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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:3 (2022) ► pp.459–483

“It is in the nation-state that democracy resides”

How the populist radical right discursively manipulates the concept of democracy in the EU parliamentary elections

ORCID logo | National Research University Higher School of Economics | Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences
This article explores how the concept of democracy is constructed, conveyed, and instrumentalised in the discourses of the populist radical right in the current EU context. The comparative analysis of the speeches of the leaders of two dissimilar PRR parties in government (Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and in opposition (French Rassemblement National) in the run-up to the 2019 European elections using tools of the discourse-historical and discourse-conceptual approaches to CDS highlights the common core of PRR interpretations of democracy, influenced by the shared axiological, institutional, and discursive framework of the EU. It shows that in the EU the PRR constructs the concept of democracy as an ideological complex, by diluting its essentially populist interpretation of democracy with liberal democratic elements. Only by advancing nativist and authoritarian interpretations of the people, does the PRR bring the concept of democracy in line with its ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism.
Keywords: populist radical right, populism; democracy, radical right, liberal democracy, political discourse, European Union, European elections
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Data
  • 5. Democracy in the interpretation of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość
  • 6. Democracy in the interpretation of the Rassemblement National
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20022.ale
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Alekseev, Alexander
2024.  The (changing) concept of democracy in (transforming) European populist radical right discourses: the case of Polish Law and Justice . Journal of Contemporary European Studies ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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