The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics: Committed Pro-Europeans Strike Back [1st ed.] 9783030481025, 9783030481032

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN UNION POLITICS SERIES EDITORS: MICHELLE EGAN · NEILL NUGENT · WILLIAM E. PATERSON

The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics Committed Pro-Europeans Strike Back Luca Carrieri

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics

Series Editors Michelle Egan American University Washington, USA Neill Nugent Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK William E. Paterson Aston University Birmingham, UK

Following on the sustained success of the acclaimed European Union Series, which essentially publishes research-based textbooks, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics publishes cutting edge research-driven monographs. The remit of the series is broadly defined, both in terms of subject and academic discipline. All topics of significance concerning the nature and operation of the European Union potentially fall within the scope of the series. The series is multidisciplinary to reflect the growing importance of the EU as a political, economic and social phenomenon. To submit a proposal, please contact Senior Editor Ambra Finotello [email protected]. Editorial Board Laurie Buonanno (SUNY Buffalo State, USA) Kenneth Dyson (Cardiff University, UK) Brigid Laffan (European University Institute, Italy) Claudio Radaelli (University College London, UK) Mark Rhinard (Stockholm University, Sweden) Ariadna Ripoll Servent (University of Bamberg, Germany) Frank Schimmelfennig (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Claudia Sternberg (University College London, UK) Nathalie Tocci (Istituto Affari Internazionali, Italy)

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14629

Luca Carrieri

The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics Committed Pro-Europeans Strike Back

Luca Carrieri LUISS University Rome, Italy

ISSN 2662-5873 ISSN 2662-5881 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics ISBN 978-3-030-48102-5 ISBN 978-3-030-48103-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Magic Lens/Shutterstock This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book began as a doctoral dissertation at the LUISS Guido Carli University. I would like to thank my supervisor Leonardo Morlino, who guided and supported me throughout all the steps of my dissertation, becoming a vital mentor for me. His feedback has been valuable, guiding me in my ideas and research interests, finally resulting in this book. Nicolò Conti helped me to narrow down the objectives of the research and to adopt the most suitable techniques to test the hypotheses. Nicolò also continued to provide me with important feedback during the preparation of this book, offering meticulous comments. I am very grateful to Lorenzo De Sio, constantly available in providing me with challenging comments on the empirical part of the work. As a Ph.D. student, I have benefitted from the guidance of Susan Scarrow, especially during a visiting semester at the University of Houston. This experience has been crucial in my academic formation and I thank Susan for her continuous suggestions and encouragements. I would like to thank my colleagues, Maria Giulia Amadio Vicerè, Davide Angelucci, Vincenzo Emanuele and Davide Vittori, who have been supportive during all the stages of this book preparation, being always available when I was confronted with doubts or problems. As a junior scholar, I have had the opportunity to work in the Italian Centre of Electoral Studies (CISE), which has been a very stimulating intellectual environment, with the debate on political current affairs being essential in the study of political science. Therefore, I thank Roberto

v

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D’Alimonte, Alessandro Chiaramonte, Nicola Maggini and Aldo Paparo, who have often involved me in intellectually challenging discussions on political parties and elections.

Contents

1

2

Introduction: The Politicisation of European Integration in the Aftermath of the Multiple Crises 1.1 Party Systems and European Integration 1.2 Research Question and Hypotheses 1.3 Transformative Effects of the Multiple Crises 1.4 Intervened and Non-Intervened Countries 1.5 The Politicisation of the European Integration Conflict 1.6 The Pro-/Anti-European Dimension of Conflict 1.7 Selection of Cases, Units of Analysis and Time Span 1.8 Conclusions Bibliography

13 15 19 20 22

Politicisation Through Manipulation: Strategic Party Efforts on EU Issues 2.1 Theories of Conflict Politicisation 2.2 Decoupling Politicisation: A Two-Fold Notion 2.3 The Notion of EU Issue Entrepreneurship 2.4 Decreasing and Increasing Entrepreneurship 2.5 Conclusions Bibliography

29 29 32 36 40 45 45

1 1 3 6 11

vii

viii

3

4

CONTENTS

How Parties Respond to European Integration? Explaining the Mainstream/Protest Dichotomy 3.1 EU Party Support and Opposition 3.1.1 Protest Anti-European Parties 3.1.2 Mainstream Pro-European Parties 3.2 Assessing Variations of Entrepreneurship: Methodology, Data and Party Selection Criteria 3.3 Conclusions Appendix Bibliography EU Politicisation in Western European Party Systems: How Mainstream Parties Learned to Stop Worrying and Became Europhile Issue Entrepreneurs 4.1 Aggregate Findings on EU Issue Entrepreneurship: Testing the Mainstream/Protest Dichotomy 4.2 EU Issue Entrepreneurship in Intervened Countries 4.2.1 Spain 4.2.2 Italy 4.2.3 Portugal 4.2.4 Greece 4.2.5 Party-System Politicisation in Intervened Countries 4.3 EU Issue Entrepreneurship in the Non-intervened Countries 4.3.1 France 4.3.2 Germany 4.3.3 The Netherlands 4.3.4 Sweden 4.3.5 The United Kingdom 4.3.6 Party-System Politicisation in Intervened Countries 4.4 Conclusions Appendix Bibliography

53 53 57 62 66 70 71 75

83 83 88 91 92 94 96 98 100 102 105 107 109 111 114 116 117 134

CONTENTS

5

6

7

Voters and European Integration: The Demand-Side of Politics and EU Issue Voting in Western Europe 5.1 Party–Voter Congruence and the Minimum Distance Theory: An Overview on Voting Behaviour Approaches 5.2 EU Issue Voting: Between Old Dilemmas and New Avenues 5.3 Methodology, Data and Variable Operationalisation 5.4 Conclusions Bibliography EU Politicisation in Western European Political Systems: From a Eurosceptic Punctuation to a Europhile Backlash 6.1 Methodological Overview 6.2 Aggregate Findings of EU Issue Voting 6.2.1 EU Issue Voting in the Pre-crisis Period (2009) 6.2.2 EU Issue Voting in the Euro Crisis Period (2014) 6.2.3 EU Issue Voting in the Multiple Crises Period (2019) 6.3 EU Issue Voting in the Intervened Countries 6.4 EU Issue Voting in the Non-intervened Countries 6.5 Conclusions Appendix Bibliography Conclusions: A History of a Europhile Backlash 7.1 The Party-System Politicisation: Propositions on the EU Supply-Side 7.2 Political System Politicisation: Propositions on the EU Demand-Side 7.3 The Growing Politicisation of the EU in Western Europe: Linking the Supply and Demand Side of Politics 7.4 Re-assessing Party Types: Responsiveness, Sovereignty and Europeanisation

ix

141 141 145 151 156 158

165 165 167 167 169 173 178 185 194 195 202 207 207 211

215 218

x

CONTENTS

7.5

The Evolution of the EU Conflict in Western Europe: Between Volatile Trends and Potential for Stabilisation Bibliography

Index

222 225 229

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5

Fig. 4.6

Fig. 4.7

Fig. 4.8

Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship in intervened countries for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Spain Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Italy Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Portugal Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Greece Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship in non-intervened countries for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—France

84

89

91

93

95

97

101

103

xi

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.9

Fig. 4.10

Fig. 4.11

Fig. 4.12

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7

Fig. 6.8

Fig. 6.9

Fig. 6.10

Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Germany Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties in 2006 and 2017—Netherlands Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Sweden Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—UK Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2009). See Table 6.1, Model 2 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2014). See Table 6.2, Model 2 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2019). See Table 6.3, Model 2 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2019). See Table 6.3, Model 2 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in the intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.4, Model 4 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in the intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.4, Model 4 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.4, Model 6 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2009). See Table 6.5, Model 2 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.5, Model 4 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.5, Model 4

106

109

111

113

196

196

197

197

198

198

199

199

200

200

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.11

Fig. 6.12

Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.5, Model 6 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.5, Model 6

xiii

201

201

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 4.1

Table 4.2

Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 6.1

Table 6.2

Table 6.3

Table 6.4

List of protest parties List of mainstream parties EU position, EU saliency, saliency normalisation, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2006 EU position, EU saliency, saliency normalisation, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2010 EU position, EU saliency, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2014 EU position, EU saliency, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2017 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2009) Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2014) Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2019) Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in the intervened countries (2009, 2014 and 2019)

72 73

118

122 126 130

168

171

174

180

xv

xvi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 6.5

Table 7.1

Table 7.2

Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in the intervened countries (2009, 2014 and 2019) Protest entrepreneurship and mainstream entrepreneurship in Western Europe, non-intervened and intervened countries EU issue voting, protest voting and mainstream voting in Western Europe, non-intervened and intervened countries

187

208 211

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Politicisation of European Integration in the Aftermath of the Multiple Crises

1.1

Party Systems and European Integration

Since the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 and until the beginning of the 2000s, the academic literature had continuously highlighted the weak impact of European integration on the national party systems and party competition. According to Mair (2000), who epitomised this view, European integration had little effect, both on the format and mechanics1 of party systems. Europeanisation did not affect the number of important parties competing in the national elections and only a tiny group of parties were established to primarily mobilise the opposition to or support for European integration. Thus, the anti-/proEU conflict did not constitute a new dimension of party competition, while the left–right divide dominated the partisan alignments in Europe, significantly predicting electoral behaviour. The lack of influence of European integration on the dynamics of party competition was to a great extent due to its peculiar development. The process of European integration had started in the 1950s, involving well-established nation states, being mainly driven by national governments under the pressure of transnational economic interests. The pivotal role of political and economic elites in shaping the European project 1 The format and mechanics are the two core features of national party systems identified by Giovanni Sartori (2005).

© The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_1

1

2

L. CARRIERI

was accompanied by an extensive popular disengagement. Even if some scholars have underlined widespread citizen approval of the European project (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970), Hooghe and Marks (2009) referred to a phenomenon of permissive consensus, which characterised public opinion trends regarding integration. Indeed, the vast majority of the European public did not fully perceive the political outcomes of the integration, leaving a wide space for national governments to expand the integration project. Consequently, European integration did not assume the status of a political issue for the voters and its saliency remained quite low for the whole period, with no incentive for the political parties to transform it into a dimension of political contestation. The Maastricht Treaty, which has been widely identified as one of the critical junctures in the European integration process (Fabbrini 2015), triggered a slow downward trend in the popular approval of the European Union project (Eichenberg and Dalton 2007). This Treaty,2 not only marked a clear transfer of functions to supranational and intergovernmental institutions, but it also lay the foundations for the European Monetary Union (EMU). However, this sudden shift towards European integration was not complemented by a widespread development of an inclusive European identity (Hooghe and Marks 2009), resulting in elements of discontent towards the EU. For the first time, Eurosceptic sentiments began to emerge across the continent, visible even among the EEC founding member states, which had previously embodied the European project. The signing of the Maastricht Treaty marked an unprecedented watershed in the mobilisation of EU opposition: “hand in hand with an accelerated process of European integration in recent years has come a rise in outright opposition to the European Union (EU) in party systems across Western Europe. Increased Euroscepticism has been the corollary of increased integration” (Taggart 1998, 363). Thus, the popular support for European integration switched from a permissive consensus to a constraining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks 2009), opening up windows of opportunity for the entrepreneurship of anti-European parties. Some scholars have recently refined these insights by coming up with the Authority Transfer Hypothesis: “The politicisation of European integration is driven by transfers of authority from the national to the European level. Because the Maastricht Treaty represents a very critical event in this 2 The Treaty on the European Union (TEU), later labelled the Maastricht Treaty, was signed on 7 February 1992 by 12 countries.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

3

process, we expect a significant and lasting increase in politicisation in the period after the Maastricht Treaty” (Grande and Hutter 2016b, 26). However, this hypothesis has found only a mixed empirical backing, with many qualifications occurring in the cross-national analysis (Grande and Hutter 2016a; Hutter and Grande 2014). In spite of the changes in public opinion, the pro-/anti-European orientations remained a “sleeping giant” (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004) in the immediate post-Maastricht decade, without finding any significant party outlets to express this latent conflict. The political parties that made any radical attempts to emphasise European integration issues failed in their objective to maximise on votes (see: Taggart 1998). Thus, in spite of their potential, EU issues had been quite weak in affecting the morphology of Western European party systems (Bartolini 2005).

1.2

Research Question and Hypotheses

Nowadays, the conflict over European integration appears to be more politicised, affecting electoral choices in Europe. This work attempts to disentangle the complex interplay between the supply-side and demandside of the EU issues occurring in the aftermath of the multiple set of crises—the Euro crisis, refugee crisis and Brexit referendum. On the one hand, the protest parties, which are outside the mainstream and positioned towards the extreme left–right poles, may have found new incentives for politicising the EU issues. Traditionally, protest parties have been electorally weak along the left–right dimension, being more likely to mobilise the EU conflict to win more votes. On the other hand, the mainstream parties, positioned closer to the centre of the left–right continuum, have not appeared to have had any incentives to politicise this conflict. Thus, these actors have been more likely to deflect the EU issues, maintaining the established conflicts to prevent electoral losses. The outbreak of several exogenous shocks (the Euro crisis, migration crisis and Brexit referendum), unsettling the continent in the last decade, has reinforced this set of strategic incentives and electoral patterns. As a result, a research question emerges: In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, how much has the European integration conflict reshaped the electoral supply and party preferences in the national party systems?

4

L. CARRIERI

To respond to the question, arguments will be developed on how European integration has affected the party supply and voter preferences for the protest and mainstream parties. By covering both party strategies and voting behaviour, the empirical tests will have a two-fold objective. The first step is to examine the fluctuations of party positioning and emphasis on the EU issues, understanding whether the crises have influenced or not the party supply. The notion of EU issue entrepreneurship (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; De Vries and Hobolt 2012) is adopted to summarise the party position and issue emphasis on the EU-related policies, relying on four rounds of CHES surveys (2006, 2010, 2014, 2017; Bakker et al. 2015; Polk et al. 2017). By observing the crosstime variations of EU issue entrepreneurship, the first empirical part allows for identifying which party type—protest or mainstream—has actually (de-)politicised the EU conflict within the Western European party systems. Specifically, the first expectation is that the protest parties have tried to reverse their ephemeral voting shares, enhancing their entrepreneurial efforts on the EU conflict. This has been called the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1). By means of this empirical test, the objective is to understand if the protest parties have seized on the crises-related windows of opportunity, politicising the EU conflict. The second prediction is that the mainstream parties have sought to dampen the EU conflict, maintaining the left–right dimension as an asset in electoral competition. In the multiple crises period, the mainstream parties are expected to minimise their levels of EU entrepreneurship, trying to lock up their electoral fortunes. This alleged strategy of the well-established European parties is defined here as the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2). The second empirical step involves providing explanations for the contemporary trends in voting preferences. European Election Studies’ (EES) data allows for creating regression models to identify the relations between the EU conflict and the voting preferences for national parties between 2009 and 2019. These models adopt the Downsean “smallest distance” theory (Downs 1957), which allows for examining the voter–party proximity on different issue dimensions. The multiple crises have been more likely to strengthen the establishment of the pro-/antiEuropean dimension of contestation, with EU issues increasingly swaying electoral preferences at the domestic level. This hypothesis is defined as the EU Issue Voting Hypothesis (H3), which holds that, in the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, EU voter–party proximity has increasingly

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

5

conditioned party support. Although it cannot be inferred that pro-/antiEU issues have directly outstripped the explanatory power of the other determinants, this test ascertains if European integration has become a more important voting driver as compared to other predictors. By proposing that EU issues have had a growing impact on electoral preferences, another two sub-hypotheses emerge, revolving around two different voting patterns associated with the party types, protest and mainstream. The protest anti-European parties are more likely to increasingly prime a Eurosceptic identity (see: H1), distinguishing themselves from the pro-EU parties. These actors seem to be the main politicisation agents, providing voters with outright Eurosceptic electoral shortcuts. On the other hand, mainstream parties have appeared to exploit the resiliency of the left–right division, which is still one of the most noteworthy electoral predictors in Europe. In fact, they have probably aimed at securing their winning electoral positions by depoliticising the EU issues (see: H2). Consequently, two different hypotheses are presented, predicting different voting trajectories for the party types. On the one hand, after the onset of the multiple set of shocks, protest parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from EU issues than the mainstream parties (Protest-voting Hypothesis, H4a). On the other hand, in the aftermath of these crises, the mainstream parties have been more likely to reap electoral benefits on the left–right issues than the protest parties (Mainstream-voting Hypothesis, H4b). This work empirically verifies the transformative effects of several catalysts of political change—the Euro crisis, migration crisis and Brexit referendum—on the supply-side and demand-side of politics. The first shock had the strongest impact across Western Europe, initiating a process of change (Pirro, et al. 2018). Nonetheless, the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum may have reinforced this set of party and voting incentives and the prediction is that both the Entrepreneurship Hypotheses (H1 and H2) and the Voting Hypotheses (H3, H4a and H4b) have been fully confirmed after the beginning of these events. In brief, though all the hypotheses take into account the core catalyst effect of the Euro crisis, unleashing new party strategies and electoral outcomes, they foresee the full development of a fundamental mainstream/protest dichotomy after the refugee crisis and the Brexit referendum. The hypotheses are verified by observing the fluctuations in the party entrepreneurial efforts and electoral preferences in nine Western European countries, accounting for both the intervened (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) and non-intervened

6

L. CARRIERI

countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom). The five hypotheses are summarised below: • The Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , protest parties are expected to increase EU Issue Entrepreneurship, by emphasising European integration and establishing their reputation on Euro-scepticism. • The Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , mainstream parties are expected to decrease EU Issue Entrepreneurship, enhancing the issues subsumed by the traditional left-right dimension. • The EU Issue voting Hypothesis (H3): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , the impact of EU party-voter proximity, is expected to increase as a determinant of electoral preferences. • Protest-voting Hypothesis (H4a): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , protest parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from the EU proximity than the mainstream parties. • The Mainstream-voting Hypothesis (H4b): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , mainstream parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from the left-right proximity than the protest parties.

1.3

Transformative Effects of the Multiple Crises

A contingent, but powerful, factor appears to have accelerated the emergence of a new political conflict related to European integration and its subsequent translation into a set of party alternatives. This was the Euro crisis (2010–2014). Indeed, the 2010–2012 sovereign debt crisis (put simply, the Euro crisis) was probably the catalyst in many electoral changes at the national level, reversing some of the pre-existing patterns of voting behaviour. In the aftermath of this economic shock, the levels of electoral volatility have increased in Western Europe, mirroring a growing party-system instability (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2017). On the one hand, these switches in electoral choices have reflected a normal reward-punishment dynamic (Lewis-Beck 1990), whereby the citizens sanctioned the poor economic performance of the incumbent governments (Kriesi 2014). On the other hand, the increasing share of votes for

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

7

protest/challenger parties (Hobolt and Tilley 2016; Hooghe and Marks 2018), which have provided voters with a set of outright anti-European positions, may have signalled a new dimensionality of political conflict related to European integration. The European Union took centre stage in the management of the Euro crisis, tackling different economic and financial challenges (Fabbrini 2013). The Great Recession, which can be dated back to September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the USA, rapidly resulted in an international financial upheaval, spurring the sovereign debt crisis in Europe (Kriesi and Grande 2016; Ruiz-Rufino and Alonso 2017). Many countries (8 out of the 28 EU members) resorted to a financial bailout by the EU and IMF and, consequently, had to adopt fiscal retrenchment measures coupled with structural reforms imposed by the joint actions of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Moreover, most of the EU member states suffered a prolonged period of stagnation, undergoing a clear drop in their GDP growth, with some countries seeing a dramatic increase in unemployment levels (source: Eurostat). Bargaining among governments occurred within the European Council, which determined many policy guidelines but also a new regulatory framework at the EU level. Reformist actions were urged by the creditor states under the aegis of the German government that was particularly committed to pursuing mechanisms to prevent new crises (Fabbrini 2013, 2015). This process entailed a complex package of reforms, developed by intergovernmental treaties (the Six-pack, European Semester, Two-pack, Fiscal Compact, etc.) to reduce the mismatch between centralised monetary policies and decentralised fiscal policies within the EMU. Hence, this new set of rules was established in order to consolidate the fiscal coordination among the EU countries by tightening the constraints of budgetary policies and increasing the EC’s monitoring power (Laffan 2014a, b; Schimmelfennig 2015). One of the pillars of this system was based on the obligation of governments to deal with fiscal consolidation by introducing an automatic deficit reduction mechanism in the national legal system (if possible under the form of constitutional law). This system was laid down in the so-called Fiscal Compact Treaty (the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union) that was signed by 25 EU member states on 2 March 2012.

8

L. CARRIERI

These actions resulted in deep repercussions at the national level, further undermining state sovereignty and weakening electoral accountability. In the first place, the prominent role taken by the EU institutions in handling the crisis exacerbated a growing tension between responsiveness and responsibility (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018; Kriesi 2014; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). Government domestic responsiveness3 to their citizens was greatly limited by their external responsibility to the EU, which consequently reduced the range of policy choices during the crisis. For instance, demand-side and pro-growth policies were removed from the domestic agendas due to the efforts of the European Council, which favoured a general orientation towards austerity measures, made up of budgetary cutbacks, structural reforms and supply-side programmes (Scharpf 2015). At the same time, despite the complexity of the EU building, which set up a multilevel polity, citizens were able to assign the responsibility to the European institutions (Hobolt and Tilley 2014). Citizens blaming the EU for the policy outcomes markedly increased during the crisis, with public opinion changing towards the overall European project (Schimmelfennig 2015). Sarah Hobolt (2015), using the Eurobarometer data, showed a loss of public trust in the European institutions, between 2007 and 2013, in all likelihood related to the EU management of the crisis. Other exogenous shocks, such as the migration (or refugee) crisis (2015–onwards) and the so-called Brexit referendum (2016) magnified some of the weaknesses in the existing treaties (namely, Schengen and Dublin) and the disruptive magnitude of Eurosceptic sentiments across the continent. The migration crisis was also aggravated by the Syrian and Libyan civil wars resulting in further influxes of refugees, complemented by an increasing migration from the African continent (Conti, Di Mauro, and Memoli 2019; Fabbrini 2019). A lot of literature has defined this shock as a further catalyst of change, resulting in notable changes in the structure of party-system conflicts (Hooghe and Marks 2018; Hutter and Kriesi 2019). Indeed, the number of asylum applications reached its highest in 2015 (1.3 million), placing further stress on the EU governance, and giving rise to cultural anxieties (Norris and Inglehart 2019). Even up to now, the EU has been unable to come up with a coordinated 3 According to Morlino (2012), the responsiveness of government is: “the capacity of government to satisfy the governed by executing its policies in a way that corresponds to their demands.” Ibidem (2012, 208).

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

9

effort concerning migration, spurring a political division on inter-state cooperation among different countries and an increase in nationalistic attitudes (Börzel and Risse 2018; Schimmelfennig 2018). According to Börzel and Risse (2018), the migration crisis exacerbated the inability to draw up an EU-wide harmonised response to a major exogenous shock, with governments tackling this problem by reinforcing their borders (defying the EU rules). Moreover, Mudde (2019) underlined that this demographic phenomenon had an overlapping effect related to terroristic attacks (the assault on the Bataclan Theatre, the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo, etc.), which were widely covered by the mass media. Thus, radical-right political entrepreneurs were able to blame the outbreak of terrorism on the growing number of refugees, steering the debate by highlighting migration, security and Eurosceptic issues (Mudde 2019). However, the catalyst effects triggered by the migration crisis have not impacted EU member states in the same way, with only a few countries (namely, Greece and Italy) being hit harder (Pirro, et al. 2018). By measuring the consequences of different external shocks on partybased Euroscepticism, Taggart and Szczerbiak (2018) have found that the migration crisis has had more moderate effects compared to the Euro crisis. Interestingly, Stockemer et al. (2019) discovered that this shock was not a catalyst in aggravating anti-EU attitudes among citizens, suggesting that, though many people may have expressed disagreement over the EU governance of the crisis, they were still mainly supportive of further integration. The British popular referendum on EU membership held in June 2016 witnessed the narrow victory of the “leave” option over the “remain”, and ushered in a new era for European integration, with an EU member state suddenly withdrawing becoming a reality. By setting a precedent, this referendum may have produced a Eurosceptic momentum across the Western European countries. Many radical-right parties have employed a Brexit-branded rhetoric, calling for their own country’s withdrawal from the EU and rallying the voters as consequence (Pirro and Taggart 2018). Other works have stressed that Eurosceptic entrepreneurs have since rapidly relinquished this strategy (Van Kessel et al. 2020). According to Taggart and Szczerbiak (2018), the referendum received an initial media coverage that legitimised some pre-existing Eurosceptic narratives. Nevertheless, beyond the United Kingdom borders, “Brexit was a

10

L. CARRIERI

rather distant and abstract process, with little apparent popular resonance” (Ibidem 1207). The transformative effects of the different crises have been muddied, with the literature being mainly divided over their consequences. This work argues that the migration crisis and Brexit constitute substantial parcels within a continuum of exogenous shocks, strengthening incentives to politicise European integration, already set underway by the Euro crisis. The latter shock set in motion a trend of political change, with the successive crises gradually strengthening the politicisation of the European integration. Indeed, conflict politicisation is not a short-term process, and requires cognitive and emotional reactions from voters vis-à-vis party information shortcuts (Carmines and Stimson 1989). Thus, the expectation is that EU politicisation reached its peak in the multiple-crises period, with the Euro crisis initiating a deep-seated transformation, later intensified by the migration crisis and Brexit. However, this work does not see this combination of shocks as a critical juncture, but considers it as a catalyst: “That is, contrary to the classic Schumpeterian hypothesis in economics that crises bring about innovative destruction, we hypothesise that in politics an economic crisis magnifies and accelerates latent or less latent trends and factors already present within the political system” (Morlino and Raniolo 2017, 23). Indeed, many of the preconditions for the awakening of the ‘sleeping giant’ (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004), were already underway. Therefore, this works argue that these economic and demographic trends may have propelled a considerable change in the party supply and voter responses, intensifying the effects of EU issues on electoral preferences. These transformative effects may have resulted in a freeze on new electoral alignments and a stabilising in new patterns of party competition. However, at the moment, it is more likely that there is a more contingent change underway, arising from the mobilisation of the European conflict that has still to prove its longterm viability. Consequently, a pro-/anti-European cleavage hypothesis is not advanced here, but rather an assessment of the politicisation of the conflict over EU issues. It is proposed that this politicisation may have strengthened another dimensionality of political contestation, based on pro-/anti-European attitudes, which currently affects voting choices.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

1.4

11

Intervened and Non-Intervened Countries

At the beginning of the Euro crisis, national governments attempted to respond to their citizens, implementing expansionary policies and rescuing national banks. However, the Greek debt crisis abruptly reversed this scenario, bringing about financial speculation within the Eurozone. The weakest European economies (Italy, Portugal and Spain) suffered greatly from the spill-over effects of the Greek crisis, prompting a rapid decline in domestic economic conditions and public accounts. Greece, Ireland and Portugal received rescue packages under strict conditions, outsourcing their fiscal sovereignty to the Troika. Even if Italy and Spain were not formally bailed out by the Troika, they adopted austerity measures and committed themselves to not implementing deficit-spending policies, amending their constitutions under the pressure of EU memorandums. This pattern “created two separate groups of countries in the Eurozone: those that could still balance responsibility and responsiveness (non-intervened countries) and those where responsibility was prioritised and, thus, responsiveness had to be weakened (intervened countries)” (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018, 5). The citizens of intervened countries were able to identify these autonomy constraints on their governments imposed by the EU institutions (RuizRufino and Alonso 2017), which resulted in electoral instability. In fact, mainstream/establishment party vote shares dropped more dramatically in this cluster of countries compared to the non-intervened ones, where governing parties had more room for manoeuvring (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino, 2018). Although this dichotomy among EU member states certainly accounts for different trends in voting behaviour, we contend that the Euro crisis resulted in establishing similarities in reshaping the ideological foundations of Western European party systems. The so-called creditor countries had dealt with the outcomes of the crisis, not only by coping with their domestic stagnation and unemployment, but also by supporting the rescue packages for the debtor countries (Grande and Hutter 2016b). Domestic opposition to bailout measures had often been widespread, politicising an intra-state solidarity issue among the non-intervened countries. Therefore, Eurosceptic discourses strongly impacted this cluster of countries (non-Eurozone countries included), increasing in momentum in the domestic political debate (Pirro, et al. 2018). The electoral growth

12

L. CARRIERI

of the anti-European protest parties has been a constant in the nonintervened countries, where these actors have become important players in their respective party systems (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). Moreover, in the post-crisis era, the EU’s non-majoritarian (Majone 1994) and poorly accountable decision-making has been unprecedented in hindering national governments in both country groups. The “austerity requirements are no longer defended as an immediately effective remedy for state-credit crises, but have become part of a new euro regime whose purpose is to ensure the long-run viability of the EMU ” (Scharpf 2015, 26). Hence, the Euro crisis has probably ushered in a new era of economic governance in the Eurozone countries, further boosting the role of EU institutions (mainly the intergovernmental) and increasingly reducing the room for manoeuvre of the national governments. Once this set of policy constraints was reinforced, the clarity of partisan choices was reshaped in both country clusters, with convergence on the austerity measures probably weakening the ability of pro-European parties to link voter preferences on the left–right conflict dimension. Economic content ensuing from the left–right dimension of political contestation has appeared to have been dampened in political agendas by EU economic governance. The EU management of the crisis may have overshadowed the economic divisions, with left–right ideological dimension becoming a less important information shortcut for voters in both country groups. These two groups of countries have manifested different trends in their economic recovery, which has been associated with their different forms of domestic capitalism (Hall 2018). Public perceptions of the current national economies have taken different trajectories, with the citizens in the non-intervened countries displaying a much more optimistic assessment compared to those living in the intervened countries (Hernández and Kriesi 2016; Kriesi 2016). Southern European countries have had to deal with an intense interaction between a pre-existing political crisis and a successive economic one, unleashing popular Eurosceptic sentiments and resulting in the electoral success of the protest parties (Hutter and Kriesi 2019; Kriesi 2016; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). Meanwhile, mainstream incumbent parties have also suffered from substantial electoral losses in the non-intervened countries, with Eurosceptic formations reaping spectacular payoffs. Kriesi (2016) has contended that this has been the result of a long-term ideological realignment occurring in North-western European democracies, with anti-European attitudes being already entrenched in the domestic culture.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

13

Therefore, the Euro crisis has simply increased these sentiments, which had dated back the 1980s, awakening the ‘sleeping giant’ of European integration. On the contrary, the Eurosceptic surge has been more abrupt and dramatic in the Southern European democracies, where popular support for European integration had been steady and strong in the previous decades. Therefore, European integration has appeared to be a hasty giant in the South of Europe, rushing head on into the political contestation, without going through an intermediate lethargic stage. In spite of these different patterns, the convergence power of the Euro crisis is posited here. In the pre-crisis period, party-based Euroscepticism had been a peculiar feature of North-western Europe, instead, in the aftermath of the Euro crisis it has become a constant for both groups of countries. Therefore, this book maintains that the Euro crisis has set in motion a parallel process of change in Western Europe, hastening the emergence of Eurosceptic parties or strengthening the pre-existing ones. Divided in their economic grievances, voters have been united in their political resentment to the EU, with the Great Recession producing an ideological convergence and marking a discontinuity from the past in both these country clusters. Moreover, the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum appear to have injected a further commonality between these country groups, with these two exogenous shocks prioritising the EU issues as a ground for political contestation.

1.5 The Politicisation of the European Integration Conflict In the last decade, many works have been dedicated to analysing the politicisation of European integration (Hoeglinger 2016a, b; Hutter, Grande, and Kriesi 2016; Kriesi 2016; De Wilde and Zürn 2012). A great deal of this academic debate has revolved around the EU’s increasing authority and the formation of clear-cut public attitudes towards the growing integration. These public opinion and institutional trends have been conducive to activating a European integration conflict, providing new incentives for the political actors. Indeed, the entrepreneurship role of parties is held to be pivotal in triggering new conflicts. According to Giovanni Sartori (1969, 209): “conflicts and cleavages may be channelled, deflected and repressed or, vice versa, activated and reinforced, precisely by the operations and operators of the political system”. Parties often choose

14

L. CARRIERI

to dismiss certain conflicts, which could potentially jeopardise their electoral stability or, vice versa, they assign saliency to conflicts that could constitute an electoral asset (Budge and Farlie 1983). Therefore, parties have the ability to alter the systemic saliency of European integration in the domestic agenda, transforming it into a source of political contestation by emphasising and polarising EU issues (Hooghe and Marks 2009; Hutter and Grande 2014). Hutter and Grande (2014) have provided a path-breaking politicisation index, individuating three main compounding dimensions—salience, actor expansion and polarisation. They identified the importance of saliency ascribed to EU issues by political parties as a core precondition to triggering a new political conflict, along with the expansion of the actors involved—i.e. the scope of conflict—which mainly includes governments and parties. These actors polarise their positions (intensity of a conflict), creating two stable and diverging political camps, ideologically colliding on EU issues. This three-dimensional index underlines the fundamental elements that are conducive to politicising a new conflict within a party system. Thus, the notion of politicisation strongly hinges upon the party strategies in highlighting or downplaying certain conflict-related issues in their political agendas. However, these core attempts to define the politicisation notion have constantly neglected voter responses as a fundamental condition to activating conflicts. Hutter and Grande’s index has tackled domestic debates, integration steps and electoral campaigns, involving parties and national, intergovernmental and supranational institutions. Voting behaviour is an empty space in the literature and this lack is detrimental to understanding a politicisation process in a political system. This work aims at filling this lacuna, contending that another compounding element should be included in the politicisation conception—that is, voter/party issue congruence. If an altering party supply does not match voter responses on the issues in the political debate, a political conflict will not arise in the political system. Instead, if the parties are able to link voter preferences on a structured and polarising pro-/anti-European dimension of political contestation, a fully politicised European integration conflict will come about in the political system The political systems also include no-elite elements, which may respond to the elite-level actions. Thus, the objective is to outline a more comprehensive notion of politicisation, considering the complex interplay between the elite and voters, which contribute to mobilising conflicts within the political systems. The combination of politicisation contributions with electoral studies

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

15

literature entails an innovative theoretical step, potentially producing new findings and insights into political conflicts. Works heralding the politicisation of European integration have mainly neglected the area of voting preferences (Hooghe and Marks 2009; De Wilde and Zürn 2012; Statham and Trenz 2015). Even those contributions eschewing a clear trend in this direction have presented the same drawbacks. Grande and Kriesi (2016) have referred to a process of punctuated politicisation, with some particular events, such as the Euro crisis, producing ephemerally increasing levels of EU politicisation. Green-Pedersen (2019) has also found evidence of the general stagnation of this phenomenon, which has only been propelled by very specific events. Similarly, Dominic Hoeglinger (2016a) has argued on the limited politicisation of this conflict, which has neither been fully awakened nor completely sedated by parties in the last decades. This non-linear path of politicisation, which varies among the different countries, has probably been conditioned by the sharp conflict between politicisation and de-politicisation efforts. By downplaying the importance of EU-related issues, mainstream parties may have successfully prevented the full politicisation of this new conflict, maintaining the pre-existing political conflict lines (Kriesi 2016; Börzel and Risse 2018; Green-Pedersen 2019). However, by neglecting to address the extent of EU issue voting (De Vries 2007), this literature does not fully account for the emergence of the EU conflict in political systems, narrowing the analysis to the party-system level. In order to assess the linking mechanisms between the party stances and the electoral choices on the EU conflict, this work employs the Downsean proximity model. Despite its limitations, this approach allows for analysing voter-party proximity on the pro-/anti-European conflict dimension. Therefore, congruence between parties and voters on this dimension is tested, shedding light on the extent of the political system politicisation.

