Euroscepticism and the use of negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns in the 2019 European Parliament election: A winning combination
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Author | Jürgen Maier,Alessandro Nai,Michaela Maier,Mike Medeiros |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211035675 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Euroscepticism and the
use of negative, uncivil
and emotional campaigns
in the 2019 European
Parliament election:
A winning combination
Alessandro Nai
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University
of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Mike Medeiros
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
Michaela Maier
Department of Communication Psychology, University
of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Jürgen Maier
Department of Political Science, University
of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Abstract
Are Eurosceptic parties more likely to run negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns, as
it is often intuitively argued? And with what consequences? In this article, we shed light
on the effectiveness of these campaign strategies for Eurosceptic parties during the 2019
European elections. We argue that ‘harsher’campaigns are ‘in character’for Eurosceptic
parties, and are as such more likely to be electorally successful for them. We use data
from the 2019 European Parliament Elections Expert Survey, covering 191 unique
Corresponding author:
Alessandro Nai, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe
Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Email: a.nai@uva.nl
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(1) 21–42
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211035675
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
parties, and show that, indeed, Eurosceptic parties are more likely to campaign in a harsh
way, and more likely than Europhile parties to benefit electorally from it. All data and
materials are openly available for replication.
Keywords
European Parliament election, Euroscepticism, fear, incivility, negative campaigning
Introduction
An element that has a prominent place in the political narrative during the decade between
the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic
in 2020 is the rise of populism and anti-establishment parties. Fuelled by economic anx-
ieties, political cynicism and a cultural backlash against ‘cosmopolitan elites’(Norris and
Inglehart, 2019; Oliver and Rahn, 2016), anti-establishment movements have often taken
the lion’s share of the media attention around the globe (e.g. Bos et al., 2010). The rise of
anti-establishment movements seem to go hand in hand with the development of a darker
and more controversial form of political competition: election campaigns are getting
increasingly harsher –that is, they rely on political attacks against the opponents
(Geer, 2012; Nai and Walter, 2015), are increasingly uncivil (Brooks and Geer, 2007;
Maier and Renner, 2018), and promote emotional appeals intended to trigger fear and
anxiety in the public at large (Brader, 2005; Crigler et al., 2006).
Circumstantial evidence linking populists and anti-establishment movements with
more negative, uncivil and emotional (‘harsher’) campaigns is not hard to find. Donald
Trump unquestionably used a rather dark and uncompromising rhetoric during his
tenure; the ‘fear’framing of the immigration issue, for instance in terms of increased
crime and violence, is rather common among far-right parties (Allen, 2017; Wodak,
2015), and populists have been shown to use a more aggressive rhetoric against their
opponents than mainstream actors (Immerzeel and Pickup, 2015; Nai, 2021). Yet, only
scarce systematic and comparative evidence exists that links anti-establishment parties
with the use of harsher rhetoric during election campaigns. Even less evidence exists
to suggest that such a marriage is electorally successful. Are anti-establishment parties
rewarded when they campaign more harshly –that is, relying more on political
attacks, incivility, and fearmongering? We test these questions within the framework
of the 2019 election of the European Parliament (EP).
The 2019 EP elections were set against the backdrop of rising polarisation around the
world (Iyengar et al., 2019); a phenomenon that also manifested itself in these elections,
fuelled by the multifaceted crises that the EU had recently undergone (see Pellegata and
Visconti, 2021). Yet, a clear symptom of polarisation in the EU can be portrayed by the
divide linked to European integration, an issue that tends to be much more salient for
Eurosceptics than for Europhiles (Spoon and Williams, 2017). While the political
voices that have attacked the EU have grown louder, so have those who aim to defend
it, setting up a fiery antagonism between Eurosceptics and Europhiles that often drives
the media coverage of EU matters (Bobba and Seddone, 2018; Pirro and Van Kessel,
22 European Union Politics 23(1)
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