Speaking doom about the EU

ABSTRACT

Since the 2000s, the European Union has become increasingly polarised issue in the Dutch political debate. This paper analyses whether that polarisation has also led to the use of doom scenarios regarding the EU. Partially inspired by the concept of securitisation, a doom scenario is defined as a speech act that claims an issue to be an existential threat to the survival of the state, or to the state’s capacity to provide its basic functional services. By combining a discourse analytical approach with content analysis, we find that the use of doom scenarios regarding the EU with an existential threat are few in number. However, once the definition is relaxed to include other threats as well, an upward trend can be observed. Interestingly, doom scenarios with a Europhile character are mostly used.

KEYWORDS:

• Polarisation
• European Union
• party language
• Dutch politics
• doom scenarios

Notes

1 A doom scenario as defined in this article is, at its very essence, a hyperbole. Claiming that the existence or the abolishment of the European Union is a threat for the survival of the state, of the state’s capacity to provide its basic functional services, is an exaggeration and hence a hyperbole. An utterance is hyperbolic when it ‘involves extreme exaggeration by describing something (an “ontological referent”) as larger than it really is’ (Burgers, Konijn, & Steen, 2016, p. 415). The use of a hyperbolic framework – in our case in framing doom scenarios – influences the political debate and the impact on the electorate in several ways. Using hyperboles increases the salience of an issue since it helps to put an issue on the agenda and it can intensify discussions. More importantly, however, the use of hyperboles increases the impact an issue can have on the recipient and it helps to persuade the public of the existence, importance and imminence of a threat (Burgers et al., 2016, p. 415). Furthermore, the use of a hyperbolic framework can reshape the debate in a fundamental way in which the discussion, for example, is no longer about being in favour or against a certain issue, but rather on the degree of which the threat is realistic (Burgers et al., 2016, p. 416).

2 In the original definition of a doom scenario, the claim of a threat has to be so serious that the state no longer survives, or that the state is no longer able to provide its basic functions. When we use the definition of soft securitisation, whereby the survival of the state and its capacity to provide basic functions are not under threat in a way that the state no longer exists and is no longer able to provide basic functions, but rather the state is weakened and its ability to provide basic functions are hindered, we can no longer speak of a hyperbolic framework.

3 For the calculation of the salience of the European Union, the Comparative Manifesto Dataset was used, see Volkens et al. (2019).

4 The Pearson correlation coefficient between the salience of the EU (aggregated) and the amount of doom scenarios involving the EU is 0.92, implying that there is a strong positive relation between salience and the use of doom scenarios.

5 From 6.6% of the party programme dedicated to the EU in 2012 to 6.3% in 2017 for D66; and from 4.0% in 2012 to 3.9% in 2017 for GroenLinks (Manifesto Project Dataset 2019).

6 Albeit not in the traditional left-right dimension, but politicisation unfolds rather according to what Hooghe and Marks (2008) call the GAL-TAN dimension. This is party conflict ‘ranging from green/alternative/libertarian (or gal) to traditionalism/authority/nationalism (or tan)’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2008, p. 16).