1.6

The Pro-/Anti-European Dimension of Conflict

The literature has hypothesised the emergence of a general pro-/anti-EU dimension, varying from less integration (defending national sovereignty) to more integration (supporting supranational governance) (Hix and Lord 1997; Steenbergen and Marks 2004). Gabel and Anderson (2002) have demonstrated that this axis contestation is mainly one-dimensional,

16

L. CARRIERI

encompassing all the main EU-related policies, such as EU defence, the single market, the single currency, etc. While, according to Van der Eijk and Franklin (2004), the capacity of EU integration to affect domestic politics revolves around its potential to introduce certain issues, which are orthogonal to the left–right dimension of contestation. Many models and studies have clearly shown the lack of relations (or the orthogonality) between the economic left–right dimension of political conflict and that of European integration (Hix and Lord 1997; Steenburgen and Marks 2004; Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009). Hix and Lord (1997) also argued that the left–right dimension has summarised the chief social and economic divisions, without assimilating the pro-/anti-European issues, which constituted an autonomous source of political conflict. The left– right dimension has given rise to controversy among functional groups on the resource allocation, while a pro-/anti-European dimension has been a catalyst in a contestation among regional/territorial stakeholders over the allocation of resources (Hix 1999). According to Hooghe et al. (2002), the relationship between the party positions on the left–right issues and the pro-/anti-EU issues has resembled an inverted U-curve, with radical left and radical right parties adopting Eurosceptic stances and mainstream centrist parties being Europhile. Political extremism on the left-right scale is a prominent intervening variable in determining party positioning, further corroborating the absence of a linear relation between the two-policy dimensionalities. Therefore, the EU issues have appeared to be more disassociated from the well-established left–right dimension, potentially transforming the political space and destabilising party competition patterns. This pro-/anti-EU dimension could effectively cut across the divisions, traditionally subsumed by the left–right issues, establishing new partisan alignments at the domestic level. The long-standing European party families (Social Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, Christian Democrats, etc.) have persistently structured political contestation along the left–right continuum. The left–right dimension of competition created a lasting source of ideological identification and reduced the information costs for the voters during the elections, simplifying the complexity of politics (Downs 1957). The European voters were able to recognise these ideologies and to place themselves on the left–right scale (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009; Van der Eijk et al. 2005; Fuchs and Klingemann 1990), electorally rewarding the established party alternatives. This dimension proved its great flexibility by incorporating a wide array of new issues

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

17

over the decades. Indeed, the left–right framework moved far beyond the socio-economic controversy and was able to absorb the emerging cultural issues (environmentalism, gender equality, immigration, etc.), also labelled as post-materialistic issues (Inglehart 2015). Mainstream parties have tried to include cultural issues (immigration, environmentalism, etc.) in their platforms (Dalton et al. 2011) in order to avoid electoral defeats and to block potential new sources of political conflict. However, other approaches have flourished among political scientists, hypothesising a different configuration of the conflict dimensionality. Kitschelt (1994) supported a two-dimensional view of politics, distinguishing between a socialist/capitalistic dimension, summing up the major economic issues, and a libertarian-cosmopolitan dimension, encompassing cultural issues. By relying on this bi-dimensionality model, Kriesi et al. (2006) provided a path-breaking framework on the contemporary dimensions of contestation. They identified globalisation (or de-nationalisation) related processes as the new critical juncture in Rokkanean terms (Lipset and Rokkan 1967), resulting in political outcomes at the domestic level. These new critical junctures have offered incentives for political actors not to introduce a further dimensionality, but to reshape the fundamental content of the two existing dimensions. The socio-economic dimension has been revitalised by the de-nationalisation processes, reinforcing a pro-market/pro-labour division. However, the political consequences arising from globalisation have been stronger on the cultural dimension, once dominated by religious issues. Indeed, this axis of contestation has increasingly synthesised a broad ideological divide between the supporters of cultural liberalism (cosmopolitanism) and those of a national culture defence (nationalism). This broad cultural dispute has been fostered by the migration flows and European integration, which have gained increasing visibility in the political debate. This globalisation cleavage hypothesis has posited a cosmopolitanism/nationalistic dichotomy as the chief manifestation of the cultural dimension (Bornschier 2010), mainly dominated by pro-/antiimmigration issues. On the contrary, European integration has been one of the sub-processes of this dimension, weakly reshaping the patterns of political contestation (Kriesi 2007; Grande and Hutter 2016b). Attitudes to migration flows and nationalistic/cosmopolitan values have probably determined an orientation towards European integration, which has been conceived as a mere outgrowth of the former. This work challenges this

18

L. CARRIERI

alleged subsidiarity of the EU issues, instead, putting forward the notion of the growing importance and autonomy of the pro-/anti-European dimension. According to some scholars, the demographic phenomena related to the migration crisis may have reinvigorated a cultural divide, pitching the exclusive nationalists against the inclusive cosmopolitans (Börzel and Risse 2018; Hooghe and Marks 2018). These objective sociodemographic factors, such as the increasing number of foreigners, may have led to a growing saliency of the migration conflict. However, the importance of the immigration issues has preceded the multiple set stabilising its grip within the party-system agenda during the last twenty years (Green-Pedersen 2019). Furthermore, an outright mainstream/protest dichotomy does not arise concerning the pro-/anti-immigration issues. Mainstream parties may accommodate anti-immigration or culturally conservative issues in their platforms (Abou-Chadi and Krause 2020; De Sio and Lachat 2020) Indeed, centre–right mainstream parties have often held a clear-cut issue ownership on anti-immigration issues (GreenPedersen 2019; Seeberg 2017), with citizens being more likely to reward their restrictive policy commitments on this political topic. On the contrary, during the refugee crisis, the EU intergovernmental channels failed in providing a coordinated response to the influx of refugees and asylum-seekers, without sharing the responsibility for their reception, nor relocating them among the member states (Schimmelfenning 2018). The member states have not adopted a common regulatory framework, resulting in negative public opinions on EU migration policies (Börzel and Risse 2018; Conti et al. 2019). Thus, it can be hypothesised that this exogenous shock has further magnified the EU issues, with citizens ascribing major responsibility to the EU for the (mis-)management of the crisis, which has reinforced, rather than downplayed, the pro-/anti-European dimension. It appears that the migration crisis has not jeopardised the establishment of an autonomous pro-/antiEuropean dimension, but hastened its politicisation. The latter crisis could be seen as another catalyst of political change, which is not fully described by nationalist-cosmopolitan divide, with the EU issues playing a meaningful role in transforming the supply-side and demand-side of politics. Consequently, multiple crises have played a role in boosting the politicisation of the EU conflict, with these catalysts being located along a continuum of several exogenous shocks initiated by the Euro crisis.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

19

1.7 Selection of Cases, Units of Analysis and Time Span Nine Western European countries—France, Germany Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom—are included in this study, which have historically presented many similar characteristics, being comparable on many aspects. The countries selected are those that have been present in the four CHES rounds (2006, 2010, 2014, 2017), allowing a cross-time comparison and accounting for an intervened/non-intervened dichotomy. According to Bartolini (2000), these countries have shared many fundamental areas of conflict, which “have been mostly responsible for the similarity of party landscapes ” (Ibidem, 10). A set of multiple cleavages4 established widespread dividing-lines within these polities, which have subsequently fostered the establishment of the left–right general dimension of contestation. These countries, in different ways, have all dealt with political outcomes resulting from European integration, especially those following the Maastricht Treaty approval. Therefore, these polities have probably developed a latent ideological division, pitching the defenders of national sovereignty (anti-Europeans) against the supporters of supranational governance (pro-Europeans). It is argued here that national contexts are still the main arenas for mobilising political conflicts. According to Kriesi and Grande (2014), the peculiar characteristics of the debate on European integration have determined a paradoxical effect: “on the one hand, the debate has been exceptionally salient and has contributed to the increased visibility of Europe in the politics of the European nation-states. On the other hand, this debate has not accelerated the transfer of European politics into ‘mass politics’. Rather, it has mainly taken place in the inter-governmental channel and has been dominated by supranational executive agencies and national executives ” (Ibidem 2014, 84). Thus, this study explores the potential mobilisation of the European conflict at the domestic level, rather than searching for a supranational party system, capable of articulating conflicts within a Europe-wide polity.

4 Lipset and Rokkan (1967) identified 4 lines of cleavages, stemming from the state formation and industrial revolution: (1) Centre versus Periphery; (2) State versus Church; (3) Land versus Industry; and (4) Owners versus Workers.

20

L. CARRIERI

The time span begins in 2006, several years before the beginning of the crisis, and ends in 2019. As was observed in the first paragraph of this chapter, the Maastricht Treaty has probably set underway a gradual reversal in the degree of public approval regarding European integration by accelerating the power transfer to the European institutions. Nonetheless, there had been scant evidence of conflict politicisation at the domestic level, with EU issues playing a very moderate role in national party platforms. This study will not propose any further empirical tests on the so-called “Authority Transfer Hypothesis” (De Wilde and Zurn 2012; Grande and Hutter 2016a, b), reassessing EU politicisation during the period 1992–2005. On the contrary, this work examines whether the multiple crises have effectively catalysed or not some changes in the mobilisation of this conflict. The chosen span of time that allows for empirically capturing these potential fluctuations are as follows: precrises period (2006–2009), the Euro-crisis period (2010–2014) and the multiple-crisis period (2015–2019).

1.8

Conclusions

This chapter has outlined the main hypotheses of this work, reviewing the state-of-the-art of the political science literature. Since the onset of the European integration processes in the 1950s until the beginning of the 2000s, European issues had hardly affected party-system morphology or voting preference patterns in Western Europe. Although the signing of the Maastricht Treaty triggered a worsening in public opinion towards European integration, it did not abruptly turn into a prominent source of conflict at the domestic level. On the contrary, the exogenous shocks—the Euro crisis, the refugee crisis and the Brexit referendum—seem to have had effects on the dynamics of party competition and voting behaviour. Despite the different impacts in Western Europe, these crises may have set in motion a parallel process of change in both the intervened and non-intervened countries, with European integration becoming a more politicised conflict. They seem to have provided two strategic incentives to the different party types. On the one hand, in the aftermath of the multiples crises, the protest anti-EU parties are expected to increase their entrepreneurial efforts on the EU issues so as to win more votes, while, on the other hand, the mainstream pro-EU parties are foreseen to downplay their entrepreneurial efforts to lock up their electoral dominance.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

21

Existing works have largely addressed three fundamental dimensions of the politicisation notion—salience, actor expansion and polarisation. This literature has identified the pivotal role of political parties in activating or repressing old/new issues and it has provided an extensive insight into the trends of the supply-side of politics. However, this three-dimensional notion of politicisation has overridden the demand-side of politics, only accounting for the changing trends in the contemporary party systems. This work aims to challenge this limitation by also focusing on the broader political system, compounded by non-elite citizens, and introducing another dimension into the politicisation notion—voter/party issue congruence. In doing so, the objective is to complement or disclaim the current findings on the EU conflict politicisation, looking at the potential (mis-)match between parties and voters along a fully-fledged pro-/anti-EU dimension. The multiple set of crises has probably reinforced this dimensionality, which may have (re-)structured inter-party competition and electoral behaviour at the domestic level. Many works have advanced an alternative two-dimensional view of the political world, made up of both an economic and cultural dimension. The latter has been dominated by the division between cosmopolitans and nationalists, with EU issues being a minor element within this broader controversy. Nonetheless, this work refutes this alleged subsidiarity role of the European integration conflict, advancing the growing importance and independence of the pro-/anti-EU dimension. The study is divided into four parts. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3) provides a series of concept definitions, which are essential theoretical devices for the subsequent empirical analysis. This section mainly deals with the notion of conflict politicisation and issue entrepreneurship, also outlining a typology of the different party types competing in Western Europe, relying on the academic literature. The second part (Chapter 4) maps out the party strategies on the EU issues, analysing the entrepreneurial fluctuations of the political actors. This step deals with the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1) and the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2). The third part (Chapters 5 and 6) presents a literature review on the main approaches of voting behaviour, outlining multi-variate models to assess the strength of EU issue voting. These models aim at developing arguments about how European integration has swayed electoral behaviour in general, taking into account all the main concurrent explanations. The core objective of this part is in observing the extent of EU issue voting, testing Hypothesis 3, 4a and

22

L. CARRIERI

4b. The fourth part (Chapter 7) summarises all the previous findings, advancing some theoretical generalisations regarding the effective politicisation of the European integration by observing the congruence between the electoral supply and voter responses.

Bibliography Abou-Chadi, Tarik, and Werner Krause. 2020. The Causal Effect of Radical Right Success on Mainstream Parties’ Policy Positions: A Regression Discontinuity Approach. British Journal of Political Science 50 (4): 829–47. Alonso, Sonia, and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. 2018. The Costs of Responsibility for the Political Establishment of the Eurozone (1999–2015). Party Politics 26 (3): 317–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068818766182. Bakker, Ryan, Catherine de Vries, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Marco Steenbergen, and Milada Vachudova. 2015. Measuring Party Positions in Europe: The Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend FILE, 1999–2010. Party Politics 21 (1): 143–52. Bartolini, Stefano. 2000. The Class Cleavage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building, and Political Structuring between the Nation State and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press. Bornschier, Simon. 2010. Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Börzel, Tanja A., and Thomas Risse. 2018. From the Euro to the Schengen Crises: European Integration Theories, Politicization, and Identity Politics. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 83–108. Bosco, Anna, and Susannah Verney. 2012. Electoral Epidemic: The Political Cost of Economic Crisis in Southern Europe, 2010–11. South European Society and Politics 17 (2): 129–54. Budge, Ian, and Dennis Farlie. 1983. Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty–Three Democracies. London: George Allen and Unwin. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cees, Van der Eijk, Hermann Schmitt, and Tanja Binder. 2005. Left–Right Orientations and Party Choice. In The European Voter: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, ed. Jacques Thomassen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

23

Chiaramonte, Alessandro, and Vincenzo Emanuele. 2017. Party System Volatility, Regeneration and De-Institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015). Party Politics 23 (4): 376–88. Conti, Nicolò, Danilo Di Mauro, and Vincenzo Memoli. 2019. Citizens, Immigration and the EU as a Shield. European Union Politics 20 (3): 492–510. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116519834648. Dalton, Russell J., David M. Farrell, and Ian McAllister. 2011. Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Sio, Lorenzo, and Romain Lachat. 2020. Issue Competition in Western Europe: An Introduction. West European Politics 43 (3): 509–17. De Vries, E. Catherine. 2007. Sleeping Giant: Fact or Fairytale? How European Integration Affects National Elections. European Union Politics 8 (3): 363– 85. De Vries, E. Catherine. 2010. EU Issue Voting: Asset or Liability? How European Integration Affects Parties’ Electoral Fortunes. European Union Politics 11 (1): 89–117. De Vries, E. Catherine, and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–68. De Wilde, Pieter, and Michael Zürn. 2012. Can the Politicization of European Integration Be Reversed? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 50: 137– 153. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York. NY: Harper and Row. Eichenberg, Richard C., and Russell J. Dalton. 2007. Post-Maastricht Blues: The Transformation of Citizen Support for European Integration, 1973–2004. Acta Politica 42 (2–3): 128–52. Fabbrini, Sergio. 2013. Intergovernmentalism and Its Limits: Assessing the European Union’s Answer to the Euro Crisis. Comparative Political Studies 46 (9): 1003–29. ———. 2015. Which European Union? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2019. Europe’s Future: Decoupling and Reforming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fuchs, Dieter, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. 1990. The Left-Right Schema. In Continuities in Political Action: A Longitudinal Study of Political Orientations in Three Western Democracies, ed. Jennings, M. Kent and Jan W. Van Deth, 203–34. Berlin: De Gruyter. Gabel, Matthew J., and Christopher J. Anderson. 2002. The Structure of Citizen Attitudes and the European Political Space. Comparative Political Studies 35 (8): 893–913.

24

L. CARRIERI

Grande, Edgar, and Swen Hutter. 2016a. Beyond Authority Transfer: Explaining the Politicisation of Europe. West European Politics 39 (1): 23–43. ———. 2016b. Introduction: European Integration and the Challenge of Politicisation. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande and Hanspeter Kriesi, 3–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grande, Edgar, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Conclusions: The Postfunctionalists Were (Almost) Right. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 279–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, Peter A. 2018. Varieties of Capitalism in Light of the Euro Crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 7–30. Hernández, Enrique, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Turning Your Back on the EU: The Role of Eurosceptic Parties in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Electoral Studies 44: 515–24. Hix, Simon. 1999. The Political System of the European Union. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hix, Simon, and Christopher Lord. 1997. Political Parties in the European Union. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hobolt, Sara B. 2015. Public Attitudes Toward the Eurozone Crisis. In Democratic Politics in a European Union Under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, 48–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2014. Blaming Europe? Responsibility Without Accountability in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis. West European Politics 39 (5): 971–91. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine De Vries. 2015. Issue Entrepreneurship and Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1159–85. ———. 2016. Turning Against the Union? The Impact of the Crisis on the Eurosceptic Vote in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Electoral Studies 44: 504–14. Hoeglinger, Dominic. 2016a. Politicizing European Integration: Struggling with the Awakening Giant. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2016b. The Politicisation of European Integration in Domestic Election Campaigns. West European Politics 39 (1): 44–63. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2009. A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 1–23. ———. 2018. Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 109–35.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

25

Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, and Carole J. Wilson. 2002. Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European Integration? Comparative Political Studies 35 (8): 965–89. Hutter, Swen, and Edgar Grande. 2014. Politicizing Europe in the National Electoral Arena: A Comparative Analysis of Five West European Countries, 1970–2010. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52 (5): 1002–18. Hutter, Swen, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Politicising Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2019. Politicizing Europe in Times of Crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (7): 996–1017. Inglehart, Ronald. 2015. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1994. The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2007. The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns. European Union Politics 8 (1): 83–108. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2014. The Populist Challenge. West European Politics 37 (2): 361–78. ———. 2016. The Politicization of European Integration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54: 32–47. Kriesi, Hanspeter, and Edgar Grande. 2014. Political Debate in a Polarizing Union. In Democratic politics in a European Union under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. The Euro Crisis: A Boost to the Politicisation of European Integration? In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande and Hanspeter Kriesi, 240–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2006. Globalization and the Transformation of the National Political Space: Six European Countries Compared. European Journal of Political Research 45 (6): 921–56. Laffan, Brigid. 2014a. Framing the Crisis, Defining the Problems: Decoding the Euro Area Crisis. Perspectives on European Politics and Society 15(3): 266–80. ———. 2014b. Testing Times: The Growing Primacy of Responsibility in the Euro Area. West European Politics 37 (2): 270–87. Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1990. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Lindberg, Leon N, and Stuart A Scheingold. 1970. Europe’s Would-Be Policy.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York, NY: Free press. Mair, Peter. 2000. The Limited Impact of Europe on National Party Systems. West European Politics 23 (4): 27–51.

26

L. CARRIERI

Majone, Giandomenico. 1994. The Rise of the Regulatory State in Europe. West European Politics 17 (3): 77–101. Morlino, Leonardo. 2012. Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures, Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morlino, Leonardo, and Francesco Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mudde, Cas. 2019. The 2019 EU Elections: Moving the Center. Journal of Democracy 30 (4): 20–34. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2019. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pirro, Andrea L.P., and Paul Taggart. 2018. The Populist Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: A Framework for Analysis. Politics 38 (3): 253–62. Pirro, Andrea L.P., Paul Taggart, and Stijn Van Kessel. 2018. The Populist Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: Comparative Conclusions. Politics 38 (3): 378–90. Polk, Jonathan, Jan Rovny, Ryan Bakker, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Jelle Koedam, Filip Kostelka, Gary Marks, Gijs Schumacher, Marco Steenbergen, Milada Anna Vachudova, and Marko Zilovic. 2017. Explaining the Salience of Anti-Elitism and Reducing Political Corruption for Political Parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data. Research and Politics 4 (1): 1–9. Rubèn, Ruiz-Rufino, and Sonia Alonso. 2017. Democracy without Choice: Citizens’ Perceptions of Government Autonomy during the Eurozone Crisis. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 320–45. Sartori, Giovanni. 1969. From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology. Government and Opposition 4 (2): 195–14. ———. 2005. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR press. Scharpf, Fritz W. 2015. Political Legitimacy in a Non-Optimal Currency Area. In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, 19–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schimmelfennig, Frank. 2015. Liberal Intergovernmentalism and the Euro Area Crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 22 (2): 177–95. ———. 2018. European Integration (Theory) in Times of Crisis: A Comparison of the Euro and Schengen Crises. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (7): 969–89. Seeberg, Henrik Bech. 2017. How Stable Is Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? A Cross-Time, Cross-National Analysis. Political Studies 65 (2): 475–92. Statham, Paul, and Hans-Jörg Trenz. 2015. Understanding the Mechanisms of EU Politicization: Lessons from the Eurozone Crisis. Comparative European Politics 13 (3): 287–306.

1

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICISATION OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION …

27

Steenbergen, Marco R, and Gary Marks. 2004. Introduction: Models of Political Conflict in the European Union. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks, and Marco R. Steenbergen, 1–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stockemer, Daniel, Arne Niemann, Doris Unger, and Johanna Speyer. 2019. The ‘Refugee Crisis,’ Immigration Attitudes, and Euroscepticism. International Migration Review 54 (3): 883–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/019791 8319879926. Taggart, Paul. 1998. A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems. European Journal of Political Research 33 (3): 363–88. Taggart, Paul, and Aleks Szczerbiak. 2018. Putting Brexit into Perspective: The Effect of the Eurozone and Migration Crises and Brexit on Euroscepticism in European States. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (8): 1194–1214. Van der Brug, Wouter, and Joost Van Spanje. 2009. Immigration, Europe and the ‘New’Cultural Dimension. European Journal of Political Research 48(3): 309–34. Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks, and Marco R. Steenbergen, 32–50. Cambridge University Press. Van Kessel, Stijn, Nicola Chelotti, Helen Drake, Juan Roch and Patricia Rodi. 2020. Eager to Leave? Populist Radical Right Parties’ Responses to the UK’s Brexit Vote. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22 (1): 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119886213. Whitefield, Stephen, and Robert Rohrschneider. 2019. Embedding Integration: How European Integration Splits Mainstream Parties. Party Politics 25 (1): 25–35.

CHAPTER 2

Politicisation Through Manipulation: Strategic Party Efforts on EU Issues

2.1

Theories of Conflict Politicisation

A great deal of political science literature has been aimed at forging a clear-cut notion of the politicisation of European integration. In his neo-functionalist work, Schmitter (1969, 166) dealt with the politicisation of the European integration conflict, defining it “as a process of rise in the controversiality of the regional decision-making process ”, whereby “national actors find themselves gradually embroiled in an ever more salient or controversial area of policymaking ”, which is “likely to lead to a widening of the audience or clientele interested and active in integration”. This notion already included some of the main elements that still characterise many contemporary approaches on the politicisation concept (such as enlarging scope of relevant actors and the issue saliency). Modern approaches have defined it as being a political phenomenon occurring when non-political issues become salient, being emphasised and polarised by political actors, which mobilise public opinion (De Wilde et al. 2016; Zeitlin et al. 2019). Grande and Hutter (2016) have recently come up with a minimal definition of the term “as an expansion of the scope of conflict within the political system” (Ibidem, 7), which is based on Schattschneider’s notion of political conflict (1960) and stands out for its flexibility. Schattschneider (1960) considered the mobilisation of bias as pivotal in politicising new issues in the party systems, with political organisations exploiting some conflicts and quashing others. Relying on this © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_2

29

30

L. CARRIERI

framework, Hutter and Grande (2014), identified three main dimensions in the European integration conflict politicisation: 1. Issue saliency (or visibility): one of the key pre-conditions for politicising EU issues. If political parties did not emphasise a political issue in the public agenda, chances of conflict politicisation would certainly vanish. However, Hutter and Grande (2014) countered the argument of saliency being the only driving force behind politicisation, underlining the effects of other determinants in the rise of political conflicts. 2. Expansion of the actors: indicates the number of actors engaged in the public debate. Grande and Hutter (2016a, b) have avoided the too minimal approach for politicisation, based on the exclusive role of party and government elites. Even if the electoral and governmental arenas remain key political grounds for the active mobilisation of new conflicts, social or protest movements seem to have conditioned public debates on European integration by increasing EU issue visibility (Calossi 2016; Della Porta 2015; Della Porta and Caiani 2009). 3. Intensity of conflict: involves the actors having to polarise their positions in order to politicise the European integration conflict, resulting in two opposing and stable camps. The polarisation concept has been a constant in party-system literature, referring to the clear ideological distance between political parties (Sartori 2005). Within the politicisation framework, polarisation is a key catalyst in the emergence of conflicts and is not only a question of a subtle contrast in opinions between parties. It must trigger broad and intense political disagreements, which result in two different constellations of actors, adopting radically distinct stances. In spite of some theoretical variations in their operational definitions, many other scholars have shared some of these basic elements of politicisation (Hoeglinger 2016a, b; Hooghe and Marks 2009; Hutter and Kriesi 2019; De Wilde 2011; De Wilde et al. 2016; De Wilde and Zürn 2012; Zürn 2019), without exclusively focusing on EU institutional development. This does not exclude the involvement of different types of political actors (parties, governments, social movements, etc.), which may act in different ways to politicise a conflict in a party system.

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

31

By looking at the role of political parties, national parliaments, mass media, social movements, interest groups and public opinion, these works have modernised the pre-existing literature. Furthermore, they have not been exclusively focused on the functional spill-over effects forecasted by the neo-functionalist approach (Schmitter 1969), which could lead to an almost automatic increase in European integration politicisation. Nor have they fully shared the elitist bias of liberal intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik 1993), which has mainly concentrated on the influence of interest groups and national governments in intergovernmental channels. Even if this theoretical background provides important insights into the current politicisation process, it does require some qualifications. Political pressures from below, from the social or protest movements, are clearly conducive to EU issues being translated into publicly debated matters (Calossi 2016). This bottom-up social contestation has been considered one of the preconditions for the establishment of a real European public sphere (Risse 2003). However, in spite of their transformative potential, the influence of the social movements has not been so evident in explaining EU issue politicisation. In fact, the democratic deficit at the EU level has certainly limited the actions of the transnational social organisations, while national protest movements have basically targeted their criticism at national governments (Della Porta and Caiani 2009; Della Porta and Parks 2018). As well, a new wave of social protest has emerged in the wake of the Euro crisis (Quaranta 2016), largely seeking to reverse the austerity policies promoted by the EU institutions (Calossi 2016). Nonetheless, these societal upheavals mainly occurred between 2009 and 2013, lacking in any transnational coordination and without leading to any pan-European social sphere (Pianta and Gerbaudo 2015). Thus, the assumption that the involvement of movements is a necessary politicisation condition appears to be too restrictive, overlooking the impact of party strategic interactions. Moreover, this work contends that there is a further limitation in the above-mentioned politicisation theory proposed by Hutter and Grande (2014), which revolves around the participation of a wide range of actors resulting in creating an actual constellation (see also: Hutter and Kriesi 2019; Kriesi et al. 2008). The chances of observing and finding broad and lasting constellations of actors, made up of political parties, interest groups and movements, is extremely rare, limiting the possibility to come up with any theoretical generalisations. Therefore, this book is based on a politicisation notion embedded in the strategies of political parties, which

32

L. CARRIERI

emphasise and polarise new issues, resulting in new conflicts arising in the party system. This is consistent with the seminal post-functionalist approach outlined by Hooghe and Marks (2009), who highlighted the pivotal role played by parties. To assess the level of politicisation in a party system, saliency and polarisation yardsticks have been employed, rejecting the expansion of actors as an indicator of the new conflict emergence within party systems. Furthermore, one of the goals is to shed light on the broader politicisation process occurring in the political system by including the general electorate as a further element. To examine a political system politicisation, the impact of EU issues on electoral preferences must be tested. Thus, a two-fold notion of conflict politicisation has been advanced, entailing an extensive analysis of party EU issue entrepreneurship, jointly with EU issue voting during the period under study.

2.2

Decoupling Politicisation: A Two-Fold Notion

According to Hooghe and Marks (2009), EU issues have entered the core of political contestation through party actor efforts. In their view, the Maastricht Treaty has gradually produced new incentives for the political parties, spurring unprecedented identitarian concerns at the mass level. The intensifying of the authority transfer has undermined public support for the EU, shifting from a permissive consensus to a constraining dissent (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970). Since the 1990s, this trend can be witnessed in the so-called inverted U-curve, with mainstream parties steadily supporting European integration and protest (radical left and right) parties increasingly opposing it (Hooghe et al. 2002). Although the authority transfer did not increase European integration politicisation during the immediate post-Maastricht era, it did unleash fundamental identity dilemmas, with many citizens maintaining that supranational integration was incompatible with the political principles of the national polity (Grande and Hutter 2016a, b). Therefore, these institutional factors have probably played a role in opening up windows of opportunity for triggering a new conflict, revolving around a pro-/anti-European divide-line (Ray 1999, 2007; Steenbergen and Marks 2004). Hooghe and Marks (2009) have shown that political parties took centre stage by injecting EU issues into the national political debate. The two scholars assumed that parties aim at politicising an issue when they

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

33

perceive it as holding some electoral benefits, thus increasing its saliency. At the same time, political actors are also faced with many constraints in achieving policy shifts within the main issue dimensions, restricted by their ideological reputations (Grofman 2004; Hooghe and Marks 2018; Hooghe et al. 2002; Marks and Wilson 2000; Marks et al. 2002; De Sio and Weber 2014). Established party families traditionally find it difficult to accommodate Euroscepticism in their political platforms, since they have historically projected and sustained the overall integration project. On the contrary, this political source of contestation may be more easily owned and capitalised on by the radical right and radical left parties, which have consistently rejected integration. As well, leaders seek to avoid raising an issue that may jeopardise the internal party unity, leading to electoral losses. In the case of the mainstream parties, the anti-European attitudes have often taken the shape of party factionalism (Taggart 1998). This theoretical framework advanced by Hooghe and Marks (2009) has basically established a model of politicisation based on strategic party interactions. Even if they have not ignored the institutional environment and public opinion trends, they have developed a more minimalist conception, “assuming that how an issue relates to major conflicts in a society, and whether it is politicized or not, are determined by political parties seeking votes and avoiding internal conflict, while constrained by their ideology” (Hooghe and Marks 2009, 21). Green-Pedersen (2012) has also narrowed down the politicisation concept, contending that the party strategies mainly relied on the saliency parties ascribed to EU issues during campaigns. Political actors may have different incentives in tackling policy positions during campaigns, accentuating those issues on which they hold a greater credibility and competitive advantage (Budge et al. 1987; Budge and Farlie 1983; Petrocik 1996; Riker 1986). Although positional adjustments have been considered as residual tactical devices, policy shifts on the pro-/anti-EU issues seem to be an important part of politicisation (Grande and Hutter 2016a, b; Hoeglinger 2016a, b; Hutter and Grande 2014; Hutter and Kriesi 2019; Kriesi 2016; De Wilde et al. 2016; Zeitlin et al. 2019). Indeed, parties may deliberately, vaguely outline their policy positions to blur the issues, seeking to downplay a certain conflict in the political debate (Rovny 2012, 2013, 2015). Furthermore, a minimal positional shift may, to a large extent, destabilise the structure of the issue preferences, especially when some political actors abruptly overturn a pre-established positional equilibrium

34

L. CARRIERI

in the party system. De Vries and Hobolt (2012) have shown the importance of controlling for average party positions within a party system to understand the degree of polarisation concerning EU issues. The magnitude of the party positional switch is regarded to be a function of the mean position of the entire party system, with small variations potentially resulting in important outcomes, polarising the political competition. Therefore, issue emphasis and position polarisation emerge as inevitable preconditions for politicising conflicts within party systems, with the political actors actively promoting new issues on the agenda. These two elements are examined here, merging them into one single formula to assess the party-system conflict politicisation. A party-system politicisation is defined here as a “process of the transformation of previous non-contentious issues into an object of public contestation, which is mobilised by the parties, emphasising and polarising the new issues within the party system” (Carrieri 2020, 53). This definition draws a top-down picture of politics, with the political parties framing the dominant issues within the agenda, probably guiding electoral preferences. A top-down approach views the parties as chief information devices providing voters with electoral cues (Downs 1957). Therefore, the role of party agents appears to be inevitable in politicising the pro-/anti-European dimension of contestation. According to Hellström (2008), parties have shown that they are capable of strongly affecting public perceptions and attitudes regarding EU issues by effectively cueing constituents. In fact, the complexity of EU issues has made voters increasingly reliant on party assessments and the framing on this issue dimension. Even if some works have not set aside the importance of public opinion fluctuations as fundamental incentives for EU conflict mobilisation (Angelucci and Isernia 2020; Sanders and Toka 2013; Steenbergen et al. 2007), growing evidence is emerging of the marked effects of partisan cueing on voter preferences (Ray 2003; Adams et al. 2012; Brader and Tucker 2012; Pannico 2017; Ray 2003). The hypothesis is that the information costs related to EU issues have risen over time and, consequently, party cueing activities have increasingly affected electoral preferences. Parties provide voters with the main existing source of political information in the real political world, establishing the fundamental alternatives in terms of issues. Hence, the party-system politicisation entails party entrepreneurial commitments to EU issues in order to sway electoral choices.

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

35

However, party strategies may fail miserably when they do not evoke any emotional responses from the voters, being incompatible with their preferences. Carmines and Stimson (1986, 1989) described a multifaceted process of issue evolution, requiring the clarity of elite positioning to structure a certain issue in the sphere of mass politics. Indeed, the potential alterations in partisan alignments depend on a subset of mass reactions to these elite strategies. The emerging new issues must be able to arouse polarised emotions in citizens so as to trigger major shifts in public opinion, producing an electoral realignment. Elite behaviour should be accompanied by the mass public having clear cognitive images and well-defined emotional concerns on the new issue. Although the issue evolution theory originated in the USA in an attempt to explain partisan changes occurring over generations, it does provide us with some insights into refining a politicisation notion, extending it to the political system realm. This work argues that conflict politicisation involves linking the elite policy positions with the broader mass orientations in the political system. The political system also involves a non-elite sphere (Sartori 2005), including citizen arenas, “which are populated not by political and societal elites, but by laypeople without professional interest in politics ” (Hurrelmann et al. 2015, 46). Some works have shown to what extent public opinion attitudes to European integration have become structured and well-defined (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004; McLaren 2007), fostering a conflict politicisation. However, by merely tracing public opinion fluctuations on EU issues, no causal relation would emerge, and would only simply result in a deductive test unrelated to party entrepreneurship. To demonstrate a linkage between party strategies and voter responses on a salient and polarised pro/anti-EU dimension, this work rules out an exclusive focus on public opinion trends. Instead, it identifies the party–voter issue congruence as a necessary precondition to politicise a conflict in the political system. As previously mentioned, party entrepreneurial efforts are conducive to mobilising a conflict in the party system. This view of a model of politicisation is consistent with the above-mentioned studies, which have identified the main dimensions that can spark off a new conflict in the party system. Nonetheless, a political system politicisation demands a stronger connection between altering party supply and voter preferences. Public attitudes towards the EU have worsened (Hobolt 2015) with new voter demands emerging in the political market (Wheatley and Mendez 2019). Voter–party issue congruence is well suited to understanding

36

L. CARRIERI

whether a certain conflict has arisen by involving both elites and the mass public. Therefore, the proximity or the minimum distance theory (Downs 1957; Enelow and Hinich 1984) is considered here as the most suitable empirical device to assess this congruence. The objective is testing whether voters increase their electoral preferences for the party closest to their issue position along the pro-/anti-EU dimension, thereby, filling a gap in the existing literature. By underlining the necessity of a party–voter interplay, the following definition is proposed: “To politicise a conflict in the political system, the voter responses should match the party policy (re)positioning, revealing a party-voter congruence on the new issues, which become significant electoral determinants ” (Carrieri 2020, 54). This two-step process of politicisation may lead to the emergence of an autonomous pro-/anti-European dimension of conflict, cutting across the traditional left–right ideological divide. By empirically identifying two different notions of conflict politicisation, the empirical test covers both the demand- and supply-side of politics, shedding light on the establishment of the pro-/anti-European dimension. No conflict dimension can arise without voter reaction, with the altering party supply being a necessary precondition to realigning electoral preferences along the pro-/anti-European dimension.

