European Voters Research Articles

A path forward: social democratic strategies and responses to far-right populist challenges

ABSTRACT Social Democratic parties have been in crisis across Europe in recent decades. The once dominant party family has struggled to adapt to the structural challenges of post-industrialization, changes in its core constituency, and increased political competition from alternative parties. This article analyzes the welfare chauvinist shift embraced by some Social Democratic parties to assess its viability as an electoral strategy in response to this changing political landscape and far-right party challenges. The article analyzes individual-level data from 26 European countries from successive European Voter Survey rounds for 2014 and 2019. This article tests the relationship between voter positions on government intervention, redistribution, and immigration and support for Social Democratic parties. Issue salience data is also examined to identify the importance granted by the public to different concerns over time. Despite claims that welfare chauvinist approaches represent a path forward for Social Democrats, this research finds that this strategy is not a broad winning formula. Rather there are incentives for Social Democrats to return to their egalitarian and progressive roots on key socioeconomic and sociocultural issues.

Pro-environmental voting: What it is, how to measure it, and its determinants among contemporary European voters

Abstract With this research, I introduce the concept of pro-environmental voting, proposing an outcome-oriented rather than motivation-based definition and measurement. By conceptualizing it as an instance of pro-environmental behavior, I define it as voting for a party that takes a pro-environmental stance and for which environmental protection is also relatively salient—regardless of whether that is why the voter supports that party. I suggest measuring it by multiplying, for the party voted, its salience score on environmental protection with the distance between its position on the environment and the average position of all parties in the system on the same issue. Then, I apply this measurement to the recently released ESS10 (2023) data from 26 European countries. Findings primarily reveal that moral obligation and age are key drivers of pro-environmental voting; they also show that younger individuals vote more consistently with their environmental concern than older voters.

Do Parties Matter? Party Positions and European Voters’ Attitudes toward Economic and Political Globalization

Abstract To what extent do party positions influence voters’ attitudes toward the economic and political aspects of globalization? Initially an issue following a left-right dimension of conflict, globalization increasingly divides mainstream from nonmainstream parties. In this study, I argue that parties help citizens form opinions on globalization issues. I then use data on voters’ attitudes and party positions on globalization to test this supply-side theory of globalization attitudes on both economic and political dimensions. Holding demand-side factors such as economic self-interest and predispositions/values constant, I find that party positions strongly affect voters’ views on economic and political globalization, with the effect being similar to that of education. Moreover, I find that the effect of cues from left- and right-populist parties is much more negative than that of mainstream parties, replicating previous elite-level findings on the positioning of these party families. Finally, green party cues show conflicting results for the economic and political dimensions, with green cues affecting voters negatively on economic globalization but positively on political globalization. The findings in this study call for a deeper exploration of the supply-side determinants of globalization attitudes.

The rhyme and reason of rebel support: exploring European voters’ attitudes toward dissident MPs

AbstractCitizens often support politicians who vote against their parties in parliament. They view rebels as offering better representation, appreciate expressive acts, take rebellion as a signal of standing up for constituents, or see rebels as defending their moral convictions. Each explanation has different implications for representation, but they have not yet been tested systematically against one another. We implement survey experiments on nationally representative samples in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy to assess whether voters treat rebellion as a cue for better representation or infer positive character traits implying a valence advantage. Policy congruence does not drive voters’ preference for rebels. However, voters do associate positive traits with rebel MPs, even if they do not feel better represented by them.

Is a Minimal Federal European Constitution for the European Union Necessary? Some Preliminary Suggestions Using Public Choice Analysis

After overcoming the Coronavirus Pandemic with massive spending programs and the possibility of running a deficit at the EU level, a minimal Federal European Constitution is proposed, to provide a legal and democratic base for the European Union. Six basic elements of a future European federal constitution are developed: the European Commission should be turned into a European government and the European legislation should consist of a two-chamber system with full responsibility over all federal matters. Three further key elements are the subsidiarity principle, federalism and direct democracy, which would provide the possibility for European voters to participate actively in political decision making, to break political and interest group cartels, and to prevent unwanted shifting of responsibilities from EU member states to the European federal level.

