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In recent years there has been growing interest in the role of discourses of globalisation and European integration in shaping political outcomes. As a variety of authors have suggested, these discourses may play a powerful causal role in determining the trajectory of policy change and, as such, should be treated as objects of enquiry in their own right. Yet, while much recent scholarship has pointed to the need for systematic empirical analysis of policy-making discourses, little such analysis has yet been undertaken. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to this task, by mapping contemporary appeals to globalisation and European integration in two EU states: Britain and the Irish Republic. We present findings from the discourse analysis (using QSR NVivo) of over 100 speeches backed by supplementary interviews in both cases. Building upon, extending and updating an earlier discussion, we develop a theoretical schema for the classification and mapping of a range of different discourses of globalisation and European integration. These we categorise in terms of the contingent or inevitable character attributed to the process in question and the positive, open-ended or negative connotations it is seen to entail. What becomes apparent is the highly strategic ways in which such discourses are used, the articulation of which depends greatly upon the context in which they are deployed and the audience for which they are intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue congruence between voters and parties can be achieved if voters and parties follow the party mandate model. A central requirement of this model is that parties fulfil their electoral mandate. This article studies collective party mandate fulfilment by comparing parties’ election manifestos with the parliamentary speeches of their politicians in two countries: a typical consensus democracy, the Netherlands, and a typical majoritarian democracy, the United Kingdom. The central question is whether a difference in collective mandate fulfilment exists between these two types of democracy. Contrary to previous findings, this study finds that such a difference does not exist, at least not with regard to the two countries analysed. This can be explained by the way in which the party mandate is conceptualised. The article also analyses the development of party mandate fulfilment over time and finds no evidence for the idea that collective mandate fulfilment is declining. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]