2.3

The Notion of EU Issue Entrepreneurship

The manipulation of issue dimensionality lies at the core of political conflict, with dominant party actors (mainstream) seeking to lock up the pre-existing conflict, as well as the peripheral ones (protest), so as to introduce a new dimensionality of electoral contestation (Mair 1997; Otjes and Katsanidou 2017; Schattschneider 1960). Many theories on party strategies have tried to capture this dynamic, revealing to be effective in explaining the different party incentives on the pro-/anti-European dimension. One of the most notable approaches has been the Rikerian notion of heresthetic, which refers to the party activity of restructuring political competition (Riker 1986). One of the tactical devices available to parties is actually the manipulation of the political contestation dimensionality. By politicising a new issue dimension, the losing parties may unsettle the previous electoral equilibrium, damaging their political opponents and gaining electoral payoffs: “If successful, this maneuver produces a new majority coalition composed of the old minority and the portion of the old majority that likes the alternative better” (Riker 1986, 1). In Riker’s

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

37

view (1986), party strategic efforts in establishing alternative dimensions have led to major shifts in electoral alignments, reshaping the distribution of the median voter along policy dimensions.1 Similarly, Carmines and Stimson (1989) argued that losing politicians try to increase consensus by introducing new issues, seeking to generate new conflicts and realign voters to become the new winners. As already mentioned, Carmines and Stimson (1986, 1989) outlined a theory of issue evolution, requiring a complex interplay between party strategies and voter reactions to unleash new conflicts. Therefore, political entrepreneurs draw attention to previously neglected issues, creating a new issue dimension, on which they can build a new majority and produce intra-party divisions among their competitors (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; Rabinowitz and Macdonald 1989; Rovny 2012, 2013; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). As previously pointed out, the mainstream parties have suffered from internal factionalism over EU issues, with Eurosceptics often opposing Europhiles, undermining the homogeneity of the party programmes (De Sio et al. 2016; Taggart 1998; Williams and Spoon 2015). On the other hand, the protest parties may find more incentives in realigning the voters on the pro-/anti-European dimension to reverse their electoral fortunes, with the mainstream parties reacting to a much lesser degree on this issue dimension (Kriesi 2016; Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2016). Hooghe and Marks (2009) have summed up this pattern as follows: “Most mainstream parties continued to resist politicizing the issue. But a number of populist, non-governing parties smelt blood. Their instinctive Euro-scepticism was closer to the pulse of public opinion. On the far left, opposition to European integration expressed antipathy to capitalism; on the populist right, it expressed defence of national community” (Hooghe and Marks 2009, 21). A cornerstone of the above-mentioned theoretical efforts has been the notion of saliency, which revolves around the parties’ selective emphases on the issues. The previous section has already identified the strategic behaviour of political actors, with parties choosing to draw attention to certain issues during electoral campaigns. “They seem to think that certain

1 According to Riker (1986), the American presidential elections of 1860 epitomised the notion of heresthetics, where Abraham Lincoln and the newly founded Republican Party emphasised the abolishment of slavery issue to defeat and divide the hegemonic Democratic Party. This tactic proved to be successful, triggering new partisan alignments that lasted until the emergence of the New Deal coalition in the 1930s.

38

L. CARRIERI

policy areas attract a net inflow of votes to the party when they become salient. Conversely, other areas favour rivals: mentioning them at all (even to refute mistaken policies) runs the risk of rendering an unfavourable issue salient and helping to push voters into another party” (Budge and Farlie 1983, 24). The saliency theory mainly hinges on the notion of issue ownership or credibility, that is, the degree to which a party has developed a good image in handling a certain issue policy (Van der Brug 2004; Petrocik 1996; Stokes 1963). This may stem from the party’s prior governmental performance or, instead, it could arise from its ideological proximity on that issue position (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2009). Consequently, parties are not prone to reckon with the whole range of issue alternatives during elections (Budge et al. 1987; Budge and Farlie 1983). On the contrary, political actors tend to mobilise voters by prioritising the issue that they have owned over time, shelving those issues that could provide electoral advantages for their opponents (Bélanger 2003; Bélanger and Meguid 2008). The extent of a party-system politicisation is highly conditioned by the level of saliency political parties ascribe to EU issues, which could subsequently be translated into new voting alignments along the pro-/anti-European dimension (Green-Pedersen 2012; De Vries 2007, 2010). Restructuring the dimensionality of contestation is a political attempt to increase or decrease the perceived saliency of partisan conflicts at the mass level. Neither the manipulation of political dimensionality (Riker 1986) nor the patterns of issue evolution (Carmines and Stimson 1986, 1989) can ever take place without party strategic emphases on given issues. By emphasising their positions, protest parties may introduce a pro-\anti-European dimension of competition, potentially reshaping voting preferences (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). However, when the political contest involves a multiple dimensionality, some established parties employ counter-strategies to deflect the saliency of the new issues (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009; Otjes and Katsanidou 2017). Thus, by manipulating the saliency and strengthening the ownership of a certain issue, parties may be able to redraw the conflict lines to increase their electoral payoffs. Nevertheless, the concept of saliency requires some changes in order to capture the main strategic devices of contemporary parties. In fact, party manoeuvring in policy space has been considered a minor tactical asset, with political actors being ideologically inflexible regarding pro-/anti-EU issues (Hooghe and Marks 2009, 2018;

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

39

Marks and Wilson 2000). It is contended here that the party positions on the main political dimension(s) may actively interact with the issue saliency, which cannot be separated from a minimal reference to the structure of policy preferences. Parties often take extreme positions to set themselves apart from their competitors, achieving an ideological distinctiveness (Wagner 2012). The hypothesis is that by expressing a salient and extreme position on an issue, a party may boost the importance of a given policy dimensionality, strengthening its control over the political agenda. Jan Rovny (2012, 2013) outlined the position blurring notion, with parties making deliberate efforts to convey ambiguous cues to downplay an emerging dimension. This tactic aims at affecting issue clarity, preventing a fully-fledged politicisation and maintaining the pre-existing set of conflicts. Rovny (2012, 273) stresses the ambiguity inherent in the blurring strategy, which seeks “to misrepresent the distance between the party and its potential voters on the critical dimension”. When a party adopts moderate stances on a policy, it often aims at deflecting the magnitude of the emerging issue dimension, making partisan alternatives less clear. Consequently, one of the driving assumptions is that policy position and saliency manipulations are closely interwoven so as to influence the conflict politicisation strategies. Hobolt and De Vries (2015) further elaborated on many insights presented in the earlier academic literature, developing a clear-cut definition of an issue entrepreneur, which is a party that “actively promotes a previously ignored issue and adopts a position that is different from that of the mean position in the party system” (Ibidem 2015, 1168). Therefore, they combine issue saliency with issue position to understand the party entrepreneurial efforts, proposing the following mathematical formula (P - MP) * SP. MP indicates the party system mean position on a certain issue, while P stands for the single party stance on the same issue, and SP represents the saliency that P attaches to that issue. This empirical tool allows for capturing the extent to which a party deviates from the average position in a party system and how much the same party ascribes saliency to that issue, becoming, or not, an issue entrepreneur. It is worth noting that a positional polarisation must be conceived as a function of the entire party system, with one or more political actors driving centrifugal efforts in the political. Consequently, the mean party position in a system takes on a key importance in identifying those actors acting as issue entrepreneurs on a new policy dimension.

40

L. CARRIERI

Some works have found evidence of a mainstream strategic response on immigration policies, with the established party alternatives increasing saliency and adjusting their positions as a reaction to protest entrepreneurial efforts (Abou-Chadi and Krause 2020; Bale 2008; Grande et al. 2019). Nonetheless, Pardos-Prado (2015) has shown that these positional shifts are more feasible and beneficial for mainstream parties, when the emerging issues can be reconciled along the dominant dimensions of conflict. For instance, centre–right parties would attract voters on immigration, if the latter issues were correlated to the economic dimension, overlapping with the cultural axis of contestation. The correlation between conflict dimensionalities is undeniably one of the major drivers in explaining party electoral success (De Vries and Hobolt 2012). The lack of correlation between a left–right super-dimension and a pro-/anti-European (Steenbergen and Marks 2004) may weaken the dominant conflict lines, becoming a sizeable hurdle for mainstream parties to overcome and limiting their strategic responses. On the contrary, this orthogonality represents a unique opportunity for the protest actors, which have room to manoeuvre to form a winning majority along an alternative dimension. By using the EU issue entrepreneurship index, a crucial empirical test can be carried out, observing which parties achieve a strategic distinctiveness and how they act in contexts where EU issues have a high systemic saliency.

2.4

Decreasing and Increasing Entrepreneurship

By adopting De Vries and Hobolt’s (2012) formula, this work measures the tactical endeavours of the political parties on EU issues. The expectation is that, in the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, while protest parties have increased their degree of EU issue entrepreneurship (H1), the mainstream parties have decreased it (H2). As already mentioned, Hobolt and De Vries (2015) defined an issue entrepreneur as an actor promoting a previously overridden issue by increasing its saliency and deviating its position from the mean of the party system. The latter strategy results in an EU issue entrepreneurship increase, with parties mobilising a new kind of ideological bias among the voters. This pattern appears to describe protest party strategies, aiming at politicising a new dimension of political contestation. At the same time, parties may choose to adopt a different type of strategy, by deliberately de-emphasising a previously overlooked issue and adopting a position that is closer to that of the party-system

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

41

mean position. Those parties adopting this line will end up with an EU issue entrepreneurship decrease, resulting in an issue dismissal to prevent a new dimension being established. Mainstream parties seem to have embodied this strategy, by minimising the EU issue ascribed to saliency and adopting blurred stances. Therefore, it is maintained here, that the contestation between protest and mainstream parties lies in their different degrees of entrepreneurship related to EU issues. Nevertheless, the tension between increasing and decreasing entrepreneurship may actually hamper a deeper politicisation of this conflict, which has been recurrently qualified as “punctuated”, “intermittent” or “limited” (Carrieri 2020; Grande and Kriesi 2016; Green-Pedersen 2019; Hoeglinger 2016a; Kriesi 2016). A protest-based entrepreneurship does not necessarily lead to the transformation of previously non-contentious issues into an object of public contestation within the political system. Mainstream parties may resist this conflict politicisation, successfully dismissing EU issues from the agenda in different ways. Hutter and Kriesi (2019) have recently refined some of their previous findings, showing that during the Euro crisis and refugee crisis the conflict in Europe has become more politicised. They have also observed the different impacts of these shocks in the Southern European and Western-Northern European countries, with the latter being more affected by the refugee crisis and the former by the Euro crisis. Therefore, a systemic politicisation may have occurred, with the radical left/right parties focusing on Euroscepticism and the centre–right/centre–left parties on Europhilia. This scenario reverses some of the expectations of this work by predicting an increasing entrepreneurship of mainstream parties, which may have been forced to highlight this EU issue due to the overwhelming pressure of the mass media and protest parties. As was clearly pointed out in the previous paragraphs, one of the chief goals is to identify the general trends in Western European party supply, through examining strategies undertaken by parties on EU issues. Therefore, the first empirical step will be to provide either a support or a rejection of the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis and Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (Chapter 4), leading to formulating some generalisations. The premise is that the Euro crisis may have prompted some fluctuations in the overall levels of EU issue entrepreneurship, which have recently been strengthened by the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. Nonetheless, other potential consequences of the crises cannot be ignored, which could result in unexpected strategic responses

42

L. CARRIERI

from different parties, eventually disconfirming the mainstream/protest entrepreneurial dichotomy. By observing the fluctuations in the degree of entrepreneurship, those developments deviating from the outlined general patterns (see H1 and H2) must be individuated to increase the accuracy of the findings. Hence, the following four-fold scenario has been devised to empirically capture the dynamics of European integration politicisation in Western Europe: 1. Protest-based Entrepreneurship: According to this scenario, the multiple set of crises has resulted in the protest parties enhancing their entrepreneurial activities, attempting to alter the foundations of electoral contestation. Conversely, mainstream parties have been more committed to extinguishing this issue dimensionality, trying to stabilise the pre-existing configuration of political competition. This strategic polarisation lends empirical support to the core expectations delineated in the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis and Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis. In fact, protest parties, located at the extreme poles of the left–right continuum in the respective party systems, play the role of issue entrepreneurs in Europe. Instead, mainstream parties, concentrated in the more centrist positions along the established ideological divide, have decreased their EU issue entrepreneurship. This scenario identifies the political extremism factor as the main driver in determining the increase in EU issue entrepreneurship. However, this dynamic may unleash only a moderate level of European integration politicisation in the party system, with these politicising/depoliticising opposing strengths reducing the impact of EU issue voting. 2. Systemic Entrepreneurship: In this scenario, the multiple set of crises has been a catalyst in boosting European integration politicisation, bringing about a notable shift in both party-type strategies. The increasing entrepreneurship is more evenly distributed along the whole political spectrum, also involving those actors located at the ideological centre. Mainstream parties tend to enhance their entrepreneurship, rather than overshadow the EU issues. This pattern contradicts the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis, only supporting the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis. Nonetheless, this systemic entrepreneurship is likely to be more conducive to party-system politicisation, with the EU issues entering the core of the political debate. When most parties engage in an activity

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

43

of entrepreneurship, this source of political conflict should result in being more strongly politicised in the public debate. Thus, an outright contrast between the pro-European and anti-European parties may foster the transformation of European integration into a contested political issue, conditioning voting preferences. 3. Limited Entrepreneurship: This scenario mainly shows that the multiple set of crises has not resulted in any notable impact on the magnitude of entrepreneurship, which has remained markedly weak. Protest parties have probably not encountered great opportunities to strengthen their electoral cues on European integration, not aiming at politicising this conflict. Conversely, mainstream parties may have effectively debilitated the pro-/anti-European dimension, by deflecting the EU issues and blurring their stances on this potential conflict. This pattern evidently substantiates the expectations on mainstream strategies, rejecting the predicted entrepreneurial activity undertaken by the protest parties. In this scenario, parties have not acted as EU politicisation agents, limiting their efforts in creating this dimension of political conflict. Thus, mainstream parties, in spite of the transformative potential resulting from the economic downturn, have successfully achieved the de-politicisation strategy of the European integration conflict, which has slightly swayed the electoral alignments. 4. Pre-existing Entrepreneurship: This last scenario disputes the explanatory power of the multiple set of crises in party entrepreneurial efforts, without necessarily falsifying the overall politicisation of European integration. This pattern foresees that party actors had already enhanced their entrepreneurship on EU issues in the pre-crisis era. Consequently, the windows of opportunity for politicising this conflict have been opened up by other factors, probably entrenched in the national culture. The present dynamic does not necessarily question the general patterns on the entrepreneurship strategies adopted by the mainstream and protest parties, as seen in our hypotheses but, instead, it disproves the catalyst effects of the multiple set of crises, disclaiming the validity of our expectations. These four scenarios consider all the main possibilities concerning entrepreneurship, which do not necessarily match the set of expectations

44

L. CARRIERI

outlined in H1 and H2. This enquiry represents one of the foundations for explaining the elite positioning/re-positioning on European integration-related issues, which may have spurred important electoral realignments. The first scenario, the protest-based entrepreneurship, is more in line with our first set of hypotheses, but it does not necessarily produce a stronger level of politicisation. It may, in fact, limit the degree of EU issue voting. The second scenario, the systemic Entrepreneurship, although contradicting the alleged entrepreneurial actions of mainstream parties, may actually result in a deeper politicisation. The third scenario, the limited entrepreneurship, fundamentally falsifies the politicisation of the European integration conflict by identifying the lack of protest party strategic agency. The last scenario, the pre-existing entrepreneurship, contests the Euro crisis impact, without necessarily disqualifying the overall politicisation hypothesis. An important empirical step will involve observing the different scenarios emerging in two different country clusters. The introduction has already identified a divide-line between intervened and non-intervened countries (Ruiz-Rufino and Alonso 2017; Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018). This distinction may have acted as an important mediating factor in spurring a different degree of conflict politicisation, with the exogenous shocks interacting with pre-established party-system aspects (Hernández and Kriesi 2016a, b; Hutter and Kriesi 2019; Hutter et al. 2018; Kriesi 2016; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). However, this work hypothesises an ideological convergence between non-intervened and intervened countries, which have both seen an increase in party-based Euroscepticism following the multiple set of crises. To ascertain the emergence of similar patterns of political contestation, Chapter 4 includes a country-level control by splitting the sample of countries into two groups. Therefore, the objective is two-fold. On the one hand, the empirical test will revolve around the general patterns of entrepreneurship in Western Europe, understanding which strategic scenario is more apt to capture the party supply in the country sample under study. On the other hand, an intervened/non-intervened country control is introduced to identify potential convergence/differences pertaining to EU issue entrepreneurship.

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

2.5

45

Conclusions

This chapter has looked at various contributions on conflict politicisation, assessing the existing works done on to this subject. By critically reviewing this literature, a two-fold notion of politicisation has been introduced, distinguishing between a party system and political system politicisation. This distinction lays the necessary theoretical ground to empirically ascertain the current degree of European integration politicisation, paving the way for testing the entrepreneurship hypotheses (H1 and H2). By combining spatial and saliency approaches and drawing up a set of strategic incentives owned by each party type, an empirical tool-kit has been created in the current chapter. The notion of EU issue entrepreneurship will be the cornerstone of this empirical part (Chapter 4), which attempts to enhance the findings on party-system politicisation in Western Europe. This chapter has also explored all the potential patterns of party entrepreneurial efforts, encompassing those scenarios that do not necessarily corroborate the work’s hypotheses. By taking into account the different possibilities of party entrepreneurship in Western Europe, all virtual trajectories on party-system politicisation have been made available, potentially opening up new areas for studying the evolving trends in party supply.

Bibliography Abou-Chadi, Tarik, and Werner Krause. 2020. The Causal Effect of Radical Right Success on Mainstream Parties’ Policy Positions: A Regression Discontinuity Approach. British Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 829–47. Adams, James, Jane Green, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2012. Has the British Public Depolarized along with Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion. Comparative Political Studies 45 (4): 507–30. Angelucci, Davide, and Pierangelo Isernia. 2020. Politicization and Security Policy: Parties, Voters and the European Common Security and Defense Policy. European Union Politics 21 (1): 64–86. Bale, Tim. 2008. Turning Round the Telescope. Centre-Right Parties and Immigration and Integration Policy in Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 15 (3): 315–30. Bélanger, Éric. 2003. Issue Ownership by Canadian Political Parties 1953–2001. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 36 (3): 539–58.

46

L. CARRIERI

Bélanger, Éric, and Bonnie M. Meguid. 2008. Issue Salience, Issue Ownership, and Issue-Based Vote Choice. Electoral Studies 27 (3): 477–91. Brader, Ted, and Joshua A. Tucker. 2012. Following the Party’s Lead: Party Cues, Policy Opinion, and the Power of Partisanship in Three Multiparty Systems. Comparative Politics 44 (4): 403. Budge, Ian, and Dennis Farlie. 1983. Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-Three Democracies. London: George Allen and Unwin. Budge, Ian, Hearl Derek, David Robertson, and Derek Hearl. 1987. Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analyses of Post-War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calossi, Enrico. 2016. Anti-Austerity Left Parties in the European Union. Competition, Coordination and Integration. Pisa: Pisa University Press. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1986. On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution. American Political Science Review 80 (3): 901–20. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Carrieri, Luca. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica 50 (1): 52–67. De Sio, Lorenzo, Mark N Franklin, and Till Weber. 2016. The Risks and Opportunities of Europe: How Issue Yield Explains (Non-) Reactions to the Financial Crisis. Electoral Studies 44: 483–91. De Sio, Lorenzo, and Till Weber. 2014. Issue Yield: A Model of Party Strategy in Multidimensional Space. American Political Science Review 108 (4): 870–85. De Vries, Catherine E. 2007. Sleeping Giant: Fact or Fairytale? How European Integration Affects National Elections. European Union Politics 8 (3): 363– 85. ———. 2010. EU Issue Voting: Asset or Liability? How European Integration Affects Parties’ Electoral Fortunes. European Union Politics 11 (1): 89–117. De Vries, Catherine E, and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–68. De Wilde, Pieter. 2011. No Polity for Old Politics? A Framework for Analyzing the Politicization of European Integration. Journal of European Integration 33 (5): 559–75. De Wilde, Pieter, Anna Leupold, and Henning Schmidtke. 2016. Introduction: The Differentiated Politicisation of European Governance. West European Politics 39 (1): 3–22.

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

47

De Wilde, Pieter, and Michael Zürn. 2012. Can the Politicization of European Integration Be Reversed? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 50: 137– 53. Della Porta, Donatella. 2015. Social Movements in Times of Austerity: Bringing Capitalism Back into Protest Analysis. Oboken: Wiley. Della Porta, Donatella, and Louisa Parks. 2018. Social Movements, the European Crisis, and EU Political Opportunities. Comparative European Politics 16 (1): 85–102. Della Porta, Donatella, and Manuela Caiani. 2009. Social Movements and Europeanization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row. Enelow, James M., and Melvin J. Hinich. 1984. The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grande, Edgar, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Conclusions: The Postfunctionalists Were (Almost) Right. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 279–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grande, Edgar, and Swen Hutter. 2016a. Beyond Authority Transfer: Explaining the Politicisation of Europe. West European Politics 39 (1): 23–43. ———. 2016b. Introduction: European Integration and the Challenge of Politicisation. In Politicising Europe, ed. Hutter, Swen, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 3–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grande, Edgar, Tobias Schwarzbözl, and Matthias Fatke. 2019. Politicizing Immigration in Western Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (10): 1444–63. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2012. A Giant Fast Asleep? Party Incentives and the Politicisation of European Integration. Political Studies 60 (1): 115–30. ———. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grofman, Bernard. 2004. Downs and Two-Party Convergence. Annual. Review. Political. Science 7: 25–46. Hellström, Johan. 2008. Who Leads, Who Follows? Re-Examining the PartyElectorate Linkages on European Integration. Journal of European Public Policy 15 (8): 1127–44. Hernández, Enrique, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. The Electoral Consequences of the Financial and Economic Crisis in Europe. European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 203–24. ———. 2016b. Turning Your Back on the EU. The Role of Eurosceptic Parties in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Electoral Studies 44: 515–24.

48

L. CARRIERI

Hobolt, Sara B. 2015. Public Attitudes Toward the Eurozone Crisis. In Democratic Politics in a European Union Under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, 48–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine E. De Vries. 2015. Issue Entrepreneurship and Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1159–85. Hoeglinger, Dominic. 2016. Politicizing European Integration: Struggling with the Awakening Giant. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2016b. The Politicisation of European Integration in Domestic Election Campaigns. West European Politics 39 (1): 44–63. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2009. A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 1–23. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2018. Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 109–35. Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, and Carole J. Wilson. 2002. Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European Integration? Comparative Political Studies 35 (8): 965–89. Hurrelmann, Achim, Anna Gora, and Andrea Wagner. 2015. The Politicization of European Integration: More Than an Elite Affair? Political Studies 63 (1): 43–59. Hutter, Swen, and Edgar Grande. 2014. Politicizing Europe in the National Electoral Arena: A Comparative Analysis of Five West E Uropean Countries, 1970–2010. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52 (5): 1002–18. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2019. Politicizing Europe in Times of Crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (7): 996–1017. Hutter, Swen, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Guillem Vidal. 2018. Old Versus New Politics: The Political Spaces in Southern Europe in Times of Crises. Party Politics 24 (1): 10–22. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2016. The Politicization of European Integration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54: 32–47. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindberg, Leon N., and Stuart A Scheingold. 1970. Europe’s Would-Be Policy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Mair, Peter. 1997. Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations. New. York: Oxford University Press. Marks, Gary, and Carole J. Wilson. 2000. The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration. British Journal of Political Science 30 (3): 433–59.

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

49

Marks, Gary, Carole J. Wilson, and Leonard Ray. 2002. National Political Parties and European Integration. American Journal of Political Science 585–94. McLaren, Lauren. 2007. Explaining Mass-Level Euroscepticism: Identity, Interests, and Institutional Distrust. Acta Politica 42 (2–3): 233–51. Moravcsik, Andrew. 1993. Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 31 (4): 473–524. Morlino, Leonardo, and Francesco Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Otjes, Simon, and Alexia Katsanidou. 2017. Beyond Kriesiland: EU Integration as a Super Issue After the Eurocrisis. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 301–19. Pannico, Roberto. 2017. Is the European Union Too Complicated? Citizens’ Lack of Information and Party Cue Effectiveness. European Union Politics 18 (3): 424–46. Pardos-Prado, Sergi. 2015. How Can Mainstream Parties Prevent Niche Party Success? Center-Right Parties and the Immigration Issue. The Journal of Politics 77 (2): 352–67. Petrocik, John R. 1996. Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, With a 1980 Case Study. American Journal of Political Science 40: 825–50. Pianta, Mario, and Paolo Gerbaudo. 2015. In Search of European Alternatives: Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe. In Subterranean Politics in Europe, ed. Mary Kaldor and Sabine Selchow, 31–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Quaranta, Mario. 2016. Protesting in ‘Hard Times’: Evidence from a Comparative Analysis of Europe, 2000–2014. Current Sociology 64 (5): 736–56. Rabinowitz, George, and Stuart Elaine Macdonald. 1989. A Directional Theory of Issue Voting. American Political Science Review 83 (1): 93–121. Ray, Leonard. 1999. Measuring Party Orientations Towards European Integration: Results from an Expert Survey. European Journal of Political Research 36 (2): 283–306. ———. 2003. When Parties Matter: The Conditional Influence of Party Positions on Voter Opinions about European Integration. The Journal of Politics 65 (4): 978–94. ———. 2007. Validity of Measured Party Positions on European Integration: Assumptions, Approaches, and a Comparison of Alternative Measures. Electoral Studies 26 (1): 11–22. Riker, William H. 1986. The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Risse, Thomas. 2003. An Emerging European Public Sphere? Theoretical Clarifications and Empirical Indicators. Paper presented at the annuale meeting of EUSA, Nashville, March 27–30.

50

L. CARRIERI

Rohrschneider, Robert, and Stephen Whitefield. 2016. Responding to Growing European Union-Skepticism? The Stances of Political Parties toward European Integration in Western and Eastern Europe Following the Financial Crisis. European Union Politics 17 (1): 138–61. Rovny, Jan. 2012. Who Emphasizes and Who Blurs? Party Strategies in Multidimensional Competition. European Union Politics 13 (2): 269–92. ———. 2013. Where Do Radical Right Parties Stand? Position Blurring in Multidimensional Competition. European Political Science Review 5 (1): 1–26. ———. 2015. Riker and Rokkan: Remarks on the Strategy and Structure of Party Competition. Party Politics 21 (6): 912–18. Sanders, David, and Gabor Toka. 2013. Is Anyone Listening? Mass and Elite Opinion Cueing in the EU. Electoral Studies 32 (1): 13–25. Sartori, Giovanni. 2005. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR press. Schattschneider, E. E., (1960). The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America.Chicago: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Chicago. Schmitter, Philippe C. 1969. Three Neo-Functional Hypotheses About International Integration. International Organization 23 (1): 161–66. Statham, Paul, and Hans-Jörg Trenz. 2015. Understanding the Mechanisms of EU Politicization: Lessons from the Eurozone Crisis. Comparative European Politics 13 (3): 287–306. Steenbergen, Marco R., Erica E. Edwards, and Catherine E. De Vries. 2007. Who’s Cueing Whom? Mass-Elite Linkages and the Future of European Integration. European Union Politics 8 (1): 13–35. Steenbergen, Marco R., and Gary Marks. 2004. Introduction: Models of Political Conflict in the European Union. In European Integration and Political Conflict, eds. Marks, Gary and Marco R. Steenbergen, 1–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stokes, Donald E. 1963. Spatial Models of Party Competition. American Political Science Review 57 (2): 368–77. Taggart, Paul. 1998. A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems. European Journal of Political Research 33 (3): 363–88. Van der Brug, Wouter. 2004. Issue Ownership and Party Choice. Electoral studies 23 (2): 209–33. Van der Brug, Wouter, and Joost Van Spanje. 2009. Immigration, Europe and the ‘New’Cultural Dimension. European Journal of Political Research 48 (3): 309–34. Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration

2

POLITICISATION THROUGH MANIPULATION …

51

and Political Conflict, ed. Marks, Gary and Marco R. Steenburgen, 32–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Eijk, Cees and Mark N. Franklin. 2009. Elections and Voters. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wagner, Markus. 2012. When Do Parties Emphasise Extreme Positions? How Strategic Incentives for Policy Differentiation Influence Issue Importance. European Journal of Political Research 51 (1): 64–88. Wheatley, Jonathan, and Fernando Mendez. 2019. Reconceptualizing Dimensions of Political Competition in Europe: A Demand-Side Approach. British Journal of Political Science Online First: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00 07123418000571. Williams, Christopher, and Jae-Jae Spoon. 2015. Differentiated Party Response: The Effect of Euroskeptic Public Opinion on Party Positions. European Union Politics 16 (2): 176–93. Zeitlin, Jonathan, Francesco Nicoli, and Brigid Laffan. 2019. Introduction: The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? Integration and Politicization in an Age of Shifting Cleavages. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (7): 963–976. Zürn, Michael. 2019. Politicization Compared: At National, European, and Global Levels. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (7): 977–95.

CHAPTER 3

How Parties Respond to European Integration? Explaining the Mainstream/Protest Dichotomy

3.1

EU Party Support and Opposition

The left–right dimension has historically presented the main political divisions within the party systems, shaping the partisan alignments and constituting a lasting source of political identification and communication in Western Europe (Dalton et al. 2011; Downs 1957; Van der Eijk et al. 2005; Inglehart and Klingemann 1976). However, political contestation multidimensionality may be a strategic resource for losing parties to overturn their electoral fates (Riker 1986), with the politicisation of the pro-/anti-European dimension becoming a major opportunity for protest parties to seize on (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). This section formulates a scale of party positions on European integration, establishing a mathematical representation of this dimension in Downsean terms (thus, characterised by a certain range of party positions) by means of exploring the current literature background. Ordering party positions on an imaginary new dimension of party contestation is an empirically and theoretically challenging operation, which has been successfully achieved in several studies, defining the opposition to or support for European integration. The most popular term to indicate party/citizen opposition to the EU has been Euroscepticism. Although this term has often suffered from a certain vagueness in political debates, beginning from its early use in the mass media (Vasilopoulou 2017), it has gradually gained clarification in © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_3

53

54

L. CARRIERI

academic debates. Taggart (1998) dealt with the concept of Euroscepticism, defining it as a comprehensive term that “expresses the idea of contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration” (Ibidem 1998, 366). Subsequently, Taggart and Szczerbiak (2002) developed a more well-defined approach to Euroscepticism, dividing it into two main ideal types: 1. Hard Euro-scepticism, which encompasses a principled opposition to the EU building and entails the questioning of the country’s membership or, alternatively, it raises strong disagreement over those values underlying the European project; 2. Soft Euro-scepticism, which incorporates a non-principled opposition to European integration, implying a qualified opposition to the policies retained to be incompatible with national interests (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2002, 7). Meanwhile, Kopecký and Mudde (2002) drew up a four-fold typology of party positioning in Europe, relying on David Easton’s work (1965) on the widespread or specific support for political regimes. They identified two dimensions for mapping party attitudes towards the EU. The first involves the “support for the ideas of European integration”, distinguishing between the supporters (Europhiles) and the rejectionists (Europhobes). The second regards support for/opposition to the EU and its embodiment, with EU-optimists believing in how it is projected and implemented, while the EU-pessimists contest its basis and development. By drawing on these dimensions, Kopecky and Mudde (2002) developed a matrix framing all the potential combinations of party positions on European integration. They distinguished between the Eurosceptic and the Euroreject parties. The Eurosceptic parties have mainly been in favour of European integration (Europhile), trusting in the underlying ideas of the EU project and the further deepening of inter-state cooperation, but disagreeing on how the EU is implemented (Euro-pessimists). On the contrary, the Euroreject parties have clearly adopted Europhobe stances, opposing the fundamental principles inspiring the European project and voicing pessimism on its development. They also created another two categories: “Euro-enthusiast parties, which hold firm positive ideas towards

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

55

the EU and its current development, supporting the acceleration of the integration process; and Euro-pragmatist parties, which do not support many of the fundamental ideas underlying the EU, but are satisfied with the current embodiment of the EU that matches their country’s national interests ” (Kopecky and Mudde 2002, 299–304). In the above-mentioned typologies, the party stances on European integration have been extensively described, clearly acknowledging a distinction between regime support/opposition and policy support/opposition. This distinction has been formalised in other later works (Bartolini 2005; Hutter et al. 2016; Mair 2007), differentiating between the EU polity-related issues (i.e. membership, decision-making rules, authority transfer, etc.) and EU policy-related issues (economic, social, competition, environmental policies, etc.). Mainstream parties have been more prone to emphasise EU policy issues, while protest parties have been more committed to priming the polity issues (Braun et al. 2019). This finding seems to shed light on some distinctions and potential developments of EU issue competition. Without doubt, policy unpacking of the pro-/anti-EU issue dimension would provide an interesting basis for future research, with the mainstream and protest parties owning and capitalising on different strategic incentives. According to Hutter et al. (2016), the constitutive issues have been associated with a higher degree of politicisation: “All highly politicised election campaigns saw major conflicts over the fundamental features of the EU political system. Moreover, these conflicts were clearly more important than concurrent conflict over European policy issues ” (Ibidem, 155). Therefore, EU integration politicisation has apparently been embedded in the constitutive issues, dominating this pro-/anti-European dimension of contestation. Taking into consideration this theoretical background, this work, however, refers to a single dimension of political contestation, varying from strong opposition to strong support for European integration (Ray 2007; Steenbergen and Marks 2004; Ray 1999; De Vries and Edwards 2009; Carrieri 2019; Carrieri 2020). Consequently, a general scale, mathematically ordering the voter/party preferences, is used to locate, on one pole, those parties/voters wanting less European integration, and, on the other pole, those desiring more (Ray 2007). This representation blurs the above-mentioned typologies to some extent, overriding the dichotomy between EU policy and polity issues. Nevertheless, the purpose is to test the emergence of a general pro-/anti-EU dimension, which may sum up both the polity and policy preferences.

