El objeto de este artículo es analizar las dimensiones del apoyo de los españoles a la Unión Europea (UE). Para ello se han tenido en cuenta los principales enfoques teóricos existentes en la ...explicación de la opinión pública europea, que se basan, respectivamente, en factores afectivos, utilitaristas y de política nacional. A través de distintos análisis de regresión se testan las tres perspectivas teóricas, tanto de forma independiente como conjuntamente, para conocer cuáles son los elementos que más influyen en el europeísmo de los españoles. La investigación revela que la percepción de beneficios económicos y sociales que conlleva la integración comunitaria sigue siendo la principal dimensión que explica las actitudes favorables de los españoles ante la UE. No obstante, son también muy relevantes los aspectos afectivos, como la confianza en las instituciones europeas y la identificación con Europa. Los factores de carácter político tienen una importancia secundaria, aunque se observa que la satisfacción con el funcionamiento de la democracia nacional se relaciona con la integración de los ciudadanos en el sistema político europeo.
One of the most significant global events in the last forty years has been the rise of China— economically, technologically, politically, and militarily. The question on people's minds for decades ...has been whether China will replace the United States as a superpower in the near future. But for China, this power must be comprehensive — having strong economic and militant forces are only two pieces of the puzzle. China must also possess soft power, such as attractive ideologies, values, and culture. China as Number One? explores China’s soft powers through the eyes of Chinese citizens. Utilizing data from the World Values Survey, the contributors to this collection analyze the potential soft power of a rising China by examining its residents' social values. A comprehensive study of changes and continuities in the political and social values of Chinese citizens, the book examines findings in the context of evolutionary modernization theory and cross-national comparison.
COVID-19 has emerged as one of the deadliest and most disruptive events in recent human history. Drawing from political science and psychological theories, we examine the effects of daily confirmed ...cases in a country on citizens’ support for the political leader through the first 120 d of 2020. Using three unique datasets which comprise daily approval ratings of head of government (n = 1,411,200) across 11 world leaders (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and weekly approval ratings of governors across the 50 states in the United States (n = 912,048), we find a strong and significant positive association between new daily confirmed and total confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country and support for the heads of government. These analyses show that political leaders received a boost in approval in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, these findings suggest that the previously documented “rally ‘round the flag” effect applies beyond just intergroup conflict.
Since 2012, some scholars, both Chinese and foreign, have argued that China’s assertive foreign policy is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, after examining China’s foreign relations in the last two ...years, this paper finds that China has experienced improved relations rather than deteriorating ones. In comparison with the strategy of keeping a low profile (KLP), the strategy of striving for achievement (SFA) shows more efficiency in shaping a favorable environment for China’s national rejuvenation. The author applies the theory of moral realism to explaining the role of the SFA strategy and argues that morality can increase both international political strength and the political legitimacy of a rising power. The key difference between the KLP and the SFA is that the former focuses on economic gains and the latter seeks to strengthen political support. That is the reason that the SFA values the role of morality and the KLP does not. Due to these different goals, the SFA strategy differs from the KLP strategy in aspects of tenets, general layouts, working approaches, and methods. So far, the SFA has achieved progress beyond people’s expectation from Xi Jinping in 2012. Xi’s strong leadership may become a new case suitable for illustrating the theory of moral realism.
Democratic legitimacy is essential for democratic stability, as democracies rely on citizen support to survive. However, perceived legitimacy gaps can also be an important catalyst for change and ...potential democratic renewal, begging the question when challenges to legitimacy become problematic for democratic survival. Easton distinguished between citizen support for political authorities and the political system, and argued that if support for political authorities declined, such declining support could either be resolved by the current political authorities changing course, or by citizens electing new political authorities at the next elections. However, if dissatisfaction with political authorities would not be resolved, lacking support had the potential to eventually “spill-over” and undermine support for the political system as a whole. In most empirical research on legitimacy, the assumption is that such “spill-over” is visible only if declining levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy start to undermine support for democracy as a political system. In this paper, we argue that “spill-over” can also manifest in a different way: through the politicization of political support. When politics is no longer (only) about substantive policy decisions, but rather (increasingly) about the system itself, agreement on the rules of the game, or even on democracy as “the only game in town”, is no longer self-evident. In this paper we further develop our theoretical argument about the connection between legitimacy and politicisation, and argue that European democracies appear to experience growing politicization of political support, in terms of the association of political support with citizens’ substantive issue positions and voting behaviour. The paper demonstrates empirical evidence of such politicization of political support in 17 European democracies with European Social Survey data from 2002–2022. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the politicization of political support for democratic stability and renewal.
