De-Europeanization as discursive disengagement: has Georgia “got lost” on its way to European integr

The former is reflected in the increasing divergence of discursive agenda, that is, the EU and domestic political actors prioritize different topics/issues; while the latter might be reflected in the increasing convergence of discursive agenda though, concurrently, the growing diver- gence in the contents of these discourses, that is, the EU and domestic political actors prioritize the same topics. [...] As the charts show, the leitmotiv of all six periods is what we call the ‘deviation discourse.’ In particular, the government blames the opposition for the deviation from the European course and it is its dominant discourse, while the opposition blames the government for the deviation from the European course that is also its dominant discourse. [...] In fact, the EU also voices the deviation discourse targeting both the government and the opposition though with a visible difference, namely, the deviation discourse addres- sing the government persists along the whole analyzed period and even becomes the EU’s dominant discourse in two periods – upon the government’s withdrawal from Michel’s document and its rejection of the EU’s MFA. [...] In contrast to the ruling party, the opposition is not engaged in the discursive contest with the EU (only a few instances of mild critique were revealed in the analyzed period), and hence we will not focus on the opposition’s and the EU’s discursive disengagement in the further analysis. [...] For example, in the period of events related to the antihomophobia rally, the EU’s dominant discourse about the freedom of expression of sexual minorities is met with the ruling party’s claim about the public display of LGBTQ relations being unacceptable; during the events related to the rejection of the EU’s financial support, we witness EU actors conditioning financial support on the implementat.