Opposing liberal democracy: discursive strategies of the radical right parties in the EP on the rule of law

While the concern for a potential erosion of liberal democracy has been increasing (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018), most research has concentrated on democratic backsliding at the Member State level, on governmental measures as well as on the EU’s response (Bárd 2018; Gora and De Wilde 2022; Pech and Scheppele 2017; Priebus 2022). What is at stake is the future of the polity, both at the EU and national level. The topic has also become central for all political parties, some of them becoming the most focal opponents of liberal democracy, others its more vocal supporters while others trying to bring some nuances into the debate. Yet, apart from a few exceptions (see Chiru and Wunsch 2021; Coman 2022; Meijers and Van der Veer 2019), little attention has been paid to the dynamics within the EP and across political parties in the EU. This article draws on and aims at contributing to two strands of academic work: the contestation of the idea of liberal democracy on the one hand and the impact of populist radical right parties on the other hand. The research questions we pose are: what discursive strategies do these parties adopt regarding liberal democracy in general and the rule of law in particular? Do they form a coherent bloc opposing liberal democracy and the EU’s action to safeguard the rule of law or is there variation among them? To do so, we rely on the analysis of debates on the rule of law in EP plenary sessions between 2010 and 2022 and an inductive method to develop a typology of strategies of populist radical right parties.