European Government-Opposition Voters (EGOV) Data Set: Data on the government-opposition status of European voters and party identifiers

The paper describes a new dataset, the European Government-Opposition Voters Data Set (EGOV), which categorizes European voters and party identifiers based on their individual party preferences, dividing them into pro-government and pro-opposition groups. The dataset includes two variables that can be used to supplement the integrated data sets of the European Social Survey project, which publishes one of the most comprehensive and most widely used social scientific database covering Europe. The present data enables the recoding of (any part of) an integrated dataset containing responses from more than 420 000 respondents in 33 European countries between 2002 and 2020, covering eight data waves and 215 country-years. The EGOV Data Set facilitates research that includes the aspect of respondents’ government-opposition status either as an independent or a control variable. Being a winner or a loser in a political sense strongly influences not only political opinions but also a wide set of perceptions from subjective well-being to economic performance. This way, these data could be especially helpful for research addressing polarization, institutional trust, economic perceptions and well-being.

What is the ‘public’ in public education? Mapping past, present and future educational imaginaries of Europe and beyond

This special issue explores past, present and potential future imaginaries of ‘public’ education in Europe and beyond. The special issue is located in a contemporary context of political turmoil, in which one in four European voters allegedly supports populist political parties, with the largest support for far-right forms of populism; it is also set against a historical background of several decades of significant change in the social, political and economic contexts of education, whereby schools and universities have been reimagined and reorganized so as to conform to the marketized and managerialist contours of the neoliberal imaginary; and it is set against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to lockdowns and school closures in many countries and prompted many to question supposedly ‘normal’ ways of doing school and education in less turbulent times. For all these reasons, the special issue is topical and timely.

The Profile of the Romanian Voter in European Elections

A European voter is a person who has their own political, social, and cultural background, while sharing a main goal with other Europeans: preserving democracy and the values and benefits that it entails. With more than 400 million people eligible to vote the result of the European elections has a great impact on European policies and national agendas. The turnout average in 2019 European elections was 50,66%, but for Romania, although it was close to average, 51.20%, it registered a significant step forward. In 2007 the Romanian people voted for the first time for the European Parliament, but only 29,22% out of the over 18 million Romanian electors cast their vote. The trend was similar until last year. What has happened in the last decade in Romania that has driven a twofold increase in turnout? Political turmoil has fueled political participation: higher turnout and protests against governmental actions. Focused on European elections, the study of the Romanian voter profile is based on the results of exit polls conducted in 2014 and 2019 in European elections held in Romania, with insight on social and political changes that have shaped the electoral behaviour of Romanians as citizens of the European Union.

Will the Real Conspiracy Please Stand Up: Sources of Post-Communist Democratic Failure

At the start of the pandemic, it looked like the biggest COVID-related threat to democracy, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was executive aggrandizement. This focus, however, may lead us to overlook a bigger threat to Eastern European democracy. We argue that Eastern European democracies’ original sin of state capture has been exacerbated by the rise of conspiracy theories, whose stock has only increased with the addition of COVID misinformation. Eastern European voters struggle to differentiate between the true political conspiracy that enables private interests to control the state and conspiracies without empirical basis, such as COVID denialism, world government, or political correctness as a tyrannical plot. As a result, conspiracy theories enable the state capture camp to divide the reformist opposition and maintain their grip, while simultaneously claiming that they are governing competently and in line with European values. We use an original survey from Bulgaria and a GLOBSEC 2020 cross-national survey to explore this hypothesis. Finally, we draw some theoretical implications from the empirical evidence for assessing the nature of democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. We call for more research on the conspiracy cleavage as a factor in explaining backsliding processes.

Socialised to think in terms of left and right? The acceptability of the left and the right among European voters

The left-right dimension plays a crucial role in how political scientists think about politics. Yet we know surprisingly little about the extent to which citizens are able to position themselves on a left-right dimension. By analysing non-response on left-right self-identification question from seven waves of the European Social Survey (N = 295,713), this study demonstrates that citizens’ ability to position themselves on the left-right dimension depends on the political system they live in and its history. Citizens in countries with lower levels of elite polarization place themselves on a left-right dimension less often, this difference is partiularly pronounced for citizens with high levels of political interest. Citizens in countries with a recent authoritarian history were unable to place themselves on the left-right dimension more often. These findings show the importance of political socialization for left-right self-identification.

Коя е истинската конспирация? (May the Real Conspiracy Please Stand Up?)

