A March for Power: The Variety of Political Programmes on the Eurovision Song Contest Stage

The present paper reviews recent studies of politics and political events on the Eurovision stage. We provide testimony to the ubiquity of nationalistic sentiments and ideological, political, historical, and even military tensions that pulsate underneath the agenda of European integration and European peace-abiding values. We advance beyond the now accepted truism, namely that the Eurovision is political, by detailing several different forms of politics that creep into the supposedly apolitical stage of the ESC: the politics of hegemony, the politics of suspicion, and the politics of conflict. The variety of political strategies and events that recur in the Eurovision expose one of its most fascinating elements: Notwithstanding the formal position of the EBU, namely that the ESC should net serve as a political platform – it is definitely a political platform. Academic studies of the ESC have given millions of spectators the tools and theories to observe those political infiltrations.