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The paper evaluates the convergence paths of Central and Eastern European member states of the EU during the 2010s, when the main task for these countries was avoiding the middle-income trap—when wages are not so low anymore to compete with less developed countries, while innovation is not developed enough yet to compete with developed countries. Using various statistical indicators, the paper shows that while most countries in the region have been on a convergence path during the decade under analysis, not all succeeded in avoiding the trap. While some countries successfully implemented policies to step on the path of productivity- and innovation-led growth (Czechia, Slovenia, Estonia, and Lithuania), in several other states, growth was supported mainly by low costs and loose monetary conditions including significant transfers from the EU. The comparative analysis of Estonia and Hungary illustrates the different growth models and shows how the institutional system plays a key role in exiting the trap.

The European Union remains an ambivalent polity. This uncertainty complicates the assessment of its democratic and federal quality. Drawing on comparative federalism research can contribute not only to making sense of whether, or rather which kind of federalism the EU has developed. It can also enable addressing such a compounded, but necessary inquiry into the federal and democratic character of the EU and how to ascertain whichtypeof democratic government for whichtypeof federal union may be appropriate. The article first elaborates a framework to assess the dimensions of federal and democratic government, drawing on comparative federalism research to delineate basic types of federal democracy. Here the democratic dimension of government is taken as referring primarily to thehorizontaldivision of powers (among ‘branches’) of government, the federal dimension to theverticaldivision of powers (among ‘levels’) of governments. The framework is applied to the government of the EU in order to gauge its own type(s) of division of power arrangements and the interlinkage between them. Finally, the discussion reflects on whether or rather how the EU could comprise afederal democracy, especially in light of recent crisis challenges and subsequent institutional developments in EU governance.

The election in Greece in 2015 of a governing coalition of populist parties—the radical left SYRIZA and the right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL)—created questions about Greece’s foreign policy orientation, particularly its alignment with Euro-Atlantic institutions and a potential rapprochement with non-Western powers. Yet these fears proved unfounded after Greece accepted a new bailout from the Eurozone in the summer of 2015. The trajectory of Greek foreign policy in this period points to an increase in the influence of populism on rhetoric and symbolic actions in the first six months of the government’s tenure, followed by a gradual decline of populism’s visibility for the rest of its term until 2019. On the whole, populism had a marginal influence on the content of Greek foreign policy during the years of the economic crisis, although it was more important in terms of rhetoric, style and domestic political strategies.

Do political parties electorally benefit from presenting ambiguous policy positions? We suggest that the electoral effect of position ambiguity on an issue depends on the salience of the issue to voters. We use data on political parties’ party position, position ambiguity, and issue emphasis as well as survey data on voters’ issue salience. We find that ambiguous party positions on an issue weaken the electoral support of people who put salience on the issue. However, position ambiguity does not alter the electoral support of people who do not consider the issue salient. Our results imply that the electoral effect of position blurring in Western Europe should be understood in the context of party competition in multi-dimensional issue space. They also imply that political parties may face a dilemma between policy flexibility and electoral loss by presenting ambiguous party positions.

Inclusion is a central tenet in deliberative democratic theory and an important indicator of the quality of a deliberative mini-public (DMP). Empirical measures of deliberation assess the quality of a deliberative exchange according to criteria drawn from deliberative theory; the discourse quality index is one well-known example. Despite the importance of inclusion in deliberative theory, existing measures do not account for this aspect of deliberative quality. This paper introduces and uses a measure for assessing the inclusiveness of deliberation called “deliberative uptake”. This paper describes the new measure and applies it to the case of Ireland’s Convention on the Constitution, a forum in which both citizens and politicians were included as members. The results suggest that politician members were more likely to receive deliberative uptake for their ideas than their citizen counterparts. In addition, women and men received similar levels of deliberative uptake throughout the Convention.

This article calls for greater attention to immigration attitudes of members of national parliaments (MPs) who absent harmonized immigration policy at the EU level remain the chief decision-makers and are thus responsible for swift government reaction to large influx of immigrants as witnessed in summer 2015 and spring 2020. Against this background, attitudes of MPs toward non-EU immigrants can be highly informative for understanding the foundation and direction of future immigration policy reforms. Although knowledge of MPs immigration attitudes is seemingly important, studies interested in this topic remain scarce. To test the relative importance of identity and economic aspects of MPs' immigration attitudes, this study adopts few well-established theoretical approaches from citizen-level research. Our data come from an MP survey that was administered in 11 Western and Eastern European countries in late 2014 as part of the European National Elites and the Crisis project. Our results suggest that social identity (religiosity) along with political ideology rather than economic concerns drive MPs' immigration attitudes. In addition, we find that in Eastern Europe immigration is only a light force behind political competition unlike in Western Europe, while economic left in Eastern Europe is more anti-immigrant than in Western Europe. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41295-021-00254-5.

