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Vers une fabrique transnationale de l’offre politique européenne? Une étude lexicométrique du programme 2014 des Europartis

par Jadot, Clément ;Kelbel, Camille
Référence Les élections européennes en pratiques. Fabrique des offres politiques et diversité des attitudes des publics (10-10-2014: Strasbourg)
Publication Non publié, 2014-10-10

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Consensual, disembodied and rather undemanding, the political programs or 'manifestos' drafted by the political parties at European level (the so-called 'Europarties') are deemed to bear the mark of their designers, and as such are marginalised in the analysis in political science. Taken together, they nevertheless constitute a dynamic material, indicative of the structuring of the political space at European level. Straddling between collective representations and party-based specificities, this research examines the issues raised by the European political parties in their program for the 2014 European elections. To that extent, it builds on and pursues previous research endeavours concerned with the making of the European political landscape in general and of Europarties in particular (Gabel & Hix 2002; Kluver & Rodon 2012; Pennings 2002). It is argued that beyond a shared discursive space, each Europarty simultaneously mobilizes its own register amounting to a plurality of European projects. The ambition of this paper is to put in perspective the political choices of Europarties with, on the one hand, the internal diversity of their ideological approaches (Hertner 2011; Kluver & Rodon 2013 Pennings 2002; Spoon 2012), and on the other hand, the European political space as external constraint (Benoit & Laver 2012; Gabel & Hix 2002; Pennings 2002). The research is based on previous work dedicated to the study of electoral programs and functions while considering that divergences and convergences of Europarties deserve to be granted renewed attention, given the specificities of the supranational partisan system. In this context, the contribution of discourse analysis is underlined, paving the way for a lexicometric analysis (Lebbart Salem & 1994) of the programs for the 2014 European elections of the thirteen Europarties which secured funding from the European Parliament, an analysis conducted using the Iramuteq free software. The appeal of this contribution is two-fold. Empirically, it revaluates and upgrades the study of Euromanifestos which have been largely neglected so far. Theoretically, discourse analysis offers an innovative outlook at the study of European political parties, which are undergoing tremendous changes.