Bulgarian Abstract: В началото на пандемията изглеждаше, че най-голямата заплаха за демокрацията, свързана с COVID, в Източна Европа и навсякъде другаде, е увеличаването на силата на изпълнителната власт. Фокусът върху поведението на изпълнителната власт обаче може да ни накара да пренебрегнем по-голяма заплаха за източноевропейската демокрация. Ние твърдим, че първородния грях на източноевропейските демокрации, „превзетата държава“, се е влошил от възхода на теориите на конспирацията, чийто запас само расте с добавянето на дезинформация за CОVID. Източноевропейските избиратели се борят да разграничат „истинската“ политическа конспирация, която позволява на частни интереси да контролират държавата, и конспирациите без емпирична основа, като отричането на COVID, наличието на световно правителство или политическата коректност като тираничен заговор. В резултат, конспиративните теории дават възможност на превзелите държавата да разцепят реформаторската опозиция и да запазят хватката си, като същевременно твърдят, че управляват компетентно и в съответствие с европейските ценности. Използваме оригинално проучване от България и международно проучване GLOBSEC 2020, за да изследваме тази хипотеза. Призоваваме за повече изследвания как конспиративните виждания обясняват процесите на демократично отстъпление.English Abstract: At the start of the pandemic, it looked like the biggest COVID-related threat to democracy, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was executive aggrandizement. This focus, however, may lead us to overlook a bigger threat to Eastern European democracy. We argue that Eastern European democracies' original sin of state capture has been exacerbated by the rise of conspiracy theories, whose stock has only increased with the addition of COVID misinformation. Eastern European voters struggle to differentiate between the `true' political conspiracy that enables private interests to control the state and conspiracies without empirical basis, such as COVID denialism, world government, or political correctness as a tyrannical plot. As a result, conspiracy theories enable the state capture camp to divide the reformist opposition and maintain their grip, while simultaneously claiming that they are governing competently and in line with European values. We use an original survey from Bulgaria and a GLOBSEC 2020 cross-national survey to explore this hypothesis. Finally, we draw some theoretical implications from the empirical evidence for assessing the nature of democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. We call for more research on the conspiracy cleavage as a factor in explaining backsliding processes.

Will the Real Conspiracy Please Stand Up: Sources of Post-communist Democratic Failure

At the start of the pandemic, it looked like the biggest COVID-related threat to democracy, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was executive aggrandizement. This focus, however, may lead us to overlook a bigger threat to Eastern European democracy. We argue that Eastern European democracies' original sin of state capture has been exacerbated by the rise of conspiracy theories, whose stock has only increased with the addition of COVID misinformation. Eastern European voters struggle to differentiate between the `true' political conspiracy that enables private interests to control the state and conspiracies without empirical basis, such as COVID denialism, world government, or political correctness as a tyrannical plot. As a result, conspiracy theories enable the state capture camp to divide the reformist opposition and maintain their grip, while simultaneously claiming that they are governing competently and in line with European values. We use an original survey from Bulgaria and a GLOBSEC 2020 cross-national survey to explore this hypothesis. Finally, we draw some theoretical implications from the empirical evidence for assessing the nature of democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. We call for more research on the conspiracy cleavage as a factor in explaining backsliding processes.

Development or reflections of the nonprofit sector in Central and Eastern Europe and Hungary

Abstract The CEE countries are celebrating the 15th anniversary of joining the European Union. The ‘feast’ is also of note because the EP elections are just in front of us. Instead of weighing up the expected results, we can surmise that the resolution of Central European voters is now weaker in terms of belonging to the European community and their trust in democratic institutions is also considerably lower than it was in the transition era. But what happened? The answer is too complex to be summarised in just one study; the examination of this issue would require a complex analysis of facts from economic transformation to transitions in social and economic subsystems. Of these elements, I wish to introduce the system-level transformation and the current state of civil society.

What if it Kicked in More Strongly? A Counterfactual Analysis of Protest Voting's Electoral Consequences in Greece, Italy and Spain

ABSTRACT Within the framework of the current democratic crisis, the electoral success of the so-called anti-establishment parties has been repeatedly and often associated with protest voting. Several scholars have tried to deal with this topic in the past, focusing particularly on the psychological dimension of the matter, i.e. on whether individual support for these actors was actually characterised by protest motivations. Yet, in so doing, they have almost completely overlooked the issue of how protest actually contributes to the electoral performance of apparent protest actors. The aim of this paper is precisely to fill this gap. Indeed, by looking at three Southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy and Spain), it aims to test the common-sense hypothesis that a higher strength of protest motivations in voters’ minds implies an increasing success of anti-establishment parties at the electoral level. Methodologically, this is accomplished by a series of counterfactual regression models on data from the 2014 European Election Voter Study (EES).

