Friends or foes? Europe and ‘the people’ in the representations of populist parties

Abstract

This article seeks to shine a light on the diversity of populist discourses about Europe and the European Union (EU). It is built upon the existing literature on populist Euroscepticism to elaborate on two underexplored aspects of the relationship between populist discourses and EU contestation. First, it explores the variable and even ambivalent representations of the EU and its main political processes exhibited by populist actors. Second, it focuses on the precise relationship between populism and the representations of the EU to determine whether there is a hierarchical relation, reciprocal influence, or they function as separated ideational ensembles. This research takes a corpus-assisted approach to discourse analysis that is based on the exploration of manifestos and party leadership speeches between 2013 and 2017 of Podemos in Spain, a left-wing populist party, and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, a right-wing populist party. The findings reveal that the populist discourse has variable effects on the forms of EU contestation depending on its centrality and that ambivalence is a crucial feature to capture the forms of EU contestation of populist parties. Finally, the article draws several theoretical implications for the research on populism and EU contestation.