Union Politics Research Articles

Another sleeping giant? Environmental issue preferences in the 2019 European Parliament elections

Seminal works have highlighted a growing polarisation regarding the environment, with supporters advocating for immediate emissions reduction and others downplaying or even denying human-caused climate change. Despite this debate, little attention has been focused on how voters’ environmental preferences influence their electoral behaviour. Using the metaphor of the ‘sleeping giant’ from European Union politics literature, the article empirically explores how environmental issue preferences impact voting choices. Analysing stacked data from the 2019 European Election Study, the article examines the phenomenon of environmental issue voting by shifting the unit of analysis from individuals to party-voter dyads. Results reveal that environmental preferences moderately, yet significantly, affect vote choice. This effect is more pronounced among left-leaning voters and in countries where the environmental issue is more salient among the public. Our findings shed light on patterns of environmental preference and their role in European electoral competition.

Beyond the North–South divide: transnational coalitions in EU reforms

ABSTRACT The literature on fifteen years of European crises leaves the reader with a puzzle. Prominent accounts of the longest crisis – that of the euro area (EA) – assert that the EA is deeply divided between North and South, with Central Eastern European (CEE) member states being ignored. This makes it hard to explain how the union has managed to reform since 2008 and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Scholars have started to talk of transnational coalitions, but they equate coalition-formation with bringing together the like-minded, typically over solidarity versus sovereignty and more or less integration. However, coalitions of the like-minded are typically too small to sustain reforms and compromise has to be sought with others who have different preferences. To establish empirically how stable or fluid transnational coalitions are, we exploit the EMU|Choices database (Wasserfallen, Leuffen, Kudrna, and Degner 2019) [Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data. European Union Politics, 20 (1), 3–23] on EA reforms and our own original data on Covid-19 reforms. Our findings show a stable pattern but no geopolitical divide – coalitions have varying CEE members. These findings can provide a basis for developing a more plausible conceptualisation of transnational coalitions.

Covert politics of competing leadership: Antonio Orendain, Cesar Chavez, and union politics in the Rio Grande Valley, 1965-1982

ABSTRACT This life history account illustrates the covert politics of sabotage, purging, and the defeat of defecting and rival factions that occurred within the United Farm Workers in Texas. I draw on Robert Michels’ framework of competing leadership to illustrate the mechanisms established leadership can use to sabotage, purge, and the eliminate rival leaders, in particular maverick and threatening leaders. This case study draws on the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union, led by Antonio Orendain in the 1970s, and its conflict with the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez. I argue that Orendain’s maverick leadership and independent union activity led the UFW leadership to 1) actively block resources such as money and supplies to Orendain, 2) leverage political connections to blacklist Orendain’s campaign for collective bargaining, and 3) write Orendain out of the UFW narrative and memory in Texas. These moments provide an opportunity to reveal the covert and complex politics of controlling the direction, resources, and objectives of labour movements. Moreover, this paper also seeks to document the organizing career of one of the founders of the UFW who earned the moniker ‘The Cesar Chavez of Texas’.

SAGE Award for the best article published in European Union Politics, Volume 24

SAGE Award for the best article published in <i>European Union Politics</i>, Volume 24

Fighting for the soul of coal: Colliery closures and the moral economy of nationalization in Britain, 1947–1994

In this article, we explore the impact of colliery closure programs across the nationalized British coal industry. We chart the regional disparities in these and the mobilization of community opposition to national protests, leading to the national miners’ strikes of 1972, 1974, and 1984–5. This article demonstrates how closures have changed the industrial politics of mining unions for miners, junior officials, and managers and have increasingly alienated NCB officials and mining communities. We demonstrate how this undermined the ideals of nationalization. This is examined through moral economic frameworks and within the context of changes to the UK’s energy mix, with implications for contemporary deliberations on public ownership, energy transitions, and regional development.