56

L. CARRIERI

European integration has essentially the potential to unleash an independent ideological continuum, with political competition revolving around the division between supranational integration and national sovereignty (Steenbergen and Marks 2004). This overarching ideological divide has probably cut across the functional conflict related to the left–right dimension, with new political coalitions mobilising a territorial dispute over the allocation of authority (Hix 1999). Therefore, a single left–right dimension has broadly structured the party positions, encompassing cultural and economic issues, with EU issues being quite unrelated to the former (Hooghe et al. 2002; Van Elsas et al. 2016; Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009). Other works have hypothesised the emergence of an autonomous cultural dimension of contestation, mainly a Cosmopolitan/Nationalist divide, with European integration being a minor parcel in this conflict (Kriesi et al. 2006). As already highlighted in Chapter 1, this work posits that the pro-/anti-EU conflict has steadily gained in a capacity to shape party supply, becoming a dimension in itself, without necessarily being absorbed by a broader cultural division (Bakker et al. 2012). By examining the supply-side of politics, scholars have found that mainstream actors are likely to integrate conservative/progressive cultural issues into their platforms, above all when these are consistent with their pre-established commitments on the left–right dimension (Pardos-Prado 2015). This has particularly been the case for many centre– right parties, which have adopted anti-immigration stances (Abou-Chadi and Krause 2020), without showing the same flexibility on the pro-/antiEuropean dimension (Hooghe and Marks 2009, 2018). Furthermore, the migration issue saliency predated the onset of the different crises (Pirro et al. 2018), being subsumed by the general left–right dimension (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009; De Vries et al. 2013). On the contrary, the orthogonality of the pro-/anti-EU issues may have strongly jeopardised mainstream electoral dominance (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; De Vries and Hobolt 2012), being unable to credibly shift their positions on EU constitutive issues (Hooghe and Marks 2018; Braun et al. 2019), and providing a stronger entrepreneurial opportunity for protest parties in the Euro crisis aftermath. For these reasons, this work tests party strategies and voting behaviour on a general pro/anti-European dimension, which may be able to capture the broader preferences for European integration. However, this does not fully unravel the polity/policy distinction but, instead, binds the two, tapping into wide-ranging party/voter orientations on EU issues. However, in order

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

57

to signal less supportive parties in the furthering of integration, references to Euroscepticism as per Taggart and Szezerbiak’s (2002) meaning are maintained throughout the book. Moreover, the above-mentioned Kopecky and Mudde’s typology (2002) is adopted to describe the nuanced attitudes of the party actors on the EU. 3.1.1

Protest Anti-European Parties

Over the last two decades, the number of parties that have sought to activate and mobilise the European integration conflict has flourished and many scholars have tried to identify the recurrent patterns of this strategic politicisation. The first systematic attempt was made by Paul Taggart (1998), who categorised a variant of the Eurosceptic party in Western Europe—the protest-based party with Euroscepticism—which seemed to be electorally widespread. These parties were positioned at the extreme poles of the ideological spectrum and predominantly excluded from holding governmental offices, only occupying peripheral positions within the party systems. They were intent on challenging the electoral dominion of the mainstream or cartel parties (Katz and Mair 1995), which monopolised government offices and colluded on several issues, including support for European integration (Mair 2007). This party type sought to overturn its losing position within the party systems even by means of politicising anti-European sentiments. The Eurosceptic identity was indeed one of the bases for distinguishing themselves from the mainstream parties (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004; Mair 2007). Therefore, their location within the party system was an important factor in determining the spread of Euroscepticism at the domestic level: “It seems therefore that parties that are peripheral are more predisposed to use Euro-scepticism as a mobilising issue than parties more central in their party systems ” (Taggart 1998, 372). Similarly, Sitter (2001) defined this as the ‘the politics of opposition’, where marginalised protest parties had major incentives to politicise Euroscepticism in the political agenda. This party type had predominantly fallen into the radical right or radical left party families (Mudde 2009; Taggart 1998). Consequently, the mobilisation of Euroscepticism was also related to a pre-established ideological radicalism and understood as a strategic response to the growing phenomena of party cartelisation. Even if this party type could not solely be defined by anti-European integration position, it did attempt

58

L. CARRIERI

to emphasise and become the owner of Eurosceptic issues. The protestbased party adopting Euro-scepticism shares some core characteristics with Sartori’s anti-system party (2005), seeking to bring about a polarised and centrifugal dynamic in political contestation. However, this type cannot be fully equated to an anti-system party, which aims at undermining the “legitimacy of the regime it opposes ” (Sartori 2005, 132–133), but, instead, it opposes the functioning of the party system (Taggart 1998) by advocating for a radical opposition to EU integration (Morlino and Raniolo 2017). In a similar vein, other studies have underlined the role of political extremism in the mobilisation of Euroscepticism (Hooghe et al. 2002; De Vries and Edwards 2009; Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009; Van Elsas et al. 2016). In fact, extreme parties have probably channelled and swayed the opposition to the EU: “While Eurosceptic parties on the right rally opposition by stressing the defence of the national sovereignty and identity considerations, left-wing extremist parties resist further integration on the basis of the neoliberal character of the project and mobilize feeling of economy uncertainty” (De Vries and Edwards 2009, 6). Hooghe et al. (2002) defined this relationship between party positions within the left– right dimension and those on the pro-/anti-European as an “inverted U-curve”. The parties on the extremes have actually adopted Eurosceptic positions, while the established parties (Liberal, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, etc.) located at the centre, and which have mainly projected and implemented the European construction, have been more favourable towards a stronger integration. A party with a more extreme stance on the left–right scale would be more likely to mobilise Eurosceptic values as a source of political contestation. Recently, Hobolt and de Vries (2015) have confirmed many of these findings from previous political science reviews. They claimed that those parties placed in peripheral or losing positions within the leading dimension of party contestation were likely to be drivers in the politicisation of new issues. Their empirical results were consistent with the overall expectations on party strategies, showing how the parties with non-mainstream positions on the left–right scale, and without a strong governmental background, have been the EU issue entrepreneurs (De Vries and Hobolt 2012; Hobolt and De Vries 2015). De Vries and Hobolt (2012) have created a definition of “challengers” “as the parties that have not previously held political office. Parties thus cease to be classified as challenger

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

59

parties if they enter government ” (Ibidem, 251). Nevertheless, this definition raises the dilemma of those radical parties, which had beforehand taken part in governing coalitions, but remained distant from the mainstream pro-European positions. Notably, this is the case of the Austrian and Italian party systems, where the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and Northern League (LN), despite being minority partners in the cabinet, maintained a firm opposition to the EU. A more appropriate definition of the protest anti-European party type would not be based only on its governmental status, but it should also include its location on the left– right continuum and its association with different kinds of European party families (Dolezal and Hellström 2016; Mair and Mudde 1998). Consequently, this work proposes a revival of the protest-based party with Euro-scepticism (Taggart 1998), relabelled as the protest antiEuropean party. This party type has taken the form of a new radical protest party (Morlino and Raniolo 2017), a form that has emerged in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, and of a revitalised radical protest party, which had already been previously established. The protest parties have certainly exacerbated the level of conflict by backing more anti-consensual and polarised policy alternatives, but without openly contesting the established democratic rules. They have mainly been located at the peripheral poles of the left–right continuum, providing voters with meaningful cues concerning European integration, even if these parties are defined as radical rather than extreme (see: March and Mudde 2005). Many other programmatic facets have accompanied these political subjects, which cannot be seen as only a mere outgrowth of the pro-/antiEuropean political dimension. Indeed, Taggart (1998) has differentiated this party type from the single-issue Eurosceptic party, which “exists only to express Euroscepticism and to mobilise electors on the European issues ” (Taggart 1998, 368). The latter party variant has been active only in a few countries (such as the United Kingdom and Denmark), being mainly marginal and ephemeral in the other Western European party systems (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2002). Thus, the protest anti-European party does not fully fall into the niche party category characterised by single-issue policy programmes, implying a challenge to the established economic dimension (Meguid 2005; Adams et al. 2006). Although protest parties seek to weaken the traditional patterns of political contestation by exploiting a Eurosceptic identity, these actors are committed to clashing on a wide set of issues, combining economic and cultural issues within their platforms (Akkerman et al. 2016; Lefkofridi and Michel

60

L. CARRIERI

2014; March and Mudde 2005; March and Rommerskirchen 2015; Otjes et al. 2018). Furthermore, protest parties have also stood out for their strong antiestablishment appeal, mobilising voters on the overall rejection of the political/economic elites. These parties have probably shared a populist ideology, which is here “understood as a thin-centred ideology that considers society ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde 2004, 543). Mair (2002, 2013) interpreted the populist reaction as a consequence of the ever-increasing process of party cartelisation, which produced a “partyless democracy”. This system has been typified by non-partisan and colluding politics, increasingly removed from civil society and leaning towards public institutions, appealing to an indistinct public mass (Katz and Mair 1995). This weakening of the party representative function, witnessed in the erosion of partisanship and declining party membership (Van Biezen et al. 2012) has unleashed a strong wave of anti-party sentiments across Western Europe. The Great Recession has worsened these trends, resulting in a surge of a new populism across the continent, with the radical left and right parties being more prone to adopt a populist narrative compared to their mainstream counterparts (Keith and March 2016; Kriesi 2014; Mudde 2013; Rooduijn and Akkerman 2017). In spite of the above-mentioned “thinness” of populism, many protest parties have broadened their base by including “thicker” political ideologies in their programmes (Mény and Surel 2002; Mudde 2009). The hypothesis is that opposition to European integration has been one of the ideological pillars of protest party discourses, which have blended a populist rhetoric with Eurosceptic cues. Indeed, these parties have recurrently blamed the non-elected Euro bureaucrats and mainstream pro-EU elites, threatening state sovereignty and the integrity of the nation and working-class conditions. Therefore, the protest parties have probably aimed at establishing a new dimension of political contestation, based on pro-/anti-European orientations, by adopting a populist-branded rhetoric. Using the party family notion, two subtypes are identified here among the protest parties—radical-left parties (RLPs) and radical-right parties (RRPs). Both the radical left and radical right seem to have rejected European integration, attempting to mobilise voters along a pro-/antiEuropean axis of conflict. However, their hypothetical opposition to the

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

61

EU project is rooted in different background ideologies. Historically, party reactions to emerging issues have been influenced by the prior cleavage system, which had resulted in deep-seated ideological orientations (Marks and Wilson 2000). Although parties have had to face ideological constraints in responding to the emergence of EU-related issues, their Euroscepticism has, however, been widely documented in the literature. According to March and Rommerskirchen (2015, 41) “the contemporary radical left possesses enough ideological and policy coherence to justify being conceptualized as a single party family”. These parties have demonstrated an ideological affinity; with the RLPs intensifying their international cooperation and increasing their policy congruence within the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) EP group (Holmes and Lightfoot 2016). In order to select the parties belonging to the RLP cluster, this work has drawn upon their membership in the GUE/NGL, which identify the ideological boundaries of this party family (see Appendix: Table 3.1). Similarly, Cas Mudde (2009, 2013) defined RRP as a party family, which includes those actors sharing a combination of authoritarianism, populism and nativism. However, grouping the RRPs presents more problems, as they have recurrently floated among different EP groups and often their representatives have been among the “non-inscrits” (Maggini 2014). To offset this fluidity, this work refers to Mudde’s RRP case selection (2009, 2013), including new protest parties (such as Vox, AfD, GD, etc.) which emerged in the aftermath of the crises and are consistent with Mudde’s typology (see Appendix: Table 3.1).1 The Italian Five Star Movement (M5S) has also been included among the protest anti-European parties. The M5S is the only case not falling into the RRL and RRP party families, setting itself apart from the left– right ideology. Morlino and Raniolo (2017) have defined the M5S as a radical party, characterising itself with a protest populist and antiestablishment outlook (Kriesi 2014) and standing out for its conflictual approach to European integration (Carrieri 2020). Thus, this actor shares many features with the protest anti-European parties, though it is not located along the peripheral poles of the left–right continuum.

1 A minor Dutch Eurosceptic list, the Christian Union—Reformed Political Party (CU-SGP), has been excluded from this party cluster, though expressing moderate anti-European positions, it cannot be reconciled with the RRP party family.

62

L. CARRIERI

3.1.2

Mainstream Pro-European Parties

Bonnie Meguid (2005, 348) defined mainstream parties “as the electorally dominant actors in the center-left, center, and center-right blocs on the Left-Right political spectrum. In this classification, the center-left parties explicitly exclude left-libertarian parties, whereas the center-right categorization excludes right-authoritarian, or right-wing, populist parties ”. Mainstream parties have generally been identified by their location on the left–right political dimension, being closer to the centre, and by their governmental status, holding cabinet positions (Hooghe et al. 2002). Most mainstream parties belong to the four traditional Western European party families (for the notion of party family see Mair and Mudde 1998)—Social Democrats\Socialists; Christian Democrats, Conservatives; Liberals. These political families have stemmed from the four main dividing-lines that occurred in the European polities (Centre versus Periphery; State versus Church; Land versus Industry; Owners versus Workers). These cleavages have structured and crystallised the political landscape for decades (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Lipset and Rokkan 1967). In spite of the “weakening of cleavage politics”, with class-based loyalties gradually declining (Van der Eijk et al. 1992; Kriesi 1998), these parties have managed to maintain the electoral preferences within the boundaries of the old conflict lines. It can be noted that Western European electoral volatility had been relatively low until the 1990s, mirroring party-system stability (Emanuele 2018). These political actors have remained the fundamental electoral and governmental alternatives in the Western European party systems, channelling the new phenomena of issue competition (Green-Pedersen 2007). In 1995, when Katz and Mair heralded their renowned cartelisation theory of politics, these well-established political families were mainly linked with the so-called cartels of colluding and governing parties, which controlled the crucial cabinet positions and policymaking. Consequently, their bonds with the voters have lasted over generations, exceeding many rosy expectations and drawing a picture of political stability. Nevertheless, after the Second World War, many systemic alterations have taken place, considerably reshaping their broader ideological commitments. For instance, the Social Democrat\Socialist parties, which have historically reflected the class cleavage (Bartolini 2000), have gradually moderated their economic stances to widen their appeal to beyond the working classes (Escalona and Vieira 2014). On the contrary, the Christian

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

63

Democrats have modernised their ideological platforms by blurring their confessional appeals (Kirchheimer 1966). Many prominent party families, such as the Communist, Fascist and Agrarian parties, have become clearly residual, vanishing from the current electoral choices. Furthermore, since the emergence of the so-called postmaterialist\materialist cleavage (Inglehart 2015), new political formations have appeared, such as the Green-ecologist parties, which, electorally, have succeeded in many European countries (Müller-Rommel 2019). Green parties have been able to enter the political mainstream by moderating their policy stances and being co-opted as minor partners in many governments (Muller-Rommel and Poguntke 2013). Thus, including the Green party family in the mainstream cluster does not appear to be too problematic. On the contrary, classifying the regionalist party family may raise some doubts. These parties have challenged the mainstream political formations mainly by emphasising the issues related to the territorial dimension of contestation (Alonso et al. 2015). However, regionalist parties do not comply with the criteria to be considered as a protest anti-European party, being more likely to assume pro-European positions (Jolly 2007). Therefore, this work posits that regionalist parties have basically followed the strategic patterns of mainstream parties by deflecting EU issues rather than breaking the pro-European consensus. According to Marks and Wilson (2000), the pre-existing system of social cleavages has extensively determined the parties’ ideological predispositions towards European integration. Consequently, mainstream parties have tried to accommodate their pro-EU identity in their broad ideological platforms. Many works have also underlined the strong impact of national cultures on mediating the party attitudes to European integration (Medrano 2010; Kriesi 2007), which have widely proved to be an explanatory factor in the fluctuations. Nonetheless, Hooghe et al. (2002) provided evidence that although the impact of national cultures has remained prominent, party family location has chiefly determined European integration party positioning. These parties have been chiefly responsible for projecting and implementing European integration, steadily expressing their support (Hooghe and Marks 2009). Consequently, this party cluster is defined as mainstream pro-European parties, including those parties with a clear-cut proEuropean position, being one of the main facets of their wider ideological programmes. However, because of their programmatic Euroscepticism (De Vries 2018), the British Conservatives have been excluded from

64

L. CARRIERI

this party cluster, representing a very rare case of a mainstream antiEuropean party in Western Europe. Although this may result in problems in analysing the British case, the work aims at testing whether a fullyfledged protest/mainstream dichotomy has come into being concerning European integration in the aftermath of the multiple set of crises. Party adherence to the different EP groups also comes into play here, delineating the boundaries of these party families and identifying the mainstream pro-European parties (see: Table 3.2). Therefore, mainstream pro-European parties are those belonging to the European People’s Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists/Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (PES/S&D), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe/Renew Europe (ALDE/RE) and the Greens-European Free Alliance (Greens-EFA). These groups have gradually displayed a high degree of ideological cohesiveness (Bressanelli 2013, 2014), with the member parties strengthening their international cooperation. However, many internal variations have occurred within the EP groups, which do not fully overlap with the notion of party family (Mair and Mudde 1998). For instance, the EPP is a heterogeneous bloc, grouping parties with different ideological traditions, such as the Conservatives and Christian Democrats. The moderate Christian Democrats have gradually become a minority, while the more right-oriented Conservatives (such as Forward Italy, New Democracy, the Popular Party, etc.) have entered the EPP, taking over this group (Emanuele 2014). Nevertheless, the EPP includes the majority of the centre–right mainstream parties, which have achieved a notable level of policy congruence in this EP group (Bressanelli 2014). The ALDE/RE has brought together liberal-conservative and radicalprogressive parties, mirroring a clear divide-line in political liberalism.2 Although these two-party sub-types have shown different ideological predispositions, all the liberal parties have consistently stood in favour of European integration (Marks and Wilson 2000; Bressanelli 2013; Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2016). The Greens-EFA and PES/S&D appear to be more ideologically homogeneous, though the PES has opened its gates to other progressive democratic parties, such as the Democratic Party (PD), changing its name to S&D, without significantly reshaping its internal policy congruence (Carrieri 2014). In brief, 2 The ALDE/RE has often included many regionalist actors, such as the National Basque Party (PNV), Convergence and Union (CiU), etc., which are included here among the mainstream pro-European parties.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

65

the mainstream case selection relies on the cleavage system, which has historically determined the party family location, currently captured by the existing EP groups (for the selection of mainstream parties, see: Table 3.2). The hardships faced by the mainstream pro-European parties in politicising the European integration conflict have already been pointed out. Positional shifting along the pro-\anti-EU dimension has been ideologically impossible for them, given their well-rooted reputations, continuing to remain quite inflexible over time (Hooghe and Marks 2018; Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2016). Moreover, these parties have been disinclined to play the EU issue card to avoid intra-party conflicts (Spoon and Williams 2017; Taggart 1998). It is proposed here that the worsening of the economic crisis has posed further difficulties for the mainstream political families in coping with EU issues. As governing parties, they have had to deal with the EU management of the crisis, being bound by their responsibility to the European institutions. The EU, especially under the form of intergovernmental bodies, took centre stage during the crisis by establishing new rules and obligations affecting national budgetary policies (Fabbrini 2013). Mainstream parties, acting as governments, have enforced the austerity packages resulting from intergovernmental bargaining, involving tax increases and spending cuts (Laffan 2014). These policies have probably magnified a responsiveness crisis, mirroring the existing dilemma between responsibility to the EU institutions and responsiveness to the domestic electorates (Mair 2013; Morlino and Raniolo 2017). Many citizens have been able to link these policy outcomes to the European institutions, acknowledging the EU’s share of responsibility, becoming increasingly critical of the EU project (Hobolt 2015; Hobolt and Tilley 2014). The hypothesis is that the mainstream parties have aligned themselves with the pro-European pole of political contestation, in spite of their location on the left–right dimension of political contestation or their governmental status. They have established a sort of mainstream consensus (Hobolt and Tilley 2016), mirroring their long-standing ideological commitment to the European project and largely supporting the austerity policies. According to Calossi (2016), the main party families have colluded on these policies driven by the EU. These parties have probably tried to prevent the EU building from falling apart by imposing the above-mentioned set of measures. In doing so, they have pursued a de-politicisation strategy, actively reducing the saliency of the

66

L. CARRIERI

EU issues at the domestic level. A new dimension of political contestation based on European integration may lessen their dominance over the party systems and decrease their electoral support. Where the protest parties have smelt blood regarding the electoral potential in EU issues (Hooghe and Marks 2009), the mainstream parties have smelt a rat, firmly resisting EU politicisation. Therefore, a paradox may be arising in the Western European party systems. On the one hand, the anti-European voters have been provided with clear-cut electoral channels by the strategic efforts of the antiEuropean political entrepreneurs (the protest parties). On the other hand, the pro-European voters have faced blurred partisan cues from the mainstream Europhile actors, perhaps finding difficulties in expressing their electoral preferences. According to Börzel and Risse (2018, 85), the Europhile electorate “has remained silent and inactive in the absence of trans-nationalized, liberal\cosmopolitan elite discourses ”. Hence, one of the current expectations here is that this party cluster has not maximised its electoral preferences on the pro-\anti-European policy dimension.

3.2 Assessing Variations of Entrepreneurship: Methodology, Data and Party Selection Criteria The second chapter of this book advanced two kinds of party strategic efforts on the pro-/anti-EU dimension—EU issue entrepreneurship increase and EU issue entrepreneurship decrease. In the previous sections, a two-fold party typology was described, revolving around deep-seated party family ideological orientation on European integration. On the one hand, the revitalisation of the anti-European protest party type, which is more likely to accentuate EU issues, has been hypothesised. These parties have been mainly located on the extreme poles of the left–right continuum, belonging to the RLP or RRP families and mainly marginalised from governmental positions (though there are exceptions). On the other hand, this chapter also upholds the widespread resiliency of the mainstream pro-European party type, which has probably deflected the EU issues. These parties have been located closer to the centre of the left–right dimension, belonging to the established European party families (Social Democrats\Socialists; Christian Democrats\Conservatives; Liberals, etc.) and largely holding governmental offices. The core objective is to combine the two above-mentioned typologies to understand

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

67

which party type is more likely to be associated with a determined strategic frame on EU issues, thus testing the first subset of hypotheses. To test the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis and the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis, data provided by the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) from 2006 to 2017 (Bakker et al. 2015; Polk et al. 2017) is used, identifying party-system politicisation in Western Europe. This dataset has allowed for measuring party positioning on this dimension of political contestation, using questionnaires of party experts. The respondents were asked to assess the party position on a seven-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly opposed) to 7 (strongly in favour), that synthesised the “overall orientation of the party leadership towards European integration in general ”. The CHES is based on the experts’ evaluations, which are not necessarily linked to a specific electoral campaign and exploit a wide array of communication sources, going well beyond simple party manifestos (Dalton et al. 2011). According to Marks et al. (2007), the expert surveys are marked by their flexibility, including “topics that do not surface in electoral manifestos ” (Ibidem 2007, 26). The experts rely on television debates, newspapers, roll-call votes and politicians’ speeches to capture the actual party stances, increasing the reliability and validity of the CHES rounds (Bakker et al. 2015). Some investigations show the strong congruence between the expert evaluations and other sources, such as surveys conducted among voters and MPs, cross-validating the CHES data (Hooghe et al. 2010; Marks et al. 2007) and, thus, warranting its usage in the empirical research. Furthermore, this source takes into account the numerous intra-party divisions that may occur within a party on a given issue, usually overshadowed in the party manifestos that seek to show the party’s internal unity. However, the CHES does display some defects, such as the personal bias and a certain information asymmetry of the single expert, who assesses the party positions retroactively and, therefore, could be conditioned in evaluating successive political developments (Marks et al. 2007; Steenbergen and Marks 2007). It is contended here that in contemporary politics the party positions on the main issues cannot be simply inferred by the use of the party manifestos and, therefore, the CHES is well suited to overcoming this drawback. On the contrary, other important sources for studying the positioning of political parties—the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and Euromanifesto Study—are limited in that they gather the same information exclusively from the party manifestos, ruling out other potential

68

L. CARRIERI

and crucial sources of political information. Some scholars have recurrently cast doubts on the CMP ability to capture party positions by mainly focusing on issue saliency during the campaigns (Dinas and Gemenis 2010; Dalton et al. 2011). It is worth noting that the Euromanifesto study has the advantage of being synchronised with the electoral rounds, however, it measures issue salience by analysing the manifesto written in the context of EP elections. Thus, this data will inevitably inflate the European dimensions, even for parties that do not normally emphasise this aspect. This work combines the issue position on the pro-/anti-European dimension and the corresponding issue saliency for capturing EU issue entrepreneurship, following the definition and methodological orientation developed by Hobolt and de Vries (De Vries and Hobolt 2012; Hobolt and De Vries 2015). These two scholars provided a mathematical formula to calculate issue entrepreneurship—(P eu − MP eu ) * SP eu . MPeu represents the average party position in the system on the European dimension, while P eu indicates the single party stance in the same issue space and, last but not least, SP eu stands for the saliency that P ascribes to European integration. The CHES dataset provides the levels of EU issue saliency from 2006 until 2017, reporting the experts’ evaluation on the “relative salience of European integration in the party’s public stance”, along a scale ranging from 0 (European integration is of no importance) to 10 (European integration is of great importance).3 Positive scores on this EU entrepreneurship index reveal the favourable party dispositions to integration, while, negative scores mirror the party anti-European stances.4 The core interest is not in establishing the direction of EU entrepreneurship, positive or negative, but in analysing the entity of the indexes to shed light on European integration politicisation within the Western European party systems. Therefore, the simple absolute values of the indexes are reported, with the negative being 3 In the 2006 and 2010 CHES rounds the scale ranged from 1 (European integration is of no importance) to 4 (European integration is of great importance). In order to synchronise the different scales, we adopted a normalisation technique (feature scaling) to bring the values in range [0–1], then, we multiplied by 10 to have the same scale as the 2014 round. 4 This work slightly refines their formula, by switching the position of Peu with that of MPeu, in order to obtain a positive score for the Europhile parties and a negative score for the Eurosceptics.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

69

discarded. Those parties wishing to politicise the European integration issue will increase their entrepreneurship score, enhancing the ascribed saliency and polarising their positions. This type of strategy is defined as EU issue entrepreneurship increase, capturing a party effort in activating a new issue in the agenda. Meanwhile parties seeking to depoliticise EU related issues would lower their entrepreneurial score, lowering the ascribed saliency and assuming a more median position along the pro/anti-European dimension. This strategy is labelled here as EU issue entrepreneurship decrease, which describes a tactical attempt to minimise the impact of EU issues within the party system. To assess the decrease\increase strategy, the party index achieved during the pre-crisis period (2006) is the benchmark to ascertain potential fluctuations. By looking at cross-time variations, the entrepreneurship scores are traced, observing the step-by-step party strategic adjustments. The 2006 is qualified as a pre-crisis period, falling into a time span not influenced by the adverse consequences of the Great Recession. The Euro crisis rounds in 2014 cover a time span witnessing a worsening trend in public support for the EU, related to the austerity measures and new intergovernmental treaties (Hobolt 2015; De Sio et al. 2016), gradually affecting changes in the supply-side of politics. The Euro crisis period should be an intermediate step, with different party types beginning to take advantage of the two windows of opportunities. Nonetheless, the expectation is that these hypotheses will be fully confirmed during the multiple-crises period (2017), with the migration crisis and Brexit increasing the abovementioned strategic incentives for the political parties. Therefore, if the multiple-crises (2017) score positively exceeds at least one unit, the level obtained by the party prior to the crisis (2006), the partisan strategy would be qualified as EU issue entrepreneurship increase. Instead, if a party score decreases by one unit or remains stagnant, the strategy would be defined as EU issue entrepreneurship decrease. The 2014 round remains a control to trace a party’s strategic evolution, potentially representing an intermediate step in a broader issue evolution. The mathematical results reflect the degree of each party’s EU issue entrepreneurship within the national system, establishing solid ground to identify the mainstream and protest party strategies and test Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2. This work mainly provides medium-term party strategies, focusing on these four rounds of party issue EU entrepreneurship (2006, 2010, 2014 and 2017). However, by observing the partisan cueing on EU issues during this time span, the transformative effects of

70

L. CARRIERI

the multiple crises are revealed, perhaps shedding light on a growing party-system politicisation. It should be pointed out, however, that a clear-cut threshold to assess whether a conflict is politicised or not is not identified here. Instead, a benchmark has been individuated that will allow for maintaining if the EU conflict has become increasingly contested or not, capturing its relative variation. The previous sections have presented the mainstream/protest dichotomy, describing the main features of the different party types. However, before tackling the hypotheses, the criteria to delimit the party selection in the current study must be defined. A large number of party systems have been selected, especially those which have undergone a relative degree of instability and electoral volatility over the last decade (Emanuele 2018). Whether to consider a party as relevant or not is a vexing question in political science, which has mainly revolved around the party blackmail or coalition potential (Sartori 2005). To avoid becoming embroiled in a difficult operationalisation of these notions by relying on some arbitrary numerical cut-off threshold, the criterion used is data availability. The party selection includes all the party cases, which have been present in both the CHES and EES, excluding those cases absent from, at least, one these surveys. In fact, two homogenous samples of parties are designed, allowing for testing the congruence between the supply-side for and demand-side of politics for each empirical round, encompassing the two-fold notion of conflict politicisation developed by this work.5

3.3

Conclusions

This chapter has primarily aimed to develop two main party types, which may be associated with the distinctive gamut of strategies advanced in Chapter 2. The first theoretical step entails a literature review on the existing typologies of party-based support for/opposition to European integration. By exploring the current literature, the work relies on a general pro-/anti-EU scale, wavering from strong opposition to strong support for European integration. This scale, mathematically represented, seeks to assess the potential rise of a pro-/anti-European general dimension, which captures polity and policy divisions pertaining 5 The only two cases that are absent from the supply-side analysis, but have been included in the demand-side are Vox (Voice) and the Brexit party in 2019 empirical analysis.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

71

to the EU. The second theoretical step presents a new typology, revolving around party attitudes to the EU. Therefore, by considering political radicalism as a core driver in determining Euroscepticism, the protest anti-European party is advanced, with RLPs and RRPs largely embodying this party type. However, protest parties have many other programmatic features, which have also been complemented by the increasing recourse to a populist narrative. The second party variant—the mainstream pro-European party—is framed here. This party type has been less contested among the scholars, being epitomised by parties located closer to the centre of the left–right ideological divide, which have traditionally held governmental positions. Mainstream parties, such as the Social Democrats, Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Liberals, stemmed from those cleavages, which cut across the Western European polities from the end of nineteenth to the beginning of twentieth century. These parties have historically sustained and engineered the major integration steps, being more likely to own pro-European issues. However, their location in a pre-existing cleavage system has influenced their ideological commitments to European integration, explaining some positional variance within this party cluster. This theoretical overview on party types allows for drawing up a set of potential combinations between party strategies and party types, developing the first set of hypotheses. The first being, the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1), which predicts that, in the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, protest parties have increased their degree of EU issue entrepreneurship. The second being, the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2), which foresees that the mainstream parties have decreased their level of EU issue entrepreneurship. The party types are considered as core determinants in predicting the degree of entrepreneurship achieved by parties, which is the object of Chapter 4.

Appendix The Tables 3.1 and 3.2 report the list of parties, which have been included in at least one empirical round of this work. Parties are classified on the basis of their party family location, as shown in the following tables.

National Front/National Rally (FN) French Communist Party (PCF) Left Party (PG) France Unbowed (FI) Left Party (LINKE) Alternative for Germany (AfD) SYRIZA Golden Dawn (XA) Greek Communist Party (KKE) Independent Greeks (ANEL) Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) Northern League/League (LN/League) Communist Refoundation (RC) Party of Italian Communists (PDCI) Left Ecology and Freedom (SEL) Brothers of Italy (FDI) Five Star Movement (M5S) Tsipras List (LT) Party of Freedom (PVV) Party for the Animals (PvdD) Socialist Party (SP) Forum for Democracy (FvD) United Democratic Coalition (CDU) Left Bloc (BE) United Left (IU) Podemos Vox (Voice) Left Party (VP) Sweden Democrats British National Party United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Brexit Party

France

United Kingdom

Sweden

Spain

Portugal

The Netherlands

Italy

Greece

Germany

Party

List of protest parties

Country

Table 3.1

Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Protest Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical Radical

Right Left Left Left Left Right Left Right Left Right Right Right Left Left Left Right Populist Left Right Left Left Right Left Left Left Left Right Left Right Right Right Right

Party family

72 L. CARRIERI

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

73

Table 3.2 List of mainstream parties Country

Party

Party family

France

Socialist Party (PS)

Social Democratic-Socialist Conservative

Union for a Popular Movement/The Republicans (UMP/LR) Union for Democracy/Democratic Movement (UDF/MoDem) Green Party/Europe Ecology—The Greens (LV/EELV) The Republic on the March (REM) Germany

Greece

Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne) Free Democratic Party (FDP) Pirate Party Germany (Pirate) PASOK New Democracy (ND) Ecologists Greens (OP) The River (To Potami) Democratic Left (DIMAR)

Italy

Democratic Party (PD) People of Freedom/Forward Italy (PdL/FI) Union of the Centre (UdC) Italy of Values (IdV) Plus Europe (+EU) Left Democrats (DS) Democracy and Freedom—The Daisy (DL)

Liberal-Liberal Democratic Green Liberal-Liberal Democratic Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Social DemocraticSocialist Green Liberal-Liberal Democratic Green Social Democratic-Socialist Conservative Greens Social DemocraticSocialist Social DemocraticSocialist Social DemocraticSocialist Conservative Christian Democratic Liberal-Liberal Democratic Liberal-Liberal Democratic Social DemocraticSocialist Liberal-Liberal Democratic

(continued)

74

L. CARRIERI

Table 3.2 (continued) Country

Party

Party family

National Alliance (AN) Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI)

Conservative Social DemocraticSocialist Liberal-Liberal Democratic Christian Democratic

The Radicals Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR) New Italian Socialist Party (NPSI)

The Netherlands

Portugal

Spain

Social DemocraticSocialist Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) Christian Democratic People’s Party for Freedom and Liberal-Liberal Democracy (VVD) Democratic Labour Party (PvdA) Social DemocraticSocialist Democrats 66 (D66) Liberal-Liberal Democratic GreenLeft (GL) Green Socialist Party (PS) Social DemocraticSocialist Social Democratic Party (PSD) Conservative-Christian Democratic Democratic and Social Conservative-Christian Centre—People’s Party (CDS-PP) Democratic People-Animals-Nature (PAN) Greens Earth Party (MPT) Liberals-Liberal Democrats Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party Social Democratic(PSOE) Socialist People’s Party (PP) Conservative Convergence and Unity (CiU) Regionalist Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) Regionalist Basque Solidarity (EA) Regionalist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) Regionalist Canarian Coalition (CC) Regionalist Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) Regionalist Aragonese Council (CHA) Regionalist Union, Progress and Democracy Liberal-Liberal (UPD) Democratic

(continued)

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

75

Table 3.2 (continued) Country

Sweden

Party

Party family

Ciudadanos (CS)

Liberal-Liberal Democratic Social DemocraticSocialist Liberal-Liberal Democratic Liberal-Liberal Democratic Conservative Christian Democratic Greens

Worker’s Party-Social Democrats (SAP) Center Party (C) Liberal People’s Party (FP)

United Kingdom

Moderate Party (M) Christian Democrats (KD) Environmental Party the Greens (MP) Pirate Party (Pirate) Labour Party (Lab.) Liberal Democratic Party (LibDem) Scottish National Party (SNP) Plaid Cymru (Plaid) Green Party (Greens)

Greens Social DemocraticSocialist Liberal-Liberal Democratic Regionalist Regionalist Green

Bibliography Abou-Chadi, Tarik, and Werner Krause. 2020. The Causal Effect of Radical Right Success on Mainstream Parties’ Policy Positions: A Regression Discontinuity Approach. British Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 829–47. Adams, James, Michael Clark, Lawrence Ezrow, and Garrett Glasgow. 2006. Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 513–29. Akkerman, Tjitske, Sarah L. De Lange, and Matthijs Rooduijn. 2016. Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream? London: Routledge. Alonso, Sonia, Laura Cabeza, and Braulio Gómez. 2015. Parties’ Electoral Strategies in a Two-Dimensional Political Space: Evidence from Spain and Great Britain. Party Politics 21 (6): 851–65. Bakker, Ryan, Catherine de Vries, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Gary Marks, Jonathan Polk, Jan Rovny, Marco Steenbergen, and Milada Vachudova. 2015. Measuring Party Positions in Europe: The Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend File, 1999–2010. Party Politics 21(1): 143–152.

76

L. CARRIERI

Bakker, Ryan, Seth Jolly, and Jonathan Polk. 2012. Complexity in the European Party Space: Exploring Dimensionality with Experts. European Union Politics 13 (2): 219–45. Bartolini, Stefano. 2000. The Class Cleavage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building, and Political Structuring between the Nation State and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Presss. Bartolini, Stefano, and Peter Mair. 1990. Policy Competition, Spatial Distance and Electoral Instability. West European Politics 13 (4): 1–16. Börzel, Tanja A., and Thomas Risse. 2018. From the Euro to the Schengen Crises: European Integration Theories, Politicization, and Identity Politics. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 83–108. Braun, Daniela, Sebastastian Adrian Popa, and Hermann Schmitt. 2019. Responding to the Crisis: Eurosceptic Parties of the Left and Right and Their Changing Position towards the European Union. European Journal of Political Research 58 (3): 797–819. Bressanelli, Edoardo. 2013. Competitive and Coherent? Profiling the Europarties in the 2009 European Parliament Elections. Journal of European Integration 35 (6): 653–68. ———. 2014. Europarties after Enlargement: Organization, Ideology and Competition. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Calossi, Enrico. 2016. Anti-Austerity Left Parties in the European Union. Competition, Coordination and Integration. Pisa: Pisa University Press. Carrieri, Luca. 2014. Il Partito Socialista Europeo: stabilità senza successo (The Party of European Socialists: Stability without Success). In Le elezioni Europee 2014 (The European Parliament Elections of 2014), ed. Lorenzo De Sio, Vincenzo Emanuele, and Nicola Maggini, 289–93. Roma: Luiss Press. ———. 2019. Awakening the Sleeping Giant?: The Euro Crisis and EU Issue Voting in Germany. Partecipazione e Conflitto 11(3): 838–864. ———. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 50(1): 52–67. Cramme, Olaf, and Sara B. Hobolt (eds.). 2014. Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, Russell J., David M. Farrell, and Ian McAllister. 2011. Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Sio, Lorenzo, Mark N. Franklin, and Till Weber. 2016. The Risks and Opportunities of Europe: How Issue Yield Explains (Non-) Reactions to the Financial Crisis. Electoral Studies 44: 483–491.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

77

De Vries, Catherine E. 2018. Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, Catherine E., and Erica E. Edwards. 2009. Taking Europe to Its Extremes: Extremist Parties and Public Euroscepticism. Party Politics 15 (1): 5–28. De Vries, Catherine E., Armen Hakhverdian, and Bram Lancee. 2013. The Dynamics of Voters’ Left/Right Identification: The Role of Economic and Cultural Attitudes. Political Science Research and Methods 1 (2): 223–38. De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–68. Dinas, Elias, and Kostas Gemenis. 2010. Measuring Parties’ Ideological Positions with Manifesto Data: A Critical Evaluation of the Competing Methods. Party Politics 16 (4): 427–50. Dolezal, Martin, and Johan Hellström. 2016. The Radical Right as Driving Force in the Electoral Arena. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 156–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Politicising Europe. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy 65 (2): 135–50. Easton, David. 1965. A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Emanuele, Vincenzo. 2014. EPP Loses Votes and Seats but Remains the First Party in the European Parliament. In The European Parliament Elections of 2014, ed. De Sio, Lorenzo, Vincenzo Emanuele and Nicola Maggini, 37–42. Roma: Luiss Press. ———. 2018. Cleavages, Institutions, and Competition: Understanding Vote Nationalization in Western Europe (1965–2015). London: Rowman & Littlefield. Escalona, Fabien, and Mathieu Vieira. 2014. ‘It Does Not Happen Here Either’: Why Social Democrats Fail in the Context of the Great Economic Crisis. In European Social Democracy during the Global Economic Crisis, ed. D. David Bailey, Jean-Michele De Waele, Fabien Escalona an Mathieu Viera, 19–41. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fabbrini, Sergio. 2013. Intergovernmentalism and Its Limits: Assessing the European Union’s Answer to the Euro Crisis. Comparative Political Studies 46 (9): 1003–29. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2007. The Growing Importance of Issue Competition: The Changing Nature of Party Competition in Western Europe. Political Studies 55 (3): 607–28. Hix, Simon. 1999. The Political System of the European Union. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

78

L. CARRIERI

Hobolt, Sara B. 2015. Public Attitudes towards the Euro Crisis. In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, 2014, ed. Olaf Cramme, and Sara B. Hobolt, 48–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2014. Blaming Europe?: Responsibility without Accountability in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. “Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis.” West European Politics 39(5): 971–991. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine E. De Vries. 2015. Issue Entrepreneurship and Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1159–85. Holmes, Michael, and Simon Lightfoot. 2016. To EU or Not to EU? The Transnational Radical Left and the Crisis. In Europe’s Radical Left: From Marginality to the Mainstream?, ed. Daniel Keith and Luke March. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Hooghe, Liesbet, Ryan Bakker, Anna Brigevich, Catherine de Vries, Erica Edwards, Gary Marks, Jan Rovny, Marco Steenbergen, and Milada Vachudova. 2010. Reliability and Validity of Measuring Party Positions: The Chapel Hill Expert Surveys of 2002 and 2006. European Journal of Political Research 49: 684–703. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2005. Calculation, Community and Cues: Public Opinion on European Integration. European Union Politics 6 (4): 419–43. ———. 2009. A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39(1): 1–23. ———. 2018. Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25(1): 109–35. Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, and Carole J. Wilson. 2002. Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European Integration? Comparative Political Studies 35 (8): 965–89. Hutter, Swen, Daniela Braun, and Alena Kerscher. 2016. Constitutive Issues as Driving Forces of Politicisation. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 137–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, Ronald. 2015. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, Ronald, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. 1976. Party Identification, Ideological Preference and the Left-Right Dimension among Western Mass Publics. In Party Identification and Beyond, ed. Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe, and Dennis Farlie, 243–73. New York: Wiley. Jolly, Seth Kincaid. 2007. The Europhile Fringe? Regionalist Party Support for European Integration. European Union Politics 8 (1): 109–30.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

79

Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1995. Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party. Party Politics 1 (1): 5–28. Keith, Daniel, and Luke March. 2016. Europe’s Radical Left: From Marginality to the Mainstream? London: Rowman & Littlefield. Kirchheimer, O. 1966. The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems. In Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, 177–200. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kopecký, Petr, and Cas Mudde. 2002. The Two Sides of Euroscepticism: Party Positions on European Integration in East Central Europe. European Union Politics 3 (3): 297–326. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1998. The Transformation of Cleavage Politics The 1997 Stein Rokkan Lecture. European Journal of Political Research 33 (2): 165–85. ———. 2007. The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns. European Union Politics 8(1): 83–108. ———. 2014. The Populist Challenge. West European Politics 37(2): 361–78. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2006. Globalization and the Transformation of the National Political Space: Six European Countries Compared. European Journal of Political Research 45 (6): 921–56. Laffan, Brigid. 2014. Testing Times: The Growing Primacy of Responsibility in the Euro Area. West European Politics 37 (2): 270–87. Lefkofridi, Zoe, and Elie Michel. 2014. Exclusive Solidarity? Radical Right Parties and the Welfare State. Radical Right Parties and the Welfare State (December 2014). Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Research Paper (2014/120). Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. Free press. Maggini, Nicola. 2014. The Populist and Eurosceptic Right: The Evolution of its Electoral Success. In The European Parliament Elections of 2014, ed. Lorenzo De Sio, Vincenzo Emanuele, and Nicola Maggini, 79–86. Roma: Luiss Press. Mair, Peter. 2002. Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy. In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed. Yves Meny and Yves Surel, 81–98. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2007. Political Opposition and the European Union. Government and Opposition 42(1): 1–17. ———. 2013. Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London:Verso Trade. Mair, Peter, and Cas Mudde. 1998. The Party Family and Its Study. Annual Review of Political Science 1 (1): 211–29.

