Abstract
This article presents a new and previously unchartered dataset on roll call votes for all 28 member states in the Council of the EU between 2010 and 2019 and studies the effects of politicisation on governments' oppositional voting in the different policy areas. We contribute to the literature with two main findings. First, our study provides strong evidence for bottom-up politicisation, where Euroscepticism and the left-right positions of national political parties strongly affect governments' voting in the Council. Second, we provide new evidence for a form of differentiated politicisation where ideological standpoints of political parties in government and opposition have different effects on oppositional voting in the various policy areas.
Highlights
The European Union (EU) has been challenged and transformed by multiple crises (Bickerton et al, 2015; Lefkofridi and Schmitter, 2015; Schmitter, 2012; Vollaard, 2018)
We argue that the effect of politicisation as a multi-faceted process on oppositional voting in the Council should be most pronounced in policy areas that were especially affected by the decade of crises – that is, economic and financial matters and immigration
This article examines how domestic politicisation, conceptualised as a multifaceted process that involves an increase in saliency and polarisation, is uploaded to the EU level in the form of oppositional voting by member states’ governments in the Council
Summary
The European Union (EU) has been challenged and transformed by multiple crises (a financial, economic, Eurozone, and asylum crisis) (Bickerton et al, 2015; Lefkofridi and Schmitter, 2015; Schmitter, 2012; Vollaard, 2018). To test hypotheses 1 to 3, the model includes fixed effects for variables of politicisation in each member state during the time of voting in the Council: the party system fragmentation within the parliament, Euroscepticism separately for national governments and parliamentary oppositions, and a left-right wing positional score (RILE), separately for government and opposition.
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