An increasing amount of research on the concept of national ownership in EU soft law governance has generated a lot of insights on: (1) its conceptualization; (2) how EU institutions foster national ownership; (3) the extent to which member state governments and other stakeholders obtain ownership. Despite all of this valuable progress, however, it remains unclear as to whether increased national ownership really improves the implementation of soft law. Based on the insights from the important management school of compliance theory, this study begins by theorizing why the member states would comply with international agreements, which they have ownership of. Then, based on an analysis of a unique dataset from the European Semester, the findings indicate that member states implement the EU recommendations better when the governments have a high level of ownership. Therefore, this study confirms the potential of enhancing national ownership in improving soft law implementation in the EU.

There is a general scholarly consensus that populist governments undermine liberal democracy at home, but less agreement over how they behave abroad. While many scholars still subscribe to the view that populism has no consistent impact on foreign policy, we argue that populist leaders engage in a characteristic set of behaviors calculated to elevate the state’s status on the international stage. However, the mechanism by which populist elite-versus people rhetoric translates into concrete foreign policy action remains underspecified. To address this gap, we develop a model showing how populism serves as a political argument to enable status elevation on the international stage. To illustrate this mechanism in action, we analyze the foreign policy rhetoric and behavior of the 2010–2020 Fidesz governments in Hungary, showing how populist argumentation was used to justify revisionist foreign policy through (1) the politicization of diplomatic machinery, (2) confrontation with traditional allies, and (3), the pursuit of more flexible partnerships. In these three respects, we show how populist arguments were used by Orbán to achieve a revolution in Hungarian foreign affairs. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41295-021-00256-3.

Economic voting is multidimensional (covering valence, patrimony and positional dimensions), and a growing number of research contributions have explored the existence and strength of the effect of these dimensions on voting. However, we know comparatively little about the interplay between these dimensions. This article fills that void by focusing on how the interplay between the rise of income inequality (the valence dimension) and redistribution preferences (the positional dimension) influences support for incumbents. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Modules 4 and 5, I find that preferences for income redistribution reduce the likelihood of voters supporting incumbent parties. Modest evidence demonstrates that this relationship is stronger in countries where inequality increased to a greater degree between elections. Voters who want more redistribution tend to re-elect left-wing governments and want to throw out right-wing incumbents. However, rise of inequality hurts both left-wing and right-wing incumbents.

Most national level referendums in Europe since 1793 are initiated either by political elites or by citizens. It remains unclear why these two types of initiators call for referendums. This article aims to explain under what circumstances political elites and citizens call referendums on domestic policies. The analysis is conducted at country level using an original data set that covers 461 national level referendums in Europe between 1793 and 2019. It tests the influence of four institutional variables that in theory are expected to have a divergent effect for the two types of initiators. The experience with direct democracy increases the likelihood to have referendums called by elites and reduces the incidence of citizen-initiated referendums. More authoritarian countries and longer time passed from referendums in a neighboring country explain why political elites initiate referendums. Coalition governments are more prone to citizen-initiated referendums on domestic policies compared to single-party governments.

This article examines the political determinants of the variations in active labour market policies across advanced democracies. Specifically, it investigates the conditions under which a welfare state accommodates rather than disregards the interests of labour market outsiders. Relying on the literature on post-industrial electoral realignment, this article argues that ideological orientations not only in socio-economic but also in sociocultural dimensions dictate the policy preferences of political parties for labour market programmes. This study then hypothesizes that libertarian governments are more likely than authoritarian governments to support human capital formation of labour market outsiders. An analysis of cabinet-based periodization data of 21 advanced industrialized countries from 1985 to 2017 shows that left- and right-libertarian governments favour public spending on active labour market programmes, thereby supporting this study’s hypothesis. Furthermore, it also reveals that while left-libertarian governments increase expenditures for direct job creation schemes, right-libertarian ones do so for employment assistance and training programmes.

Why do some advanced capitalist democracies experience relatively higher economic growth rates? In this paper, it is argued that complementarities between varieties of coordination and systems of social protection can help explain differences in long-run economic performance. Testing the explanatory power of the original varieties of capitalism (VoC) model and the welfare production regime (WPR) model, the article finds that long-run economic growth is conditioned by the extent to which systems of social protection are complementary to varieties of coordination. Using time-series cross-section data on 17 OECD countries from 1974 to 2009, the article finds strong support for the hypothesis that coordinated market economies with decommodified welfare states achieve relatively higher economic growth rates in the long run. The WPR model moreover seems better at explaining economic growth compared with the classical VoC model. The welfare state is therefore argued to be crucial in understanding the economic effects of varieties of coordination.

