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UKIP) Policies in 2009-2015

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UKIP) Policies in 2009-2015 CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Trepo - Institutional Repository of Tampere University University of Tampere School of Management Degree Programme in Politics Political Science “Believe in Britain.” Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) policies in 2009-2015 Linda Vuorinen Master’s thesis Supervised by Tapio Raunio 4.5.2015 University of Tampere School of Management Degree Programme in Politics VUORINEN, LINDA: “Believe in Britain.” Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) policies in 2009-2015 Master’s thesis: 100 p. + 2 appendices. Degree Programme in Politics / Political Science May 2015 Abstract: This master’s thesis examines the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which is labelled as United Kingdom’s (UK) most eurosceptic party, whereby it essentially opposes the European Union (EU). This nationally unique party has only recently risen to the political mainstream – albeit still as a minor party – in the United Kingdom, even though the party’s success in the recent EU-elections has been exceptional. Given that UKIP is a one-of-a-kind political party, the noteworthy achievement of this thesis is the individually defined UKIP’s EU-attitude, which is built around the party’s ideology, three appropriate theories and two theoretical approaches. Its validity is tested in two analyses that scrutinise the data [a. UKIP’s official documents, and b. MEPs’ speeches in the European Parliament (EP)]. The research objective is two-fold: first, the objective is to assess the party’s attitude towards the EU in an entirely new context, and the second objective is to examine how the directly elected UKIP MEPs (Members of European Parliament) carry out their mandate in an institution which they heavily oppose. These aforementioned objectives are reached using theory-driven content analysis, with which the non-structured data are condensed into coherent and appropriate form. First of all, the results confirmed that that UKIP, MEPs, and the party’s overall EU-attitude are at least as unique, as is the bilateral UK-EU -relations. Most importantly, however, the results thoroughly support the constructed theoretical framework and thus revealed that the party fundamentally opposes the EU’s policies and actions, and that the membership cripples the UK’s economy, infrastructure and human capital. Moreover, UKIP strongly argues that the comprehensive control practiced by the EU limits the UK from developing both nationally and internationally, whereby the UK should withdraw from the EU entirely. In terms of the behavior of the UKIP MEPs, it became evident that since they can be halved to passive and active players in the EP, the mandate is carried out intermediately. All things considered, the achieved results can be considered academically important and a good starting point for further, related research. Key words: United Kingdom Independence Party; UKIP; euroscepticism; European Union; United Kingdom; Britain; British politics. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Background and motives ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Previous research ................................................................................................................. 3 1.3. Research questions and thesis outline ................................................................................. 4 2. EUROSCEPTICISM ...................................................................................................... 6 2.1. Defining euroscepticism ....................................................................................................... 6 2.2. Party-based euroscepticism ................................................................................................. 8 2.3. Eurosceptic Britain .............................................................................................................. 10 3. THE UNITED KINGDOM INDEPENDENCE PARTY (UKIP) ...................................... 16 3.1. 1993-2014 and the rise of UKIP ......................................................................................... 16 3.2. Ideology, policies and values .............................................................................................. 20 3.3. UKIP in the British political context ..................................................................................... 24 3.3.1. UKIP and The Conservatives ......................................................................................... 28 3.3.2. UKIP and the British National Party ............................................................................... 31 3.4. UKIP in the European Parliament’s context ....................................................................... 32 3.4.1. Three-fold role theory and UKIP MEPs .......................................................................... 34 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................... 38 4.1. Theory I: Taggart and Szczerbiak’s hard and soft euroscepticism ..................................... 39 4.2. Theory II: Kopecky and Mudde’s four-fold typology ........................................................... 41 4.3. Theory III: Flood and Usherwood’s classification ............................................................... 44 4.4. Niche party -concept ........................................................................................................... 45 4.5. Chapel Hill Expert Survey ................................................................................................... 49 4.5.1. UKIP according to CHES ............................................................................................... 50 4.6. Constructed theoretical framewok ...................................................................................... 56 5. METHOD AND DATA .................................................................................................. 58 5.1. Theory-driven content analysis ........................................................................................... 58 5.1.1. Structured analysis framework ....................................................................................... 60 5.2. Data .................................................................................................................................... 63 6. ANALYSIS (I): UKIP MANIFESTOS AND DOCUMENTS ........................................... 66 6.1. Findings .............................................................................................................................. 74 7. ANALYSIS (II): SPEECHES IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT .............................. 77 7.1. Findings .............................................................................................................................. 80 8. ANALYSIS (III): BEHAVIOR OF UKIP MEPs IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT .... 83 8.1. Findings .............................................................................................................................. 86 9. CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................................... 89 9.1. Answer to the research questions ......................................................................................... 89 9.2. Evaluation ............................................................................................................................. 90 9.3. Suggestions for further research ........................................................................................... 91 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 93 Data ........................................................................................................................................... 100 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................. 101 Appendix (I) ................................................................................................................................ 101 Appendix (II) ............................................................................................................................... 102 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background and motives The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is the United Kingdom’s (UK) most eurosceptic political party. The party won the United Kingdom’s European Union-elections (EU) in 2014, and against all odds, beat the current governmental parties, the Conservatives (also Tory) and Labour (BBC, 2014c). In the preceding EU-elections, in 1999, 2004 and 2009, UKIP’s success has steadily grown, as time by time, the party has increased its number of seats in the European Parliament (EP). These factors have largely contributed to the fact that the party has risen from sidelines to mainstream in the British political context, alike making UKIP a household name. Albeit still a minor party, UKIP is nowadays a significant political force, and therefore able to challenge the mainstream parties in the upcoming UK general elections in May 2015. In fact, UKIP’s main target is to win seats from the national Parliament, and through elected Members of Parliament (MP), influence to the current state of British society. UKIP
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