestic and transnational perspectives of issues can be used to understand shifts in party rhetoric and changes in their electoral scores. I use electoral data, scores from the Party Manifesto Project (Volkens et al., 2020), and original manifesto analyses to better comprehend the rhetoric of blame and its impact on party success. My findings suggest that the blame of transnational rather than domestic institutions for EU-wide issues is a strategy that allows Eurosceptic parties to strengthen their core and expand their electoral gain.
Academic Unit
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Transnational Perspectives and Euroscepticism: A Strategical Rhetoric of Blame
Presentation- College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
The increasing success of Eurosceptic parties in national and European elections is undeniable. In the last twenty years, the European Union (EU) has faced economic, social, and political crises without much time in between. As a result, we are now the witnesses to an institutional crisis rendered even more real by the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU in January 2020. In this paper, I analyze the changes in rhetorical strategies employed by Eurosceptic parties to gather stronger electoral support.
Many scholars have now agreed that Euroscepticism and the parties representing it have become mainstream and accepted by the general public (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2018). The journey to that acceptance, however, is less clear. While most agree that the crises that shook the EU have served as catalysts of success for Eurosceptic parties, the strategies employed to gather and use that momentum is less evident.
Based on the cleavage theory and its subsequent adaptations, I argue that the distinction between domestic and transnational perspectives of issues can be used to understand shifts in party rhetoric and changes in their electoral scores. I use electoral data, scores from the Party Manifesto Project (Volkens et al., 2020), and original manifesto analyses to better comprehend the rhetoric of blame and its impact on party success. My findings suggest that the blame of transnational rather than domestic institutions for EU-wide issues is a strategy that allows Eurosceptic parties to strengthen their core and expand their electoral gain.
Comments
This work is archived and distributed under the repository's standard copyright and reuse license, available here. Under this license, end-users may copy, store, and distribute this work without restriction. For questions related to additional reuse of this work, please contact the copyright owner.