Regionalization has been a defining feature of European politics since the 1970s. Previous work has studied political drivers of the movements of competences to the subnational level, including the role of citizens’ preferences. Yet, we still know little about how these new divisions of competences between government levels have impacted the development of public opinion about this division. The article builds on the literature on policy feedback and argues that institutional regionalization may both directly and indirectly affect support for regionalization through normative and interpretive effects. To empirically qualify these expectations, the article uses eight cross sections of the Flemish and Walloon populations in Belgium (1991–2019). This approach explains differences in support for regionalization between citizens that were socialized in different institutional and regional contexts. The analyses show that Walloons who came of age in the context of more institutional regionalization tend to be more supportive of regionalization. In Flanders, in contrast, support for regionalization is most consistently and substantially explained by regional and Belgian identification. However, our analyses show no support for the expectation that coming of age in a more regionalized Belgium is associated with a greater sense of regional identification.

This paper is a contribution to the comparative historical literature on the development of American and European federal macroeconomic government institutions, spawned by the 2010–12 Eurozone crisis. The literature has two major shortcomings, namely a lack of agreement on relevant periodization and a lack of causal explanations about the sources of the processes being compared. My claim is that the most relevant comparison is between the first half of the twentieth century for the USA and the period beginning in the 1980s for the European Union. The reason for this is the underlying and profound socio-economic process of the corporate reconstruction of American and European capitalisms, which I identify as the root cause of the development of federal macroeconomic government institutions in both polities.

This paper advances a theoretical framework on the impact of time rules on the administrative coordination of policies that deal with long-term, transboundary challenges. Its empirical focus is on the fight against antimicrobial resistance—AMR. The paper’s framework concerns how government agencies employ time rules in coordination so as to respond to this open-ended policy challenge. To illustrate the framework’s usefulness to studies of coordination, the paper examines Sweden's intersectoral coordination on AMR. The case study draws on interviews and policy documents. Its findings give support to the paper’s argument, namely that government agencies are more likely to coordinate voluntarily if they have discretion in setting and administering coordinative time rules.

Belgium is often portrayed as a textbook example of gradual federalization. Today, however, a rather new debate among political elites has emerged: whether to refed-eralize some of the powers that have been devolved to the substate entities. Yet, little is known about how citizens see the issue. The objective of this article is therefore to explore and compare citizens’ arguments for more or less regional autonomy. To this end, three citizen forums focusing on federalism were organized in 2017–2018: one in French, a second one in Dutch and a third one in German. They were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Our results suggest that citizen opinions are justified based on two major argumentative themes: identity and efficiency. While one would expect the former to be of traditional importance, our analysis revealed that considerations about efficiency have taken the lead. This can above all be under stood given the advanced stage of the Belgian federalization process, for which con-siderations of identity are still latently important but explicitly not sufficient enough anymore to justify further dynamics. Finally, our analysis also outlined the existence of additional argumentative frames related to path dependencies and the peculiar situation of Brussels.

Recent decades have seen a strengthening of local autonomy in many European states. At the same time, local governance capacities were strengthened through intermunicipal structures and territorial consolidation to prepare local authorities for additional tasks. In this paper, we assess what citizens think about strengthening local autonomy and strengthening inter-local cooperation. We argue that citizens’ attitudes towards local autonomy and inter-local cooperation are a function of their behavioural, emotional and ideological connection to the local. Using data from a population-based survey in eight West European metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, we show that local autonomy and inter-local cooperation supporters have divergent ideological positions concerning the allocation of political authority across state scales. Inter-local cooperation is supported by voters of new progressive left parties but opposed by right-wing nationalist partisans—who in contrast favour local autonomy. This suggests that the demarcation–integration divide which structures citizens’ attitudes towards international integration also matters for subnational and local governance reforms.

Does the political ideology of governments influence credit ratings? Previous studies report that the economic left–right dimension has an impact on credit ratings. However, recent literature shows that there are no significant differences between right-wing and left-wing debt-related policies. In addition, current political developments, such as the rise of populist movements, indicate that the economic left–right dimension may not be sufficient to describe how political ideology affects governments’ actions and thereby credit ratings. Therefore, this paper suggests that the socio-cultural dimension of political ideology or the GAL-TAN (Green–Alternative–Liberal vs. Traditionalist–Authoritarian–Nationalist) also impacts a country’s rating. In particular, the study proposes that TAN-leaning governments are perceived as a risk factor for debt repayment because they are less likely to adhere to rule of law and are reluctant to cooperate with international organizations and other domestic political parties. They also prefer protectionist policies for cultural reasons. Using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey for 24 European countries between 1999 and 2019, the results show that governments with TAN-leaning major parties are associated with lower sovereign credit ratings. This study contributes toward a closer understanding of what role day-to-day politics and governments’ political ideology have for the assignment of credit ratings.

