The Politics of Parliamentary Communication: European Membership and Enlargement Debates

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on parliamentary communication in European parliaments, which has gained attention as a key deliberative arena of democracies. The author studies constitutive debates about countries' EU membership and selective participation in EU policies and examines parliamentary speech both as the dependent and independent variable. The dissertation concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for European integration theory and political practice, their limitations, and provides a broader outlook for research on political communication in the digital age.