Zvyšovanie kompetencií orgánov Európskej únie ako jedna z príčin nárastu extrémistických a radikálnych politických strán

Extremist and radical political parties have been getting great support in several Member States of the European Union. One of the main reasons are the continuous growing of competences of the European Union institutions. The aim of our article is to analyze selected extremist and radical political parties from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland working in the current European Parliament. As the research method of the quantitative approach we have chosen the method of content analysis. In the analysis and interpretation of the research results we have used the method of interpretation of exploratory analysis. Based on the results of our research, we have found that selected political parties are dismissing the current direction of the European Union. They are dismissing further movement of sovereignty to the EU institutions. Their relatively high support among European voters is made by traditional political parties pursuing a policy of deeper integration.

@JunckerEU vs. @MartinSchulz: How leading candidates in the 2014 European Parliament elections campaigned on Twitter

Twitter has become a valuable tool both for politicians trying to monitor conversations and communicate with constituents as well as for publics interested in discussing and engaging on political matters. This is the first study to research Twitter use during the 2014 European Parliament elections. Twitter posts by the two main candidates in the elections, Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz, were comparatively analyzed with specific emphasis on frequency of Twitter use, content of tweets and interaction levels. Results showed that unlike previous research studies on Twitter use by politicians, the candidate that used Twitter less often and used the interactive characteristics of Twitter less frequently won the election. However, the winning candidate focused significantly more on specific topics and functions of relevance to European voters, such as immigration and the targeting of specific EU countries.

The European Union democratic deficit: Substantive representation in the European Parliament at the input stage

The analysis compares voters' preferences in economic policy to political parties' economic written parliamentary questions during the 2009–2014 term of the European Parliament. The corpus of over 55,000 written questions was ideologically scaled via crowdsourcing. The analysis shows that parties are unresponsive to second-order and to disengaged voters. The results also suggest that there is no upper class bias in European Parliament political representation. The data highlight a strong tendency of EP7 political parties to cluster around the position of the average European voter, at the expense of their average supporter. The democratic deficit is therefore at most a pluralism deficit in the European Parliament, since substantive representation in the European Parliament is successful as far as the majoritarian norm is concerned.

The Euro and the Yuan: Some Political Economy Considerations

This paper sets out a political economy model of exchange rates, focusing on the importance of lobbying. Applying it to the Euro and the Chinese Yuan, we show that pressure groups in China can influence the determination of exchange rate. Furthermore, international negotiations could theoretically lead to an appreciation of the Chinese Yuan. We further extend the political economy model to include some of the special characteristics of Chinese trade such as the prevalence of processing trade and foreign-invested enterprises. Our paper makes a theoretical contribution in linking the Yuan, the Euro, trade disputes and politics. High unemployment and sluggish growth in Europe have led many European voters to put pressure on their governments and Brussels to take a tougher stance in trade disputes with China, leading to a form of “China bashing”.

European voters in the face of crisis: the prominence of unemployment

From a political perspective, an economic crisis is an external shock which may deeply affect the functioning of a political system. Covering the European Parliament elections from 1999 to 2014, this article analyses how and to what extent the 2008 economic crisis affected the electoral patterns in EU member states. The analysis focusses on the electoral performance of both government parties and Eurosceptic parties, before and after the outbreak of the crisis. Resorting to the economic voting theory, it addresses two questions: first, if and why electoral losses of governing parties are greater during the crisis than before; and, second, if and why Eurosceptic parties have become more prominent after the onset of the crisis. Change of unemployment rate is shown as being the most important factor explaining these trends.

Looking for the European Voter: Split-Ticket Voting in the Belgian Regional and European Elections of 2009 and 2014

While European elections are often seen as remote from EU issues, considerations specifically linked to the EU came to the forefront in the wake of the 2014 European elections: the economic and financial crisis, the new process of designation of the European Commission President, and the alleged increase of Eurosceptic votes. This increased salience of political debates about the EU asks for a reconsideration of the ‘second-order nature’ of European elections. In this context, as in 2009, the Belgian electorate voted for the regional and European levels on the very same day. Belgian voters were thus offered the opportunity to split their ticket between both levels. This allows comparing the occurrence and determinants of these ‘immediate switching’ behaviours in 2014 with those of the presumably less politicized EP elections in 2009. We do that by employing the 2009 and 2014 PartiRep Election Study data. On the one hand, the article shows that split-ticket voting cannot be explained by economic voting, European identity, and attitudes towards integration in 2014. On the other hand, the unique configuration of the Belgian elections enables us to observe that the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten did enhance split-ticket voting for voters who could directly vote for this candidate (in Flanders), while this did not increase split-ticket voting among voters who could only indirectly support the candidate (in Wallonia).