Political Claims and Discourse Formations: A Comparative Account on Germany and Greece in the Eurozone Crisis

Abstract

The economic crisis following the financial meltdown in 2007 had disparate impacts for citizens of the southern and northern Eurozone member states. In this study, we analyze public debates in Germany and Greece, two countries that have attracted global attention during the crisis, through a political claims analysis based on newspaper articles published between 2005 and 2014. The article makes use of multiple correspondence analysis to detect the patterns governing the discursive construction of the European financial and economic crisis. Our findings corroborate the expected differences between the Greek and German debates in regard to core issues and assessments. However, the de-alignment of political cleavages in both countries is notable and stresses seemingly an underlying mainstreaming process that limits the diversity of crisis-related claims. Related Articles in this Special Issue: Zamponi, Lorenzo, and Lorenzo Bosi. 2016. “Which Crisis? European Crisis and National Contexts in Public Discourse.” Politics & Policy 44 (3): 400–426. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12156/abstract . Temple, Luke, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Patrick English. 2016. “Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis: A Political Claims Analysis of the U.K. Press, 2007–14.” Politics & Policy 44 (3): 553–576. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12161/abstract . English, Patrick, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Luke Temple. 2016. “Convergence on Crisis? Comparing Labour and Conservative Party Framing of the Economic Crisis, 2008–14.” Politics & Policy 44 (3): 577–603. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12160/abstract .