Turkish and European Union Political Maneuvers in the Syrian Conflict

Turkish and European Union Political Maneuvers in the Syrian Conflict

Hagemann (Christian) – EU Funds in the New Member States. Party Politicization, Administrative Capacities, and Absorption Problems after Accession. – Cham, Palgrave Macmillan (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics), 2019. XXIV + 324 p. Bibliogr. Index.

Hagemann (Christian) – EU Funds in the New Member States. Party Politicization, Administrative Capacities, and Absorption Problems after Accession. – Cham, Palgrave Macmillan (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics), 2019. XXIV + 324 p. Bibliogr. Index.

Legal Boundaries, Organizational Fields, and Trade Union Politics: The Development of Railway Unions in the US and the UK

AbstractThroughout the nineteenth century, powerful railway unions in the USA and the UK cultivated an expansive system of voluntary sickness, death, unemployment, and superannuation benefits. By the early twentieth century, the movements had diverged: while the British Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants relinquished its commitment to voluntarism in favor of state healthcare and pensions, the American Railway Brotherhoods persisted along voluntarist lines, resisting social insurance in favor of exclusive schemes for their white male membership. What accounts for these diverging orientations? I highlight the importance of organizational forms as a lens for understanding comparative trade union strategy, emphasizing the role of law in designating legitimate forms of working-class association. I demonstrate that governing elites in both countries promoted voluntarism as a benign form of working-class organization throughout much of the nineteenth century. Consequently, I argue, early American and British trade unions adopted benefits in part because they enabled them to mimic the far more respected and legitimate friendly and fraternal mutual benefit societies. Toward the end of the century, the context had changed: while alternative organizational avenues were opened for trade unions in the UK, benefits presented an ongoing organizational lifeline for American unions. In defining and redefining the boundaries of legitimate forms of workers’ associations, legal decisions in both countries shaped not only trade union organizing strategies in the short run but also their positioning in broader social struggles.

Mission partly accomplished: European Union Politics at 25

In this article, we analyze how European Union Politics has evolved over the last 25 years. Our analysis demonstrates that the goals the editorial team has pursued over this quarter century have only partly been reached. While the journal has helped to consolidate EU studies as a field of research in its own rights, several problems of representation persist in the journal and the social sciences in general. We identify besides the well-known gender gap that especially authors from the (European) South and East continue to be underrepresented in submitted and published articles. While less represented and successful at the submission stage, our results show that female scholars are more likely than male author teams to publish high-impact articles. Our findings indicate that studies of political behavior, broadly conceived, and articles using quantitative methods are well-represented. The article concludes with some remarks on how the journal might help to further professionalize the study of the EU in the coming years.

Workability via Platform: A Legislative Proposal and a Collective Movement for Socio-Labor Civil Integration

Introduction: The legal integration of work via technological platforms (applications) in the Brazilian legal system. Contextualization/concept: Under the terms of articles 7 and 114 of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988, it is work and work relations that gain grammaticality and literality in the constitutional text, which inaugurate the concept of workability, when the tone of employment (industrial sector) would be giving way to work (services sector). Objective: The historical and normative broth induces a perspective of reflexivity in the midst of resisted change, which will impose on workers via the platform (as mostly urban workers) and labor institutions renewed forms of collective union political, legislative and organizational action, whether at a national or international level, to overcome obstacles that impede the effectiveness of constitutional labor standards. Methodology: The methodology follows comprehensive (Weberian) and extensive interpretative and constitutional historical analysis connected to excerpts from current reality, centered on the theoretical-normative method. Theoretical framework: For Weber (2000), legal norms have the function of disciplining and ordering actions and social relations, constituting maxims and, therefore, creating the conditions of administration and obedience of society's participants to the law. Conclusion: The duty to be constitutionally regulated inaugurated new labor precepts, which are still in resistance in the world of being, which imposes on actors and labor institutions the creation of a middle path suitable for the civil socio-labor integration of a new professional category of urban workers.