Representative democracy entails governments that are both responsive and responsible. Mair argued that political parties find it increasingly difficult to balance these two tasks. With an increase ...in international commitments and interdependence, governments cannot always follow the wishes of their citizens but need to be responsible instead. Our study examines the responsiveness–responsibility link from the angle of citizen perceptions. We argue that when governments are seen as responsive they build a “buffer” of support, allowing them to make decisions that are not necessarily responsive but possibly responsible. By being responsive, governments build a reservoir of goodwill, which they can use to survive more difficult periods. Using data from the 2012 European Social Survey, we test whether perceived responsiveness feeds into this reservoir and whether this reservoir consequently increases perceived responsibility. We find support for this link, suggesting that responsiveness and responsibility do not need to be trade-offs but can complement each other.
Public support for state surveillance ZILLER, CONRAD; HELBLING, MARC
European journal of political research,
November 2021, 2021-11-00, 20211101, Volume:
60, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This study examines citizens’ support for state surveillance, contingent upon factors related to policy design and the context of implementation. While most people want to live in a secure ...environment, we argue in this study that the support of policies to reach this goal depends on their necessity, extensiveness and reliability. Results from survey experiments in four European countries show that citizens are ready to approve the introduction of far‐reaching state surveillance that includes measures of facial recognition and motion detection. Public support is further enhanced if these measures are to be targeted at potential criminals, rather than at all citizens (i.e., policy extensiveness), as well as if a safety threat is salient (i.e., policy necessity). Concerns about data security reduce support (i.e., policy reliability). While these conditions matter for the support of specific policies, they do not influence how trustworthy citizens consider government and other political authorities to be.
Does election fraud erode support for dictators? An original survey experiment from Russia following the 2020 vote on constitutional amendments reveals three key findings. First, regime supporters ...and opponents differ significantly in their baseline beliefs about election fairness. While regime opponents are already aware of fraud, supporters expect relatively fair elections. Consequently, only regime supporters revise their election beliefs when exposed to fraud information. Second, fraud revelations reduce regime legitimacy beliefs, but only among the regime’s political base. In contrast, regime opponents already perceive the regime as illegitimate at the baseline. Third, the experiment shows minimal, if any, effects on attitudes toward Putin. While fraud revelations cause regime supporters to adjust their views on the regime, their opinions about Putin remain largely unaffected. The findings imply that dictators can maintain popular support among their political base while manipulating elections, posing questions about the potential of fraud to undermine regime stability.
This contribution aims, first, to determine whether support for the far right is based on perceptions of cultural or economic threats posed by immigrants in 11 European countries. Second, it seeks to ...reanalyze the question of whether class is an important explanation for support for the far right using new measures of class and, related to this, to determine the extent to which class interacts with perceived threat to explain support for far-right parties. The study reveals that perceived cultural ethnic threats are a stronger predictor of far-right preferences than are perceived economic ethnic threats. This cultural versus economic distinction is also depicted in social class differences in far-right preference. These are particularly evident between sociocultural specialists and technocrats, as anticipated by the new social class scheme. Sociocultural specialists particularly perceive fewer cultural ethnic threats compared to technocrats and consequently have a smaller likelihood to prefer the far right. On the contextual level, the authors find that higher levels of GDP in a country result in greater far-right preference, whereas higher levels of GDP do result in lower levels of ethnic threats. The effect of proportion of Muslims on far-right preference is nonsignificant. The study shows that the choice of countries in cross-national research can heavily influence the results.