80

L. CARRIERI

March, Luke, and Cas Mudde. 2005. What’s Left of the Radical Left? The European Radical Left after 1989: Decline and Mutation. Comparative European Politics 3 (1): 23–49. March, Luke, and Charlotte Rommerskirchen. 2015. Out of Left Field? Explaining the Variable Electoral Success of European Radical Left Parties. Party Politics 21 (1): 40–53. Marks, Gary, Liesbet Hooghe, Marco R. Steenbergen, and Ryan Bakker. 2007. Crossvalidating Data on Party Positioning on European Integration. Electoral Studies 26 (1): 23–38. Marks, Gary, and Carole J. Wilson. 2000. The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration. British Journal of Political Science 30 (3): 433–59. Medrano, Juan Diez. 2010. Framing Europe: Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Meguid, Bonnie. 2005. Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success. American Political Science Review 99 (3): 347–59. Mény, Yves, and Yves Surel. 2002. The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism. In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed. Yves Mény and Yves Surel, 1–21. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Morlino, Leonardo, and Francesco Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mudde, Cas. 2004. The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition 39 (4): 541–63. ———. 2009. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Three Decades of Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe: So What? European Journal of Political Research 52(1): 1–19. Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand. 2019. New Politics in Western Europe: The Rise and Success of Green Parties and Alternative Lists. London: Routledge. Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand, and Thomas Poguntke. 2013. Green Parties in National Governments. London: Routledge. Otjes, Simon, Gilles Ivaldi, Anders Ravik Jupskås, and Oscar Mazzoleni. 2018. It’s Not Economic Interventionism, Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right-wing Populist Parties. Swiss Political Science Review 24 (3): 270–90. Pardos-Prado, Sergi. 2015. How Can Mainstream Parties Prevent Niche Party Success? Center-Right Parties and the Immigration Issue. The Journal of Politics 77 (2): 352–67.

3

HOW PARTIES RESPOND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? …

81

Pirro, Andrea L.P., Paul Taggart, and Stijn van Kessel. 2018. The Populist Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: Comparative Conclusions. Politics 38 (3): 378–90. Polk, Jonathan Jan, Ryan Bakker Rovny, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Jelle Koedam, Filip Kostelka, Gary Marks, Gijs Schumacher, Marco Steenbergen, Milada Vachudova, and Marko Zilovic. 2017. Explaining the Salience of Anti-Elitism and Reducing Political Corruption for Political Parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data. Research & Politics 4 (1): 2053168016686915. Ray, Leonard. 1999. Measuring Party Orientations towards European Integration: Results from an Expert Survey. European Journal of Political Research 36 (2): 283–306. ———. 2007. Validity of Measured Party Positions on European Integration: Assumptions, Approaches, and a Comparison of Alternative Measures. Electoral Studies 26(1): 11–22. Riker, William H. 1986. The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Rohrschneider, Robert, and Stephen Whitefield. 2016. Responding to Growing European Union-Skepticism? The Stances of Political Parties toward European Integration in Western and Eastern Europe Following the Financial Crisis. European Union Politics 17 (1): 138–61. Rooduijn, Matthijs, and Tjitske Akkerman. 2017. Flank Attacks: Populism and Left-Right Radicalism in Western Europe. Party Politics 23 (3): 193–204. Sartori, Giovanni. 2005. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR press. Sitter, Nick. 2001. The Politics of Opposition and European Integration in Scandinavia: Is Euro-scepticism a Government-opposition Dynamic? West European Politics 24 (4): 22–39. Spoon, Jae-Jae, and Christopher Williams. 2017. It Takes Two: How Eurosceptic Public Opinion and Party Divisions Influence Party Positions. West European Politics 40 (4): 741–62. Steenbergen, Marco R., and Gary Marks. 2004. Introduction: Models of Political Conflict in the European Union. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks and Marco R. Steenburgen, 1–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Evaluating Expert Judgments. European Journal of Political Research 46(3): 347–66. Szczerbiak, Aleks, and Paul Taggart. 2008. Theorizing Party-Based Euroscepticism: Problems of Definition, Measurement, and Causality. In Opposing Europe? The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism: Volume 1, ed. Paul Taggart and Alexs Szczerbiak, 238–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

82

L. CARRIERI

Taggart, Paul. 1998. A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems. European Journal of Political Research 33 (3): 363–88. Taggart, Paul, and Aleks Szczerbiak. 2002. Europeanisation, Euroscepticism and Party Systems: Party-based Euroscepticism in the Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe. Perspectives on European Politics and Society 3 (1): 23–41. Van Biezen, Ingrid, Peter Mair, and Thomas Poguntke. 2012. Going, Going, … Gone? The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe. European Journal of Political Research 51 (1): 24–56. Van der Brug, Wouter, and Joost Van Spanje. 2009. Immigration, Europe and the ‘New’ Cultural Dimension. European Journal of Political Research 48(3): 309–34. Van der Eijk, Cees, Mark N. Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen. 1992. Cleavages, Conflict Resolution and Democracy. In Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries, ed. Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen, 406–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks and Marco R. Steenburgen, 32–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Eijk, Cees, Hermann Schmitt, and Tanja Binder. 2005. Left–Right Orientations and Party Choice. In The European Voter: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, ed. Jacques Thomassen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Elsas, Erika J., Armen Hakhverdian, and Wouter Van der Brug. 2016. United against a Common Foe? The Nature and Origins of Euroscepticism among Left-Wing and Right-Wing Citizens. West European Politics 39(6): 1181–1204. Vasilopoulou, Sofia. 2017. Far Right Parties and Euroscepticism: Patterns of Opposition. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

CHAPTER 4

EU Politicisation in Western European Party Systems: How Mainstream Parties Learned to Stop Worrying and Became Europhile Issue Entrepreneurs

4.1 Aggregate Findings on EU Issue Entrepreneurship: Testing the Mainstream/Protest Dichotomy This section presents the results on EU issue entrepreneurship, shedding light on party strategic efforts. On the one hand, H1 expects that the protest anti-European parties have increased their entrepreneurship to reap electoral payoffs. On the other hand, H2 foresees that the mainstream pro-European parties have decreased their entrepreneurship efforts to dampen the electoral success of their opponents. The Euro crisis, the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum may have changed party strategic incentives, ushering in a new era of issue competition, with European integration becoming more politicised. This first empirical step attempts to examine the strategic efforts of the two main party types on EU issues. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the empirical test has been carried out by employing Hobolt and De Vries (2015) index of entrepreneurship—(P eu − MP eu ) × SP eu , summarising the evolving trends in the electoral supply on EU-related issues. The aim is not to assess the direction of this entrepreneurship, but to understand the magnitude of the partisan strategic efforts on the pro-/anti-European issue dimensionality. The aggregate figures only report the absolute values of © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_4

83

84

L. CARRIERI

PARTY TYPES Mainstream

Protest 16.2 14.9

13.6

13

9.9 8.3 7

2006

7.3

2010

2014

2017

Fig. 4.1 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017

EU issue entrepreneurship, providing the average values by calculating the simple arithmetic mean for each party type.1 Figure 4.1 reveals a growth in the degree of EU issue entrepreneurship among protest parties, lending empirical support to the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1). The absolute values for this party cluster have clearly increased, from 13.6 in 2006 to 14.9 in 2017. By adopting 2006 as the index, it can be seen that the protest actors have increased their score by 1.3 points, a relative variation of +9.6%, with a peak of +19.2% in 2014. Thus, these parties have enhanced their cueing activities, strengthening their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship and exploiting the catalyst effect of the Euro crisis. It appears that the Euro crisis brought to the fore new strategic incentives for protest actors, perceiving the growing electoral yields linked to the anti-EU stances in its aftermath. However, the following time-point (2017) does not corroborate a path 1 The chapter appendix reports the entrepreneurship cores achieved by each party under study between 2006 and 2017, also offering an overview on party positions and issue saliency on EU issues for the four empirical steps (see Appendix: Tables 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4).

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

85

towards an entrepreneurial stabilisation, with protest parties mainly downplaying their tactical priming after the onset of the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. However, all things considered, protest actors did not abandon their active efforts in politicising EU issues during the multiple-crises period, increasingly mobilising the pro-/anti-European conflict compared to their pre-crisis-era positions. They clearly recognised an important incentive arising from the crises, adopting the role of European integration politicisation agents, confirming H1. However, compared to 2014, the multiplecrises period has also resulted in a stagnation in this entrepreneurship increase strategy, reflecting a transient Euro crisis effect. The shocks that followed have not strengthened protest politicisation endeavours, undergoing a decrease rather than an increase. Conversely, the mainstream entrepreneurship index has substantially grown, resulting in a quantitative leap in the multiple-crises period. Since 2006, these parties have actually stepped up their strategic efforts on the EU dimension, with an increase of +2.9 points. The relative variation of these parties has not been marginal, amounting to +29.3%, with the overall index showing an entrepreneurial boost. The mainstream trajectory reveals a trend of gradual strategic adjustments, rather than sudden changes, culminating in an entrepreneurial climax during the period. According to Green-Pedersen and Mortensen (2010), when an issue becomes more salient in a party system, regardless of the politicisation initiator, all the main parties are more prone to emphasise the issue. The EU politicisation conflict appears to fit into this schema, with the mainstream parties clearly responding to the Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. In the Euro crisis aftermath, the protest actors have taken on a leading role as conflict initiators, mobilising a Eurosceptic bias. At first, the mainstream parties partially resisted turning to the EU conflict, seeking to maintain the pre-existing conflicts. In fact, the 2014 round mirrored a fundamental mismatch in partisan strategic efforts, where protest parties actually doubled mainstream entrepreneurship. In the multiple-crises period, this pattern has been markedly reversed by a widespread mainstream response on EU issues. Even though the mainstream actors are still lagging behind their protest counterparts, left–right ideological radicalism is not the only driver in predicting an entrepreneurship increase, with the centrist parties providing an important set of Europhile cues to voters.

86

L. CARRIERI

The above findings empirically contradict the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2). In the multiple-crises period, mainstream parties have been committed to politicise the EU issues in the party systems, undertaking an entrepreneurship increase strategy. Their repertoire of strategies has not entailed any issue blurring (Rovny 2012) but, instead, has conveyed clear-cut electoral hints to the electorate to foster the emergence of the pro-\anti-European dimension of contestation. These parties have not turned out to be silent or inactive agents, as suggested in some works (Börzel and Risse 2018), but, instead, have sought to counter-mobilise an alternative pro-EU coalition in order to win more votes. In brief, these aggregate results do not contradict H1 and, at the same time, do not support H2, empirically demonstrating how the different party types have taken advantage of strategic incentives on EU issues, gradually converging on an entrepreneurship increase. However, these party types have reacted to the multiple crises in different ways, with the exogenous shocks opening up distinct sets of windows of opportunity. During the Euro crisis, public opinion concerning the EU had clearly deteriorated (Hobolt 2015), with protest parties seizing on this window of opportunity. The figures have also shown that the importance of EU issues within the protest parties’ platform actually predated the Euro crisis. However, the latter shock resulted in some marked changes in protest party strategies, with these actors bolstering their entrepreneurship. They sensed the political opportunities of their Eurosceptic identity to turn their losing and peripheral positions around within the party systems. Although Europhile parties were confronted with unfavourable conditions, they did not adopt a dismissive strategy, gradually initiating a response to Eurosceptic cueing, which reached a peak in the multiplecrises period. With the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum, the mainstream parties have set in motion an entrepreneurship increase strategy, while the protest parties have turned to the EU issues. Thus, these shocks have clearly reversed the pre-existing system of strategic incentives related to EU issues, perhaps by making the Europhile cues more electorally advantageous. Indeed, the migration crisis may have resulted in the increase of popular demands for a pan-European coordination of the growing influx of refugees, boosting support for this particular EU policy. Conti et al. (2019) found that most Western European citizens were in favour of furthering the EU coordination of migrant and

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

87

asylum-seeker hosting. Stockemer et al. (2019) have also shown that the refugee crisis has not actually triggered a worsening in individual opinions on European integration, with EU level seen as the most appropriate to cope with migration issues. The Brexit referendum has also given rise to similar public opinion trends, with public support for the leave option abruptly dropping in the rest of Europe (De Vries 2018). The reality of the British withdrawal from the EU has probably magnified the existing “benefits” over the “costs,” with many citizens reappraising their country’s membership in the EU (De Vries 2018). Although the Brexit referendum has acted as a focus for politicising the conflict over Europe, it did not provide protest parties with extra stimuli to revitalise their politicisation agency. On the contrary, Van Kessel et al. (2020) have observed how the Western European RRPs have clearly dealt with internal party on EU issues after Brexit, by handing over the constitutive membership issue. By reshaping popular attitudes, these recent exogenous shocks have significantly enfeebled the leeway in Eurosceptic cueing activity, with protest parties decreasing their entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, this empirical step has revealed a pattern of systemic party-system entrepreneurship at the aggregate level, paving the way for a more politicised EU conflict in the Western European party systems. In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, mainstream parties have deviated from the expectations outlined in H2, strengthening their Europhile cueing activity across the continent. Meanwhile, protest parties have also adopted an entrepreneurship increase strategy, though their Eurosceptic cues have stagnated compared to the Euro crisis period. Previous works have actually shown that mainstream parties had been committed to overlooking the EU conflict, successfully limiting its full politicisation (Börzel and Risse 2018; Green-Pedersen 2019). These findings reverse this scenario, revealing an increase in party-system politicisation. The multiple set of crises has probably established different strategic incentives for the two party types, which have openly collided on the EU dimensionality. Ideological radicalism has not been the only driver in predicting the increasing degree of EU issue entrepreneurship, with ideological centrism also standing out as a determinant in this strategy. Thus, this conflict has resulted in being more politicised, with political parties, both protest and mainstream, rendering EU issues more contested. This analysis gives rise to a few doubts regarding the mainstream and protest entrepreneurship Increase strategies. However, there is no

88

L. CARRIERI

certainty that these results hold at the disaggregate level and many questions still remain unanswered. The next empirical round aims to clarify these unresolved matters by looking at the party entrepreneurial variations, identifying potential nuances occurring in different countries. This section replicates the entrepreneurship test by disaggregating the intervened countries—those in the South of Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain)—and the non-intervened countries—the NorthWestern European democracies (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK).

4.2

EU Issue Entrepreneurship in Intervened Countries

As mentioned in the introduction, the financial crisis gave rise to two distinct blocs of countries in the EU—intervened and non-intervened countries. The former suffered more acutely from a lack of domestic responsiveness, with the external responsibility of the EU/Troika being prioritised (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018). This cluster largely involves the Southern European democracies, their citizens being increasingly aware of the EU external constraints on their governments (Ruiz-Rufino and Alonso 2017). The prediction is that this public opinion driver has catalysed an unprecedented and sudden spread of popular Euroscepticism, with new protest actors, and revitalised the existing protest actors taking advantage of this political momentum (Morlino and Raniolo 2017). Figure 4.2 reports the average values achieved by the two different party types for the intervened countries, unveiling some surprising findings. As expected, the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis holds for this bloc, showing a marked growth in protest-based entrepreneurship. This increase corresponds to +2.4 points, amounting to a relative variation of +24%. The multiple set of crises has apparently ushered in a new era for Southern European party systems, which have been reshaped by the mergence of a novel Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. This transformation has been linked to the austerity policies (Calossi 2016), which have brought to the fore European integration for the electorates, providing protest parties with an unprecedented strategic opportunity. The Euro crisis period marked a peak in these Eurosceptic entrepreneurial efforts, with the following time span (2017) showing a relative stagnation (−5.3%). Therefore, protest-based entrepreneurship has emerged after

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

14

89

13.3 12.6

12 10.2 10

9.3

9.3

9.4

8 6.8

6.5

6

4

2

0 Intervened Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

Fig. 4.2 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship in intervened countries for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017

the implementation of the austerity packages, demonstrating the transformative impact of the Euro crisis on the intervened cluster, and perhaps weakening the party abilities to link voters across the traditional sources of conflict (Clements et al. 2018). On the contrary, during the multiple crises, these protest-based incentives have been slightly eroded, with migration and the Brexit referendum dampening Eurosceptic orientations and reinforcing Europragmatic stances (De Vries 2018; Conti et al. 2019). Furthermore, many protest parties have entered the cabinets (SIRYZA and ANEL) or provided parliamentary support (BE and CDU), while others have sought to become credible coalition partners (M5S, Podemos and IU), moderating their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. Southern European party systems have undergone a major governmental turnover, with many protest actors holding a ministerial position or externally supporting the government. Nonetheless, the Euro crisis was a major transformative event in the South of Europe, with an injection of Euroscepticism, which has not lessened during the multiple-crises period.

90

L. CARRIERI

Before the outbreak of the Euro crisis, these four democracies had displayed a clear pattern in their pro-EU attitudes, with their political elites/citizens expressing stronger Europhile attitudes compared to other EU member states (Conti et al. 2010). The EU-driven austerity policies acted as a powerful catalyst, interacting with a pre-existing political crisis and, thus, prompting the surge of a newly branded Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. The literature has often highlighted a predominance of left-biased Euroscepticism (Kriesi 2016), epitomised by the electoral success of the new left parties, such as Podemos, the Left Bloc (BE) and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). These parties have expressed a conditional and contingent form of anti-EU opposition, embodying a Soft Euroscepticism, which has been recurrently associated with the EUdriven austerity policies (Otjes and Katsanidou 2017). However, these party systems have not been lacking in a more radical typology partybased Euroscepticism, with the Euro crisis strengthening the ideological hostility towards the EU, especially among the Communist parties (KKE and PCP) and RRPs (LN and GD). Furthermore, the multiple-crises round has provided another important insight into the intervened countries by falsifying the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis. Indeed, by observing the relative variations in entrepreneurship, this party type achieved a marked increase of +38.2%, from 6.8 (2006) to 9.4 (2014). Although the protest-based entrepreneurship has exceeded the mainstream, these parties have collided on pro-/anti-EU issues, without giving up their Europhile stances. Mainstream parties have not undergone any Eurosceptic positional shifts (the only exception being Forward Italy, FI) but have, instead, been responsive to the party-system agenda change. By responding to a protest Eurosceptic strategy, mainstream parties have mainly moved more towards a systemic entrepreneurship in Southern Europe. This pattern reverts the expectation of the mainstream strategies (H2), and also lends greater support to party-system politicisation, with entrepreneurship increase strategies being located throughout the entire political spectrum, not being solely associated with an ideological radicalism. By studying the four party systems, the above-mentioned results can be further confirmed, indicating some commonality in Southern European party strategies. Italy, Portugal and Spain have reflected a dynamic systemic entrepreneurship, with both party types increasing their strategic efforts on EU issues.

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

4.2.1

91

Spain

Even if the Spanish parties have achieved a lower degree of entrepreneurship, this party system has followed the same trends as the other Southern European countries. The party entrepreneurship shift has not been ephemeral, especially when considering the peculiar structure of the country’s conflicts, marked by the notable resurgence of a centre– periphery cleavage in the aftermath of the Euro crisis (Alonso et al. 2015). Besides the Catalan secession, many works have pointed to the emergence of other issues in Spain, such as the austerity policies and democratic renewal, with European integration being a minor parcel in the political debate (Vidal and Sánchez-Vítores 2019). On the contrary, these results show how the Spanish parties have greatly increased their entrepreneurship, probably combining pro-/anti-austerity stances with opposition to/support for the economic embodiment of the EU, triggering a growing politicisation of this conflict in its party system (Fig. 4.3).

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

5.9

2.6

2.6

4

3.6

4.7

6

7.8

Mainstream 2006

SPAIN

Fig. 4.3 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Spain

92

L. CARRIERI

According to Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro and Plaza-Colodro (2018), the Great Recession provided the Spanish RLPs—Podemos and IU— with the incentive to draw attention to soft Eurosceptic stances, with the latter adopting a populist narrative and opposition to austerity policies. Nevertheless, the multiple-crises period shows certain contingent effects regarding the transformative powers of the financial crisis on protest entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, mainstream parties have gradually shown a more pronounced entrepreneurial increase compared to the protest parties, benefitting from the country’s economic recovery during the 2013–2017 period. The Spanish level of politicisation has seemed to be more context-dependent, with the Euro crisis constituting a punctuation point, without substantially dampening widespread EU support (Coller and de Luis 2020). Furthermore, the Spanish have expressed positive views on migration and its management by the EU, with the refugee crisis not giving rise to any major cultural anxieties related to European integration (Conti et al. 2019). The absence of a radical-right outlet may have prevented this conflict from reaching a deeper politicisation, with the Podemos-IU alliance offering only a rather limited criticism of the EU-driven austerity measures. The rise of Vox, which was not captured in the 2017 CHES data, has probably filled this ideological vacuum in Spain, supplying voters with an identitarian-cultural anti-EU frame. 4.2.2

Italy

The Italian case presents a strong growth in EU politicisation, with both party types transforming European integration into a more salient and polarised conflict in the party system. Other works have presented similar findings on Italy, highlighting the rise of a distinct pro-/antiEuropean ideological divide in the aftermath of the Euro crisis (Giannetti et al. 2017). On the one hand, protest actors, both the new and the old (LN, M5S and FDI), have channelled a new wave of discontent towards the EU spurred by the austerity policies. These protest parties have seized on this window of opportunity, accommodating their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship with broader policy commitments, such as anti-migration and populism, developing new winning formulas (Carrieri 2020). On the other hand, since the onset of the Euro crisis, the main centre–left actor, the Democratic Party (PD), has been increasingly committed to cueing voters on Europhile stances, with its former Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, drawing up a new frame on the EU. Indeed, he

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

93

adopted a more conflictual approach before the European Commission in order to obtain more budgetary flexibility, even though, in doing so, not abandoning its pro-European tradition (Brunazzo and Della Sala 2016) (Fig. 4.4). The multiple-crises period has marked the climax of protest strategic efforts in Italy, with this bloc of parties achieving a relative entrepreneurial increase of +37.8%. The refugee crisis created a major shock, as Italy became the main European entry point for the increasing migrant influxes. The M5S and LN have attacked. The EU’s mismanagement of this crisis, which failed in providing a timely coordinated response to the migration and asylum-seeker flows, and not alleviating the burden placed on the country (Pirro and Van Kessel 2018). Hence, the Italian case has stood out due to the profound impact of the multiple crises on the country, with the joint effects of the economic recession and migration crisis fuelling a consistent downward spiral in popular support for the EU (Conti et al. 2020). The Eurosceptic entrepreneurs have

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

6

6

7.9

9.1

10.3

14.8

16.9

20.4

Mainstream 2006

ITALY

Fig. 4.4 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Italy

94

L. CARRIERI

developed a cross-cutting anti-EU discourse, merging utilitarian concerns with cultural anxieties related to EU integration. These anti-EU stances have been a common ideological denominator among the Italian protest parties, being one of the main reasons for the formation of the M5SLeague government (the so-called “yellow-green” coalition) in June 2018, led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte (Giannetti et al. 2018). At the same time, the pro-EU parties did not seek to depoliticise this source of conflict, with the PD and Plus Europe2 (+EU) mainly conveying positive messages to voters on European integration. The multiple crises have resulted in a transformation in the Italian partisan supply, with all the main parties aligning themselves along a fully salient and polarised pro/anti-EU dimensionality. Consequently, the Italian party system has been characterised by the growing politicisation of the EU conflict, which has clearly gained autonomy in steering party strategies. 4.2.3

Portugal

As far as Portugal is concerned, during the pre-crisis period, there had been an absence of EU issues in the political debate, as well as any partybased polarisation (Costa Lobo and Magalhães 2011), thus, hampering any party-system politicisation of this conflict. Indeed, Portuguese public opinion was conspicuous for its stable Euro-enthusiasm, perceiving European integration as beneficial for national interests (Conti et al. 2010). The Euro crisis gradually reversed these popular attitudes, with Portuguese citizens increasingly blaming the EU for the effects of the austerity policies (Freire et al. 2014). The post-crisis empirical rounds reflect a growing entrepreneurship, with both party types almost doubling their strategic efforts on the pro-/anti-European issue dimension. The government choice to sign the memorandum of understanding with the Troika (2011) probably triggered this change in the Portuguese political agenda (Freire and Santana-Pereira 2015), with the PSD, CDS-PP and PS continuing to hold pro-European positions, and the BE and PCPCDU displaying Eurosceptic stances. After the 2015 general elections, the BE and PCP-CDU overturned their marginal position in the party system, leaving behind their historical opposition status and providing 2 Plus Europe (+EU) has been included in this round by using the party position and issue emphasis of the Democratic Centre (CD), which had merged into +EU before the 2018 general elections.

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

95

crucial support for the Socialist-led government. Even if these parties had diverged in the degree and content of their anti-EU entrepreneurship, both had undergone a clear Eurosceptic turnaround after the onset of the Euro crisis, boosting the politicisation of this conflict. The Euro crisis has probably been the core catalyst for transforming the supply-side of politics by making the EU issues more salient and controversial in the party-system agenda (Fig. 4.5). Conversely, in the multiple-crises period, Portuguese parties have mainly played down their EU-related cues, which have, however, still remained higher than in the pre-crises era. This strategic refurbishment has been linked to an existing ideological divergence between the moderate left (the PS) and the radical left (BE and PCP-CDU) along the pro-/anti-EU dimension. On the contrary, the economic dimension was of fundamental importance in the formation of the PS minority government, which gained the external support of the BE and PCP-CDU. These parties signed agreements concerning many fiscal, labour and economic

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

11.4 9.4

6.6

7.5

8.6

9.8

11.7

14.8

Mainstream 2006

PORTUGAL

Fig. 4.5 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Portugal

96

L. CARRIERI

policies, without any mention of the potentially detrimental and divisive EU issues (Fernandes et al. 2018). However, the Eurosceptic parties never gave up on voicing their dissent on accelerating the deficit reduction pursued by the Costa government in order to comply with the EU rules and avoid an Excessive Deficit Procedure. Instead, the PS insisted on taking a path of fiscal consolidation, steadily supporting a federal view of the EU (Lisi and Ramalhete 2020). In short, in spite of some waning party-based incentives, the EU conflict has gradually become more politicised than in the pre-crises period, with both party types being committed to priming EU-related issues before the Portuguese public. 4.2.4

Greece

Last but not least, the Greek case presents deviant features compared to the other Southern European democracies, mirroring the most notable level of mainstream entrepreneurship in this country sample. Mainstream strategic efforts have actually exceeded the protest efforts in both the pre-crisis and post-crisis period, with the PASOK and ND constantly attaching more emphasis to EU issues compared to their opponents. This entrepreneurial trend was due to the long-lasting positional polarisation on EU issues, predating the financial crisis, seen in the presence of Eurosceptic parties, such as SYRIZA, LAOS and KKE. The latter parties had already set in motion an anti-European electoral supply, achieving a significant degree of entrepreneurship in 2006 (Fig. 4.6). The Troika intervention and the ensuing austerity policies worsened public attitudes towards the EU (Freire et al. 2014; Katsanidou and Otjes 2016), with Greek parties rapidly reshaping their strategies. In a context of marked electoral instability, the mainstream parties adjusted their cueing commitments by downplaying their EU issue entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, these actors did not remain silent on this source of conflict, with the PASOK, ND and the River (To Potami) notably priming EU issues in the political debate. It the 2014 EP elections, the RRPs (GD and ANEL) and RRLs (KKE and SYRIZA) took advantage of the Eurosceptic momentum sparked off by the Euro crisis. The Coalition for the Radical Left (SYRIZA) was one of the frontrunner parties in the 2014 EP elections, subsequently winning the 2015 general elections, forming an anti-austerity coalition with the Independent Greeks (ANEL). This party had undergone several strategic swings over time, initially enhancing its EU entrepreneurship (2010) and then,

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

97

10.6

9.3

10.7

12.8

14.7

16

16.9

25.9

4

GREECE

Fig. 4.6 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Greece

later toning it down (2014). SYRIZA had mainly profiled itself as an antiausterity actor (Teperoglou et al. 2015), though gradually moderating its Eurosceptic stance (Vasilopoulou 2018). However, Greece has not lacked in more radical anti-European channels, such as the KKE and GD (Ellinas 2013; Vasilopoulou 2018), with the aggregate protest entrepreneurship increasing after the beginning of the financial crisis. Following the migrant crisis and Brexit referendum, SYRIZA has moved away from its traditional Eurosceptic position, profiling itself as a fully fledged pro-EU party and toning down its overall entrepreneurship. This strategic and ideological U-turn has appeared to be unrelated to the migration crisis or the Brexit referendum. Instead, it reflects some realistic concerns of SYRIZA’s cabinet, which perceived difficulty in the Greek economy being able to achieve a recovery outside of the Eurozone (Vasilopoulou 2018). This turnaround was epitomised by the June 2015 Greek bailout referendum on whether the country should accept or not a rescue package conditioned by austerity policies. In spite of its

98

L. CARRIERI

rejection of this plan, the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition ended up negotiating a new memorandum of understanding, reversing the popular vote. The Greek PM and SYRIZA leader, Alexis Tsipras, did not overturn the EUled austerity policies, as he pledged, facing the overwhelming strength of the creditor country coalition and thus, prioritising external responsibility vis-à-vis domestic responsiveness. Protest efforts have slightly increased over time, the KKE and GD being chiefly responsible for this. However, the protest-led coalition government has paradoxically contributed to lowering the politicisation of the EU conflict, with SYRIZA actively blurring this source of contestation. Meanwhile, though gradually decreasing, mainstream entrepreneurship has outweighed protest entrepreneurship during the multiple-crises period, with the centrist parties leaning more towards politicising European integration in the party system. The Greek case presents several peculiarities, with some overlapping between the economic (pro-/antiausterity divide) and pro-/anti-EU dimensionalities (Katsanidou and Otjes 2016), making the analysis of this conflict politicisation more problematic. However, polarised and salient positions on this issue dimension have emerged in this party landscape, with a great array of party stances being presented to voters during the multiple-crises period. 4.2.5

Party-System Politicisation in Intervened Countries

Prior to the Euro crisis, previous works had not identified any actual preconditions for awakening the “sleeping giant” of European integration in the South of Europe, with these countries being stably and favourably disposed towards European integration (Conti et al. 2010). Conti et al. (2010) saw the nature of this pro-Europeanism as multifaceted, with both the elite and citizens expressing a positive evaluation of the economic benefits of integration. The Euro crisis proved its catalyst effect by transforming a previously marginal issue into a matter of political debate within these party systems. The EU management of the crisis made European integration more contentious in these party systems, opening up new windows of opportunity for protest-based Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. However, this Eurosceptic momentum has slowed down during the multiple-crises period, with protest parties downplaying the EU-related information shortcuts. Many protest anti-European parties have begun profiling themselves as more credible governing actors, adopting officeseeking strategies. For instance, Portuguese protest actors had to prioritise

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

99

economic issues to join forces with the mainstream PS, thus decreasing their anti-EU entrepreneurship. In Greece, SYRIZA took on governing responsibility, dealing with the EU external constraints and, consequently, making an ideological shift along the pro-/anti-EU to warrant its support for the austerity policies. The Spanish RLPs had less incentives to draw attention to Eurosceptic issues, with the migration crisis reducing the room of agency for these politicisation efforts. The Italian case is the main exception, where the migrant crisis clearly reinforced negative opinions on the EU, with the M5S and League exploiting a shared anti-EU position to form a coalition government in 2018. Even though the Euro crisis brought about the most sudden strategic change among protest parties, in the multiple-crises period these actors have increased their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship, confirming H1. Hence, by priming EU-related issues in the South European political debate, protest parties have contributed to making the EU conflict more politicised within their respective party systems. Another core finding revolves around the marked rejection of H2, with mainstream actors not seeking to sedate this conflict, but rather to boost its politicisation in the party system. Therefore, Europhile parties prompted a systemic entrepreneurship, which is considered to be greatly conducive to spurring new political conflicts, with political radicalism not being associated with greater strategic efforts on this issue dimensionality. Some works have made similar remarks on the rise of this controversy in Southern Europe (Kriesi 2016; Charalambous et al. 2018), but neglecting mainstream party responses. These parties have partially characterised themselves as EU conflict mobilisers. The pro-/anti-EU perilous orthogonality to the established left–right conflicts has not prevented mainstream parties from playing the EU card in the political debate. It is worth noting that these strategies did not entail any positional collusion on Euroscepticism, with mainstream actors continuing to hold firm Europhile views. Therefore, Southern Europe has been typified by the presence of vocal pro-European outlets, perhaps activating a coalition of Europhile voters. This empirical test unveils a marked increase in the party-system politicisation of European integration in the intervened countries, which has been due to a party-based systemic entrepreneurship. Before the crisis, scholars had not specifically referred to these democracies when they formulated the “sleeping giant” hypothesis, with the Southern European party system being the most stable Europhile bloc of countries among the

100

L. CARRIERI

EU member states. Nowadays, these party systems display a convergence towards the non-intervened countries, with the European integration conflict becoming increasingly politicised in Southern Europe.

