Replication Data for: The odd couple: analyzing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Italian Five Stars Movement’s (FSM’s) European Union (EU)-opposition in the European Parliament

Since the late 2000s economic and immigration crises are testing the European Union (EU). Such challenges have opened up a period of radical change for the EU, among them, the Brexit referendum that will radically change EU’s geography. This turmoil is mirrored by the last European Parliament (EP) election results; extreme right and left wing parties succeeded in the electoral competition at the expense of their mainstream counterpart. These forces are generally labelled as ‘Eurosceptic’, even though the literature still lacks a clear-cut definition of Euroscepticism. Starting from this observation, this paper reviews the conceptual evolution of Euroscepticism, stressing its pros and cons and proposes a reconceptualisation of it in terms of EU-opposition such that the objects of criticism are clearly identified as the EU-policies, the EU-elite, the EU-regime and the EU-community. The paper applies ‘EU-opposition’ to examine empirically the activity of two ‘Eurosceptic’ parties in the EP: the Italian Five Stars Movement (FSM) and the British United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), using the speeches they deliver in the arena of the EP as the main source of data. From the analysis, it can be seen that UKIP and FSM are an odd couple working in the same party-group in the EP, and the concept of EU-opposition is able to better disentangle UKIP and FSM’s criticism of the EU.

自2000年代末以来，经济与移民危机持续考验着欧洲联盟（European Union, EU）。此类挑战为欧盟开启了一段剧烈变革的时期，其中英国脱欧公投将彻底重塑欧盟的地理版图。这场动荡也映射在最新一届欧洲议会（European Parliament, EP）的选举结果中：极右翼与极左翼政党在选举竞争中胜出，却以其主流对手的失利为代价。这些势力通常被贴上“疑欧主义（Euroscepticism）”的标签，尽管学界至今仍未对疑欧主义形成清晰明确的定义。基于这一观察视角，本文首先梳理了疑欧主义的概念演变历程，着重探讨其利弊得失，并提出以“欧盟反对立场”为框架对疑欧主义进行重新概念化，从而将批评对象清晰界定为欧盟政策、欧盟精英、欧盟治理体系与欧盟共同体。本文运用“欧盟反对立场”这一分析框架，以欧洲议会内两家“疑欧主义”政党的活动为实证研究对象——意大利五星运动（Five Stars Movement, FSM）与英国独立党（United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP），并以二者在欧洲议会会场发表的演说作为核心数据来源。通过分析可见，英国独立党与意大利五星运动虽是欧洲议会同一党团内的成员，却是一对看似矛盾的组合；而“欧盟反对立场”这一概念则能够更清晰地厘清二者对欧盟的批评内容。