Euro-Populism – Official Party Positions and Public Dialogue in the Party Systems of Germany, the United Kingdom and France

The finance, Euro and economic as well as the refugee crisis in Europe can be considered as catalyzers of already existing trends like populism and euroscepticism. These trends, often combined, characterize the current development of the party systems. Thereby the successes of AfD, UKIP and FN are encouraged, although the specific rules of the electoral systems mostly prevent a parliamentary representation so far. Besides (1) the extent of populism and euroscepticism among the considered parties it should be clarified, (2) if both are combined to a specific Euro-Populism? Furthermore (3) a possible increasing difference between public dialogue and official party positions is of interest. Finally the question arises, how, (4) as a result, the party competition is potentially influenced? With the planned study the so far in the research existing gap between the isolated consideration of populism and euroscepticism should be bridged in a first attempt. In this study populism is considered exclusively as an ideology. In the research literature the opposition of “the people” and “the elite” is assumed to be the true core. Euroscepticism is according to one of the both most common definitions differentiated in “hard euroscepticism” (demand for a prompt exit from the EU) and “soft euroscepticism” (the principle of the European integration is not rejected fundamentally, but however the current manifestation or parts of it). Theoretically the possible combination of populism and euroscepticism to a specific Euro-Populism can be explained as follows: First, populism is merely regarded as a so called “thin centered ideology” which makes likely a supplement with at least one (full-fledged) ideology. Additionally the basic concept of populism, “the people” vs. “the elite”, seems to be expandable or combinable with the topic euroscepticism because the opposition people vs. elite can be transferred to the level “national population” vs. “(alienated) EU-elite”. By means of a qualitative content analysis the official party positions should be determined on the basis of the national party and electoral programmes as well as the public positioning (discourse) on the basis of statements in speeches, interviews etc. Preceding the coding there should be a computer-assisted search for tags. Populism will be measured gradually. The electoral programmes as core of the data collection benefit from being transnationally available and therefore being comparable between countries and time. The planned study is limited to the right side of the respective party systems and considers besides the far most on the right side positioned relevant parties (according to the electoral results at the last national elections) AfD, UKIP and FN as well for each country an ideologically neighbouring party to answer question 4. It is proposed to present and and discuss the conceptualisation of the study as well as first pretest-results at the conference.