‘It’s the EU’s fault!’ Strategies of blame avoidance in Andrej Babiš’s discourse on the conflict-of-interest case

Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F22%3A73614517" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/22:73614517 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23745118.2022.2043066?journalCode=rpep21" target="_blank" >https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23745118.2022.2043066?journalCode=rpep21</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2022.2043066" target="_blank" >10.1080/23745118.2022.2043066</a>

Result language
angličtina
Original language name
‘It’s the EU’s fault!’ Strategies of blame avoidance in Andrej Babiš’s discourse on the conflict-of-interest case
Original language description
The article investigates strategies of blame avoidance in the discourse of the Czech Prime Minister (PM), Andrej Babiš, on the conflict-of-interest case over the misuse of European Union (EU) funds. Taking a critical discursive perspective and working with a dataset of Babiš’s public pronouncements on his conflict of interest during the period of 2019–2021, the study uncovers the particular ways of arguing, framing, denying, characterising social actors, legitimising and manipulating that Babiš exploited when trying to avoid blame in the conflict of interest case. It reveals that the conflict of interest case has provided opportunities for the Czech PM to play a multi-dimensional blame game against the EU, orchestrate a discursive battle with the EU and invoke nationalist feelings. We argue that this discursive patterning signals a departure from his hitherto pragmatic approach to the EU, with Babiš increasingly radicalizing his explicitly exclusionary construction of the EU, promulgating anti-EU sentiment and countenancing the polarization between the EU on the one hand and the Czech Republic on the other.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—

Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
—
OECD FORD branch
50601 - Political science

Project
<a href="/en/project/GA19-10214S" target="_blank" >GA19-10214S: Czech Political Discourse on the EU’s Polycrisis and the Future of the European integration in the Era of its Destabilisation</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year
2022
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

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