Constructing a "New Europe": The European Commission's Discursive Legitimation of Increased Defence Imperatives – A Critical Discourse Analysis
(2026) SKOM12 20261Department of Strategic Communication
- Abstract
- The Readiness 2030 initiative, launched in March 2025, proposed unprecedented levels of European defence investment and integration in a historically constrained domain. This thesis analyses how the European Commission discursively constructed and legitimised increased defence imperatives through its official policy communication on this initiative. It thereby investigates discursive legitimation amid a strategic institutional shift as a communicative phenomenon. Drawing on Van Leeuwen's (2007) discursive legitimation theory and Van Dijk's (1998) insights on legitimation, power, and ideology, the study applies Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis to policy documents, speeches, and press materials... (More)
- The Readiness 2030 initiative, launched in March 2025, proposed unprecedented levels of European defence investment and integration in a historically constrained domain. This thesis analyses how the European Commission discursively constructed and legitimised increased defence imperatives through its official policy communication on this initiative. It thereby investigates discursive legitimation amid a strategic institutional shift as a communicative phenomenon. Drawing on Van Leeuwen's (2007) discursive legitimation theory and Van Dijk's (1998) insights on legitimation, power, and ideology, the study applies Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis to policy documents, speeches, and press materials published between March and October 2025. The analysis highlights three interrelated discursive logics that structure the discourse, specifically Transformation, Normalisation, and Integration, within which legitimation strategies operate in patterned ways. Rationalization and Moral Evaluation communicatively work as a dual-legitimation strategy that normatively grounds a largely technocratic policy discourse. Integration emerges as a particularly powerful discursive logic that functions bidirectionally. Drawing on instrumental and theoretical rationalization, it legitimises defence imperatives from both security and economic standpoints, thereby expanding their perceived relevance and benefit. The European Commission is positioned as an enabler of this institutional shift and associated policy implications, whereby its policy discourse reproduces a peace-through-strength ideology that renders peace discursively dependent on rearmament. The thesis contributes theoretically to understanding discursive legitimation as a micro-linguistic, communicative process and empirically to the EU's defence expansion and the European Commission's growing role therein. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9243403
- author
- Gamper, Vera LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SKOM12 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Discursive legitimation, European Commission, Readiness 2030, strategic policy communication, Critical Discourse Analysis, European security and defence policy, strategic institutional shifts, communicative strategies
- language
- English
- id
- 9243403
- date added to LUP
- 2026-07-10 17:43:51
- date last changed
- 2026-07-10 17:43:51
@misc{9243403,
abstract = {{The Readiness 2030 initiative, launched in March 2025, proposed unprecedented levels of European defence investment and integration in a historically constrained domain. This thesis analyses how the European Commission discursively constructed and legitimised increased defence imperatives through its official policy communication on this initiative. It thereby investigates discursive legitimation amid a strategic institutional shift as a communicative phenomenon. Drawing on Van Leeuwen's (2007) discursive legitimation theory and Van Dijk's (1998) insights on legitimation, power, and ideology, the study applies Fairclough's (1992, 1995) three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis to policy documents, speeches, and press materials published between March and October 2025. The analysis highlights three interrelated discursive logics that structure the discourse, specifically Transformation, Normalisation, and Integration, within which legitimation strategies operate in patterned ways. Rationalization and Moral Evaluation communicatively work as a dual-legitimation strategy that normatively grounds a largely technocratic policy discourse. Integration emerges as a particularly powerful discursive logic that functions bidirectionally. Drawing on instrumental and theoretical rationalization, it legitimises defence imperatives from both security and economic standpoints, thereby expanding their perceived relevance and benefit. The European Commission is positioned as an enabler of this institutional shift and associated policy implications, whereby its policy discourse reproduces a peace-through-strength ideology that renders peace discursively dependent on rearmament. The thesis contributes theoretically to understanding discursive legitimation as a micro-linguistic, communicative process and empirically to the EU's defence expansion and the European Commission's growing role therein.}},
author = {{Gamper, Vera}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Constructing a "New Europe": The European Commission's Discursive Legitimation of Increased Defence Imperatives – A Critical Discourse Analysis}},
year = {{2026}},
}