Populist radical right parties are naturally Eurosceptic. Many responded positively to the British referendum vote to leave the European Union; various observers even spoke of a potential populist radical right-instigated ‘domino effect’. We ask whether this Brexit-enthusiasm prevailed in the proximate aftermath of the UK referendum, by means of a comparative analysis of populist radical right parties’ national election campaigns in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Italy. The analysis considers whether the UK referendum result served as an external stimulus for populist radical right parties to harden their Euroscepticism and politicise the issue of European integration. The results show that this has, generally speaking, not been the case, and that Brexit has also not stimulated or amplified calls for leaving the European Union. Relating our findings to literature on the politicisation of European integration and strategic party behaviour, we argue that populist radical right parties had few incentives to act differently given the uninviting political opportunity structure.

This article seeks to shine a light on the diversity of populist discourses about Europe and the European Union (EU). It is built upon the existing literature on populist Euroscepticism to elaborate on two underexplored aspects of the relationship between populist discourses and EU contestation. First, it explores the variable and even ambivalent representations of the EU and its main political processes exhibited by populist actors. Second, it focuses on the precise relationship between populism and the representations of the EU to determine whether there is a hierarchical relation, reciprocal influence, or they function as separated ideational ensembles. This research takes a corpus-assisted approach to discourse analysis that is based on the exploration of manifestos and party leadership speeches between 2013 and 2017 of Podemos in Spain, a left-wing populist party, and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, a right-wing populist party. The findings reveal that the populist discourse has variable effects on the forms of EU contestation depending on its centrality and that ambivalence is a crucial feature to capture the forms of EU contestation of populist parties. Finally, the article draws several theoretical implications for the research on populism and EU contestation.

Are populism and nationalism two inseparable dimensions? The controversial argument is that both exclusionary and inclusionary populism draw on nationalist representations and traditions to construct their political discourse. In the case of Podemos, several scholars have argued that this party presents a nationalistic character based on its invocation of the ‘patria’ and a demarcated, imagined political community. This article relies on an original data set in order to test this hypothesis related to Podemos's supply and demand. With regard to supply, we explore four party manifestos to elucidate how Podemos refers to the nation, Spanish identity, sovereignty and immigration. To evaluate demand, we analyse the party's supporters' political attitudes and values regarding the nation, assimilation of immigrants and national preferentialism. Our results show that Podemos's supporters express lower levels of national identification than the remainder of the population. Similarly, the former analysis reveals a pro‐immigration position and a tendency of the party Podemos to avoid issues related to national identity. Departing from these results, we draw several implications on the use of nationalism for the categorisation of political parties and, in particular, left‐wing populism.

Multiple voices warn about an analytical deadlock in the field of populism studies mainly due to an excess of description and a lack of contextualisation. Reflecting on the current responses to this impasse, this study presents a framework for contextualising populism and seeks to enrich and expand the potential of populism research. The main argument of this article is that a more dynamic and interactive analytical framework is necessary to show the contingent and fragile nature of populist discourses and complement existing research. To illustrate this approach, the case of Podemos is analysed to show how the populist discourse varies over time for the same populist actor and to what extent this variation responds to contextual pressures. The study concludes that the contingent nature of populism can be related to two main conditions: the variable power over discourse of populist mobilisation and the normative pressures within the political sphere.

The rise of populist contenders in Western Europe in the aftermath of the euro crisis has led to an increasing critique of the project of the European Union (EU). This critique has been frequently encapsulated in the label 'Euroscepticism' and its softer or harder gradations. This article proposes to revisit this phenomenon from a different angle: the discursive and historical exploration of EU contestation in its context. This paper argues that the forms of EU contestation must be studied together with the symbolic orders about Europe and the EU at the national level. Drawing on the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), this article delineates the diverse representations and problematizations of EU-contesting discourses in Western Europe studying the cases of Germany and Spain. The findings show greater power to constrain (power in discourse) EU contestation in Spain than in Germany, the latter country being a more suitable terrain for critique of the EU. These divergences are connected to the historical processes of Europeanization in each country and their particular symbolic orders.