This article reconstructs the role of European Commission President’s political entrepreneurship in the further socialisation of the European Semester. Firstly, it analyses the context in which Juncker promoted the European Pillar of Social Rights. Secondly, it presents how such an initiative was mainstreamed into the Semester. Finally, by distinguishing among social retrenchment, social investment and social protection prescriptions, it analyses whether the post-2015 development of the Semester was consistent with Juncker’s political effort. We find clear evidence of entrepreneurial activities in the strategic recourse to Presidency’s Cabinet and the Secretary General and in the introduction of a new Social Scoreboard. Furthermore, we show that such socialisation process is congruent to the expected impact of European Pillar of Social Rights, which indeed contributes to strengthen an already ongoing incremental trend. Our analysis contributes to better qualify the socialisation process by highlighting its characteristics and the role of politics. These findings are particularly important to understand whether the Social Pillar left a legacy to the current Commission’s social agenda and to the EU responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and whether these changes open a new window of opportunity to further reform the Semester.

Regions with a strong sense of identity, especially culturally distinct regions within a country, typically wish for more autonomy. But regions with strong economic grievances against the centre also tend to resist centralisation. While both types of regionalism suggest widely different mechanisms with respect to support for decentralisation, we argue that this is not the case. Indeed, both types of grievances may lead regions to foster a strong sense of regional identity. In turn, regions with a strong identity tend to wish for more decentralisation. Canada is one such case where different regional dynamics co-exist within the same country. To test this hypothesis, we use the 2015 Canadian Election Study to compare regional attitudes towards decentralisation. We observe that identity has a similar role in shaping support for decentralisation in citizens from both the Prairies and Quebec, even though the nature of their identity is based on different grounds.

Basic core political values differ widely across Europe. From a European integration perspective, a gradual convergence in core political values across European countries would be beneficial. Desirably, the direction of any possible European value convergence would be also in accordance with the values stipulated by the European Union (EU). Based on European Values Study (EVS) data from 1990 to 2017, we assess the developments among 18 EU countries with regard to public opinion on nine political value indicators, comprising three core political values: equality, individual autonomy, and cosmopolitanism. The differences and the dynamics of change in core political values between these 18 European countries are considerable. Our investigation arrives at contradictory conclusions about the outcome of the temporal development, depending on the political value we analyze. EU countries have converged on equality and cosmopolitanism values, but diverged on individual autonomy. The overall change in cosmopolitanism is, however, not in the direction the EU intends, as the countries have become more skeptical of EU enlargement. The trend in individual autonomy is in an EU-desired direction ('same direction'), but is much slower in the former socialist countries ('different speed'), which results in divergence on an EU-wide scale.

Prosecuting anti-immigration party leaders for hate speech is theorized to yield electoral ramifications. We assess to what extent these trials are mediatized and whether news visibility of hate speech prosecution affects levels of anti-immigration party support. We compare four Western European countries (Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands) for which aggregate-level media and public opinion data are combined. We find that hate speech trials were highly mediatized, and dominated the headlines for protracted periods. This short-term news attention drives general news visibility for anti-immigration party actors. Thus, news about hate speech prosecution of anti-immigration politicians creates a reinforcing spiral of attention by increasing the general newsworthiness of a political actor. The findings seem to point to the cautious conclusion that hate speech prosecution is either directly or indirectly related to increased electoral support. While in France and Germany, general news visibility of anti-immigration party actors is associated with higher levels of electoral support, in the Netherlands and Belgium, news about hate speech prosecution has a weak and direct positive relationship with anti-immigration party support. This finding yields implications for political communication strategies of parties by suggesting that hate speech prosecution does not undermine the electoral performance of anti-immigration parties. In fact, initiating legal actions yields unintended effects by granting these parties a media platform.

Cooperation between states takes place in International Organizations (IOs) and Regional Organizations (ROs). Since we know more about the evolution of cooperation in IOs than ROs, this paper examines trajectories of regional cooperation. Based on a novel dataset, it provides a descriptive analysis of how all 76 ROs developed over time. This reveals that regional cooperation evolved in two waves with respect to RO size as well as the policy areas of cooperation. The paper adopts an explorative approach to examine these patterns. This reveals that ROs with regional courts and ROs which adopt a model of dynamic change are more likely to broaden their policy scopes. In addition, during the Cold War, ROs with initially broad policy scopes were less likely to obtain additional competencies, while after 1990 ROs were more likely to broaden their policy scopes when they are large in size, when their members are economically strong and when majority decisions are possible in their day-to-day operation.

