Cultural Stereotypes in the European Parliament: Warmth, Competence, and Political Dynamics in a Transnational Setting

Possible panel: Communicating European integration to citizens co-authored with Natalia Kubalova (Leiden University) Cultural stereotypes have existed in Europe for centuries. On a continent comprising a mosaic of nation states, stereotypes developed as people started to associate ethnic, religious, or entire national groups with certain attributes, which could be either positive or negative (Connelly 2014; Leerssen 2018). In the context of European integration and increasing redistribution in the European Union (EU), cultural stereotypes have acquired a new significance. In the past decade, cultural stereotypes have often been present in the political and media discourse on EU decision-making. The euro crisis (2009-2015) split the EU into Northern ‘saints’ and Southern ‘sinners’ to capture cultural attitudes towards public spending (Matthijs and McNamara 2015). The Covid-19 pandemic led to the emergence of the ‘frugal four’ (Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden), a group of countries that used a self-ascribed adjective to signal virtue against the spendthrift countries of the South (Bialasiewicz 2020). However, despite a few well-documented instances, our understanding of the systematic use of cultural stereotypes in EU public discourse remains limited. How do politicians within EU institutions employ national, regional, or religious stereotypes in their public communication? This paper investigates the presence of cultural stereotypes in plenary speeches of the European Parliament (EP) between 2009 and 2019. As a transnational parliament with publicly accessible deliberations, the EP is the only EU institution which allows the systematic identification of cultural stereotypes in circulation. Starting from the ParlEE dataset (Sylvester et al. 2023), we use qualitative content analysis to link speakers to specific positions through which they attribute general traits to EU cultural groups (nationalities, regions, and religions). Theoretically, we apply the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske 2018) to categorize types of stereotypes in circulation and the overarching emotion related to the stereotyped group (admiration, paternalism, envy, or contempt). Additionally, we explore the relationship between the presence of positive/negative stereotypes and the political affiliation of speakers on the left/right and pro-/anti-European dimensions. The findings contribute to the development of a comprehensive dictionary of stereotypes in circulation in EU political debates and enhance our understanding of the dynamics of cultural stereotyping in a transnational setting. References Bialasiewicz, L. (2020) National stereotypes in times of COVID-19: the ‘frugal four’ and the ‘irresponsible South’, 13 July 2020, openDemocracy, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/national-stereotypes-in-times-of-covid-19-the-frugal-four-and-the-irresponsible-south/ (accessed October 2021). Connelly, T. (2014) Don’t Mention the Wars: A Journey Through European Stereotypes, 2nd edition., New Island. Fiske, S. T. (2018) ‘Stereotype Content: Warmth and Competence Endure’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 27(2): 67–73. Leerssen, J. (2018) National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History, 3rd revised., Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Matthijs, M. and McNamara, K. (2015) ‘The Euro Crisis’ Theory Effect: Northern Saints, Southern Sinners, and the Demise of the Eurobond’, Journal of European Integration 37(2): 229–245. Sylvester, C., Ershova, A., Khokhlova, A., Yordanova, N. and Greene, Z. (2023) ParlEE plenary speeches V2 data set: Annotated full-text of 15.1 million sentence-level plenary speeches of six EU legislative chambers, doi:10.7910/DVN/VOPK0E.