This Workshop addresses the critical interplay between populism and Euroscepticism, two persistent phenomena that present fundamental challenges to the European Union and its legitimacy. The main aim is to analyse this linkage, identify its causes and consequences, and explore how negative societal impacts can be mitigated. Key objectives include mapping existing conceptualisations of both phenomena, understanding their drivers, intersections and interactions, and fostering comparative and longitudinal analyses using rigorous methodologies. The Workshop is a platform for scholars to produce cutting-edge research and policy-relevant insights. Workshop also supported by the EUPopLink COST Action: eupolink.eu
Euroscepticism and populism represent two fundamental challenges to the institutional order of the European Union (EU) and its member states. Euroscepticism does so by challenging or outright rejecting the EU, its institutions, and policy remit. Populism is a set of ideas that pits a sovereign 'people' against a suspect 'elite', by which it challenges the legitimacy of political institutions. Both typically denote feelings of resentment against remote and unresponsive elites. The study of Euroscepticism and populism often overlap in their socio-political drivers, empirical measures and normative assumptions. Yet, there is so far little scholarly agreement on how the two phenomena interrelate; very few studies genuinely investigate how the two concepts are related and how they interact in practice (Andreadis et al., 2022; Rooduijn & Kessel, 2019).
The lack of rigorous analysis represents a major obstacle to addressing the EU's legitimacy crisis and formulating effective political reforms. Such questions become even more relevant at a time when populist (far right) actors often appear to display an ambivalent (Lorimer, 2021) or ‘equivocal’ (Heinisch et al., 2021) position towards further European integration, suggesting that populism and Euroscepticism do not always go hand in hand.
Against this background, our Workshop seeks to provide a platform for novel research on the linkage between populism and Euroscepticism, which is urgently needed to ensure the scholarly community does not lag behind political developments. By connecting researchers from different theoretical and methodological standpoints, the Workshop will innovate conceptually, methodologically, and empirically, filling a critical gap in the literature.
Andreadis, I., Stavrakakis, I., & Teperoglou, E. (2022). Innovative methods and high-quality data for populism and euroscepticism research (DataPopEU). In Proceedings of the DataPopEU Conference (2022): Populism and Euroscepticism in Perspective.
Heinisch, R., McDonnell, D., & Werner, A. (2021). Equivocal Euroscepticism: How Populist Radical Right Parties Can Have Their EU Cake and Eat It. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 59(2), 189–205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13055
Lorimer, M. (2021). What do they talk about when they talk about Europe? Euro-ambivalence in far right ideology. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(11), 2016–2033. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1807035
Rooduijn, M., & Kessel, S. van. (2019). Populism and Euroskepticism in the European Union. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1045
1: What is the relationship between populism and Euroscepticism?
2: How does this relationship vary over time, across countries and regions?
3: Can we identify common points among the voters and at the elite level?
4: When do populists adopt Eurosceptic positions, and is it tactical or ideological?
5: How can we mitigate the negative effects of linked populism and Euroscepticism?
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| Does my voice count in the EU? Political efficacy in a multilevel system, 2004-2024 |
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| Intersecting Dynamics of Populism and Euroscepticism: A Comparative Cross-National Inquiry into France and Poland |
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| Mapping the Populism-Euroscepticism Nexus: A Symmetric Index Approach Using CHES 2024 |
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| From rhetoric to responsibility: how government participation reshapes populist euroscepticism |
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| Theorising the overlap between Euroscepticism and populism |
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| Does Europe divide? Affective Dynamics of Polarization in Lithuania |
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| Before Their Time: How the Timing of Democratisation Affects Challenger Party Euroscepticism |
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| The Populism-Euroscepticism Nexus in a Contested Europe |
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| How Careers of Politicians affect Euroscepticism and Populism |
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| Linking euroscepticism and populism: methodological approaches and challenges |
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| Blame allocation in the EU: populism and the unequal pathways to Euroscepticism |
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| United they construct the people of Europe? A comparative visual analysis of right wing populists’ Euroscepticism. |
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| Euroscepticism in local elections manifestos of populist parties in the Czech Republic |
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| Do Populist Attitudes Predict Euroscepticism? Evidence from 31 Countries |
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| Political Discontent as the Missing Link between Populism and Euroscepticism |
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