The European Union continuously faces transboundary crises (TBCs), such as the 1996 and 2000 outbreaks of ‘mad cow disease’, or the 2015 refugee crisis. Within this context, European Union agencies (EAs) have emerged as technical repositories that are capable of addressing such crises more efficiently than intergovernmental cooperation. However, their effective implication in transboundary crisis management largely varies, as different degrees of involvement can be observed. Different angles can be adopted to make sense of variation in the response of agencies to TBCs; hence, this study focuses on the role of EA management boards. These boards epitomize the unique nature of EU institutions, in that they represent the Member States and integrate their network capabilities into a single entity. Our study assesses perceptions of board members concerning three aspects related to the capacity of agencies to respond to TBCs: decision-making, coordination, and resources, based on a survey distributed among board members and a biographical database.

Recent increases in emigration and overseas voting have heightened the importance of understanding what characteristics predispose diaspora voters to support parties other than those most popular with domestic voters. We hypothesize such a divergence regarding far-left parties and test the issue positions and ideological traits that may inform it. Large-N analyses of an original cross-national dataset of European legislative election returns show that, as hypothesized, members of the far-left party family systematically receive smaller shares of the emigrant vote than of the domestic vote in both Eastern and Western European states’ elections. Still, the domestic–diaspora electoral rift is more accentuated in the East, where overseas voters are much less likely to support far-left parties than their Western European counterparts. Hostilities between ruling Communist parties and expatriate groups as well as different attitudes toward globalization and individualism may also explain this rift.

I examine how different employment contracts moderate the impact of welfare chauvinist preferences on radical right support. Welfare chauvinism has become a cornerstone of radical right’s nativist electoral programme. Yet, there are mixed findings on how welfare chauvinist preferences affect radical right support. While some studies find a positive association, others find little correlation. One reason for such ambiguity is: voters who support welfare chauvinism may prioritise other competing issue preferences. They may thus vote for other parties, even if such parties do not offer welfare chauvinist programmes. From this perspective, the crucial question is: under what conditions do voters who support welfare chauvinism prefer the radical right? Among other reasons, I argue that they may do so when they experience economic risk from insecure employment contracts. Differences in employment protection legislation strictness for different employment contracts yield differences in employment security for these different contracts. Using cross-national data from the European Social Survey (Rounds 1 and 7), I find that employed workers, who support welfare chauvinism and have temporary contracts, vote most for radical right parties. I regard this finding as evidence that voters supporting welfare chauvinism prefer radical right parties under conditions of employment insecurity.

Through the analysis of the crisis, and its impact on European identity and on politics and party systems, this review provides three contributions. First, the persistence of crisis throughout the history of European integration is explained as a significant factor strengthening the EU and triggering the emergence of the social construction of embedded narratives. These tensions deal with identity, culture and attitudes towards the EU, but also with the EU at the political level and the role of the EU as global actor. This leads to the second debate, with a focus on the different impact the crisis has had, by examining the case of the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany. The crisis indicates the salience of the national contexts, institutions, actors and narratives, shaping the responses, while the domestic experiences, towards the responses themselves, stress divergences and differences across member states. Third, the focus on Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, and their party system, addresses the possible prolonged long-lasting crisis, characterizing the Southern member states. As Jean Monnet wrote, it is not the institutions that create the EU, but the people who shape the institutions. Further research can address how the EU is differently represented, experienced and articulated.

This paper traces the political debate about the export and the indexation of family benefits in the European Union (EU). We ask why such a technical legal issue has become salient in several EU member states. Explanations building on financial and political justifications prove to be insufficient. Rather, we argue, indexation has to be understood in the broader context of the contestation and constitutionalization of the free movement of workers. Free movement and equal treatment of workers have become contested with Eastern enlargement, but their legal framework is largely removed from political adjustments as it is constitutionalized in the Treaties and progressively interpreted by the Court of Justice (CJEU). At least symbolically, indexation promises to address these economic and legal challenges and serves as an “outlet” for member state governments. We illustrate our argument with empirical evidence from the debates preceding the Brexit referendum and the Austrian reform of family benefits.

Studies have shown that the economic crisis that started in 2008 was followed by a sharp decline in political trust in some liberal democracies. These findings suggest that an economic downturn might contribute to a more structural crisis of democratic legitimacy. From 2011 on, however, unemployment levels in industrialized democracies started to decline again. In this paper, we investigate how public opinion reacted to this gradual economic recovery. Previous studies examining economic evaluations by the public suggest that there is a negativity bias, with public opinion reacting stronger to an economic downturn than to economic growth. We analyse the ESS data from 2002 to 2016 (eight waves) and find that public opinion reacted positively to economic recovery, with levels of political trust gradually rising to pre-crisis levels in most countries. In the discussion section, we reflect on the implications of our findings for the study of trends in political trust.

