New approach to analyse ideological and economic factors in the politics of the European Union

Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali. 2021. Vol. 88. No. 3. P. 415–430.

Andreyuk D., Petrunin Y., Shuranova A.

Political decision-making on issues that polarise societies are usually accompanied by debates in media and political circles, where influence groups formulate arguments in certain contexts beneficial for their interests. Consequently, the debates become increasingly emotional at the expense of rationality. The construction of nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline can serve as an example of such a polarising discussion. being an example of a controversy for the European Union, it allowed us to develop an approach for analysing argumentation that allows to compare arguments from completely different contexts and visualise a field of possible lines of argumentation taking into account the debating states’ population count. Over 20 arguments from the EU political and information agenda regarding NS2 were classified as belonging to either ideological or economic rationale and charted as vectors. The vectors’ projections on the axes of the chart reflect the arguments’ relative influence on the final decision. The proposed approach allows for quantitative analysis of possible scenarios of discussion development and for comparing arguments from different areas of rationale. Practical application and further development of the approach will allow to make complex political decision-making more rational and decrease potential destabilising tendencies which contribute to high levels of society polarisation.

Keywords: European Union, energy policy, Nord Stream 2