The Rise of Public Sector Unions in the Twenty-First Century: A Theoretical, Mixed-Methods Approach with Evidence from Argentina

Public sector unions are increasingly becoming the hegemonic contemporary labor actor in terms of membership and militancy in both advanced and emerging economies. However, political economy lacks a unified theoretical approach to study mobilization by state unions. The analysis of public sector union politics has been largely separated by regional (United States vs. Europe vs. Global South) and disciplinary (American politics vs. comparative politics/political sociology) divides. We contend that though both public and private workers belong to the subaltern classes, public sector union politics and mobilization have different foundations than in the private sector. Unlike private unions, state labor mobilization is essentially driven by what we call the “reverse economic cycle” (militancy increases in bad—rather than good—economic times), by the legal enforcement of bargaining rights (which in contrast to the private sector substantially varies across and within democracies), and by the likelihood of a political exchange between labor and the government. Argentine teachers between 2006 and 2019 provide an ideal laboratory to test this argument through a multilevel (i.e., national and subnational), mixed-methods strategy, which includes comparative and statistical assessments.

The right and religion in European Union politics: from ‘confessionalism’ to ‘conservatism’

ABSTRACT The intimate relationship between religion and parties of the right in European politics has been well documented in political science, encompassing both the long-standing partnership between the church and Christian Democrats as well as the more recent adoption of Christian identity and symbolism by radical ‘right-wing’ parties. Yet in this contribution, it will be argued that in the 2019–2024 session of the European Parliament (EP), it is a third right-of-centre group that has now emerged as the clearest proponents of the role of Christianity in the modern-day European Union (EU). The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), led by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS), regularly and consistently advance the case for ‘freedom of religion’ and the positive role of churches as institutions in public affairs. While Christian Democrats have become secular, ‘catch-all’ peoples’ parties and ‘far-right’ politicians are criticised for exploiting tensions over multiculturalism, it is the European conservatives, with their ‘Euro-realist’ agenda, who now represent the most novel and intriguing aspect to the interface between religion and the right in EU party politics.

The response of the European parties to the transformation of the socio-political cleavages

ABSTRACT From a bottom-up perspective, cleavage theory links the socio-economic trends existing in the political community with the shape acquired by party politics. Globalization and European integration impacted European society, creating novel socio-economic divides and bringing new social, cultural and economic issues into the political discussion. The impact of the novel cleavage over the pre-existent societal socio-political fractures acquires a central role in the study of European Union politicization. Deploying critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discourse-historical approach (DHA), this study aims to comprehend how the emergence of a novel cleavage has influenced the discourse of the mainstream European parties. The manifestos of the European Christian democratic, socialist and liberal parties from the last three European Parliament elections are analyzed to assess the contemporary relevance of the left-right political competition in a scenario characterized by the salience gained by transnational issues and the electoral success of populist elites.

Introducing the PFxEU tracker dataset: Tracking political financing in the European Union

A rich literature examines the links between politics, money and corruption across the globe. Somewhat surprisingly, this topic has not found much attention in European Union studies. This article presents the PFxEU tracker, an open-access dataset that tracks the financial donations received by European Union political parties. It systematically codes (a) each donation received; (b) its amount; (c) the type of donor; and (d) its region of origin. Analysing the dataset, a cleavage can be observed. On one side are parties that have Eurosceptic and nationalist agendas and individual donors. On the opposite side are federalist agendas and international-business donors. Moreover, individuals form the largest donor category, and nearly half of all donations come from Central and Eastern Europe. PFxEU aims to encourage further research into European Union political financing, supports research collaboration devoted to the analysis of corruption and European Union politics and makes basic political information part of the public domain.

Kriza vladavine prava u svetlu „nužnosti” zaštite nacionalnog (ustavnog) identiteta

The creation of a European identity through respect for the values of the national system is simultaneously accompanied by a weakening of the (European) rule of law. It was believed that countries close to the European Union share the same values as it, that is, that their common values represent a guarantee of stability. However, it turned out to be the opposite. The desire of the European Union to contribute to the progress of the region through the policy of conditionality encountered the obstacle of protecting the principle of national (constitutional) identity on the part of the member states (Hungary and Poland), which gave the outlines of the beginning of the rule of law crisis with such an approach. While the first part of the work will be devoted to the theoretical and practical importance of national (constitutional) identity and the rule of law through the construction of European Union politics, both internal and external, the second part will be based on Hungary and Poland and their criminal slippages from the core of all the values of the European Union – the rule of law.