This paper offers a replication of the analysis presented in Pierson’s (1994) book, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. Since Pierson grounded his conclusions about the irrelevance of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s on a mere confrontation between Reagan and Thatcher’s plans and the retrenchments actually implemented, the replication was performed in a counterfactual framework. Specifically, adopting the synthetic control method, the trajectories of several UK and US welfare state measures, observed in the presence of Thatcher and Reagan’s administration, were compared with corresponding trajectories reconstructed in the absence of conservative governments. That comparison involved results substantially in line with Pierson’s main conclusion: in many policy arenas, the two conservative governments did not exercise a noticeable alteration. Nevertheless, the significant impacts that emerged for specific components of the two welfare states are, in several cases, different from those stressed in Pierson’s book.

Theories on economic voting and democratic accountability are rooted in the reward–punishment hypothesis, stating that voters punish incumbent governments for economic decline and reward them for economic expansion. We argue that this accountability mechanism goes beyond economic performance indicators, as voters take into account a moral perspective about the economy as well. More specifically, we argue that when economic inequality is high, citizens’ social justice preferences are infringed upon, which could lower support for the incumbent. Moreover, as inequality leads to higher levels of conflict over economic resources, we should observe higher levels of economic voting in unequal contexts. Hence, we hypothesise that (1) economic inequality is negatively related to electoral support for the incumbent party (parties), and (2) the level of economic inequality moderates the effect of perceptions of economic performance on electoral support for the incumbent party (parties). We test our hypotheses using hierarchical models based on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey. While we do not find support for a direct effect of inequality on electoral support, our findings strongly support the second hypothesis: incumbents are punished more strongly for a bad economic performance when economic inequality in the country is high.

Artykuł ma na celu wyjaśnienie sukcesu Polski i Niemiec w procesie legislacyjnym UE. W szczególności analizuje, w jaki sposób zgodność preferencji Polski i Niemiec wpływa na ich sukces negocjacyjny i czy jest ona bardziej korzystna niż ich bliskość do stanowisk innych państw członkowskich posiadających najwyższą siłę głosu. Analiza przeprowadzona na zbiorze danych DEUII prowadzi do trzech wniosków. Po pierwsze, istnieje silna rozbieżność preferencji Polski i Niemiec. Po drugie, pomimo posiadania rozbieżnych preferencji, zarówno Polska, jak i Niemcy odnoszą większy sukces, gdy zbliżają lub zajmują podobne stanowiska w zakresie prawodawstwa UE. Co ważne, ta zależność jest niezależna do ekstremalności ich preferencji, zajmowania pozycji status quo, zgodności ich stanowisk z Parlamentem i Komisją, kompleksowości projektu legislacyjnego, procedury legislacyjnej lub obszaru polityki. Po trzecie, zbliżanie preferencji zapewnia Polsce i Niemcom większy sukces niż przesunięcie ich stanowisk w stronę innych kluczowych państw członkowskich, a mianowicie Francji, Wielkiej Brytanii (z wyjątkiem Polski), Włoch i Hiszpanii. Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, artykuł pokazuje, że wzajemna współpraca (czyli zbliżanie lub wymiana preferencji) jest niezwykle korzystna dla Polski i Niemiec, ponieważ ich sukces jest silnie uwarunkowany stopniem podobieństwa ich preferencji, niezależnie od innych warunków negocjacyjnych i relacji z kluczowymi aktorami. The article seeks to explain the bargaining success of Poland and Germany in EU lawmaking. Specifically, it explores how the similarity of Poland’s and Germany’s preferences affects their bargaining success and whether it is more beneficial than their proximity to other member states holding the highest voting power. The analysis conducted on the DEUII dataset leads to three conclusions. First, there is a strong discrepancy between Poland’s and Germany’s preferences. Second, despite having divergent preferences, both Poland and Germany are more successful when they approximate or hold similar positions on EU legislation. Importantly, this relationship is robust to the extremity of their preferences, the status quo position, their closeness to the Parliament and Commission, the proposal’s multidimensionality, procedure or policy area. Third, bringing preferences closer provides both Poland and Germany with higher success than moving their policy positions towards other pivotal member states, namely France, the UK (except for Poland), Italy and Spain. Overall, the paper demonstrates that mutual cooperation (i.e. the approximation or exchange of preferences) is extremely profitable for Poland and Germany as their success is strongly dependent on the level of similarity of their preferences, irrespective of other negotiating conditions and relations with pivotal actors.

