ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to disentangle the notion of discourse and its implications for the social sciences in order to articulate a discursive theoretical framework for the study of populism and EU contestation. First, the chapter arbitrates among different definitions and approaches to discourse, arguing that a Foucauldian approach is well equipped to explore the populism–Euroscepticism nexus in its context. It introduces the idea of dispositif (Europeanization dispositf), based on the elaborations of Foucault, and the analysis of power relations to navigate across the various social contexts in which discourse is nested. In a second step, the chapter turns to the operationalization of the theoretical framework and the discussion on how this framework can serve to investigate the populist articulations of Europe and the EU in the cases of Spain and Germany. The rationale behind the selection and comparison of the two cases is presented together with the central analytical categories and the methods for data collection and analysis.
