How do Populist Parties Deal with Conflicts of Sovereignty? A Comparative Analysis of Podemos, the Five Star Movement, UKIP and Front National

The EU has been facing multiple crises as its legitimacy, competences, and sometimes raison d’être have been increasingly challenged. In the context of economic crisis, the policies decided at the EU level triggered tensions and oppositions among parties and public opinion. Contestation against the idea that there was no alternative to austerity increased (Borriello 2017). More generally, the current context has fueled the rise of populism and the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism at both the national and the European levels (Brack and Startin 2015). Indeed, right-wing and left-wing populist parties have been particularly successful recently, surfing on people disenchantment with politics and mainstream parties. This paper aims at examining how sovereignty has been framed by populist parties in relation to two key crises: the migration crisis and the economic crisis. Populist parties tend indeed to have particularly strong stances on various types of sovereignty, be it national, supranational, parliamentary or popular sovereignty. We will therefore analyze how the crises have been used by these parties to articulate discourses on sovereignty. More particularly, we will compare two parties from the right (Front National, UKIP), one party from the left (Podemos) and one party ideologically ambiguous (Five Star Movement).