How do deep economic crises reshuffle dominant policy frameworks? Institutionalist scholars such as Peter Hall, Mark Blyth, Vivien Schmidt and Colin Hay have focused particularly on the 1980s. The polarizing ascension of Thatcher and Reagan, characterized by a public battle of ideas, has become the prime example of a broader neoliberal turn. Based on this experience, it is common to assume that a shift in policy paradigm involves a politicized contest over ideas. The Dutch market-oriented reforms of the 1980s have long been described as a counterexample, representing an alternative, consensual trajectory of institutional change. As critics have pointed out, the problem with this account is that there is little evidence for an economic policy consensus in the 1980s. Based on the Dutch case, this paper proposes a third, depoliticized model of institutional change, where policy makers instigate a battle of ideas within the institutions, while politicians depoliticize the reforms in public debate.

The Eurozone financial crisis was widely seen as a challenge to the legitimacy of the European Union (EU). It raised concerns about the quality of its policy outputs, the democratic character of its decision-making, and the EU’s willingness to respect its own legal framework. This article examines how the legitimacy dimension of the crisis was reflected in media discourse. Using methods of political claims analysis, it studies newspaper reporting in four Eurozone states (Germany, Austria, Spain, and Ireland) between 2009 and 2014. It inquires whether the Eurozone crisis led to an increase in discourse that explicitly challenged the legitimacy of the EU and assesses which discourse constellations were particularly likely to result in de-legitimation. The analysis shows that there was no dramatic erosion of legitimacy in media discourse. EU-related reporting was dominated by statements from EU and member-state executives and largely had a technocratic focus, until the outcome of the 2014 European Parliament election made popular discontent with the EU impossible to ignore.

This paper seeks to problematise the historical significance of the EU for British governing strategy with reference to immigration policy and the concept of depoliticisation. Situating British governing strategy in terms of the crisis-prone nature of capitalist society, this paper argues that British immigration policy has been depoliticised through, initially, the invocation of globalisation and, more recently, the EU. Through this strategy, the British state has been able to repeatedly claim that immigration policy is largely out of its hands, as they have no control over workers wishing to enter Britain looking for work. This paper makes three claims: firstly, immigration policy has been used as a means by both Conservative and Labour governments to manage inflation and labour; secondly, successive governments have sought to depoliticise immigration policy through reference to external forces; thirdly, this strategy of depoliticisation ultimately failed, politicising Britain’s relationship with the EU and creating conditions for Britain’s exit from the EU.

Free movement of people can be considered as a contested issue. While the European Commission stimulates a further ‘harmonization’ of citizen ‘mobility’, some member-states question the ‘burdens’ of ‘EU migration’. To understand these differences, it contains a multi-level focus on the meaning-making practices of policy actors at the European Commission and in the Netherlands. The analysis reveals a European legal discourse legitimated by expert authorization which differs with a Dutch national discourse legitimated by mythopoesis. As such, it displays the significance of a discursive approach since it shows the contested meaning-making practices and its policy consequences around intra-European movement.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the participation of the membership in new digital parties, i.e., Five Stars Movement and Podemos. Following the pioneering example of the Pirates parties, those two parties rely on digital platform to make crucial decisions. While the literature has extensively dealt with several aspects of party organizations, little has been said on membership participation. The aim of this paper is to inquire whether new (digital) participatory tools are able to boost political participation. Firstly, I evaluate the types of membership that these parties allow. Secondly, I analyze when, under which rules and in which fields direct democracy tolls have been used. Thirdly, I evaluate the overall participation of the membership to internal consultations. The (partial) conclusion that I reach is that, albeit presenting different characteristics, the platform implemented by the parties have tried to expand direct democracy in the internal decision-making. However, the low participation rates indicate that direct democracy risks to be an empty vessel if not coupled with a constant political mobilization.

This article traces the emergence and development of claims that the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union delivered a mandate for a so-called no-deal Brexit. Utilising Lacanian ideas about group mobilisation combined with a detailed content analysis and evidence drawn from polling data, it shows that this no deal narrative should be viewed as a discursive project that was constructed by a section of Leave campaigners relatively late into the Brexit process amidst growing disillusionment with the direction that negotiations with the EU were taking. By emphasising the role of Brexit as an ‘empty signifier’, the article shows that Brexit was initially successful in mobilising and uniting a disparate, but often unconnected, range of discontent to its cause. However, over time the complexities of the Brexit process triggered a discursive ‘war of position’ as competing visions of Brexit attempted to vie for dominance amongst the Leave camp. It is within this context that the myth of no deal emerged as an attempt by an elite group of actors to re-mobilise support for their cause.