4.3 EU Issue Entrepreneurship in the Non-intervened Countries This section analyses the non-intervened countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom), grouping together these nation states that were better able to cope with the consequences of the Great Recession, facing minor responsiveness constraints (RuizRufino and Alonso 2017). Before the outbreak of the crisis, some works had found a similarity in these countries, with the integration–demarcation cleavage increasingly structuring the political conflicts in their party systems. The literature has chiefly regarded European integration as being a minor parcel of the demarcation–integration cleavage (Kriesi et al. 2008). In France, Germany and the Netherlands, founding members of the EEC, public opinion had traditionally been favourably disposed towards European integration, with Euroscepticism holding a minor transformative power on the configuration of the conflict dimensionality (Kriesi 2007). On the contrary, Sweden and the UK had shared a history of widespread public Euroscepticism (Vasilopoulou 2017; Sørensen 2017), already preceding the onset of the financial crisis. The second Greek bailout prompted more popular Euroscepticism in these countries, with the inter-state solidarity related to the rescue packages receiving media coverage (Grande and Kriesi 2016). Furthermore, some of these countries, namely France and the Netherlands, experienced major economic downturns and adopted fiscal retrenchment measures (Ivaldi 2018; Pirro and Van Kessel 2017). Although Sweden and the UK were not Eurozone members, the Euro crisis probably affected public attitudes on pro-/anti-EU issues, with many citizens rejecting further integration steps, wishing to set themselves further apart from the Eurozone (Nielsen 2017). Figure 4.7 shows that protest parties had already been acting as politicisation agents in 2006, with the Euro crisis providing them with additional incentives for conveying Eurosceptic cues to the voters. In fact, aggregate results show protest party indexes increasing from 18 (2006) to 20 (2014), an increase of +11.1%. Thus, the 2014 round captures a rise in protest entrepreneurship, with these parties actually seizing on

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mianstream 2017

Protest 2017

101

7.6

7.9

7.2

10.2

16.2

17.2

18

20

4

NON-INTERVENED

Fig. 4.7 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship in non-intervened countries for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017

the opportunity opened up by this exogenous shock. The Euro crisis had a catalyst effect in these countries, consolidating some pre-existing trends of party system change. At the same time, the migration crisis and Brexit referendum did not lead to any additional strategic efforts along this policy dimensionality, with protest efforts notably stagnating in the multiple-crises period (2017). These figures may reflect some widespread concerns in the nonintervened countries, with the domestic electorates fearing fiscal transfers towards weaker Eurozone economies. Indeed, the approval of the rescue packages for the debtor states probably gave rise to new incentives for protest parties. In the post-crisis period, these actors further differentiated themselves from the EU consensus, channelling a new wave of public discontent within a pre-existing Eurosceptic frame. Thus, the rise of Euroscepticism may be interpreted as a long-term transformation occurring in the non-intervened countries, with the Euro crisis constituting a punctuation point in conflict politicisation. Conversely, in the multiplecrises period, many protest actors may have been more likely to focus

102

L. CARRIERI

on other policy issues, with European integration suddenly becoming a source of intra-party division for many RRPs (Van Kessel et al. 2020). Furthermore, after the migration crisis, the RRPs may have seized on the incentives to highlight anti-immigration related policies, exploiting the popular polarised attitudes on this policy domain. Nonetheless, these parties currently display a steady ownership of Eurosceptic positional issues, which may provide them with flexibility in adopting strategic shifts whenever they appear to be electorally convenient. Meanwhile, these results disconfirm H2 for the non-intervened countries, with the mainstream parties significantly reacting on the EU issues and, thus, aiming at providing the voters with more clear-cut hints on this issue dimensionality. Their entrepreneurial increase has been significant, with a relative growth of +41.7%. Mainstream actors may find more favourable conditionality in the aftermath of the migration crisis and Brexit referendum, with many citizens reassessing the potential benefits of European integration. The refugee crisis has actually led to an intensification in popular demands for further integration steps, revolving around EU coordinated efforts in managing this crisis (Conti et al. 2019; Stockemer et al. 2019). Moreover, these countries have definitively left behind the Euro crisis, showing more positive socio-economic indicators (Kriesi and Hutter 2019), with EU issues being more likely to be embedded within a broader cultural dimensionality (Otjes and Katsanidou 2017). In short, the current analysis signals a trajectory of systemic entrepreneurship in this bloc of countries, with both party types leading a party-system politicisation. However, this country cluster requires a more comprehensive analysis, taking into account the nationwide variations occurring in the different party systems, which may potentially disclaim the general patterns in party entrepreneurial activity. 4.3.1

France

The French party system has reflected the impact of the multiple crises, bringing about transformations in party strategies, with political extremism not being the only factor to explain the increasing entrepreneurship. The National Front (FN) stood out as a continuous driver for French Euroscepticism (Goodliffe 2015), already having exploited the opportunity provided by the 2005 Constitutional Treaty referendum. Marine Le Pen, who assumed the FN’s presidency in January 2011, has further clarified the party’s anti-European position, providing

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

103

voters with outright cues on this conflict. Indeed, since the beginnings of the Euro crisis, the FN has gradually reinforced its entrepreneurship, without radicalising its position, but ascribing more saliency to EU issues. Thus, the party has taken centre stage in European integration politicisation, largely prioritising EU issues in the 2012 and 2017 presidential election platforms (Evans and Ivaldi 2018). The 2017 presidential campaign coincided with the multiple-crises period, with the FN rallying the voters on the country’s withdrawal from Schengen and the single currency (the so-called Frexit ). Even though the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum had clearly conditioned party strategies, the FN anti-currency position may have backfired, preventing this party from increasing its credibility among moderate voters, and sparking off intraparty factionalism (Ivaldi 2018; Van Kessel et al. 2020). However, in the 2017 presidential elections, Marine Le Pen’s candidacy resulted in a significant electoral breakthrough, winning over 21.3% of the votes in the first electoral round and 33.9% in the second one (Fig. 4.8). The French party system has also been marked by the presence of a radical-left Eurosceptic outlet—the Left Party (PG)/France Unbowed (FI). In 2009, Jean-Luc Mélenchon became the leader of the radical-left

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mianstream 2017

Protest 2017

19.1

11.7

18.3

9.1

10.1

17.4 9.4

20.2

Mainstream 2006

FRANCE

Fig. 4.8 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—France

104

L. CARRIERI

camp, promoting an electoral coalition between his own formation (PG) and the French Communist Party (PCF), creating the Left Front (FG). Mélenchon had been consistently conspicuous as one of the most active Eurosceptic leaders in the French context. Hence, the FG exploited the problems arising from the Euro crisis, by opposing the EU-led austerity policies and promising Treaty reforms to amend the EU neoliberal foundations (Goodliffe 2015). After the outbreak of the multiple set of crises, Mélenchon again restructured the radical-left camp, founding a new party, France Unbowed (FI). This party turned out to be a strong Eurosceptic entrepreneur, leaving behind the more lukewarm attitudes of the PCF, and persisting in strongly criticising the EU neoliberal bias. This strategy apparently paid off, with FI’s Mélenchon attracting dissatisfied left-wing voters, winning over 19.6% in the 2017 presidential elections. The mainstream camp has notably reacted to the Eurosceptic challenge, with the EU issues gaining in importance and, potentially, reshaping the party-system conflicts. After the Euro crisis, the two dominant French mainstream parties—the Socialist Party (PS) and the Republicans (LR)—toned down their focus on EU issues, overshadowing the ancillary role played by the French government vis-à-vis the Germans in managing the crisis, experienced under both the Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies. In the multiple-crises period, the PS and LR held primaries to choose their presidential candidates, with the more extreme candidates (Benoît Hamon and Franç´ois Fillon, respectively) winning. This leadership turnover opened a window of opportunity for a new centrist political entrepreneur—Emmanuelle Macron’s Republic on the March (REM) (Evans and Ivaldi 2018). During the 2017 electoral campaign, this new mainstream actor combined economic conservativism (neoliberalism) with culturally progressive positions, challenging the dominant left–right dimension. Macron became one of the most important politicisation agents in the French party system, with the REM index of EU entrepreneurship almost matching that of the FN. By cueing the voters on an ambitious Euro-reformist platform, this party rapidly established a high credibility in achieving pro-EU policy goals (Lachat and Michel 2020). Macron had probably benefitted from a popular Europhile backlash, with most French voters rejecting the FN’s Frexit campaign and, thus, rewarding his candidacy in the 2017 presidential run-off (Van Kessel et al. 2020). Smaller mainstream formations (the PS and EELV) had also increased their entrepreneurial efforts, making the EU a more contentious

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

105

issue. Therefore, the French party system mainly epitomised a pattern of systemic entrepreneurship, with European integration being increasingly politicised in the party system. 4.3.2

Germany

The German party system has apparently exemplified the transformative impact of Euro crisis, the major catalyst of change in this country. Since the post-war period, the German political and economic elite had been traditionally very supportive of the European project, expecting to gain advantages from the establishment of a common market area and to bring an end to the country’s political insulation (Bulmer and Paterson 2013). Before the crisis, this party system had constantly lacked in any important radical-right Eurosceptic entrepreneur, only presenting one radical-left actor, the PDS/Die Linke (Left Party), which only moderately emphasised these issues (Carrieri 2019). At the same time, the mainstream actors had not significantly highlighted the EU issues, maintaining benefits from a widespread permissive consensus on the deepening integration. The Euro crisis impacted the German landscape, probably triggering long-lasting changes in the party-system format. With the German economy rapidly recovering from the crisis, the government took on the leadership role in the Eurozone, dominating the intergovernmental bargaining and endorsing bailout packages for the debtor countries (Schmitt-Beck 2017). This debate gave rise to unprecedented anxieties in the German population, who perceived the risks involving the fiscal transfers, awakening latent Euroscepticism grounded in the most radical interpretation of ordo-liberalism (Grimm 2015). In April 2013, a group of intellectuals and journalists founded a new protest party, the radicalright Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose platform reflected these spreading anti-European sentiments. In fact, the AfD had chiefly profiled itself as an anti-currency party, cueing the voters on getting rid of the euro (Reher 2017). AfD politicisation efforts were extraordinary (27.8), affecting the overall protest entrepreneurial index, which skyrocketed from 7.3 (2006) to 18 points (2014), mirroring the most important relative variation (+146.6%) in all of Western Europe (Fig. 4.9). However, the AfD repeatedly experienced internal conflicts, with the more economic conservative Bernd Lucke’s faction being replaced by the orthodox radical-right wing, led by Frauke Petry. Even though the tension between these two ideological orientations continued, the AfD

L. CARRIERI

Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mianstream 2017

Protest 2017

8.5

3

3.8

7.3

7.6

9.1

10

18

106

GERMANY

Fig. 4.9 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Germany

clearly jumped on Angela Merkel’s open door policy towards Syrian refugees (Lees 2018). The outbreak of the refugee crisis markedly reshaped the AfD incentive structure, which attracted anti-migration voters, exploiting the progressive shift achieved by the CDU along the cultural dimension (Franzmann et al. 2020). Consequently, the party deflected its Eurosceptic entrepreneurship, which turned out to be a lesser strategic asset in 2017. At the same time, the Left party (LINKE) has not attempted to cue voters on EU issues, depoliticising the EU conflict. The German radical left has tried to profile itself as a more libertarian party on cultural issues, without any strong incentives to highlight Euroscepticism (Franzmann et al. 2020). In a context of growing Euroscepticism, the German mainstream parties responded to the challenge posed by the AfD, politicising European integration. The multiple set of crises has prompted a systemic change in the German electoral supply, with the CDU, SPD and the Greens increasing their EU issue entrepreneurship. In the multiple-crises period, total Europhile entrepreneurship amounted to 8.5, an increase of +183.3% among mainstream actors. During the Euro crisis, the CDU, under the leadership of Angela Merkel, had developed a Europhile

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

107

discourse by employing utilitarian arguments, advocating for the single currency as a device for ensuring domestic economic stability (Grimm 2015). In doing so, the CDU was able to steer the domestic debate, pushing other parties to endorse rescue packages for the debtor countries. Furthermore, the CDU managed to signal a domestic responsiveness through hard intergovernmental bargaining, with the German voters positively reacting to the government’s actions and positions in the Councils (Schneider 2018). However, this party system has also activated another sub-conflict in the Europhile camp, where it has pitched supporters for an EU intergovernmental and ordo-liberal embodiment (CDU and CSU) against those endorsing a federalist and social-oriented path (SPD and the Greens; Carrieri 2019). In brief, an increasing entrepreneurship spread over the whole left–right ideological divide, involving both protest and mainstream parties. This systemic entrepreneurship has hastened the politicisation of European integration, transforming a previously overridden political conflict into a contested matter in the German party system. 4.3.3

The Netherlands

The Dutch case also presents a certain degree of mainstream politicisation agency with, conversely, protest parties revealing a more unstable level of entrepreneurship. Different works have referred to the long-standing proEU support in the Netherlands, with public opinion showing a pattern of clear consensus (De Vreese et al. 2017). However, in a Constitutional Treaty referendum (2005), a Eurosceptic backlash had already shaken the Netherlands, with anti-European attitudes being the major factor in predicting the rejection of this integration step (Schuck and de Vreese 2009). In fact, before the Euro crisis, negative orientation towards European integration had already been spreading throughout Dutch society (Lubbers and Jaspers 2011), channelled by strong Eurosceptic entrepreneurs both on the left (the Socialist Party, SP) and on the right (Pim Fortuyn List, LPF, and Party for Freedom, PVV). The Euro crisis triggered major divisions and more negative attitudes to the EU (De Vreese et al. 2017), which had become a contentious issue in the political agenda. By playing on its pre-existing Euroscepticism, the PVV reinforced its cueing activity on this latent dimension to gain more votes. This party repeatedly criticised the government’s decision to use national money for the Greek rescue package, ultimately withdrawing its

108

L. CARRIERI

support from the cabinet by holding the EU responsible for the worsening economic conditions of the Dutch people (Pirro and Van Kessel 2018). Therefore, the PVV had been the chief driving force behind the party-system politicisation of this conflict after the onset of the Euro crisis, complemented by the Eurosceptic entrepreneurship of an important radical-left actor—the Socialist Party (SP). The multiple-crises period has changed this picture, with protest parties reducing their strategic efforts compared to the pre-crisis period (−13.6%). In the aftermath of the refugee crisis and Brexit referendum, both the PVV and SP have downplayed their Eurosceptic cueing. The PVV leader, Geert Wilders, gradually distanced himself from the socalled Nexit, relinquishing his former stance in favour of the country’s withdrawal from the EU (Van Kessel et al. 2020). Although the PVV remained a strong Eurosceptic entrepreneur in the Dutch party system, revealing a prominent index in 2017 (22.8), the Euro crisis rapidly exhausted its catalyst effects. Before the 2017 Dutch general elections, the radical-right supply-side had become more complex due to the emergence of a new protest actor, Forum for Democracy (FvD), which had also adopted notable politicisation efforts on the EU conflict (23). In the aftermath of the refugee crisis, the Dutch RRPs have seemed to be more committed to tackling other cultural issues, benefitting from a wider set of opportunities on anti-migration policies. On the other hand, the SP has softened its anti-EU stance, reducing its Eurosceptic entrepreneurship to gain more credibility on economic issues (Fig. 4.10). Dutch mainstream parties have not escaped from this issue dimension, bolstering their EU entrepreneurship. The EU’s growing intervention and monitoring powers over domestic budgetary policies have produced strong reactions among the mainstream parties. Two out of the three “core” Dutch parties, the CDA and VVD, have adopted more outright pro-EU strategies. According to Otjes (2016), in the onward crisis period, party locations along the pro-/anti-European dimension were increasingly structured on economic policies. In fact, the Eurosceptic parties (PVV and SP) opposed EU-led restrictions on budgetary sovereignty, while the Europhile parties (D66 and GL) favoured the Europeanisation of the budget formation (Otjes 2016). To cue the voters on economic policies, the EU issue entrepreneurship turned out to be a crucial strategic resource for the Dutch parties, with mainstream actors making this conflict more politicised. In the multiple-crises period, this Europhile politicisation has grown even more, with an increase of +62.3% over the

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mianstream 2017

Protest 2017

109

6.9

9.4

9.8

11.2

11.4

17.6

19

20.9

4

NETHERLANDS

Fig. 4.10 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties in 2006 and 2017—Netherlands

pre-crisis period, probably due to Dutch public opinion reassessing the utility of European integration. Mainstream parties probably benefitted from a system of strategic incentives to prime the Europhile issues within the political debate. In doing so, these parties, especially the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), ceased pandering to the radical-right Eurosceptic position. In short, the EU conflict seems to have become increasingly politicised in this party system, with new mainstream entrepreneurs colliding with the entrenched Eurosceptic ones. 4.3.4

Sweden

In Sweden, the financial crisis provoked many concerns about Europe among voters, who feared the fiscal transfers to the intervened countries. The crisis reinforced Eurosceptic orientations in this country, strengthening a pragmatic Euroscepticism on the economic facets of European integration (Nielsen 2017). The Eurosceptic entrepreneurs, such as the

110

L. CARRIERI

Swedish Democrats (SD), gained a large share of votes in the 2014 EP elections, achieving an unprecedented breakthrough. The Swedish Democrats (SD) were not included in the CHES pre-crisis round (2006), not being an important player in the Swedish party system prior to the Euro crisis. However, since 2010, it has undergone a substantial boost in its entrepreneurship, embedding its Eurosceptic narrative within a populist frame. In fact, this party blamed the delegation of powers towards the EU as being a threat to the well-being of the “common people”, calling for an opt-out referendum (Jungar 2015). As well, the country had already had a radical-left outlet—the Swedish Left Party (V)—emphasising social Euroscepticism. Conversely, during the multiple-crises period, protest parties have deflected their entrepreneurship, with both the SD and V blurring this source of contestation. By accounting for the recent surge in votes for the SD in the recent 2018 Swedish elections, Jylhä et al. (2019) have underlined the importance of socio-economic issues in drawing electoral support from the Social Democratic Party (SAP), though the concerns regarding immigration are still a core predictor among party constituents. Eurosceptic entrepreneurship is still an important parcel of the SD discourse, but it abruptly lost momentum during the multiplecrises period, not providing any supplemental window of opportunity to reinforce the politicisation of this conflict. This outcome has probably been due to the depoliticisation efforts of the mainstream parties, which successfully prevented this conflict from gaining ground in the party system. Indeed, the Swedish party system is the only example supporting the core expectation outlined in H2, with mainstream parties decreasing their EU issue entrepreneurship during the multiple-crises period. Thus, Sweden has embodied a pattern of limited entrepreneurship, demonstrating the absence of transformative effects resulting from the different crises fuelling the conflict. In general, an increasing politicisation agency has not been associated with political radicalism, nor with centrism. The mainstream parties tried to extinguish this source of conflict within the party system, with protest parties not enhancing their efforts, deciding instead to focus on other policy issues (Fig. 4.11).

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

Mainstream 2006

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

111

6.7

6.2

9.7

9.3

12.2

14.4

15.4

17.2

4

SWEDEN

Fig. 4.11 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—Sweden

4.3.5

The United Kingdom

As far as the UK is concerned, there are many distinctive features, with the Euro crisis interacting with pre-existing incentives to politicise European integration, which were well-rooted in the national culture (Medrano 2010; Kriesi 2007). This country had always been troubled by the European project, recurrently giving rise to dilemmas for the main governing parties. After its accession to the EEC in 1973, the UK experienced a growing public support for the European project, which was, however, reversed by the approval of the Maastricht Treaty, increasing popular concerns over the loss of state sovereignty and national identity (Vasilopoulou 2017). This public opinion shift was channelled by the foundation of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), rapidly profiling itself as a single Eurosceptic party, being exclusively committed to withdrawing the UK from the European Union (Usherwood 2008). The UKIP had made constant campaign efforts to politicise this conflict, with the pre-crisis data corroborating the party’s endeavours on this policy dimension. On the other hand, mainstream pro-European parties were

112

L. CARRIERI

less prone to play up the Europhile card, often dealing with an adverse public response to European integration. Tony Blair’s New Labour typified the blurred strategy on EU issues, depoliticising this latent conflict (Oppermann 2008). The Euro crisis markedly strengthened these trajectories in the partybased entrepreneurship, exacerbating Eurosceptic attitudes in the UK. According to Bale (2018), the EU-led management of the Great Recession increased citizen anxiety over European integration, interwoven with the financial bailout of the debtor countries. The UKIP immediately reinvigorated its politicisation agency, which was clearly visible in 2014. Under the leadership of Nigel Farange, the UKIP developed a new winning formula, without diluting the primacy of programmatic Euroscepticism. Farange persistently identified immigration as the most critical problem facing the country (Tournier-Sol 2015), linking it to the European integration conflict. According to the UKIP’s narrative, the eastern enlargement enabled thousands of people to enter Britain, making withdrawal from the EU the only policy device able to restore controls over national borders (Goodwin and Milazzo 2015). The Euro crisis indisputably gave rise to additional difficulties for the Conservatives3 in handling the European integration conflict, with this party clearly moving towards a more anti-European position to collude with the UKIP (Bale 2018). Several reforms were undertaken by a creditor state coalition to avoid the occurrence of new economic setbacks in order to bolster the monitoring powers of the EC and to increase fiscal coordination within the Eurozone (Laffan 2014). From the outset, the Conservative PM, David Cameron, had feared the impact of this deepening integration, which could have precipitated the creation of a multispeed Europe, depriving the UK of its fundamental decision-making role at the European level (Lynch 2015). Moreover, he had continuously faced recurrent opposition from the hard Eurosceptic conservative MPs, challenging his cabinet on EU policies. To cope with party factionalism and the integration steps, Cameron pledged to hold a popular referendum on British membership in the EU if he won the 2015 Westminster elections (Fig. 4.12).

3 As mentioned in Chapter 3, this party does not fall in line with the party types under study, being excluded from this empirical step.

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

Protest 2006

Mainstream 2010

Protest 2010

Mainstream 2014

Protest 2014

Mainstream 2017

Protest 2017

113

5.9

6.4

7.3

14.2

24

32

34.6

Mainstream 2006

34.6

4

UNITED KINGDOM

Fig. 4.12 Average levels of EU issue entrepreneurship for mainstream and protest parties between 2006 and 2017—UK

The popular referendum resulted in a narrow victory for the “leave” option, which ushered in a new era for the British party system, experiencing the growing primacy of the European integration conflict. The decision to withdraw from the EU brought about far-reaching consequences, with the issue of the future UK–EU relationship gaining in importance and reshaping the content of this conflict. Indeed, the latter no longer revolved around the controversy regarding more or less European integration, but hinged on the “leave/remain” divide. The UKIP was the core issue entrepreneur of this conflict, representing the most distinct “leave” stance, stabilising its level of entrepreneurship after the Brexit referendum. Several mainstream parties responded by priming “remain” stances—namely, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru—which achieved an entrepreneurship increase compared to the pre-crisis period. This pool of parties drove the impetus towards Europhile entrepreneurship in the British party system, reaching a climax in the multiple-crises period. Instead, the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbin, took a more ambiguous position on the “leave/remain” dimension, suffering from

114

L. CARRIERI

divisions among its MPs and constituents (Hobolt and Rodon 2020), deflecting party commitments on this issue. Labour tried to build-up an anti-austerity radical-left platform to win more votes, depoliticising the EU-related issues, though gradually moving towards the Eurosceptic pole of contestation. It is worth noting that the Conservative Party’s strategic efforts increased in the multiple-crises period—not captured in the mainstream entrepreneurship indexes—probably enhancing the party-system politicisation of European integration. Therefore, the EU conflict has clearly become more politicised in the party system, with both party types transforming the Brexit related issues into a more contested topic in the political debate. 4.3.6

Party-System Politicisation in Intervened Countries

As already mentioned, by analysing these countries, many works have assessed the limited politicisation of this conflict. Grande and Kriesi (2016) related the politicisation of this conflict to EU constitutive issues, driven by radical-right efforts, with some specific events sparking off some contingent politicisation. Recently, Green-Pedersen (2019) confirmed that the crisis has had a limited impact on this group of countries. This work reverts some of the above-mentioned findings by shedding light on the transformative impact of the multiple set of crises in politicising European integration among the non-intervened countries. Many fluctuations took place on the supply-side of politics, enhancing a party-system politicisation in these countries. The Euro crisis has clearly acted as a major catalyst to foster protest parties’ increasing entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, subsequent exogenous shocks have not reinforced this Eurosceptic cueing, with many parties downplaying their politicisation agency. The majority of the RRPs (FN, AfD, Ukip, PVV and FvD) had actually drawn attention to this conflict dimension, while the RLPs (SP, LINKE and V) were chiefly responsible for the stagnation of the protest party type. Indeed, the Euro crisis made the economic embodiment of the EU more salient, leading to the implementation of austerity policies, providing an opportunity for the RLPs. These parties had historically channelled the economic anxieties about European integration, conveying to the electorate utilitarian-economic Eurosceptic messages (De Vries and Edwards 2009). The multiple set of crises has reversed this system of incentives for the RLPs, with these parties shelving their entrepreneurial efforts on this issue dimension. At the same time, the

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

115

RRPs were at odds with some changes in public opinion related to the Brexit referendum, which did not appear to be a favourable context to prime Euroscepticism. However, these actors substantially maintained their strategic efforts on EU issues in their respective party systems—such as in France, Germany and the UK—which exceeded the entrepreneurship scores achieved during the pre-crisis period. Protest parties took advantage of the Euro crisis consequences to strengthen their politicisation agency, with the following set of shocks substantially reducing their manoeuvring room along this issue dimension. Thus, even though most of these parties had adopted more entrepreneurial endeavours compared to the pre-crisis period, H1 has received less empirical support than was expected. On the other hand, this empirical step does not confirm H2, with the mainstream largely increasing their EU entrepreneurship and drawing a picture of growing party-system politicisation in the non-intervened countries. France, Germany and the UK have embodied a pattern of systemic entrepreneurship, which may result in a fully fledged conflict politicisation, perhaps transforming the EU into a more significant voting determinant. Although the Dutch case diverges from this scenario, mainstream parties have increased their Europhile entrepreneurship, ideologically colliding with the strong Eurosceptic entrepreneurs. In Sweden, both party types have blurred this source of contestation, with the party competition being more likely to hinge upon economic and immigration issues. Nevertheless, mainstream strategies have basically revealed a homogenous pattern in the non-intervened countries, with these parties probably overcoming their internal divisions (Van de Wardt et al. 2014). Mainstream parties have led a genuine Europhile backlash across this cluster of countries, sensing the opportunity arising from the refugee crises and the Brexit referendum. According to Green-Pedersen (2019), mainstream parties are expected to hinder the EU issues from being politicised, in spite of protest actor Eurosceptic entrepreneurship. In his analysis, he corroborated this expectation, assessing the limited impact of European integration, with this conflict being far from constituting a durable controversy in the party-system agenda. On the contrary, another finding arises here, with mainstream parties in the North-Western democracies colliding over European integration. Apart from the Swedish case, the crises appeared to have influenced party strategies, with many changes actually occurring in the non-intervened countries, which, jointly considered, has mirrored a growing party-system politicisation of European integration.

116

L. CARRIERI

4.4

Conclusions

Sections 4.1–4.3 have empirically addressed the party-system politicisation, which is hereby defined as a “transformation of previous noncontentious issues into an object of public contestation, which is mobilised by the parties, emphasising and polarising the new issues within the party system” (Carrieri 2020, 53). By using the notion of EU issue entrepreneurship, which combines both issue emphasis and positional polarisation, this empirical step identifies party strategic fluctuations to capture party-system politicisation. Section 4.1 outlines the aggregate findings, confirming the Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H1) and rejecting Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2), identifying the catalyst effects of the multiple set of crises in Western Europe. On the one hand, the Euro crisis has substantially provided more entrepreneurial incentives for the protest actors, which blurred the Eurosceptic cues after the onset of the migration crisis and Brexit referendum. On the other hand, mainstream parties have seized on the window of opportunity opened up by the latter shocks to reinforce a Europhile entrepreneurship. By disaggregating the intervened and non-intervened countries, these findings have maintained their explanatory power, as shown in Sects. 4.2– 4.3. In both country clusters, the EU conflict has resulted in being more politicised in their respective party systems, confirming H1 and refuting H2. Thus, these country groups have displayed a more marked convergence trend on this conflict politicisation, in spite of their different backgrounds. The chapter has also ascertained a certain degree of strategic flexibility in the political parties, undergoing many entrepreneurial adjustments over time. Party strategic incentives have been influenced by the evolving mutable conditionality, arising from the different exogenous shocks. This finding contrasts with some insights provided by the literature on EU issue entrepreneurship, which have assessed how losing parties could be more prone to setting underway an alternative conflict dimension to win more votes. The protest entrepreneurial volatility does not appear to be conducive to the formation of an alternative majority of (Eurosceptic) voters along the pro-/anti-EU dimension. Meantime, the mainstream responses may have led to a more salient and polarising pro-/anti-EU dimension, which potentially matches Europhile attitudes in Western Europe.

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

117

In a nutshell, this chapter has identified a scenario of systemic entrepreneurship, supporting the transformation arising from the multiple set of crises, which has substantially reshaped the electoral supply. Thus, by emphasising and polarising the EU issues within the party system, political parties have transformed the previous non-contentious issues into an object of public contestation. The main assumption is that political parties had historically carried out a fundamental role of agency in politicising the latent conflicts. In fact, by seizing on the opportunities opened up by external catalysts, parties may have established new political divide lines, realigning and matching voter preferences along a previously overridden issue dimensionality. By identifying the voter–party EU issue congruence as a compounding element of a political system politicisation, the analysis moves to the electoral level. The next empirical step will consider the fluctuations in EU issue voting, hinging on the interplay between party agency and voter reactions, which ultimately lead to a fully fledged conflict politicisation.

Appendix The appendix reports the tables with the entrepreneurship score for each party during the time-points under scrutiny—2006, 2010, 2014 and 2017. Tables show the EU saliency, EU positions and the EU issue entrepreneurship associated with each party, specifying the operation employed to obtain the index and its adjustment, removing the negative sign. Tables 4.1 and 4.2—2006 and 2010—contain the pre-normalisation index (see Tables 4.3 and 4.4).

2006

2006

2006

France FN Greens UDF PS UMP PCF Mean Party System Germany SPD CDU CSU FDP Grüne PDS Mean Greece PASOK ND SYRIZA KKE LAOS Mean

6.8 6.7 3.1 1 2.4 3.7

6 6.4 5.4 6.3 5.8 3.3 5.5

1 4.7 6.3 5 5.7 2.1 4.0

EU position

3.4 3.7 2.8 2.8 2.9

2.6 3 2.7 2.5 2.7 2

3.2 2.4 3.3 3.1 2.7 3

EU saliency

8.0 9.0 6.0 6.0 6.3

5.2 6.7 5.8 4.8 5.7 3.3

7.3 4.7 7.7 7.0 5.7 6.7

Saliency normalisation

−24.8 −27.0 3.6 16.2 8.2

−2.6 −6.0 0.6 −3.9 −1.7 7.3

22.0 −3.3 −17.6 −7.0 −9.6 12.7

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

24.8 27.0 3.6 16.2 8.2

2.6 6.0 0.6 3.9 1.7 7.3

22.0 3.3 17.6 7.6 9.6 12.7

Entrepreneurship adjusted

EU position, EU saliency, saliency normalisation, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted

Party

Table 4.1 in 2006

118 L. CARRIERI

2006

2006

Italy AN DL DS FI IDV LN PDCI NPSI RC SDI UDEUR UDC RAD VERDI Mean Netherlands CDA VVD PvdA PVV D66 SP GL Mean

5.3 4.5 5.6 1.6 6.5 2 5.5 4.3

4.8 7 6.9 4.1 5.6 1.5 2.8 5.3 3 6.4 6.3 6.3 6.5 5.9 5.3

EU position

Party

2.3 2.6 2.6 3.2 3.3 3.4 2.3

2.3 3.6 3.6 2.5 1.8 3 2 2.3 2.4 2.6 2.1 2.8 3.4 3

EU saliency

4.3 5.3 5.3 7.3 7.7 7.9 4.3

4.3 8.7 8.7 5.0 2.5 6.7 3.3 4.3 4.7 5.3 3.7 5.8 8.0 6.7

Saliency normalisation

−4.3 −1.1 −6.9 19.8 −16.9 18.1 −5.2

2.4 −14.7 −13.9 6.0 −0.8 25.3 8.5 0.0 10.7 −5.9 −3.7 −5.5 −9.6 −4.0

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

(continued)

4.3 1.1 6.9 19.8 16.9 18.1 5.2

2.4 14.7 13.9 6.0 0.8 25.3 8.5 0.0 10.7 5.9 3.7 5.5 9.6 4.0 14.4

Entrepreneurship adjusted

4

119

2006

2006

2006

Portugal PS PPD-PSD CDU CDS-PP BE Mean Spain PSOE PP CiU Pnv IU BNG CC ERC EA CHA Mean Sweden SAP M C FP KD

5.8 6.2 5.6 7 5.8

7 5.9 6.3 5.6 4.5 4.5 5.3 4.5 4.8 5 5.3

6.9 6.6 3.8 5.3 4 5.3

EU position

(continued)

Party

Table 4.1

2.1 2.5 2.6 3.2 2.2

3.3 3 2.7 2.3 2.5 2.1 2.4 2.1 2 1.9

3.2 2.9 2.6 2.5 2.6

EU saliency

3.7 5.0 5.3 7.3 4.0

7.7 6.7 5.7 4.3 5.0 3.7 4.7 3.7 3.3 3.0

7.3 6.3 5.3 5.0 5.3

Saliency normalisation

−4.8 −8.5 −5.9 −18.3 −5.2

−13.0 −4.0 −5.7 −1.3 4.0 2.9 0.0 2.9 1.7 0.9

−11.7 −8.2 8.0 0.0 6.9

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

4.8 8.5 5.9 18.3 5.2

13.0 4.0 5.7 1.3 4.0 2.9 0.0 2.9 1.7 0.9

11.7 8.2 8.0 0.0 6.9

Entrepreneurship adjusted

120 L. CARRIERI

V MP Mean United Kingdom Lab. LibDem SNP Plaid UKIP Mean Party System

Party

2006

5.2 6.2 5.2 5.4 1 4.2

1.8 2 4.5

EU position

2.3 3 2.8 2.4 4

2.6 2.6

EU saliency

4.3 6.7 6.0 4.7 10.0

5.3 5.3

Saliency normalisation

−4.3 −13.3 −6.0 −5.6 32.0

14.4 13.3

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

4.3 13.3 6.0 5.6 32

14.4 13.3

Entrepreneurship adjusted

4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

121

2010

2010

2010

France FN ELLV UDf PS UMP PCF Mean Germany SPD CDU CSU FDP Grüne LINKE Mean Greece PASOK ND OP SYRIZA KKE LAOS

6.1 5.3 5.6 2.2 1 3.3

5.9 6.0 4.9 6.0 6.0 3.3 5.4

1.2 6.1 6.7 6.1 6 2.8 4.8

EU position

3.8 3.7 2.8 3.5 3.5 3.3

3.1 3.4 3.2 2.9 2.9 2.3

3.2 3.1 3.4 3 2.9 2.5

EU saliency

9.3 9.0 6.0 8.3 8.5 7.7

6.8 8.0 7.2 6.3 6.5 4.3

7.3 7.0 8.0 6.7 6.3 5.0

Saliency normalisation

23.3 15.3 12.0 −11.7 −22.0 −2.3

3.3 4.8 −3.3 3.8 3.9 −9.1

−26.5 9.0 15.1 8.6 7.5 −10.1

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

23.3 15.3 12 11.7 22 4.6

3.3 4.8 3.3 3.8 3.9 9.1

26.5 9 15.1 8.6 7.5 10.1

Entrepreneurship adjusted

EU position, EU saliency, saliency normalisation, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted

Party

Table 4.2 in 2010

122 L. CARRIERI

Mean RC SEL PD IDV UDC PDL LN Mean Netherlands CDA VVD PvdA PVV D66 SP GL PvdV Mean Portugal PS PPD-PSD CDU CDS-PP BE

