Populist radical right parties are naturally Eurosceptic. Many responded positively to the British referendum vote to leave the European Union; various observers even spoke of a potential populist radical right-instigated ‘domino effect’. We ask whether this Brexit-enthusiasm prevailed in the proximate aftermath of the UK referendum, by means of a comparative analysis of populist radical right parties’ national election campaigns in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Italy. The analysis considers whether the UK referendum result served as an external stimulus for populist radical right parties to harden their Euroscepticism and politicise the issue of European integration. The results show that this has, generally speaking, not been the case, and that Brexit has also not stimulated or amplified calls for leaving the European Union. Relating our findings to literature on the politicisation of European integration and strategic party behaviour, we argue that populist radical right parties had few incentives to act differently given the uninviting political opportunity structure.
European media systems have been affected by major changes in the last few decades that have facilitated the dissemination of populist messages, including increased media ownership concentration, increased commercialization, and a stronger orientation towards news values (Esser, Stępińska, Hopmann, 2017). At the same time, Europe has faced several political crises, such as the European sovereign debt crisis, the refugee crisis, and 'Brexit'. Against this background, we analyze populist communication in immigration news coverage as well as in opinion pieces within two time periods (2016 2017) across twelve European countries. We define populism as a 'thin' ideology (Mudde, 2004) and derive four dimensions of populist communication: people-centrism, anti-elitism, the exclusion of specific out-groups, and restoring sovereignty (Mény Surel, 2002; Reinemann, Aalberg, Esser, Strömbäck, de Vreese, 2017). This chapter provides a theoretical introduction to populist communication in the media, and a detailed description of the methodological approach, as well as first descriptive results of the study.
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