Right-Wing Populist Parties And Euroscepticism In Britain,France And Germany

European integration is an institutional innovation of national governance and regional governance made by European countries after the World War ? in the hope of overcoming the disasters resulted from nationalism and fascism in the 20th century.While it is a laboratory for globalization and regional integration,it also turns the European Union into a weighty pole in the international power pattern.However,with the deepening and expansion of European integration,the"permissive consensus" of people for integration has been weakening,and there have been "Eurosceptic" ideas,movements and broader practices that question,oppose,and even disintegrate the European Union,which have permeated political,economic,social and cultural aspects of the EU and its member states.Especially since the beginning of the 21st century,the world has undergone drastic changes unseen in a century.The developed countries in Europe and the United States have weakened relatively in the international power patterns,the modes of economic and social development have been subjected to many difficulties,the ideological trends of anti-globalization have risen,and the EU integration has suffered from multiple practical challenges,such as constitutional frustrations,European debt crisis,refugee flows,Brexit,and outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19.Euroscepticism has become an important goal and realistic promoter of populist thoughts and movements that have emerged against this background.The two make use of each other,merge with each other,and promote each other,so that the European Union,which has developed for more than 70 years after World War ?,is confronted with unprecedented challenges and even survival crises.In this context,academic communities at home and abroad have carried out many theoretical and empirical studies in the following areas:the history and status quo of Euroscepticism,the char act eristics of the rise of populism in this round and its impact on European integration and globalization,the rise and impacts of populist parties in major EU member states,and the development of Euroscepticism and de-Europeanization after Brexit.This research studies the right-wing populist parties,which are the most active and influential actors in the confluence of Euroscepticism and populism in Europe,focusing on the situations in the three core European countries of Britain,France and Germany since the beginning of the 21st century,and analyzes how their right-wing populist parties have resorted to Euroscepticism to come upon the stage or built up their presence to fulfill their own political goals,and how the relatively loose Euroscepticism has enlarged its influence on the national systems and mainstream politics and achieved its own political goals with the rise of populist political parties in turn,thereby posing various challenges to the relationship between member states and the European Union,as well as the role and future of the European Union.Existing academic studies have parsed from a multi-dimensional perspective European populist political parties or Eurosceptic movements separately.In the past decade,populism has risen to become one of the core concepts for understanding European politics and even global politics.In this context,this research takes the right-wing populist;parties,the main carriers of populism,as the starting point,highlights key objectives of their policies--the dimensions of European relations,and link the same with Euroscepticism that merges therewith while differs therefrom,in quest of discoveries and revelations at the levels of theories and policies.In terms of methods and paths of research,the instant study mainly compares political parties,and meanwhile conducts in-depth case studies of the main right-wing populist parties in the three western European countries--British Independence Party/Brexit Party,French Rassemblement National(formerly known as the Front National)and Alternative fur Deutschland(hereinafter referred to as AfD),focusing on the ideology,policy propositions,development routes,election performance,behavioral strategies and other issues of these parties.It uses first-hand information such as party election platforms,large-scale poll data from the Eurobarometer,official document's of the European Union and member states,and follows the backgrounds,thoughts,identities,behaviors and political influences of party leaders;it performs in-depth analysis of the election performance(national elections in the primary elections and European Parliament elections in the secondary elections),and dynamic tracking of new developments under the Brexit and COV ID-19.It carries out comparison and analysis on the basis of case studies,and explores their motives,prospects and their impacts at the national,European and global levels on the basis of their commonalities and differences.At the same time,attention is paid to the new characteristics,new trends,and regularities of these traditional marginal parties in the process of turning into quasi-mainstream parties,or having a significant impact on the countries' major development directions and decision-making,at the levels of party politics,national governance,regional and global governance.On this basis,we have noticed the overall increase in the influence of right-wing populist parties in the political territory of the European Union,which poses a challenge to the development of western democracy and globalization.Traditional political parties are increasingly facing a crisis of representation in the current era of increasingly deepening globalization and regional integration.The rise of populist parties has broken the traditional party political system to a certain extent,and made European party politics appear fragmented.Further theoretical studies are therefore necessary.The rise of populist parties provides a new perspective for understanding and viewing the relationship between "mainstream" and marginal of political parties in national governance.The instant research demonstrates that since the beginning of the 21st century,especially since the European debt crisis,the three main EU member states of Britain,France and Germany,have shown the rise of right-wing populist parties,and Euroscepticism as the most active part of the political agenda of right-wing populist parties with a clear realistic orientation and a certain foundation of public support has played a key role in the quasi-mainstreaming of right-wing populist parties and the development of national policies towards Europe.The populist parties in the three countries share certain common characteristics in the process of interaction with Euroscepticism and their mutual constitution:they all strengthened the Euroscepticism at the national and EU levels;by virtue of Euroscepticism,they promoted the influence of traditional marginal parties in domestic politics;anti-institution and anti-EU are the discourse characteristics of right-wing populist parties,because the institutionalized design of EU is based on traditional liberalism,which restricts the further development of European integration,and at the same time,they have also weakened their extreme ideology and policies in the process of fighting for mainstream status.However,the situations in the three countries are also different due to their own political cultures and historical experiences in the participation of European integration.The UK Independence Party,or the Brexit Party,as a single Eurosceptic party,made full use of its strong Eurosceptic tradition under the Westminster model,promoted the populism of the Conservative Party,leveraged British party politics,and finally led to the emergence of Brexit.However,there has been no breakthrough on broader populist issues and the party faces further marginalization.The French Rassemblement National has a long history and deep roots in French party politics,and to a large extent,it has promoted its status as a quasi-mainstream party on the strength of Euroscepticism;while Euroscepticism has room for further development,it is also restricted by the fact that the French people as a whole still support integration and it has to compete with the rise of left-wing populism.In Germany,where Euroscepticism is traditionally the weakest,the AfD has advanced its Eurosceptic agenda with the aid of the EU crisis and the waves of populism,but its influence is still dictated by the outcome of the games between the mainstream political parties in Germany.With Brexit,while France and Germany have strengthened their status as core countries of the European Union,rifts have appeared in the transatlantic relations as Trumpism legacies,and the two countries have put forward ambitious plans to revitalize the European Union,hoping to achieve strategic autonomy.The outbreak of the COVID-19 and the shortcomings exposed by EU institutions and member governments in managing the pandemic have provided a new excuse for right-wing populist parties' opposition to the European Union.In view of drastic changes in the world,it still requires further studies as to how the right-wing populist parties will continue to promote Euroscepticism,what kind of constraints they will face,and how they will impact the future of the European Union and the development of the international landscape.