Framing Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: A Comparison of the German and Irish Media Discourse

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the framing of solidarity in the Euro crisis discourse. Previous research has argued that the Euro crisis and the debtor–creditor constellation highlights the political conflict around solidarity in the EU. Based on a discursive institutionalist framework, the article investigates the different meanings of solidarity as well as the constellation of actors in Germany and Ireland from 2010 to 2015. Whilst Germany as the biggest creditor country is understood as a potential giver of solidarity, Ireland as a debtor country is conceptualised as a potential receiver of solidarity. The discourse network methodology is applied to study the relation of framing and actor presence. The findings show that the ideational structure of both discourses is different, but the actor constellation is rather similar. In particular, solidarity and austerity are linked in the German discourse, while the Irish discourse focuses predominantly on responsibility and solidarity, and less so on austerity. The actor constellation shows a dominance of German actors in both countries, highlighting the central position of Germany within the Eurozone. The article is the first study to analyse the construction of solidarity in the Euro crisis and contributes to the study of solidarity in hard times.

KEYWORDS:

• Discursive institutionalism
• solidarity
• Euro crisis
• discourse network analysis
• Germany
• Ireland

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants of the joint InIIS/BIGSSS colloquium, the UCD SPIRe Seminar Series and the panel audiences at the ECPR general conference 2017 and DVPW section conference ‘Internationale Politik’ in 2017 for their helpful comments and suggestions. In particular, I appreciate the feedback by Sebastian Haunss, Aidan Regan, Sandra Reinecke, Marcus Wolf and Arndt Wonka.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Stefan Wallaschek is a PhD fellow at the University of Bremen, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS).

ORCID

Stefan Wallaschek http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3758-1799

Notes

1 Scholars have argued that the protest about austerity in Ireland was channelled by the ballot box in the ‘earthquake elections’ of 2011 in which the ruling coalition (Fianna Fáil and the Green Party) was fundamentally out-voted by the people (Allen and O’Boyle 2013: 109–125).

2 The appendix includes an overview of the government and party constellation in Germany and Ireland, showing who was in government, the party affiliations of key politicians, and how these changed during the analysed time period.

3 Guido Westerwelle (FDP) was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition between 2009 and 2013. His network visibility only results from this time period.

4 During the global financial crisis, Ireland had a severe banking crisis in which six Irish banks faced insolvency and the state had to bail them out. In 2013, journalists from the Irish Independent obtained audio material from meetings of top managers at the Anglo-Irish Bank (AIB) – one of the banks that was rescued – revealing how fraudulent and risky bankers had speculated and that they were well aware that the Irish state would bail them out in any case.

5 In this regard, it is also interesting that Macron and Hollande are present in the German discourse and yet not visible in the Irish one, while the opposite is the case with Sarkozy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Project GSC 263 as well as by a visiting scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the University College Dublin in 2017.