Party

2010

2010

7 6.7 3 5.5 3.7

5.3 3.9 5.3 1.4 6.6 2.4 6.2 3.6 4.2

3.6 3.3 4.5 6.6 6.1 6.3 4.7 2.7 5.1

EU position

3.5 2.8 2.5 2.8 2.7

2.6 2.6 2.8 3.4 3.5 2.7 2.9 1.8

2.1 2.3 3.1 2.5 2.7 2.1 2.8

EU saliency

8.3 6.0 5.0 6.0 5.7

5.3 5.3 6.0 8.0 8.3 5.7 6.3 2.7

3.7 4.3 7.0 5.0 5.7 3.7 6.0

Saliency normalisation

15.0 9.0 −11.0 1.8 −8.5

5.9 −1.6 6.6 −22.4 20.0 −10.2 12.7 −1.6

−6.6 −2.6 10.5 5.0 6.8 −1.5 −14.4

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

15 9 11 1.8 8.5

5.9 1.6 6.6 22.4 20 10.2 12.7 1.6

6.6 2.6 10.5 5.0 6.8 1.5 14.4

(continued)

Entrepreneurship adjusted 4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

123

Mean Spain PSOE PP CiU PNV ERC EA IU UPD BNG CC Mean Sweden SAP M C FP KD V MP Pirate SD Mean

Party

Table 4.2

2010

2010

6 6.3 5.7 6.9 5.9 2 3.4 3.8 1.6 4.4

6.8 6 6.1 5.7 5.3 5 4.8 5.3 4.8 5.6 5.4

5.2

EU position

(continued)

2.5 2.9 2.6 3.7 2.7 3.2 3 2.6 2.8

2.9 2.8 2.7 2.6 2.4 2.3 2.3 2 2.1 2.2

EU saliency

5.0 6.3 5.3 9.0 5.7 7.3 6.7 5.3 6.0

6.3 6.0 5.7 5.3 4.7 4.3 4.3 3.3 3.7 4.0

Saliency normalisation

8.0 12.0 6.9 22.5 8.5 −17.6 −6.7 −3.2 −16.8

8.9 3.6 4.0 1.6 −0.5 −1.7 −2.6 −0.3 −2.2 0.8

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

8 12 6.9 22.5 8.5 17.6 6.7 3.2 16.8

8.9 3.6 4 1.6 0.5 1.7 2.6 0.3 2.2 0.8

Entrepreneurship adjusted

124 L. CARRIERI

2010

United Kingdom Lab. Greens LibDem Plaid SNP BNP UKIP Mean

4.8 4.7 6 5 5.1 1.2 1 3.8

EU position

Party

2.1 2.4 2.7 2.4 2.4 3.3 4

EU saliency

3.7 4.7 5.7 4.7 4.7 7.7 10.0

Saliency normalisation

3.7 4.2 12.5 5.6 6.1 −19.9 −28.0

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu 3.7 4.2 12.5 5.6 6.1 19.9 28

Entrepreneurship adjusted 4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

125

2014

2014

2014

France FN ELLV MoDem PS LR PG PCF Mean Germany CDU SPD FDP Grüne LINKE CSU Piraten AfD Mean Greece PASOK ND SYRIZA

6.6 6.6 3.4

6.4 6.4 5.7 6.2 3 4.8 4.7 1.6 4.5

1.2 6.2 6.6 5.8 5.4 2.1 2.6 4.5

EU position

7.7 7.4 6.3

6.9 6.8 5.5 6.1 5.6 6.6 3.7 9.5

8.5 6.5 6.8 5.1 5 8.1 5.1

EU saliency

20.0 19.2 −3.8

13.1 12.9 6.6 10.4 −8.4 2.0 0.7 −27.6

−28.1 11.1 14.3 6.6 4.5 −19.4 −9.7

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

20 19.2 3.8

13.1 12.9 6.6 10.4 8.4 2 0.7 27.6

28.1 11.1 14.3 6.6 4.5 19.4 9.7

Entrepreneurship adjusted

EU position, EU saliency, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2014

Party

Table 4.3

126 L. CARRIERI

KKE XA DIMAR ANEL Potami Mean Italy PD M5S FI LN RC SEL NCD UDC FDI Mean Netherlands CDA VVD PvdA PVV D66 SP GL

Party

2014

2014

5.5 5.2 5.5 1.1 6.8 2.1 6.5

6.6 1.4 3.4 1.1 2 3.1 5.7 6.1 2.2 4.3

1.1 1.1 5.8 2.2 6 4.0

EU position

4.7 4.5 4.9 8.4 7.5 6.7 6.4

7.6 8.9 5.9 8.9 4.1 5.6 7.7 4.3 6.8

6 4.4 6.4 4.9 6.7

EU saliency

5.8 4.1 5.9 −27.0 18.8 −14.7 14.3

(continued)

5.8 4.1 5.9 27 18.8 14.7 14.3

17.5 25.8 5.3 8.2 8.6 6.7 10.8 7.7 14.3

17.4 12.8 11.5 8.8 13.4

−17.4 −12.8 11.5 −8.8 13.4

17.5 −25.8 −5.3 −28.5 −9.4 −6.7 10.8 7.7 −14.3

Entrepreneurship adjusted

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

127

Mean Party Portugal PS PSD CDU CDS-PP MPT BE Mean Spain CiU PNV IU Podemos UPD PSOE PP ERC CC BNG CS Mean Sweden SAP M

Party

Table 4.3

2014

2014

2014

5.3 6.4

6.3 6.4 4.6 4.4 6.7 6.7 6.8 5.6 6.4 5 6.7 5.8

6.4 6.9 1.9 6.1 3.4 3.1 4.6

4.3

EU position

(continued)

3.6 4.8

6.8 6.7 5.7 6.2 6.8 6.9 6.9 6.5 6.7 6 6.6

8.1 7.6 7.1 6 4.7 6.9 6.7

EU saliency

2.9 9.1

3.4 4.0 −6.8 −8.7 6.1 6.2 6.9 −1.3 4.0 −4.8 5.9

14.6 17.5 −19.2 9.0 −5.6 −10.4

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

2.9 9.1

3.4 4 6.8 8.7 6.1 6.2 6.9 1.3 4 4.8 5.9

14.6 17.5 19.2 9 5.6 10.4

Entrepreneurship adjusted

128 L. CARRIERI

C FP KD V MP SD Mean United Kingdom Lab. LibDem UKIP SNP Plaid Green Mean

Party

2014

5.6 6.7 1.1 6.3 6 5.2 4.9

5.4 6.9 5.9 2.1 4.4 1.3 4.5

EU position

3.6 6.7 9.1 5.6 5 4.6

4 6.5 4 4.7 4.8 6.1

EU saliency

2.5 12.1 −34.6 7.8 5.5 1.4

3.6 15.6 5.6 −11.3 −0.5 −19.5

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

2.5 12.1 34.6 7.8 5.5 1.4

3.6 15.6 5.6 11.3 0.5 19.5

Entrepreneurship adjusted

4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

129

2017

2017

2017

France FN ELLV REM PS LR FI Mean Germany CDU SPD FDP Grüne LINKE CSU AFD Mean Greece PASOK ND SYRIZA KKE XA

6.6 6.8 5.1 1.1 1.2

6.1 6.6 4.6 6.7 4 4.6 1.8 4.4

1.1 5.7 7 6.1 4.7 2.3 4.3

EU position

7.7 8.2 6.4 4.8 3.4

5.9 7.1 5.6 6.3 4.7 5.6 7.1

8.1 6.8 8.8 6.4 5.1 7.2

EU saliency

14.6 17.2 2.6 −17.3 −11.9

10.0 15.6 1.1 14.5 −1.4 1.1 −18.5

−25.9 9.5 23.8 11.5 2.0 −14.4

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

14.6 17.2 2.6 17.3 11.9

10 15.6 1.1 14.5 1.4 1.1 18.5

25.9 9.5 23.8 11.5 2 14.4

Entrepreneurship adjusted

EU position, EU saliency, EU issue entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship adjusted in 2017

Party

Table 4.4

130 L. CARRIERI

DIMAR Mean Italy League PD M5S FDI FI +EU Mean Netherlands CDA VVD PvdA PVV D66 SP FvD GL Mean Party Portugal PS PSD CDU CDS-PP

Party

2017

2017

2017

6.5 6.5 2.5 5.9

5.1 4.8 5.5 1.1 6.9 2.7 1.1 6.3 3.9

1.5 6.5 2.6 1.9 4.7 6.9 4.8

6.5 4.7

EU position

7.8 7.4 6 6.7

4.4 4.7 4.8 8.1 7.9 5.8 8.2 6.4

8 7.4 6.5 7.1 5.3 6.8

6.9

EU saliency

14.8 14.1 −12.6 8.7

5.3 4.2 7.7 −22.8 23.7 −7.0 −23.0 15.4

−26.4 12.6 −14.3 −20.6 −0.5 14.3

12.4

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

14.8 14.1 12.6 8.7

5.3 4.1 7.7 22.8 23.7 7 23 15.4

26.4 12.6 14.3 20.6 0.6 14.3

12.4

(continued)

Entrepreneurship adjusted

4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

131

2017

2017

2017

3.5 6.8

5.8 6.2 5.6 6.9 5.8 2.5 4.1 1.5 4.5

4 4.5 4.9 6.7 6.6 5.4 6.8 5.6

4.6 3 4.6

EU position

(continued)

PAN BE Mean Spain EA/EH IU Podemos PSOE PP ERC CS Mean Sweden SAP M C FP KD V MP SD Mean United Kingdom Labour LibDem

Party

Table 4.4

6.3 9.3

4.5 4.6 4 6.2 3.7 3.8 4 5.6

5.4 6 5.7 6.9 6.9 7.2 6.6

4.8 5.6

EU saliency

−6.9 20.5

5.9 7.8 4.4 14.9 4.8 −7.6 −1.6 −16.8

−8.4 −6.3 −3.7 7.9 7.2 −1.1 8.2

0.0 −9.0

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu

2.5 12.1

2.9 9.1 3.6 15.6 5.6 11.3 0.5 19.5

9.2 6.8 8.7 6.2 6.9 1.3 5.9

0 9

Entrepreneurship adjusted

132 L. CARRIERI

UKIP SNP Plaid Green Party Mean

Party

1.1 6.7 6.3 6.7 4.6

EU position 9.9 7.9 6.1 7.8

EU saliency −34.7 16.6 10.4 16.4

Entrepreneurship: (Peu − MPeu) × SPeu 34.6 7.8 5.5 1.4

Entrepreneurship adjusted

4 EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

133

134

L. CARRIERI

Bibliography Alonso, Sonia, Laura Cabeza, and Braulio Gómez. 2015. Parties’ Electoral Strategies in a Two-Dimensional Political Space: Evidence from Spain and Great Britain. Party Politics 21 (6): 851–865. Alonso, Sonia, and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. 2018. The Costs of Responsibility for the Political Establishment of the Eurozone (1999–2015). Party Politics. 1354068818766182. Bale, Tim. 2018. Who Leads and Who Follows? The Symbiotic Relationship between UKIP and the Conservatives—and Populism and Euroscepticism. Politics 38 (3): 263–277. Börzel, Tanja A., and Thomas Risse. 2018. From the Euro to the Schengen Crises: European Integration Theories, Politicization, and Identity Politics. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 83–108. Brunazzo, Marco, and Vincent Della Sala. 2016. «Adesso Le Cose Sono Cambiate » : Matteo Renzi e l’Unione Europea. Rivista Italiana Di Politiche Pubbliche 11 (1): 115–134. Bulmer, Simon, and William E. Paterson. 2013. Germany as the EU’s Reluctant Hegemon? Of Economic Strength and Political Constraints. Journal of European Public Policy 20 (10): 1387–1405. Calossi, Enrico. 2016. Anti-Austerity Left Parties in the European Union. Competition, Coordination and Integration. Pisa: Pisa University Press. Carrieri, Luca. 2019. Awakening the Sleeping Giant? The Euro Crisis and EU Issue Voting in Germany. Partecipazione e Conflitto 11 (3): 838–864. ———. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 50 (1): 52–69. Charalambous, Giorgos, Nicolò Conti, and Andrea Pedrazzani. 2018. The Political Contestation of European Integration in Southern Europe: Friction Among and Within Parties. Party Politics 24 (1): 39–51. Clements, Ben, Kyriaki Nanou, and José Real-Dato. 2018. Economic Crisis and Party Responsiveness on the Left-Right Dimension in the European Union. Party Politics 24 (1): 52–64. Coller, Xavier, and Fernando Ramírez de Luis. 2020. Unstable Preferences and Policy Changes: Spain. In The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis in Southern Europe, ed. Leonardo Morlino and Cecilia Sottilotta, 133–171. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Conti, Nicolò, Maurizio Cotta, Pedro Tavares, and Pedro Tavares de Almeida. 2010. Southern Europe: A Distinctive and More pro-European Region in the EU? South European Society and Politics 15 (1): 121–142. Conti, Nicolò, Danilo Di Mauro, and Vincenzo Memoli. 2019. Citizens, Immigration and the EU as a Shield. European Union Politics. 1465116519834648.

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

135

———. 2020. Immigration, Security and the Economy: Who Should Bear the Burden of Global Crises? Burden-Sharing and Citizens’ Support for EU Integration in Italy. Contemporary Italian Politics 12: 1–21. Costa Lobo, Marina, and Pedro C. Magalhães. 2011. Room for Manoeuvre: Euroscepticism in the Portuguese Parties and Electorate 1976–2005. South European Society and Politics 16 (01): 81–104. De Vries, Catherine E. 2018. Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, Catherine E., and Erica E. Edwards. 2009. Taking Europe to Its Extremes: Extremist Parties and Public Euroscepticism. Party Politics 15 (1): 5–28. De Vreese, Claes, Rachid Azrout, and Judith Moeller. 2017. Netherlands 2014 EP Voting Patterns: From Euphile to Eurosceptic. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen and Mark N. Franklin, 149–169. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ellinas, Antonis A. 2013. The Rise of Golden Dawn: The New Face of the Far Right in Greece. South European Society and Politics 18 (4): 543–565. Evans, Jocelyn, and Gilles Ivaldi. 2018. The 2017 French Presidential Elections. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Fernandes, Jorge M., Pedro C. Magalhães, and José Santana-Pereira. 2018. Portugal’s Leftist Government: From Sick Man to Poster Boy? South European Society and Politics 23 (4): 503–524. Franzmann, Simon T., Heiko Giebler, and Thomas Poguntke. 2020. It’s No Longer the Economy, Stupid! Issue Yield at the 2017 German Federal Election. West European Politics 43 (3): 610–638. Freire, André, and José Santana-Pereira. 2015. More Second-Order than Ever? The 2014 European Election in Portugal. South European Society and Politics 20 (3): 381–401. Freire, André, Eftichia Teperoglou, and Catherine Moury. 2014. Awakening the Sleeping Giant in Greece and Portugal? Elites’ and Voters’ Attitudes Towards EU Integration in Difficult Economic Times. South European Society and Politics 19 (4): 477–499. Giannetti, Daniela, Andrea Pedrazzani, and Luca Pinto. 2017. Party System Change in Italy: Politicising the EU and the Rise of Eccentric Parties. South European Society and Politics 22 (1): 21–42. ———. 2018. The Rising Importance of Non-Economic Policy Dimensions and the Formation of the Conte Government. Italian Political Science 13 (2): 27–44. Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, Margarita, and Carolina Plaza-Colodro. 2018. Populist Euroscepticism in Iberian Party Systems. Politics 38 (3): 344–360.

136

L. CARRIERI

Goodliffe, Gabriel. 2015. Europe’s Salience and ‘Owning’ Euroscepticism: Explaining the Front National’s Victory in the 2014 European Elections in France. French Politics 13 (4): 324–345. Goodwin, Matthew, and Caitlin Milazzo. 2015. UKIP: Inside the Campaign to Redraw the Map of British Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grande, Edgar, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Conclusions: The Postfunctionalists Were (Almost) Right. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 279–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer, and Peter B. Mortensen. 2010. Who Sets the Agenda and Who Responds to It in the Danish Parliament? A New Model of Issue Competition and Agenda-setting. European Journal of Political Research 49 (2): 257–281. Grimm, Robert. 2015. The Rise of the German Eurosceptic Party Alternative Für Deutschland, between Ordoliberal Critique and Popular Anxiety. International Political Science Review 36 (3): 264–278. Hobolt, Sara B. 2015. Public Attitudes Toward the Eurozone Crisis. In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, 48–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine E. De Vries. 2015. Issue Entrepreneurship and Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1159–1185. Hobolt, Sara B., and Toni Rodon. 2020. Cross-Cutting Issues and Electoral Choice. EU Issue Voting in the Aftermath of the Brexit Referendum. Journal of European Public Policy 27 (2): 227–245. Ivaldi, Gilles. 2018. Contesting the EU in Times of Crisis: The Front National and Politics of Euroscepticism in France. Politics 38 (3): 278–294. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine. 2015. Business as Usual: Ideology and Populist Appeals of the Sweden Democrats. In European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, ed. Pappas Kriesi Hanspeter and S. Takis, 41–56. Colchester: ECPR Press. Jylhä, Kirsti M., Jens Rydgren, and Pontus Strimling. 2019. Radical RightWing Voters from Right and Left: Comparing Sweden Democrat Voters Who Previously Voted for the Conservative Party or the Social Democratic Party. Scandinavian Political Studies 42 (3–4): 220–244. Katsanidou, Alexia, and Simon Otjes. 2016. How the European Debt Crisis Reshaped National Political Space: The Case of Greece. European Union Politics 17 (2): 262–284. Van Kessel, Stijn, Nicola Chelotti, Helen Drake, Juan Roch, and Patricia Rodi. 2020. Eager to Leave? Populist Radical Right Parties’ Responses to the

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

137

UK’s Brexit Vote. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 1369148119886213. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2007. The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns. European Union Politics 8 (1): 83–108. ———. 2016. The Politicization of European Integration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54: 32. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter, and Swen Hutter. 2019. Crises and the Transformation of the National Political Space in Europe. In European Party Politics in Times of Crisis, ed. Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi, 3–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lachat, Romain, and Elie Michel. 2020. Campaigning in an Unprecedented Election: Issue Competition in the French 2017 Presidential Election. West European Politics 43 (3): 565–586. Laffan, Brigid. 2014. Testing Times: The Growing Primacy of Responsibility in the Euro Area. West European Politics 37 (2): 270–287. Lees, Charles. 2018. The ‘Alternative for Germany’: The Rise of Right-Wing Populism at the Heart of Europe. Politics 38 (3): 295–310. Lisi, Marco, and Vera Ramalhete. 2020. Challenges and Opportunities Under Conditionality: Portugal. In The Politics of the Eurozone Crisis in Southern Europe, ed. Morlino, L. and Cecilia Emma Sottilotta, 173–201. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lubbers, Marcel, and Eva Jaspers. 2011. A Longitudinal Study of Euroscepticism in the Netherlands: 2008 versus 1990. European Union Politics 12 (1): 21– 40. Lynch, Philip. 2015. Conservative Modernisation and European Integration: From Silence to Salience and Schism. British Politics 10 (2): 185–203. Medrano, Juan Diez. 2010. Framing Europe: Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morlino, Leonardo, and Francesco Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nielsen, Julie Hassing. 2017. The Pragmatic Euroscepticism of Scandinavia. In Routledge Handbook of Euroscepticism, ed. B. Leruth, S. Usherwood and N. Startin, 231–243. London: Routledge. Oppermann, Kai. 2008. The Blair Government and Europe: The Policy of Containing the Salience of European Integration. British Politics 3 (2): 156–182. Otjes, Simon. 2016. How the Eurozone Crisis Reshaped the National Economic Policy Space: The Netherlands 2006–2012. Acta Politica 51 (3): 273–297.

138

L. CARRIERI

Otjes, Simon, and Alexia Katsanidou. 2017. Beyond Kriesiland: EU Integration as a Super Issue After the Eurocrisis. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 301–319. Pirro, Andrea L.P., and Stijn Van Kessel. 2017. United in Opposition? The Populist Radical Right’s EU-Pessimism in Times of Crisis. Journal of European Integration 39 (4): 405–420. Pirro, Andrea L.P., and Stijn Van Kessel. 2018. Populist Eurosceptic Trajectories in Italy and the Netherlands During the European Crises. Politics 38 (3): 327–343. Reher, Stefanie. 2017. German Euroscepticism: Alternative Für Deutschland in 2014. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen and Mark N. Franklin, 37–56. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rovny, Jan. 2012. Who Emphasizes and Who Blurs? Party Strategies in Multidimensional Competition. European Union Politics 13 (2): 269–292. Ruiz-Rufino, Rubén, and Sonia Alonso. 2017. Democracy without Choice: Citizens’ Perceptions of Government Autonomy during the Eurozone Crisis. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 320–345. Schmitt-Beck, Rüdiger. 2017. The ‘Alternative Für Deutschland in the Electorate’: Between Single-Issue and Right-Wing Populist Party. German Politics 26 (1): 124–148. Schneider, Christina J. 2018. The Responsive Union: National Elections and European Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schuck, Andreas R.T., and Claes H. de Vreese. 2009. Reversed Mobilization in Referendum Campaigns: How Positive News Framing Can Mobilize the Skeptics. The International Journal of Press/Politics 14 (1): 40–66. Sørensen, Catharina. 2017. Nordic Eurosceptic Voting in 2014: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen and Mark N. Franklin, 125–147. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Stockemer, Daniel, Arne Niemann, Doris, Unger, and Johanna Speyer. 2019. The ‘Refugee Crisis,’ Immigration Attitudes, and Euroscepticism. International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319879926. Teperoglou, Eftichia, Emmanouil Tsatsanis, and Elias Nicolacopoulos. 2015. Habituating to the New Normal in a Post-Earthquake Party System: The 2014 European Election in Greece. South European Society and Politics 20 (3): 333–355. Tournier-Sol, Karine. 2015. Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions into a Populist Narrative: UKIP’s Winning Formula? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 53 (1): 140–156. Usherwood, Simon. 2008. The Dilemmas of a Single-Issue Party—The UK Independence Party. Representation 44 (3): 255–264.

4

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS …

139

Vasilpoulou, Sofia. 2017. British Eurosceptic Voting in 2014: Anti-EU or AntiGovernment?. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen and Mark N. Franklin, 57–81. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2018. The Party Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: The Case of Greece. Politics 38 (3): 311–326. Vidal, Guillem, and Irene Sánchez-Vítores. 2019. Spain—Out with the Old: The Restructuring of Spanish Politics. In European Party Politics in Times of Crisis, ed. Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi, 75–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Wardt, Marc, Catherine E De Vries, and Sara B Hobolt. 2014. Exploiting the Cracks: Wedge Issues in Multiparty Competition. The Journal of Politics 76 (4): 986–999.

CHAPTER 5

Voters and European Integration: The Demand-Side of Politics and EU Issue Voting in Western Europe

5.1 Party–Voter Congruence and the Minimum Distance Theory: An Overview on Voting Behaviour Approaches As explained in Chapter 2, party–voter issue congruence has been included as a compounding element for EU conflict politicisation in the political system. Party entrepreneurship is a necessary, but inadequate, precondition for politicising a fully fledged conflict, which requires an analysis of party–voter proximity along the pro-/anti-EU dimension. Literature on EU politicisation has constantly ignored the demand-side of politics, chiefly focusing on the elite actors that modify the issue saliency and polarise policy positions (Grande and Hutter 2016; Hoeglinger 2016; Hutter and Grande 2014; Hutter and Kriesi 2019). Instead, both the demand-side and supply-side of politics is dealt with here, which may, however, result in being contradictory (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009; Mattila and Raunio 2012; Wheatley and Mendez 2019). These two elements do not necessarily correspond, with voter realignments not automatically stemming from a party cueing change. The linkage between the elite supply and popular demands is more complex, implying an interplay between the clarity of party (re-)positioning and voter responses on the emerging issues (Carmines and Stimson 1986). The popular element is integrated into the politicisation notion by including © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_5

141

142

L. CARRIERI

the voter–party issue congruence and, thus, examining variations in EU issue voting. To capture this congruence, a proximity variable has been created, measuring to what extent, and whether, the absolute distance between voter positions and party positions affects voting preferences or not. The previous chapter has addressed the supply-side of politics, assessing the growing party-system politicisation of the EU conflict. Although many mainstream actors have been committed to priming EU issues in debates, this politicisation growth has mainly been driven by protest entrepreneurial activity. Thus, the expectation is that this conflict has increasingly conditioned party preferences, with protest parties gaining more electoral benefits from the EU issues than mainstream parties. More generally, European integration may have become a more meaningful determinant in voting preferences, taking on an explanatory power for the left–right dimension in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the supply-side analysis shows that protest parties have constantly outweighed mainstream entrepreneurial efforts, being more likely to electorally profit from EU issues compared to their mainstream opponents. Hence, the following predictions have been drawn: • The EU Issue Voting Hypothesis (H3): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , the impact of EU party–voter proximity is expected to increase as a determinant of electoral preferences. • Protest-Voting Hypothesis (H4a): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , protest parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from the EU proximity than mainstream parties. • The Mainstream-Voting Hypothesis (H4b): In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , mainstream parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from the left –right proximity than protest parties. The expectation revolves around the increasing degree of EU issue voting in the multiple-crises period, with protest parties being more likely to latch on to this predictor. By developing arguments about how European integration has influenced the strength of party support for the

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

143

protest and mainstream, the empirical studies deal with the politicisation of the EU conflict in Western European political systems. Indeed, “To politicise a conflict in the political system, the voter responses should increasingly match the party policy (re-)positioning, revealing a party-voter congruence on the new issues, which become significant electoral determinants ” (Carrieri 2020, 54). The current embodiment of this second step of politicisation may lead to the rise of a deep-seated and autonomous pro-/anti-EU dimension of contestation, shedding light on the catalyst effects of the multiple crises. By using the European Election Studies’ (EES) rounds (2009, 2014, 2019, Van Egmond et al. 2013; Schmitt et al. 2020), linear regression models (OLS) are used to investigate the EU issue voting fluctuations in Western Europe. These models hinge upon the Downsean “proximity” or “smallest distance” theory (Downs 1957), which is driven by one basic assumption—the voters are likely to choose a party that is closest to their issue preferences on the policy space to maximise their electoral utility. Even if scholars have extensively adopted this technique for analysing EU issue voting (Van der Brug et al. 2007b; De Sio et al. 2016; De Vries 2007, 2010; De Vries and Hobolt 2016; Weber and Franklin 2018), its usage does require a reasoned justification, by delving further into voting theory approaches. The Downsean approach revolves around a spatial political world, made up of a single political dimension, ranging from left to right, with voters rationally choosing parties providing them with more (policy) benefits (Downs 1957). This theory was mainly tailored for the US two-party system, being characterised by its centripetal competition, leading Downs to formulate the median voter theorem. Moreover, in his path-breaking work, An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs (1957) contended that the party choice was the result of a dynamic process, mainly involving two steps. In the first, the voter formed their preferences regarding all the party alternatives within the system, evaluating parties/candidates on their policy position. Each individual voter can be represented by a utility function, summarising their favourite policy package and the expected benefits associated with each party choice (see also; Ordeshook 1976; Van der Brug et al. 2007a). This set of party preferences was dubbed as “party utility”, which depended on the net benefits

144

L. CARRIERI

that voters expected to gain by choosing a given party. In the second step, the voter made their electoral choice for the party that best matched the rational expectations they had developed in the previous phase. The policy-seeker orientation of voters, who rationally base their choices on issue proximity to parties, has received further attention in the literature, underlining the insights provided by the spatial approach (Van der Eijk and Niemöller 1983; Enelow and Hinich 1984). Many works have reviewed this approach, challenging the median voter theorem, drawing multidimensional views of politics and individuating sociological explanations. According to Stokes (1963), onedimensionality failed in accounting for the complexity of the political world, with many issues disputing this single space. He actually referred to valence issues as those policy objectives that the entire population agree upon, escaping from a one-dimensional and conflictual frame of politics. Other works have, instead, focused on an alternative explanation—party identification or partisanship—which can be defined as a customised attachment or allegiance to a party. Party identification constitutes a long-lasting source of cue-taking in the political world, acquired during the early stage of an individual’s political socialisation, which is one of the core determinants of electoral choice (Campbell et al. 1980; Franklin 1992). Further contributions have maintained that the proximity theory does not often capture voting choices, with parties/voters being mainly driven by a policy objective (e.g. Stay in the EU) or its opposite (e.g. Leave the EU), instead of locating themselves on an imaginative issue dimension (Rabinowitz and Macdonald 1989). This so-called directional theory of voting has contested the median voter theorem, with centrist parties being small and unattractive, and it has also incorporated issue saliency to analyse valence policy objectives. However, the above-mentioned drawbacks of the Downsean proximity theory are not compelling enough to change approach. In fact, this work does not critically review the established equilibrium among parties along the left–right single dimension, seeking to refine the median voter theorem. The objective is to evaluate a potential multidimensionality, observing whether EU voter/party proximity has increasingly conditioned voting preferences or not. The minimum distance theory stands out for its flexibility, potentially accommodating alternative dimensions of contestation. Consequently, the one-dimensionality of politics becomes

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

145

one of the core targets of the current investigation, estimating if the left– right divide has remained the main cognitive shortcut for the electorate. The analysis directly (re-)assesses the dominance of the left–right vis-à-vis the pro-/anti-EU dimension, with the latter potentially restructuring the political space and turning into a robust heuristic for voters. Pardos-Prado and Dinas (2010) have found that European integration results in a centrifugal dynamic of issue competition, with voters being more likely to evaluate parties on two opposite policy goals. Although these scholars have pointed out the inadequacy of a spatial approach to grasp EU issue voting, the potential evolution in the party–voter dimensional proximity represents a fundamental step in EU politicisation. This policy complexity should not hinder examining the party–voter congruence along the fully fledged pro-/anti-EU scale, which is more appropriate to analysing this politicisation step. Establishing a two-policy objective assumption would be too simplistic, aprioristically excluding an EU centripetal competition. Party intermediate stances, explicitly rejected by this theory, potentially identify important nuances in the EU voter– party congruence, with centrist positions often being electorally rewarded (Carrieri 2019, 2020). Furthermore, EU issue complexity has not necessarily reduced party capacity in influencing citizens’ attitudes on this policy realm (Angelucci and Isernia 2020; Pannico 2017). Thus, the directional theory does not appear to be appropriate for capturing a political system conflict politicisation, omitting party–voter congruence on the centrist positions. Instead, the importance of valence issues in contemporary voting behaviour has been clearly acknowledged (Clark 2009), however, the consensual policy goals are not relevant to the current investigation, which aims at evaluating the emergence of a new positional conflict. On the contrary, in spite of its documented decline (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002; Franklin 1992), this work regards partisanship as a prominent predictor, controlling for its impact on voting preferences.

5.2 EU Issue Voting: Between Old Dilemmas and New Avenues As already mentioned in the introductory chapter, EU issue voting is defined as “the process whereby individual preferences over European integration directly influence the voting choices in national elections ” (De Vries 2010, 92). By referring to EU issue voting, the assumption is that voting behaviour is mainly grounded in issue competition rather than

146

L. CARRIERI

social identities. The decline in social structures as determinants of party support has mirrored the weakening of cleavage politics (Dalton et al. 2011; Franklin 1985; Inglehart 2015; Kriesi 1998; Mair 1997). Since the 1960s, “class volatility” has undoubtedly become an emerging reality in Western Europe, with established parties no longer exclusively relying on the support of the class gardeè (Duverger 1959). Parties have developed new tactics to maximise on votes, disregarding their earlier social ties to pursue “catch-all ” strategies, moving beyond their traditional constituencies (Kirchheimer 1966). Therefore, Western European party systems have become conditioned by the growing impact of issue competition, with the parties drawing attention to those contentious issues that can win the majority of votes (Green-Pedersen 2007). This kind of competition involves a complex interplay between issue positions and selective emphasis, which can be found in the EU issue entrepreneurship notion. The literature has dealt with the impact of the EU issues on voting, but offering very mixed empirical evidence. Van der Eijk and Franklin (2004) identified the potential of this conflict, with popular orientations gradually becoming more structured and polarised on EU issues, cross-cutting citizenry self-location along the left–right dimension. However, these popular attitudes have not automatically translated into corresponding electoral preferences, playing a marginal role, for a long time, in both EP and national elections (Van der Brug et al. 2007b; Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996; Reif and Schmitt 1980; De Vries 2007). The EP elections had always been dominated by domestic concerns, without serving as an intermediary channel through which citizens could address EU policies (Reif and Schmitt 1980; Hix and Marsh 2007; Schmitt 2005). By not being able to perform a democratic function (Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996), the EP elections have been defined as “second-order” (Reif and Schmitt 1980), mirroring government popularity trends, rather than a fully fledged EU conflict. Indeed, this arena had traditionally provided the voters with the opportunity to punish incumbent parties or reward the opposition, being less constrained by the strategic logic of national elections and allowing them to cast a sincere preference (Van der et al. 1996; Schmitt 2005). On the contrary, national elections have often proved to be a more meaningful arena for expressing domestic preferences on European integration (Evans 1998; Gabel 2000; Schoen 2008), with the EU membership issue being a potential source for politicising this conflict (Tillman 2004; De Vries and Tillman 2011). Nevertheless, the national elections have appeared to embody some transient fluctuations on EU

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

147

issue voting, which remained scattered and geographically concentrated until the 2000s (Mair 2000; De Vries 2007). Recent studies have subsequently refined this, highlighting that European integration matters to some voters, who under certain conditions perceive the importance of EU issues. Indeed, media coverage, positional polarisation and issue saliency affect the degree of EU issue voting, increasing the clarity of public perception on the party position along this latent dimension (Hobolt and Spoon 2012; Hobolt et al. 2009; Van Spanje and de Vreese 2014; De Vries 2010; De Vries et al. 2011; De Vries and Hobolt 2016). The latter works have actually revealed the growing magnitude of the impact of European integration on voting choices, becoming a more prominent explanation in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections. By adding the EU issue proximity variable to conditional logit models (CL), De Vries and Hobolt (2016) have shown how this predictor significantly improves the overall fit of the electoral choice models, with this result holding both at EP and national elections in most member states. They have also identified greater media coverage as being quite relevant to the increasing degree of EU issue voting, corroborating other works (Hobolt et al. 2009; Hobolt and Spoon 2012). Magalhães (2017) has discovered how the EU proximity variable has increasingly predicted the shift in choices in favour of Eurosceptic parties or abstention in the 2014 EP elections. On the contrary, the left–right proximity variable has lost much of its explanatory power compared to the 2004 and 2009 EP elections (see: Hobolt et al. 2009; Hobolt and Spoon 2012), especially in pushing voters away from the governing parties. Even if this literature provides some important insights, other works have refuted any clear-cut pattern increasing EU issue voting. By plugging the EU proximity variable into a multilevel model for all EU member states, De Sio et al. (2016) observed no growing Europeanisation in electoral politics from 2009 and 2014, with parties and voters weakly reacting to the EU management of the financial crisis. Furthermore, there is substantial disagreement over whether, and to what extent, protest parties have actually benefitted from this voting predictor, with many contributions producing an array of different findings (Van der Brug 2016; Gómez-Reino and Llamazares 2013; Van Elsas et al. 2019). These contradictions have demonstrated the difficulty in reaching a general and definitive conclusion on EU issue voting, which appears to be highly context-dependent and volatile. To minimise this, the current empirical test only focuses on those Western European countries which

148

L. CARRIERI

have shared some basic similarities in their political conflicts (Bartolini 2000). Earlier academic works assessed to what extent European integration had conditioned electoral politics by analysing all the member states (De Sio et al. 2016; De Vries and Hobolt 2016). This choice has probably resulted in overlooking some important findings related to the outbreak of the crisis in Western European countries, which may have experienced an important growth in EU issue voting. De Vries and Tillman (2011) have identified different voting patterns, with EU proximity being clearly a more prominent predictor in Eastern and Central European democracies. These newer democracies had not been so constrained by a pre-existing system of cleavages, with parties being more likely to accommodate EU issues within their platforms (De Vries and Tillman 2011). On the contrary, Western European parties could not ignore their long-standing ideological commitments nor their social constituencies, facing limitations in coping with the European integration conflict (Marks and Wilson 2000). To eliminate a potential source of bias, this work develops voting models excluding the Eastern and Central European countries, which could skew the overall findings. Instead, another kind of country-based control is advanced here, revolving around the intervened/non-intervened dichotomy, which has been a major divideline in Western European polities during the multiple-crises period. By running separate voting models for each cluster, the objective is to develop arguments on whether a certain degree of harmonisation has occurred among these countries, unveiling a homogeneity in voting behaviour patterns. The expectation is that EU proximity has gained in its explanatory power after the beginning of the multiple crises, being a widespread voting determinant. The models include interaction terms to observe the multiplicative effects of EU voter–party proximity for the protest party type. The expectation is that different party types have epitomised different voting patterns. The distinction can be clearly seen in the previous chapters, and identifies the different strategies set in motion by the two party types. Many above-mentioned works did not consider the potential variance occurring between different party types as an altering factor, merging their electoral support into a single dependent variable. However, parties are not created the same, and merging them into the same model, without controlling for their specific characteristics, would hamper the empirical results, eclipsing notable driving forces behind their voting equations.

