The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections (original) (raw)
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This article systematically investigates, in a comparative perspective, the support for new extreme right-wing political parties (ERPs) in national elections across the Western European Union countries (WEU). The objective of the research is not to explain why or how the ERPs platforms can be convincing and persuasive, but to describe conditions that contribute to identify when this has occurred. Since the reactionary nature of ERP discourse met the spreading phenomenon of Euroskepticism, a vote for ERP candidates and platforms is considered Euroskeptic voting behavior. Our hypothesis is that the greater the political power a member state enjoys in European Union institutions, the fewer the incentives for voters to support ERPs. To test this hypothesis, a great amount of data was organized and a set of econometric exercises was established using panel data with fixed effects. Given the intertemporal variation captured by the panel data with fixed effects, it is possible to assess the political conditions for the growth of electoral support for ERPs across the WEU as a function of three classes of variables: representative variables, economic variables, and variables of perception. The findings suggest that representation in European institutions has greater impact on ERP support than economic circumstances.
While European elections are often seen as remote from EU issues, considerations specifically linked to the EU came to the forefront in the wake of the 2014 European elections: the economic and financial crisis, the new process of designation of the European Commission President, and the alleged increase of Eurosceptic votes. This increased salience of political debates about the EU asks for a reconsideration of the 'second-order nature' of European elections. In this context, as in 2009, the Belgian electorate voted for the regional and European levels on the very same day. Belgian voters were thus offered the opportunity to split their ticket between both levels. This allows comparing the occurrence and determinants of these 'immediate switching' behaviours in 2014 with those of the presumably less politicized EP elections in 2009. We do that by employing the 2009 and 2014 PartiRep Election Study data. On the one hand, the article shows that split-ticket voting cannot be explained by economic voting, European identity, and attitudes towards integration in 2014. On the other hand, the unique configuration of the Belgian elections enables us to observe that the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten did enhance split-ticket voting for voters who could directly vote for this candidate (in Flanders), while this did not increase split-ticket voting among voters who could only indirectly support the candidate (in Wallonia).
While European elections are often seen as remote from EU issues, considerations specifically linked to the EU came to the forefront in the wake of the 2014 European elections: the economic and financial crisis, the new process of designation of the European Commission President, and the alleged increase of Eurosceptic votes. This increased salience of-‐ context, as in 2009, the Belgian electorate voted for the regional and European levels on the very same day. Belgian voters were thus offered the opportunity to split their ticket between both levels. This allows comparing the occurrence presumably less politicized EP elections in 2009. We do that by employing the 2009 and 2014 PartiRep Election Study data. On the one hand, the arti-cle shows that split-‐ ticket voting cannot be explained by economic voting, European identity, and attitudes towards integration in 2014. On the other hand, the unique configuration of the Belgian elections enables us to observe that the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten did enhance split-‐ ticket voting for voters who could directly vote for this candidate (in Flanders), while this did not increase split-‐ ticket voting among voters who could only indirectly support the candi-date (in Wallonia).
2017
Eurosceptic political parties are predicted to over perform in second-order elections such as the European Parliamentary (EP) elections. Yet, not all eurosceptic parties have been successful in taking electoral advantage of their second-order electoral benefits. I argue that EP voters respond to EP legislative behavior and reward eurosceptic parties that actively oppose the EU by posing questions and attending plenary sessions, while EP voters punish eurosceptic parties that do not actively participate in the EP. Furthermore, the media provide the vital link between eurosceptic party EP legislative engagement and EP voters by providing increased levels of media exposure for engaged eurosceptic parties. There is an electoral benefit to public grandstanding, and eurosceptics who engage strategically are able to tap into EP voter malaise in ways that extend beyond mere anti-EU ideology.
European Societies, 2020
Several Radical Right (RR) parties have called for referendums challenging European institutions, unpopular elites, and immigration, but do their voters support the use of referendums in general and do Radical Left (RL) voters also share preferences for these instruments? Combining data on twenty-six European countries from the 2012 ESS and the 2017 Polpart survey, we demonstrate that both RR and RL voters score higher on referendum support than moderate voters, with RR voters scoring the highest. However, the differences between voter groups are more characteristic of Western than Eastern European countries and the link between RR voting and referendum support is weaker in countries where these parties are more electorally successful. In a second analysis on five Western European countries from the 2017 Polpart Survey, we investigate individual-level explanations for the association between radical voting and referendum support, demonstrating that anti-elitism is the most important attitude linking RR voters to referendum support whereas income redistribution is the most important attitude linking RL voters to referendum support. Even when controlling for all possible explanations, we find that radical voters are still more favorable towards direct democracy than moderate voters.
