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AbstractThe May 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were characterised by the success of far‐right Eurosceptic parties, including the French Front National, UKIP, the Danish People's Party, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Austrian FPÖ, the True Finns and the Greek Golden Dawn. However, a closer look at the results across Europe indicates that the success of far‐right parties in the EP elections is neither a linear nor a clear‐cut phenomenon: (1) the far right actually declined in many European countries compared to the 2009 results; (2) some of the countries that have experienced the worst of the economic crisis, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, did not experience a significant rise in far‐right party support; and (3) 'far right' is too broad an umbrella term, covering parties that are too different from each other to be grouped in one single party family.

The European Parliament has often been accused of its inability to link to European citizens. This article employs quantitative measures to investigate levels of congruence between individual MEPs and their voters on core policy issues following the 2009 EP elections. Operationalizing congruence as a 'many-to-one' relationship, it suggests that on socio-economic issues, the correspondence of policy preferences tends to be higher between voters and MEPs belonging to right-wing and liberal parties than for leftist MEPs. On socio-cultural issues, MEPs generally tend to have more liberal views than their representatives. Tobit models show that, depending on the issue, the strength of voter-MEP opinion congruence can be linked to the frequency of contacts and MEP seniority in office. Eurosceptic MEPs tend to be worse at representing their electorate, while voter-MEP agreement also tends to be affected by the electoral system and length of EU membership. The findings have implications for the legitimacy of European politics in current affairs. Adapted from the source document.

The process of approving a Greek drawing on funds provided by the international community is now familiar. There is concern about the prospect of securing an agreement between the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and Greece, which satisfies all parties. This paper suggests that all parties to the agreement have interests in an orderly resolution of the Greek crisis that keeps Greece in the Eurozone. Furthermore, it argues that disagreements and delay before eleventh‐hour agreements can best be explained politically. The paper first demonstrates how Greece, the IMF, and the EU each have a clear interest in finding an orderly solution to the Greek crisis that allows it to remain in the Eurozone. It then outlines the incremental nature of the package and its strategic benefit both for the European banking sector, and governments in Greece and the Eurozone more broadly.

This article examines the ways in which the BNP utilises the elements of British national identity in its discourse and argues that, during Griffin's leadership, the party has made a discursive choice to shift the emphasis from an ethnic to a civic narrative. We put forward two hypotheses, 1: the modernisation of the discourse of extreme right parties in the British context is likely to be related to the adoption of a predominantly civic narrative and 2: in the context of British party competition the BNP is likely to converge towards UKIP, drawing upon elements of its perceived winning formula, i.e. a predominantly civic rhetoric of national identity. We proceed to empirically test our hypotheses by conducting a twofold comparison. First, we compare the BNP's discourse pre‐ and post‐1999 showing the BNP's progressive adoption of a civic narrative; and second the BNP's post‐1999 discourse to that of UKIP in order to illustrate their similarities in terms of civic values.

Free movement is simultaneously widely acclaimed and strongly contested in the European Union. To address this apparent contradiction, we unpack European Union freedom of movement into its different transnational rights and argue that opposition is unequal across entitlements. Using evidence from a unique survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2017, we show that citizens mainly contest welfare access. This transnational right implies costs for the host country and taps into perceptions of belonging and deservingness. Due to its association with ideas of national community and solidarity, access to welfare is more contested even among those who, in principle, should be favourable to such entitlements: inclusive national identifiers and European integration supporters. Our findings underscore the challenge of creating a sense of European community that could underpin all transnational rights implied by the Union's principle of freedom of movement.

Within the broader debate on the Greek crisis, the theory of 'populist democracy' postulates that populism is fundamental to the sustenance of the Greek political system and is at the heart of Greece's endemic domestic weaknesses. This article tests this assumption empirically through the use of a sophisticated framing analysis of speeches delivered by the leaders of the five parties in the Greek parliament in the period 2009-11. The findings confirm that populism: (a) is expressed through the narratives of political actors; (b) is observed across the party system; (c) is expressed in the forms of blame-shifting and exclusivity; and (d) differs depending on position in the party system. The article contributes to the debate by testing and building on the theory of democratic populism, providing a novel way of measuring and operationalizing populism and identifying a new typology that distinguishes between mainstream and fringe populism. Adapted from the source document.