Economic conditions are said to affect election outcomes, but past research has produced unstable and contradictory findings. This book argues that these problems are caused by the failure to take ...account of electoral competition between parties. A research strategy to correct this problem is designed and applied to investigate effects of economic conditions on (individual) voter choices and (aggregate) election outcomes over 42 elections in 15 countries. It shows that economic conditions exert small effects on individual party preferences, which can have large consequences for election outcomes. In countries where responsibility for economic policy is clear, voters vote retrospectively and reward or punish incumbent parties - although in coalition systems smaller government parties often gain at the expense of the largest party when economic conditions deteriorate. Where clarity of responsibility for economic policy is less clear, voters vote more prospectively on the basis of expected party policies.
In this article, we examine the programmatic reactions to the rise of populist parties. It has been argued that populism is not necessarily the prerogative of populist parties; it has been adopted by ...mainstream parties as well. The article investigates whether populism is contagious. On the basis of the results of a content analysis of election manifestos of parties in five Western European countries (France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom), we conclude that the programmes of mainstream parties have not become more populist in recent years. We find no evidence that mainstream parties change their programmes when confronted with electoral losses or successful populist challengers. Yet, we do find that populist parties change their own programmes when they have been successful: Their initial success makes them tone down their populism.
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We study 'regional resentment', or the feeling that one's region is not treated rightly by citizens and elites from other regions, in a European context. Is this mainly a rural or a peripheral ...phenomenon, or do these two contextual characteristics matter equally? We present three survey items to measure regional resentment, field it among a geocoded representative sample of 8000 Dutch citizens stratified by region and urbanity, and show that they create a valid scale. Regional resentment differs between urban and rural areas, but is especially strong in peripheral and deprived areas, and amongst citizens with strong place-based identities.
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Kriesi et al. announced the birth of a new cleavage in contemporary Western Europe, one dividing the winners and losers of globalisation. Their studies in 2006 and 2008 contain analyses of party ...positions in six countries, based on the contents of editorial sections of newspapers. This article challenges the main conclusion of Kriesi et al. by demonstrating − on the basis of two expert surveys − that party positions are mainly structured by one dimension. The structure detected by Kriesi et al. in their analysis of parties is not found, except concerning voter positions. A consequence of this article's findings is that large groups of citizens are not represented by any parties, in particular those who are left‐wing on socio‐economic issues and right‐wing on cultural issues. The article in its conclusion discusses possible causes for the differences between these findings and those of Kriesi et al., and the implications of these findings for democratic representation.
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What was the impact of the 2014–2016 refugee crisis on immigration attitudes and national identification in Europe? Several studies show that radical right parties benefitted electorally from the ...refugee crisis, but research also shows that anti-immigration attitudes did not increase. We hypothesize that the refugee crisis affected right-wing citizens differently than left-wing citizens. We test this hypothesis by combining individual level survey data (from five Eurobarometer waves in the 2014–2016 period) with country level statistics on the asylum applications in 28 EU member states. In Western Europe, we find that increases in the number of asylum applications lead to a polarization of attitudes towards immigrants between left- and right-leaning citizens. In the Southern European ‘arrival countries’ and in Central-Eastern Europe we find no significant effects. Nationalistic attitudes are also not affected significantly.
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Some parties are more popular among men, while other parties attract more female voters. This article proposes that these differences can be partially explained by two recurring gender differences in ...the socio-psychological literature. It argues that men’s generally lower sensitivity to social cues makes them more likely to vote for stigmatized and small parties, whereas women’s greater concern with social harmony is expected to make them less likely to vote for extreme parties. The models are tested at the individual and party levels using three waves of Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data from twenty-eight countries. Ceteris paribus, men are more likely than women to vote for parties that are socially stigmatized or ideologically extreme. This has consequences for the current understanding of gender gaps in voting, and reiterates that voting has important social aspects.
How is euroscepticism related to left–right ideology in Western European public opinion? We argue that inconsistent findings on this relationship result from the changing nature of European ...integration over time. Initially, EU market integration mainly sparked left-wing opposition; after Maastricht the intensification of political integration additionally produced nationalist euroscepticism among the political right. Hence, we hypothesize that the relationship between citizens’ left–right ideology and euroscepticism evolved from linear to U-shaped. We test this hypothesis by means of multilevel logistic regression on 74 waves of the Eurobarometer (1973–2010) in 12 EU member states. The results demonstrate an increase of right-wing euroscepticism across countries, whereas the developments on the left are mixed. In the concluding section, we discuss the theoretical and political implications of these findings.
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This study examines the relationship between educational attainment and euroscepticism from 1973 to 2010. Existing research has shown that, driven by utilitarian considerations, political cues and ...questions of collective identity, education and euroscepticism are negatively related. However, as the process of European unification has progressed, all three factors have become more salient, so we expect an increasing effect of education on euroscepticism over time. Using 81 waves of the Eurobarometer survey in 12 European Union (EU) member states, our results show that the impact of education on euroscepticism has indeed increased, particularly after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty.
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What are the effects on public support for the European Union (EU) when a member state exits? We examine this question in the context of Britain's momentous decision to leave the EU. Combining ...analyses of the European Election Study 2019 and a unique survey-embedded experiment conducted in all member states, we analyse the effect of Brexit on support for membership among citizens in the EU-27. The experimental evidence shows that while information about the negative economic consequences of Brexit had no significant effect, positive information about Britain's sovereignty significantly increased optimism about leaving the EU. Our findings suggest that Brexit acts as a benchmark for citizens’ evaluations of EU membership across EU-27, and that it may not continue to act as a deterrent in the future.
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It is often argued that right-wing populist party leaders are dependent on the media for their public image, which in turn is key for their electoral success. This study tests this assumption by ...comparing the effects of the media coverage of 2 Dutch right-wing populist leaders with the effects of the coverage of leaders of established parties, in a real-life setting, by tracking campaign developments in the Dutch 2006 national election campaign. We combine panel survey data (n = 401) with repeated measurements of the party leaders' public images with a systematic content analysis of 17 media outlets (with a total of 1,001 stories), on the basis of the media consumption of individual respondents. Our results show significant effects of the content of media coverage on the public image of political leaders. However, only in 1 case (out of 10) is there a significant difference between right-wing populist party leaders and leaders of other parties in the strength of media effects. It thus seems that leaders of right-wing populist parties are just as dependent upon the media as leaders of other parties. The findings are discussed in the light of extant research on right-wing populist parties and media populism.
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