This article analyses whether and how the persistent positive relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation can be moderated by institutional design. Hopes to boost turnout rates of socially disadvantaged citizens often rest upon the introduction of participatory institutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill had already asserted claims about the educative effect of close political institutions at the local level, which presumably result in a decrease in social inequality. More recently, campaigns for greater regional authority throughout Europe have represented a demand for opportunities to participate in decentralised, accessible polities. Based on data from 259 regions in Europe, we investigate whether political decentralisation and increased opportunities to participate are appropriate means of mitigating political inequality. The results not only fail to meet expectations but show that decentralisation in fact reinforces unequal voter turnout. These findings are particularly relevant for combatting inequality and indicating the potential side effects of decentralisation campaigns.

The capacity of the left–right scale to summarize most political issues can be challenged by the salience of the center–periphery cleavage. However, the existing literature does not agree on whether both attitudinal dimensions are related and, if so, to what extent. In this paper, we argue that both axes can have a dependency relationship, going from the latter to the former. Our main argument is that individuals with a strong regional attachment will assume a more progressive stance on the left–right axis regardless of their positions on the economic and cultural issues, and that this relationship is reinforced by contextual characteristics of the region such as internal homogeneity and external distinctiveness. We test our arguments by using the survey data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project, which has data for 11 regions in 5 different countries.

The recent economic crisis has witnessed a surge in demonstrations and other protest actions all over Europe, while in the most affected countries—such as Greece—the use of personal violence and damage of property became an everyday phenomenon. What are the drivers of violent political action in times of crisis? How do these drivers interact? And to what extent does context matter? These questions are examined in the light of a new and original survey data set carried out across nine European countries, all affected to different degrees by the financial crisis. Four theoretical paradigms from social movement research that account for violent political action are examined. This study looks beyond the staple explanations of relative deprivation and resource mobilisation, expands the analysis to include a relational approach—namely, conflictual irrelevance—and explores the soundness of an integrative approach that attempts to reconcile the traditional divide between grievance and resource-based models. By measuring actual behaviour rather than merely intention, the article furthermore contributes to the discussion over the participation of individuals in violent activism and gives empirical support to the dual-pathways model of collective action for the understanding of violent political action during times of crisis.

The regulatory state model has traditionally been used to analyse the process of integrating the European energy sector, including the sensitive area of security of gas supply. This article argues that, due to recent innovations, this conceptualisation has become increasingly problematic and cannot provide an accurate picture of the current governance and politics of European energy security. This article applies the catalytic state model to the EU and contrasts it with the regulatory state approach. The catalytic state describes a peculiar pattern of governance which combines—rather than resolves—the tensions between market-centred and state-centred approaches and supranational and national views on EU energy security. This article also illustrates how this stylised form of state can be used to better frame the guiding principles, strategies and tools that are currently emerging as EU institutions address the issue of security of gas supply.

Western democracies have witnessed gradual decline of voting according to socio-economic background factors. However, the emergence of elderly parties suggests increasing mobilization along generational lines, which would partly reverse this pattern. While religion and class voting have decreased, such new generational divide might make age, education and income salient (again). However, to what extent is support for these parties driven by such mobilization—rather than by a-political protest, or by politics as usual? Focusing on 50Plus in the Netherlands, the most successful current Western elderly party, we find evidence for mobilization on a new divide. Many older, less educated voters who feel poor vote for 50Plus, irrespective of their feelings of mere protest or their position on dominant policy issues. Furthermore, perceptions of 50Plus substantially vary with age and income combined. Our findings suggest that 50Plus heralds the emergence of a novel divide. To what extent this divide revitalizes socio-economic background factors in Western politics remains to be seen.

The demise of a post-war Keynesian policy paradigm of discretionary fiscal fine-tuning in pursuit of full employment is widely associated with the rise of a monetarist economic policy paradigm stressing fixed policy rules and money supply targets to secure price stability. Challenging these conventional wisdoms, and questioning the usefulness of the paradigm change framework, this article interrogates how far monetarism did replace Keynesian approaches to macroeconomic policy in the UK and USA after the 1970s. Crucial aspects of monetarism—notably the commitment to abandon stabilisation policy and shift to fixed policy rules—were overridden shortly after brief, abortive attempts to use monetarism as a governing doctrine. A paradigm lens overstates the clarity of monetarist ideas, failing to acknowledge how these were reconciled to (New) Keynesian ideas by the end of the 1980s within a pragmatic composite (the Taylor rule). The wider theoretical contribution of this article is to revisit understandings of paradigmatic change in political science and political economy. We argue that taking a paradigmatic view of economic ideas and their relationship policy orders can overstate change, overlook continuities, and overrate the efficiency of punctuated change. It also under-appreciates scope to combine ideas from different paradigmatic homes.