Foreign appeals: Symbolic uses of "the West" in Parliamentary Speeches

"The West" is a salient geographical and geopolitical concept, but also the source of various positive and negative narratives. While its uses in international relations have been explored, not much attention has been paid to how "the West" is used in domestic political discourse. I argue that, beyond expressing concrete policy positions or political orientations that directly involve Western actors, politicians also use "the West" as part of their rhetorical strategies. I define this as a symbolic use, through which political actors integrate existing narratives into their communication to persuade their audiences and legitimise their policies and programs. I identify the symbolic uses of "the West" in political communication through a multilingual large language model (BERT-NLI) using parliamentary speeches in seven European legislatures (Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, and Spain). I expect the symbolic use of "the West" to be more common for politicians holding extreme and conservative ideological positions, those politically socialised during the Cold War, and also those from countries at the "peripheries" of "the West". I will also account for the recent crises that affected the stability of "the West": the migration crisis, COVID-19 and the Russian War in Ukraine. Initial preliminary findings suggest that references to “the West” are more frequently used symbolically in Central and Eastern European countries, as well as during the COVID pandemic. By contrast, the Russian War in Ukraine led to a decrease in symbolic uses. The findings highlight how domestic actors can use concepts symbolically in their rhetorical strategies.