Voting under EMU: economic perceptions, responsibility attribution and EU politicisation.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article analyses the effects of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on economic voting. Theories of responsibility attribution suggest that voters are less likely to consider the economic situation when they realise that the national government is not completely in charge of economic policy. However, some aspects of the theory are being questioned, and its empirical application to EMU has yielded inconclusive results. The article uses experimental data from six EU countries to provide both a theoretical and a methodological contribution to the debate. Theoretically, we argue that to analyse the effects of EMU on economic voting, it is important to consider voters’ and parties’ positions on EU integration. The Europeanisation of economic policy has become a politicised issue over the last years. Consequently, voters are likely to combine functional considerations about who is in charge of economic policy with political considerations about the desirability of this distribution of responsibility. Methodologically, the article provides an analysis of the conditionality of economic voting that considers different sources of endogeneity. The results confirm the relevance of economic perceptions in voting and provide some support for the idea that voters’ EU positions matter when it comes to the effects of EMU on voting.