Varieties of EU trade politicisation in EU public debates

This paper examines the politicisation of EU trade policy at the level of the EU's Member States. In an effort to study the variation of politicisation across the EU, going beyond the degree to which an issue is politicised, we map out the debates surrounding EU free trade agreements (TTIP and CETA) in the media of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, based on a novel representative claims analysis dataset. We ask whether and how claimants from different EUMS attempt to politicise FTAs in distinct ways. The expectation, based on Castles and Obinger' families of nations, is that the behaviour of claimants belonging to the same family of nations displays overarching features, which sets them apart from other claimants. By way of an actor‐level regression analysis, this study identifies possible correlations between claimant nationalities and types of politicisation. The findings suggest, on the one hand, that there is a link between families of nations, the socio‐economic and institutional trajectories they capture, and types of politicisation. On the other hand, the variation in how issues are politicised is not random but, just like policy outcomes, it appears to ‘cluster’ following a territoriality logic.