The Changing Discourses of EU Enlargement: A Longitudinal Analysis of National Parliamentary Debates

Spyros Economides, Kevin Featherstone and Tom Hunter

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2024, vol. 62, issue 1, 168-185

Abstract: Domestic support for EU enlargement across existing member states is understood to have shifted significantly since 2004. But, how? Here, we explore how enlargement has been framed discursively in the national parliaments of eight member states. Our dataset comprises over 18,000 statements from 1989 to 2019. We link our exploration to alternative explanations for change: IR‐based shifts in how applicant states are perceived and, from comparative politics, the ‘politicisation’ of EU membership in domestic party systems. We analyse changes in salience, sentiment and thematic foci. Our results confirm shifts in the perceptions of individual applicant states over time and an increased concern with issues of ‘identity’ in relation to enlargement. We find that whilst salience has declined, sentiment has turned negative and explore the distinctive discourses of ‘challenger parties’ in this regard.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13484

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:62:y:2024:i:1:p:168-185

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().