Seminar Simulations of the European Union’s Intergovernmental Institutions: The Council of Ministers and Qualified Majority Voting

The case for the use of simulations in political science seminars to provide illustrative learning of complex political process has been well demonstrated across a variety of sub-disciplines within political science. Their value to the teaching of European Union politics has also been explored and is particularly valuable for the EU’s numerous examples of complex decision-making processes. This is particularly true of the EU’s Qualified Majority of Voting (QMV) system used in its Council of Ministers. This article demonstrates the use of a QMV simulation for undergraduate EU politics classes. Achievement of learning outcomes was greatly improved versus the standard Socratic seminar method and was in confirmed student feedback.

SAGE Award for the best article published in European Union Politics, Volume 23

SAGE Award for the best article published in <i>European Union Politics</i>, Volume 23

Ulster Unionist Political Thought in the Era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998

Abstract This article examines Ulster Unionist political thought, in its widest sense, against the backdrop of the Northern Ireland Troubles. During this period, Ulster Unionists sought to resist nationalist and republican arguments for the unification of Ireland and to articulate their position to supporters and wider audiences. As Direct Rule from London followed the suspension of the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont in 1972 and its abolition the following year, internal unionist debate intensified over the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. Defining Ulster Unionism broadly, at a time when its organisational forms were proliferating, the article considers the Ulster Unionist Party and its offshoot Vanguard, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party and the paramilitary organisations, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, and their affiliated political bodies. The article analyses, in turn, the four competing unionist visions of the future: a return to majority-rule devolution; independence; closer integration with Great Britain; and power-sharing devolution. Not attempting a detailed consideration of the policy proposals, the article instead explores the connections forged between Ulster Unionist political ideas, some of them of long pedigree, and wider debates. It shows that, at a time of considerable change for the United Kingdom, Ulster Unionist argument reflected—much more than is currently understood, and sometimes in a pronounced form—a wide range of interconnected contemporary British disputes. These not only concerned the constitution, nationality and sovereignty, but also permissiveness, political parties, decline, the end of empire, Thatcherism and European integration.

Executive power in European Union politics

AbstractIn the multilevel system of the European Union (EU), national governments have been empowered at the expense of parliaments. We study the executive power shift in EU politics in the formation of national preferences. This article shows that governments are more likely to integrate parliaments and external actors, such as other governments and EU institutions, when they advocate extreme bargaining positions in EU negotiations. We theoretically develop this argument and provide an empirical study of Eurozone politics, covering the preference formation of 27 EU member states. The analysis shows that the executives are overall the dominating power: most of the time, governments form national preferences on their own. When governments integrate additional actors, they mostly rely on external actors and do so to avoid blame and to shift responsibility. These findings question whether the integration of national parliaments in EU politics indeed addresses democratic accountability concerns.

Drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union politics: institutional factors or party characteristics?

ABSTRACT A vital political opposition is one of the cornerstones of democracy, yet we know surprisingly little about the conditions that shape it. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive assessment of the drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union (EU) politics in five countries: Denmark; Germany; Ireland; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Based on an extensive hand-coded data set of 7,520 statements made by members of parliament (MPs) during both plenary sessions and deliberations during European Affairs Committee (EAC) meetings, we examine how institutions and party characteristics shape two types of oppositional behaviour: the expression of critique and the presentation of alternatives. We find that both factors are important for understanding to what extent, and how, opposition is voiced in national parliaments. Oversight institutions’ strength and a party’s degree of Euroscepticism jointly function as significant determinants of the likelihood that MPs will express opposition in the form of critique. However, when it comes to the likelihood of offering alternatives, oversight institutions’ strength fails to explain variations in the share of alternatives, while degree of Euroscepticism remains a significant predictor.