In the wake of the harshest economic crisis since 1929, in several European countries there has been a rise of Eurosceptic parties that oppose EU integration. The 2014 European Parliament elections were a fundamental turning point for these parties. In this article, after a theoretical discussion on the concept of Euroscepticism, we provide an updated classification of Eurosceptic parties after the 2014 European Parliament elections. We show the cross-country variability of such parties’ results and present two hypotheses aiming at explaining Eurosceptic parties’ results, one related to each country’s economic context and one related to each country’s political-institutional context. Through a comparative approach and the use of quantitative data, we test the two hypotheses by creating two standardised indices of economic and political-institutional contexts. Three important findings are shown: Eurosceptic parties perform better in either rich, creditor countries or in poor countries; Eurosceptic parties perform better in countries with peculiar political-institutional features, such as high levels of party system instability and a more permissive electoral system; finally, and crucially, favourable political-institutional contexts seem to be more important than favourable economic contexts for Eurosceptic parties’ electoral results.
Politics of the Low Countries , 2020
This study investigates how protest attitudes and ideological considerations affected the 2019 election results in Belgium, and particularly the vote for the radical right-wing populist party Vlaams Belang (VB) and for the radical left-wing pop-ulist party Partij van de Arbeid-Parti du Travail de Belgique (PVDA-PTB). Our results confirm that both protest attitudes and ideological considerations play a role to distinguish radical populist voters from mainstream party voters in general. However, when opposed to their second-best choice, we show that particularly protest attitudes matter. Moreover, in comparing radical right-and left-wing populist voters, the article disentangles the respective weight of these drivers on the two ends of the political spectrum. Being able to portray itself as an alternative to mainstream can give these parties an edge among a certain category of voters, albeit this position is also difficult to hold in the long run.
Mapping national political party attitudes towards the EU is crucial in explaining the current state of the EU and is key to understanding political alliances on European affairs. Although important, literature on the topic remains constrained by the idea that positions on European integration can be located on a single ‘pro-/anti-axis’. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate why one-dimensional typologies lead to cumbersome and misleading evaluations of party positions. Based on Easton’s theory of political support, the research undertaken hypothesises that such classifications are unable to solve the problem of divergent orientations from one sector to another. Taking Belgium as an example, I explain why Belgian political parties, generally labelled as unanimously ‘pro-integration’, can be considered as divided regarding the EU. The research is primarily based on qualitative analysis of 2009 European manifestos and interviews with party elites conducted from May to July 2010.
With the lingering Euro crisis, personalized competition for the Commission presidency, and a surge of Eurosceptic parties , the 2014 European Parliament elections took place against an unknown level of European Union politicization. How does this changing context affect the supply side of party competition on European issues in EP election cam-paigns? This article compares the 2014 and 2009 EP elections in two EU founding members with high electoral support for radical left and radical right Euroscepticism—France and the Netherlands. We study publically visible patterns of partisan mobilization in the written news media with semi-automated content analyses. The data indicate that visible party mobilization on EU issues was on average not significantly higher in 2014. While particularly mainstream and especially incumbent parties publically mobilize on European issues during both campaigns, the radical right's mobilization efforts have become more visible during the 2014 elections. Examining the temporal dynamics within electoral campaigns, we show that the Eurosceptic fringes exhibit significant contagion effects on the mainstream parties, but that the extent of this contagion was surprisingly lower in the 2014 campaign. As a result, the increasing EU politiciza-tion between the 2009 and 2014 electoral contests has not resulted in an enhanced and more interactive supply of partisan debate about Europe.
Differently Eurosceptic: radical right populist parties and their supporters
Journal of European Public Policy, 2018
Since the 2008 crisis, radical right populist (RRP) party positions on European integration have hardened and/or increased in salience. But do their supporters align with them on this? And what role does Euroscepticism play in driving support for these parties? Using data from the ‘euandi’ voting advice application, we examine how close over 8000 RRP supporters in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Belgium were in 2014 to their parties on European integration and, for comparison, immigration. We find that, while they closely aligned on immigration, which remains a stronger predictor of support, they did not on European integration. We conclude, firstly, that increased salience of this issue does not necessarily lead to stronger linkages between parties and voters and that the consequences of positional congruence depend on salience congruence. Secondly, our findings suggest that RRP parties enjoy flexibility on European integration and can shift positions if necessary.