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

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.