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Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-eup-10.1177_14651165221076444 for The impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European identity: A comparative analysis of EU regions by Gabriela Borz, Heinz Brandenburg and Carlos Mendez in European Union Politics

The dataset consists of an original and representative survey of citizens in a sample of EU regions (17 regions from 11 EU member states, with a sample of N=500 for each region). It was collected as part of the COHESIFY project - The Impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European Identification - funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 693427. For details see the technical report.

This report presents the COHESIFY citizen survey. The survey was conducted in 2017 as part of the COHESIFY project, which aims to investigate the impact of EU Cohesion policy on attitudes to the EU and European identity. The overall survey specifications and questionnaire for the survey were developed by the COHESIFY coordinator team at the University of Strathclyde, which contracted GfK Belgium to implement the survey. This report presents the technical specifications, fieldwork arrangements and questionnaire with an accompanying codebook., COHESIFY WP5 -- Task 5.1, Output 5.1

This paper investigates the impact of EU Cohesion Policy on citizens’ identification with Europe. To do so, an original and representative survey was conducted in 17 regions across 12 EU member states, which vary considerably with regard to allocations from EU Cohesion Policy and attitudes to the EU. We estimate the impact of awareness about the EU Funds, perceived benefits and exposure to publicity on the likelihood that a respondent develops a European identity. We adopt a novel gradual approach to measuring EU identity by considering various stages in the shift from a sole identification with one’s home country to a mixed national-European identity and then a sole identification with Europe. Multilevel models allow us to control for well-known individual drivers of identification with Europe, such as political interest, trust in EU institutions, or attachment to Europe, as well as regional/national factors, such as actual Cohesion Policy allocations as well as frequency, saliency and tone of national and regional media coverage of Cohesion Policy. We find that knowledge of Cohesion Policy matters for developing a European identity, and indeed awareness of the Cohesion Fund matters more than awareness of the European Regional Development Fund or the European Social Fund. Further, exposure to EU publicity of funded projects also increases the likelihood of developing a Europeanised identity. Wider theoretical and policy implications are discussed in the context of the debate on the post-2020 EU budget and Cohesion policy reform., COHESIFY Research paper 14. COHESIFY WP5 -- Task 5.1, Output 5.2

Supplemental material, PSX764177_Supplementary_material for Trust and Citizens’ Evaluations of Promise Keeping by Governing Parties by Robert Thomson and Heinz Brandenburg in Political Studies

A considerable body of research exists on the economic and informational determinants of voting behaviour. However, unresolved questions remain about the relationship between these two factors. While economic voting is generally understood as a matter of prospective evaluation carried out on the basis of retrospective cues available to voters, the extent to which prospective information matters for vote choice remains unclear, in particular if it conflicts with retrospective experience. How do different sources of information compete to affect vote choice and evaluations of incumbents? Specifically, how do voters evaluate incumbents if past economic performance has been good but predictions about the near future are bleak? In this chapter we address this question by analysing the economic and informational determinants of vote choice at three successive Irish elections: the last two general elections before the fiscal and economic collapse and the first election following the meltdown. Jointly, these elections form a quasi-experimental case study of economic votingthatenablesustoinvestigatewhethertheextenttowhichvotersreward the government for facilitating an economic boom is affected by warnings about precarious foundations and predictions of economic decline. To analyse this potentially contingent relationship we link media content data in the context of the elections with survey data from the Irish National Election Study (INES). The three election campaigns are marked by significant variation in the amount (and, for two elections, in the tone) of economic

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly tended to focus on the horse-race and the campaign as a game rather than the policy debate pertinent to the election. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also make sense given the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of politics varies. The economic crisis in the west might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us use a quasi-experimental approach to test the impact of crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from Ireland’s last three elections, and with a design that shows when other pertinent variables are held constant, we find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace versus substantive policy issues.