Populist Eurosceptic trajectories in Italy and the Netherlands during the European crises
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395718769511 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Author | Andrea LP Pirro,Stijn van Kessel |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
research-article2018
Special Issue Article
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(3) 327 –343
Populist Eurosceptic
© The Author(s) 2018
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trajectories in Italy and the
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718769511
DOI: 10.1177/0263395718769511
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Netherlands during the
European crises
Andrea LP Pirro
Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
Stijn van Kessel
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Abstract
Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and
financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the European project and its
monetary union. Then, the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers into Europe in 2015 questioned
the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. More recently, Brexit came across
as the corollary of a prolonged legitimacy crisis. These crises have not only affected the course
of European integration but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU
member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally
listed among the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this article,
we empirically address the changing Eurosceptic frames adopted by populist parties during these
crises and speculate on the reverberation of these frames in respective party systems. For this
purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present instances of
populist parties of different ideological persuasions within traditionally Europhile contexts. At
the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises,
allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities.
Keywords
crisis, Euroscepticism, frames, political parties, populism
Received: 20th July 2017; Revised version received: 30th October 2017; Accepted: 29th January 2018
Introduction
Populist parties have made significant electoral inroads and are now integral part of
European party systems. They pose a challenge not only to political elites at the national
level but also to the process of European integration. From a populist perspective, the
Corresponding author:
Andrea LP Pirro, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi,
Firenze 50123, Italy.
Email: andrea.pirro@sns.it
328
Politics 38(3)
European Union (EU) can be interpreted as the ultimate elitist project, operating against
the general will of the people and according to non-democratic practices (e.g. Canovan,
1999). Populist organisations have been also considered ‘movements of crisis’, linking
their emergence and fortunes to real or perceived crises (Taggart, 2000). As explained in
the introduction of this Special Issue, the occurrence, in close sequence, of the ‘Great
Recession’, the migrant crisis, and ‘Brexit’ gives us the opportunity to ascertain whether
this holds in practice.
By studying four Eurosceptic populist parties in Italy and the Netherlands, this contribu-
tion seeks to advance the debate on this topic in a number of respects. First, by looking at
the way populists framed Europe and its crises, we intend to ascertain if discourses effec-
tively overlapped – and, if not, why. As crises are porous and fuzzy events, and primarily
‘performed’ by populists (Moffitt, 2015), disentangling the mechanisms in place at these
stages represents a meaningful way forward to understanding the relationship between pop-
ulist parties and crises. Second, through the analysis of populist Eurosceptic frames in times
of crisis, we set out to investigate whether the nature of oppositional discourses changed
substantially over time in reaction to critical events. Finally, we devote some remarks to the
reciprocal influence exerted by populist Eurosceptic actors at the end of our discussion.
The article is structured as follows. First, we outline the rationale for our case selec-
tion, the main expectations, and the analytical strategy. Second, we look at the evolution
of populist Eurosceptic discourses in the face of the multiple crises. Finally, we draw
some comparative conclusions on the basis of our findings and briefly elaborate on the
question of populist Eurosceptic impact across the two party systems. We find that all
European crises provided ammunition for populist actors to emphasise their disenchant-
ment with the process of European integration. While all of our cases started out as soft-
Eurosceptic in the pre-crises years, some clearly hardened their Euroscepticism. However,
the reactions of the populist parties and their framing of the various crises still varied,
depending on their ideological characteristics and also the way the crises have played out
in their particular contexts.
Rationale and methodology
From a comparative perspective, the two selected countries are interesting in that they (1)
demonstrate contextual differences in ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ Europe, and (2) host elec-
torally relevant populist parties of various kinds. While the first criterion should unravel
differentiated populist responses across countries, the second should highlight how these
responses were articulated among populist parties of different ideological persuasions.
The Great Recession and the migrant crisis have affected both countries in different
ways. While the Netherlands certainly felt the consequences of the economic crisis, its
unemployment figures and government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio
remained roughly half the size of Italy’s, and the Italian economy experienced worse
negative growth figures (Eurostat, 2016). Concerning the migrant crisis, Italy has been a
key point of access for immigrants, whereas the Netherlands can be listed among coun-
tries of eventual destination (The Economist, 2016). The cases thus allow us to examine
how populist parties have reacted to different context-driven political opportunities. That
is, populist parties’ responses can be expected to vary due to the different salience as well
as effects of each crisis in both countries.
The Italian and Dutch party systems both include populist parties that have opposed
‘Europe’ through different ideological lenses. We can include the Italian Northern League
Pirro and van Kessel
329
(LN) and the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) in the populist radical-right party family,
describe the Dutch Socialist Party (SP) as radical left, while the Italian 5 Star Movement
(M5S) defies straightforward categorisations in terms of left and right: the M5S started
out as an anti-establishment party with left-libertarian concerns, but increasingly adopted
nativist tones. This selection allows us to assess how populist parties of various kinds
have reacted to the multiple European crises. It can, for instance, be expected that the
‘Great Recession’ was a salient theme for left-wing parties in particular, in view of their
primary concern with socioeconomic issues, while populist radical-right parties, gener-
ally more concerned with cultural issues, concentrated mainly on the migrant crisis. As
Brexit has typically been associated with themes of sovereignty and democracy, it could
arguably entice all types of populist parties.
Although we anticipate a variety of specific responses due to these ideological and
contextual differences, we generally expect socioeconomic arguments to have become
dominant during the Great Recession, cultural arguments during the migrant crisis, and
legitimacy and/or sovereignty arguments amid Brexit. On the whole, we interpret crises
as a catalyst for particular frames, which may coexist with other traditional/pre-existing
arguments against Europe.
Drawing on social movement theory, we resort to the notion of frames to explain the
construction of collective identities and the creation of alternative systems of meaning at
the public level (e.g. Snow et al., 1986). The use of frames fulfils a symbolic function,
punctuating and connecting ‘patterns or happenings in the world’ (Snow and Benford,
1992: 138). We interpret them as the discursive stratagem to link populist Euroscepticism
to the crises that unfolded during the past decade. In times of crisis, populist parties can
use Eurosceptic frames as ‘interpretative schemata’ to single out an existing social condi-
tion or aspect of life, and define it as unjust and deserving of corrective action (Snow and
Benford, 1992: 137). Far from static, populist Eurosceptic frames are liable to continuous
redefinition and adjustment. For this reason, we set to analyse the evolution of frames
across time and, in fact, across crises.
Acknowledging limitations in the categorisation of Eurosceptic frames in the extant lit-
erature (e.g. Helbling et al., 2010), we set to square the discourse of populist parties within
four main frame categories. First, socioeconomic frames link Euroscepticism to economic
and financial arguments, such as the mishandling of the sovereign debt crisis, and generally
to all those (negative) consequences attached to EU or Eurozone membership. Second,
cultural frames link Euroscepticism to the issue of immigration and the security threats
posed by (Muslim) ‘aliens’. Finally, sovereignty and legitimacy are typical oppositional
frames deployed by populists. The former relates to the observation that European...
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