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

149

The party types have been mainly associated with a set of diverse strategies, with Eurosceptic parties being more committed to politicising the EU conflict compared to the Europhiles. Thus, the mainstream/protest dichotomy seems more apt in understanding if the multiple set of crises has catalysed the increasing impact of the EU party–voter proximity as a determinant of voting preferences, with the protest parties gaining more electoral benefits than the mainstream parties along this issue dimension, and vice versa. By outlining a two-fold set of predictions, pertaining to party types, the primary goal is to evaluate if the magnitude of EU issue voting has changed over time, (de-)politicising this conflict. The EU voter–party proximity is generally expected to increase its impact on voting preferences in Western Europe. Secondly, voters should reward protest parties markedly more than mainstream parties on this issue dimension, responding to their clearer (Eurosceptic) information cues. Similarly, to test H4b, models include another interaction term, multiplying effects of the left–right proximity for the party type variable. This work has avoided the distinction between the EP and general elections, by selecting the propensity to vote for a party as the dependent variable. The previous section already introduced the notion of party utility (Downs 1957), that is, a system of individual preferences associated with each party, depending on the net benefits expected by choosing a given party. By drawing upon this different set of utilities, the voter will subsequently translate those preferences into a voting choice, maximising its forecasted benefits. This Downsean concept of “party utility” was successfully revisited by Van der Brug et al. (2007a), who moved away from its mere utilitarian notion by means of identifying another analytical tool—the propensity to support a party (which has frequently been labelled, for the sake of simplicity, as the “propensity to vote”, “party support” and “party preference”). In doing so, Van der Brug et al. (2007a, b) reconceptualised the notion party choice, mainly used as a dichotomous variable (left vote versus right, or government versus opposition party, Lewis-Beck 1990), providing an alternative variable measuring the propensity to vote (PTV). Typically, this variable is based on using a questionnaire asking respondents whether it is probable they will vote for a certain party, being offered an 11-point scale, from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very probable). Voting choice presents several drawbacks, such as not being reliable in capturing voter attitudes to those parties they have not voted for, constrained by strategic calculations or institutional binding rules. On

150

L. CARRIERI

the contrary, the PTV controls for the large variety of electoral rules in the different national contexts by asking respondents about the probability of voting for a party, increasing the comparability among the countries analysed. Furthermore, by multiplying the number of cases for each party, PTV overcomes the problems posed by the smaller parties, which cannot be fully analysed through voting choice models, losing important sources of information (Van der Eijk et al. 2006; De Vries and Tillman 2011). Therefore, PTV controls for the party size, which is an essential resource for describing electoral competition in multiparty or multicandidate systems. This dependent variable estimates voter orientations to parties in general, partially offsetting the biases arising from the dataset timing (EES), which measures the EP election preferences. In fact, as mentioned before, the European elections have traditionally been regarded as second-order elections, with voters exploiting this arena as a device for rewarding/punishing the parties in office (Reif and Schmitt 1980). This work makes no attempt to refine the second-order notion, without documenting existing differences between the EP elections and general elections, but aims at evaluating the effects of voter–party EU distance as a voting determinant and its implication on the political system politicisation. This kind of test is held to be more apt for observing a conflict emergence, without becoming bogged down in second-order model related arguments. By focusing on the general processes of voting formation, the model aims at a more precise investigation into the party–voter relationship, less conditioned by the specific EP election aspects (for instance, the government popularity cycle), and presenting more solid ground to test the politicisation hypothesis on. In brief, by proposing an alternative case selection, advancing party type-based controls through interaction terms and using the PTV as the dependent variable, the current analysis departs from the work presented in the existing literature, coming up with some innovative results. The combination of these three elements may allow for formulating new statements on EU politicisation, reviewing many existing findings on the crises’ impact on the structure of the political conflicts, which has often divided the scholars.

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

151

5.3 Methodology, Data and Variable Operationalisation To test H3, Ha and H4b, the Downsean proximity theory (Downs 1957) is used to compare the effects of the EU and left–right proximity on mainstream and protest voting preferences. The European Elections Study (EES) allows for developing these voting models, collecting the same data for all the countries analysed. Information on electoral behaviour, general political attitudes and background characteristics are included, conducting identical questionnaires across Western European member states. As already mentioned, the PTV is the dependent variable and its use allows for designing the models, adopting a linear regression with random intercept for country effects, capturing the variations and reducing the weaknesses found in the Logit models (Van der Eijk et al. 2006). To operationalise this variable, the EES question (2009, 2014 and 2019): “If you think of …, what mark out of ten best describes how probable it is that you will ever vote for this party?” is posed. Voters were asked to describe their propensity to vote for each party on a 11-point scale, ranging from 0 (Not at all probable) to 10 (Very probable). By choosing this dependent variable, a large number of mainstream and protest parties can be simultaneously analysed as a single dependent variable. This choice involves focusing on the common foundations affecting preference formation, resulting in a generic voting model, rather than many party-specific models (Van der Eijk et al. 2019). The empirical question is based on to what extent the EU distance has affected protest and mainstream voting, with protest parties being more likely to exploit this predictor. This kind of test requires a stacked data matrix, multiplying each respondent for every party combination. “In the stacked data, the respondent is represented by as many cases as there are parties for which support propensities were measured” (Van der Brug et al. 2007b, 174). This involves reshaping a normal matrix, transforming the unit of analysis from the individual respondent to the individual * party combination level. Therefore, the independent proximity variables refer neither to a party nor to a voter, but, instead, express the relation between the voter and party, resulting in a party–voter dyad (Van der Eijk et al. 2019). The pro-/anti-EU and the left–right proximity variables are constructed by measuring the absolute distance between the party positions (relying on the CHES rounds) and self-assessed voter positions (available in the EES

152

L. CARRIERI

studies), being coded as an 11-point scale. The dataset offers as many voter–party dyads as party cases present in each national party system, capturing the explanatory powers of the proximity variables. When a voter increases the probability to vote for a party by reducing the issue distance from the party position, the coefficient will be negative, mirroring a party– voter issue congruence. Instead, when a voter decreases the probability to vote for a party by reducing the issue distance from the party position, the coefficient will be positive, reflecting a voter–party ideological discrepancy. The EES asks the respondents to locate themselves on both dimensions, capturing the voter self-assessed positions. The European integration mathematical scale varies from 0 (European unification has already gone too far) to 10 (European unification should be pushed further), with the CHES dataset clearly congruent with the EES questionnaire and, thus, measuring party positions. Similarly, voters/parties are ordered along the left–right issue dimension, from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). The proximity variables are recoded in two 11-point scales, ranging from 0 to 1, which better fit the empirical research aims. Testing these potential fluctuations is a fundamental empirical step, as this work aims at investigating the emergence of European integration as a source of intra-party conflict. H3 involves a general expectation that, in the multiple-crises period, the EU proximity variable has increased its impact on voting preferences in Western Europe. By establishing the precrisis round as a benchmark (2009), the models will estimate whether, and to what extent, some electoral changes have occurred along this ideological divide, increasing or decreasing the political system politicisation following the exogenous shocks. Instead, H4a posits that voters have been more likely to electorally reward protest parties on their (anti-)EU positions, with the mainstream parties lagging behind on this source of voting. This hypothesis is verified by plugging an interaction term into the models, with the mainstream party type corresponding to 0 and the protest to 1. When the protest type condition is met, the coefficient must be significant and negative so H4a is not rejected. As for the interpretation of simple voting coefficients, the expected sign of the interaction term is negative, which indicates that when the party type variable increases, meeting the protest party type (sign plus), and the EU proximity decreases (sign minus), the coefficient will be negative. This scenario identifies the party type as becoming

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

153

an intervening variable in explaining EU issue voting in the multiplecrises period, with protest parties increasingly benefitting from the EU proximity variable to boost their voting preferences. Vice versa, if the coefficient is positive and significant, mainstream parties will be more likely to harness this voting predictor than the protest parties. Conversely, in the multiple-crises period, the left–right proximity has been held to be the major voting predictor for the mainstream parties (H4b). The hypothesis is also tested by including the same interaction term in the models, with the mainstream party type being 0 and the protest being 1. When the mainstream type condition is met, the coefficient must be significant and positive so H4b will not be rejected. Indeed, when the party type variable decreases, meeting the mainstream party type (sign minus), and the left–right proximity variable decreases (sign minus), the coefficient will be positive. This voting pattern would provide evidence that mainstream actors have been more markedly rewarded by voters on left–right issues than the protest actors. On the contrary, if the coefficient is negative and significant, protest parties will be more likely to exploit this voting predictor than the mainstream parties. To interpret the interaction term, scatterplots are included in the Chapter 6 appendix. Even if the core aim is to investigate the impact of these proximity variables on the potential fluctuations in party preference, several control variables are included in the models. A chief factor potentially swaying voting preferences is the pro-/anti-immigration proximity variable. Immigration issues have become increasingly attractive for many parties, being considered the most important parcel in the cultural dimension of contestation (Kriesi et al. 2006, 2008). This strong proxy of the so-called nationalistic/cosmopolitan divide, must be plugged into the models to apply a fundamental control. Immigration encompasses all those policies related to refugees and immigrants, as well as citizenship, integration and inclusion (Green-Pedersen 2019). The refugee crisis has placed further stress on the Western European polities, probably giving rise to negative attitudes to refugee acceptance or relocation. Therefore, the models assess whether the voters are more or less likely to vote for a party, which is closest to their policy position on pro-/anti-immigration issues. To ascertain the party–voter proximity on the pro-/anti-immigration issues, the following EES question was used: “We would like to ask you to position yourself on a scale from 0 to 10, where ‘0’ means that you ‘fully agree with the statement at the top’ and ‘10’ means that you ‘fully agree with the statement at the bottom’. Then, if your views are somewhere in between, you

154

L. CARRIERI

can choose any number that describes your position best”. The respondents position themselves on an 11-point scale, again recoded in another 11point scale, varying from 0 (Extremely anti-immigration) to 1 (Extremely pro-immigration)3. The party positions were drawn from the CHES, outlining the pro-/anti-immigration proximity variable. The previous sections have already mentioned the importance of a traditional and powerful predictor—“party identification”. “Party identification is sense of personal attachment which the individual feels towards the (party) of his choice” (Campbell et al. 1980). Campbell et al. (1980) assessed the strength of partisanship as a determinant of voting behaviour, constituting a fundamental perceptual screen in the political world. Individual-level affective and ideological dispositions towards a given party develop during early socialisation phases, resulting in a long-lasting political allegiance. When voting, the voter is likely to express their long-term affiliation by remaining a loyal party voter, but this party identification could be later reshaped (Fiorina 1981). Even if some scholars contended the decline of party identification (Franklin 1992; Van der Eijk and Franklin 2009), we see partisanship as a strong determinant in electoral preference, which should be incorporated in the empirical model as a control variable. Party identification is operationalised here by using the EES question (QPP21): “Do you consider yourself to be close to any particular political party? If so, which party do you feel close to?”, with the respondents declaring their closeness for only one party. This variable is dubbed here as party closeness, which is more consistent with the content of the survey, representing a good proxy for party identification. These independent variables—proximities and party closeness—have been stacked by party, with each matrix row reporting a different party– voter dyad and, thus, potentially drawing on information concerning preference formation. The models also include socio-demographic variables, unvaried in the individual, such as gender, age, education years, etc. Thus, synthetic variables are employed by providing affinity measures representing the relation between the respondent holding certain characteristics and each political party. These affinity measures are known as y-hats, construed as the predicted values of multiple party-specific bivariate OLS regression models of PTVs based on the respondent characteristic available (Van der Brug et al. 2007a). These predicted and centred values are stacked into the matrix, not being subjected to substantive interpretation. Indeed, y-hats are included in the models to achieve an empirical control for the effects concerning the proximity variables, which

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

155

are the main interest of this book. Though their effects will not receive a straightforward interpretation, their selection still requires a brief explanation to justify their presence, singling out their operationalisation in the party-specific bivariate OLS models. Gender—Political science literature has recently advanced a very interesting finding (Kitschelt and McGann 1997; Mudde 2009; Spierings and Zaslove 2015), showing that there is a lesser propensity for women to vote for the protest parties. According to Mudde (2009), gender emerged as a very powerful socio-demographic variable, with RRPs gaining lesser support from females. Although this work does not fully investigate if a new potential gender divide has emerged or not, this control variable cannot be omitted from the models. Gender, here, is translated into a dichotomous variable by employing the EES questions on gender status, where 0 represents men and 1 indicates women. Age—Although its impact has often resulted in being blurred, interacting with other variables, age has been regarded as an explanation for voting behaviour, determining electoral alignments. Van der Eijk and Franklin (2009) dismantled the conventional thinking on the established relation between the older population and political conservatism, defining it as a myth. On the contrary, age strongly affects ideological orientation and party identification, where the timing of political socialisation matters in conditioning these political values. This work uses age as a 4scale variable, dividing the generational groups as follows: 1 (16\18–24); 2 (25–39); 3 (40–54) and 4 (55 and plus). Education Years —Lower educational levels have mainly hindered voters from recognising the information shortcuts presented by parties, diminishing their cognitive skills in understanding the content of the left–right ideological dimension (Dalton et al. 2011; Fuchs and Klingemann 1990). Many works have assessed that higher education levels may determine a liberalising effect, prompting a positive value orientation towards cultural liberalism and increasing tolerance and openness (Kriesi et al. 2008). Conversely, poorly educated voters usually develop less tolerant attitudes to foreigners and immigrants, deprived of the cognitive tools to understand other cultures (Bornschier 2010). Hence, the educational\cultural divide affects voter alignments on the conflict dimensionality, increasingly reshaping voting preferences. Though clear-cut predictions cannot be formulated nor subsequently tested, this kind of control takes on a fundamental importance. By using the EES question (How old were you when you stopped full-time

156

L. CARRIERI

education?), education years is turned into a 3-point scale, where 0 corresponds to less than 15 years, 1 to a range between 16 and 19 years old, 3 is equivalent to 20 years and plus. Economic Retrospective Voting —Checking on the effects of the contingent economic conditions is a crucial control in empirical models. Retrospective evaluations on country economic performance probably affect the likelihood of a vote for the incumbent or opposition parties. A vast amount of literature has studied to what extent voters are prone to punish governments when economic conditions decline (Fiorina 1981; Lewis-Beck 1986, 1990). According to Lewis-Beck (1986), if citizens perceive the general economic situation as improving or worsening, they will be likely to punish or reward parties as a consequence. As the objective economic indicators deteriorated in Western Europe during the financial crisis, the expectation is that voters’ perceptions of the economic situation have influenced the propensity to vote for parties (see also Hobolt and Tilley 2016; Hobolt and De Vries 2016). The EES ask respondents to evaluate their country’s economic performance in the last 12 months prior to this survey (What do you think about the economy? Compared to 12 months ago, do you think that the general economic situation in the “Country”?). Therefore, this variable is operationalised as a 5-point variable, from 1 (It is a lot better) to 5 (It is a lot worse). Unemployment Status —The second variable accounting for the potential crisis consequences is unemployment status, which captures those who have suffered more from the economic downturns, losing their jobs or being the victims of austerity policies. The Euro crisis increased unemployment levels, probably aggravating a reward-punishment dynamic as an explanation for electoral preferences. The EES questionnaires allow for operationalising unemployment status, where 0 includes the employed, students, housewives and retired voters, while 1 corresponds to the unemployed.

5.4

Conclusions

This chapter has outlined the expectations related to the European integration impact on electoral politics. The Downsean theory provides the most appropriate framework for testing the hypotheses and, thus, assessing whether a political system politicisation has actually occurred or not. By dealing with the literature on EU issue voting, the chapter has presented all the major findings on this topic and has outlined a strategy

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

157

to offset some of the existing altering factors. In fact, the magnitude of this phenomenon has often been conditioned by some contextual variables, which have strongly affected EU issue voting. This work examines preference formation, eliminating the distinction between the general and EP elections, which often act as a potential intervening factor in determining EU issue voting. In doing so, the empirical test aims at moderating these contextual biases arising from these two different electoral arenas, grasping the general voter orientations towards the main conflict dimensionality. Furthermore, by controlling for the party type-based dichotomy, the empirical models seek to delineate new generalisations on protest-voting and mainstream-voting in Western Europe. As all the methodology and fundamental variables of the voting preference models have been established, the next chapter will estimate the variations in EU issue voting. This empirical step will allow for shedding light on the congruence between the party supply and voter reaction, assessing the final step in the EU conflict politicisation. Chapter 4 has already thoroughly examined the changing partisan supply, looking at the variations in EU issue entrepreneurship, which need to be empirically linked with a corresponding set of electoral preferences. Carmines and Stimson (1986) provided a causal chain of issue evolution, made up of elite positioning\repositioning, public clarity and an emotional popular response to produce a sizeable electoral realignment on a certain issue. This present work does not directly test electoral instability, but relies on the existing literature concerning this topic, assessing the growing volatility, jointly with protest party electoral successes. (Hobolt and Tilley 2016; Hobolt and De Vries 2016; Hooghe and Marks 2018). The next chapter tries to determine whether the voters have electorally responded to the changing partisan supply, creating clear-cut connections with the elite and, thus, unleashing the politicisation of a new conflict. In a nutshell, the expectation is that parties have been capable of restructuring the foundations of political competition by reshaping their electoral supply, leading to a stronger issue evolution.

158

L. CARRIERI

Bibliography Angelucci, Davide, and Pierangelo Isernia. 2020. Politicization and Security Policy: Parties, Voters and the European Common Security and Defense Policy. European Union Politics 21 (1): 64–86. Bartolini, Stefano. 2000. The Class Cleavage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bornschier, Simon. 2010. Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1980. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1986. On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution. American Political Science Review 80 (3): 901–20. Carrieri, Luca. 2019. Awakening the Sleeping Giant? The Euro Crisis and EU Issue Voting in Germany. Partecipazione e Conflitto 11 (3): 838–864. ———. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 50 (1): 52–67. Clark, Michael. 2009. Valence and Electoral Outcomes in Western Europe, 1976–1998. Electoral Studies 28 (1): 111–22. Dalton, Russell J., David M. Farrell, and Ian McAllister. 2011. Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, Russell J., and Martin P. Wattenberg. 2002. Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Sio, Lorenzo, Mark N. Franklin, and Till Weber. 2016. The Risks and Opportunities of Europe: How Issue Yield Explains (Non-) Reactions to the Financial Crisis. Electoral Studies 44: 483–91. De Vries, Catherine E. 2007. Sleeping Giant: Fact or Fairytale? How European Integration Affects National Elections. European Union Politics 8 (3): 363– 85. ———. 2010. EU Issue Voting: Asset or Liability? How European Integration Affects Parties’ Electoral Fortunes. European Union Politics 11 (1): 89–117. De Vries, Catherine E., Armen Hakhverdian, and Bram Lancee. 2013. The Dynamics of Voters’ Left/Right Identification: The Role of Economic and Cultural Attitudes. Political Science Research and Methods 1 (2): 223–38. De Vries, Catherine E., and Erik R. Tillman. 2011. European Union Issue Voting in East and West Europe: The Role of Political Context. Comparative European Politics 9 (1): 1–17.

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

159

De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2016. EU Issue Voting in National and European Parliamentary Elections. In (Un)-intended Consequences of EU Parliamentary Elections, ed. Van der Brug and Claes Holger Vreese, 101–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, Catherine E., Wouter Van der Brug, Marcel H. Van Egmond, and Cees Van der Eijk. 2011. Individual and Contextual Variation in EU Issue Voting: The Role of Political Information. Electoral Studies 30 (1): 16–28. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy 65 (2): 135–50. Duverger, Maurice. 1959. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. London: Methuen. Enelow, James M., and Melvin J. Hinich. 1984. The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, Geoffrey. 1998. Euroscepticism and Conservative Electoral Support: How an Asset Became a Liability. British Journal of Political Science 28 (4): 573–90. Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press. Franklin, Charles H. 1992. Measurement and the Dynamics of Party Identification. Political Behavior 14 (3): 297–309. Franklin, Mark N. 1985. The Decline of Class Voting in Britain: Changes in the Basis of Electoral Choice, 1964–1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuchs, Dieter, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. 1990. The Left-Right Schema. In Continuities in Political Action: A Longitudinal Study of Political Orientations in Three Western Democracies, ed. Jennings, M. Kent and Jan W. Van Deth, 203–34. Berlin: De Gruyter. Gabel, Matthew. 2000. European Integration, Voters and National Politics. West European Politics 23 (4): 52–72. Gómez-Reino, Margarita, and Iván Llamazares. 2013. The Populist Radical Right and European Integration: A Comparative Analysis of Party-Voter Links. West European Politics 36 (4): 789–816. Grande, Edgar, and Swen Hutter. 2016. Introduction: European Integration and the Challenge of Politicisation. In Politicising Europe, ed. Hutter, Swen, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 3–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2007. The Growing Importance of Issue Competition: The Changing Nature of Party Competition in Western Europe. Political Studies 55 (3): 607–28. ———. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hix, Simon, and Michael Marsh. 2007. Punishment or Protest? Understanding European Parliament Elections. The Journal of Politics 69 (2): 495–510.

160

L. CARRIERI

Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine De Vries. 2016. Turning Against the Union? The Impact of the Crisis on the Eurosceptic Vote in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Electoral Studies 44: 504–14. Hobolt, Sara B., and Jae-Jae Spoon. 2012. Motivating the European Voter: Parties, Issues and Campaigns in European Parliament Elections. European Journal of Political Research 51 (6): 701–27. Hobolt, Sara B., Jae-Jae Spoon, and James Tilley. 2009. A Vote against Europe? Explaining Defection at the 1999 and 2004 European Parliament Elections. British Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 93–115. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2016. Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis. West European Politics 39 (5): 971–91. Hoeglinger, Dominic. 2016. The Politicisation of European Integration in Domestic Election Campaigns. West European Politics 39 (1): 44–63. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2018. Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 109–35. Hutter, Swen, and Edgar Grande. 2014. Politicizing Europe in the National Electoral Arena: A Comparative Analysis of Five West E Uropean Countries, 1970–2010. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52 (5): 1002–18. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2019. Politicizing Europe in Times of Crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 26 (7): 996–1017. Inglehart, Ronald. 2015. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, Ronald, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. 1976. Party Identification, Ideological Preference and the Left-Right Dimension among Western Mass Publics. In Party Identification and Beyond, ed. Budge, Ian, Ivor Crewe, and Dennis Farlie, 243–73. New York: Wiley. Kirchheimer, O. (1966). The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems. In Political Parties and Political Development, ed. LaPalombara, Joseph and Myron Weiner, 177–200. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kitschelt, Herbert, and Anthony J. McGann. 1997. The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1998. The Transformation of Cleavage Politics the 1997 Stein Rokkan Lecture. European Journal of Political Research 33 (2): 165–85. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2006. Globalization and the Transformation of the National Political Space: Six European Countries Compared. European Journal of Political Research 45 (6): 921–56. ———. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1986. Comparative Economic Voting: Britain, France, Germany, Italy. American Journal of Political Science 30 (2): 315–46. ———. 1990. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

161

Magalhães, Pedro C. 2017. Bailout Countries and Others in 2014: Austerity and Government Defection. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Nielsen, Julie Hassing and Mark, N. Franklin, 197–222. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mair, Peter. 1997. Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2000. The Limited Impact of Europe on National Party Systems. West European Politics 23 (4): 27–51. Marks, Gary, and Carole J. Wilson. 2000. The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration. British Journal of Political Science 30 (3): 433–59. Mattila, Mikko, and Tapio Raunio. 2012. Drifting Further Apart: National Parties and Their Electorates on the EU Dimension. West European Politics 35 (3): 589–606. Mudde, Cas. 2009. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ordeshook, Peter C. 1976. The Spatial Theory of Elections: A Review and a Critique. In Party Identification and Beyond, ed. Budge, Ian, Ivor Crewe and Dennis Farlie, 285–313. New York: Wiley. Pannico, Roberto. 2017. Is the European Union Too Complicated? Citizens’ Lack of Information and Party Cue Effectiveness. European Union Politics 18 (3): 424–46. Pardos-Prado, Sergi, and Elias Dinas. 2010. Systemic Polarisation and Spatial Voting. European Journal of Political Research 49 (6): 759–86. Rabinowitz, George, and Stuart Elaine Macdonald. 1989. A Directional Theory of Issue Voting. American Political Science Review 83 (1): 93–121. Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. 1980. Nine Second-order National Elections–A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results. European Journal of Political Research 8 (1): 3–44. Schmitt, Hermann. 2005. The European Parliament Elections of June 2004: Still Second-Order? West European Politics 28 (3): 650–79. Schmitt, Hermann, Sara B. Hobolt, Wouter Van der Brug, and Sebastian Adrian Popa. 2020. European Parliament Election Study 2019, Voter Study. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA7581 Data file Version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/ 10.4232/1.13473. Schoen, Harald. 2008. Turkey’s Bid for EU Membership, Contrasting Views of Public Opinion, and Vote Choice. Evidence from the 2005 German Federal Election. Electoral Studies 27 (2): 344–55. Spierings, Niels, and Andrej Zaslove. 2015. Gendering the Vote for Populist Radical-Right Parties. Patterns of Prejudice 49 (1–2): 135–62. Stokes, Donald E. 1963. Spatial Models of Party Competition. American Political Science Review 57 (2): 368–77.

162

L. CARRIERI

Tillman, Erik R. 2004. The European Union at the Ballot Box? European Integration and Voting Behavior in the New Member States. Comparative Political Studies 37 (5): 590–610. Van der Brug, Wouter. 2004. Issue Ownership and Party Choice. Electoral Studies 23 (2): 209–33. ———. 2016. European Elections, Euroscepticism, and Support for AntiEuropean Union Parties. In (Un)-intended Consequences of EU Parliamentary Elections, ed. Van der Brug and Claes Holger Vreese, 255–273. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Brug, Wouter, and Joost Van Spanje. 2009. Immigration, Europe and the ‘New’ Cultural Dimension. European Journal of Political Research 48 (3): 309–334. Van der Brug, Wouter, Cees Van der Eijk, and Mark Franklin. 2007a. The Economy and the Vote: Economic Conditions and Elections in Fifteen Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Brug, Wouter, Cees Van der Eijk, and Mark N. Franklin. 2007b. EU Support and Party Choice. In European Elections & Domestic Politics, ed. Van der Brug Wouter and Cees Van der Eijk, 168–188. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Van der Eijk, Cees, Hermann Schmitt, and Tanja Binder. 2005. Left–Right Orientations and Party Choice. In The European Voter: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, ed. Jacques Thomassen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark Franklin. 2009. Elections and Voters. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin (Eds.). 1996. Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. ———. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Marks, Gary and Marco R. Steenburgen, 32–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Eijk, Cees, Mark Franklin, and Michael Marsh. 1996. What Voters Teach Us About Europe-Wide Elections: What Europe-Wide Elections Teach Us About Voters. Electoral Studies 15 (2): 149–66. Van der Eijk, Cees, Wouter Van der Brug, Martin Kroh, and Mark Franklin. 2006. Rethinking the Dependent Variable in Voting Behavior: On the Measurement and Analysis of Electoral Utilities. Electoral Studies 25 (3): 424–47. Van der Eijk, Cornelis, and Broer Niemöller. 1983. Electoral Change in the Netherlands: Empirical Results and Methods of Measurement. Amsterdam: CT-press. Van Egmond, Marcel, Wouter Van der Brug, Sara Hobolt, Mark Franklin, and Eliyahu V. Sapir. 2013. European Parliament Election Study 2009, Voter Study.

5

VOTERS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE DEMAND-SIDE …

163

GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5055 Data file Version 1.1.0, https://doi. org/10.4232/1.11760. Van Elsas, Erika J., Andreas C. Goldberg, and Claes H. de Vreese. 2019. EU Issue Voting and the 2014 European Parliament Elections: A Dynamic Perspective. Journal of Elections. Public Opinion and Parties 29 (3): 341–60. Van Spanje, Joost, and Claes de Vreese. 2014. Europhile Media and Eurosceptic Voting: Effects of News Media Coverage on Eurosceptic Voting in the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections. Political Communication 31 (2): 325–54. Weber, Till, and Mark N. Franklin. 2018. A Behavioral Theory of Electoral Structure. Political Behavior 40 (4): 831–56. Wheatley, Jonathan, and Fernando Mendez. 2019. Reconceptualizing Dimensions of Political Competition In Europe: A Demand-Side Approach. British Journal of Political Science 1–20. Published Online First. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0007123418000571.

CHAPTER 6

EU Politicisation in Western European Political Systems: From a Eurosceptic Punctuation to a Europhile Backlash

6.1

Methodological Overview

As mentioned in Chapter 5, the Downsean proximity is the basis of this empirical step, tackling H3, Ha and H4b. By choosing the propensity to vote (PTV) as the dependent variable, an 11-point scale, multilevel regression models with random intercept for country effects has been designed capturing the country variations. A great number of parties have been simultaneously analysed, requiring the design of generic voting models, rather than many party-specific models. To carry this out, a stacked data matrix has been developed, which multiplies each respondent for every party under analysis. In doing so, the normal matrix is reshaped, with the unit of analysis being transformed from the single respondent to the individual * party. The independent proximity variables will synthesise the relation between voter and party—the so-called party–voter dyad (Van der Eijk et al. 2019)—being constructed by measuring the absolute difference between the party positions (using CHES) voter positions (using EES), providing 11-point scale variables. To test H3, it is important to clarify the forecasted signs. If voters increase their propensity to vote for a party by minimising their issue distance from the party, the coefficient will turn out to be negative, signalling the issue congruence between voters and parties. Instead, when voters decrease the propensity to vote for a party by minimising their issue distance from the party position, the coefficient will be positive, mirroring a positional discrepancy between the voters © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_6

165

166

L. CARRIERI

and parties. H3 involves predicting that EU issue voting has increased after the multiple crises period, politicising this conflict in the Western European political systems. Hence, by adopting the pre-crisis coefficient as a benchmark (2009), the models will assess whether EU issue voting has varied over time, enhancing the political system politicisation in the multiple crises period. To ascertain H4a, which forecasts that protest parties have benefitted more from the EU proximity than the mainstream parties, further models will be developed, including an interaction term (Protest x pro-/antiEU Distance). The mainstream party type corresponds to 0 and the protest to 1. Thus, if the protest type condition is satisfied, the coefficient will be significant and negative, lending support to H4a. When the party type variables increase, satisfying the protest party type condition, and the EU proximity diminishes, the coefficient will become negative, confirming that protest parties are more likely to electorally benefit from the EU proximity than the mainstream parties. On the contrary, when the coefficient is positive and significant, the mainstream parties are those more likely to exploit this voting predictor. The same procedure is adopted to verify H4b, which foresees the left–right proximity as being a more important electoral determinant for the mainstream parties (H4b), including another interaction term (Protest x left–right Distance), with the mainstream party type corresponding to 0 and the protest to 1. If the mainstream type condition is fulfilled, the coefficient will be significant and positive, supporting H4b. If the party type variable diminishes, satisfying the mainstream condition, and the left–right proximity variable also decreases, the coefficient will emerge as positive, witnessing the mainstream actors’ greater capacity to harness left–right issues than the protest actors. If the coefficient is negative and significant, protest parties will be more likely to capitalise on the left–right proximity than the mainstream parties, rejecting H4b. The interpretation of the interaction terms requires the presentation of marginal plots, which are separately included in the appendix of this chapter. Socio-demographic variables are y-hats, synthetic variables employed by providing affinity measures that account for the relation between the respondent with certain characteristics and each political party. These variables cannot rely on any substantial interpretation, but simply control for the impact of the proximity variables.

6

6.2

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

167

Aggregate Findings of EU Issue Voting

6.2.1

EU Issue Voting in the Pre-crisis Period (2009)

As discussed in Chapter 5, no definitive conclusions were reached on the impact of EU issues on voting preferences, with several scholars coming up with contradictory results on its magnitude. Before the outbreak of the multiple set of crises, public opinion had been increasingly displaying structured and well-defined orientations regarding European integration (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004). The literature has identified many powerful conditions for the triggering of a more pronounced trend in EU issue voting, such as media coverage, political sophistication, party entrepreneurship, etc. (De Vries 2010; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). However, during the pre-crisis period, individual attitudes towards European integration had been a minor determinant, with the left–right orientations representing the main driver in conditioning the domestic vote (Van der Brug et al. 2007; De Sio et al. 2016). The 2009 round captures a span of time preceding the worsening of popular sentiments towards the EU and the impact of the EU-driven external constraints (Nielsen and Franklin 2017; Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018). According to De Sio et al. (2016), “the crisis did not really appear to affect electoral results in EU countries in 2009, as it had not yet translated into actual austerity measures with a direct impact on voters’ everyday life” (Ibidem, 484). Therefore, the 2009 round is an appropriate benchmark to observe the changing levels of EU issue voting in Western Europe, allowing for understanding whether a relative increase has actually occurred or not, and which party type has benefitted from the different issue dimensionality. Table 6.1 reveals, unsurprisingly, a classic structure of political conflicts in Western European political systems, with the left–right dimension still embodying the most prominent heuristics for voters in 2009. This finding seems to corroborate the resiliency of this so-called “super-issue”, which had notably shaped party contestation prior to the Euro crisis. By observing the multiplicative effects of party type for the left–right proximity, it is worth noting that mainstream parties benefitted electorally from this more than their protest opponents did. Mainstream coefficients turned out to be more negative than the protest coefficients, with no overlapping intervals of confidence (see: Fig. 6.1 in the appendix). Thus, the left–right dimension had secured mainstream electoral dominance in the pre-crisis era, with these parties drawing major support from voters

168

L. CARRIERI

Table 6.1 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2009)

Ptv Gender (y-hats) Age cohort (y-hats) Education (y-hats) Unemployment status (y-hats) Retrospective economic (y-hats) Party closeness Left–right distance Pro-/anti-immigration distance Pro-/anti-EU distance

2009 Model 1

2009 Model 2

0.783*** (0.065) 0.721*** (0.038) 0.627*** (0.053) 0.596*** (0.085) 0.433*** (0.027) 5.125*** (0.0460) −3.878*** (0.063) −0.218*** (0.054) −0.580*** (0.052)

0.788*** (0.065) 0.733*** (0.038) 0.638*** (0.052) 0.591*** (0.084) 0.446*** (0.027) 5.062*** (0.046) −3.975*** (0.081) −0.162** (0.054) −0.546*** (0.061) −0.833*** (0.0672) 0.0163 (0.114) 0.918*** (0.128) 4.478*** (0.166) −0.724** (0.237) 1.032*** (0.00320) 0.343 48865

Mainstream vs. protest (1 = protest) Protest x pro-/anti-EU distance Protest x left–right distance Intercept Var. Comp. country level Var. Comp. Ind. level R2 N

4.350*** (0.154) −0.793*** (0.237) 1.035*** (0.003) 0.338 48865

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

on those issues. On the contrary, the protest parties, in providing voters with more radical cues, were less likely to be rewarded along the left–right dimension.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

169

At the same time, the pro-/anti-EU distance is a weaker voting predictor than the left–right one, substantially confirming the literature on the degree of EU issue voting. Nonetheless, the 2009 results yield some interesting and uncovered trends, concerning the effects of proximity variables during the pre-crisis period. Firstly, the pro-/antiimmigration issue did not exceed the explanatory power of the pro-/antiEU issue. This electoral determinant, which may be considered as the main proxy of a fully autonomous cultural dimension (Van der Brug and Van Spanje 2009), was not the main motivation for voter party support. Many studies have shed light on how individual attitudes on immigration have influenced voting behaviour, with this set of policies already entering the party-system agendas prior to the Euro crisis (Green-Pedersen 2019). Yet, this issue proximity did not emerge as a core explanation in determining voting preferences, with the pro-/anti-EU distance equating its explanatory variable. Secondly, protest parties did not gain any more electoral payoffs on the pro-/anti-EU proximity than their mainstream opponents, with the interaction coefficient not being statistically significant. In Chapter 4, the empirical analysis showed some pre-crisis attempts to politicise the EU conflict among the protest parties, which exceeded mainstream efforts on this issue dimension. Although these parties had already been distinguishing themselves as more active politicisation agents, they did not succeed in winning more votes on the EU proximity. In 2009, Eurosceptic cues appeared to be rather ineffective strategic devices in challenging the mainstream dominance, with the more centrist and governing actors being able to minimise this conflict politicisation. This overall pattern describes a political context still marked by a notable degree of political “cartelisation” (Katz and Mair 1995). In fact, this political phenomenon entailed a wide-ranging policy convergence among mainstream governing actors, with support for European integration being one of the facets of this ideological collusion (Mair 2008). At this stage, the mainstream parties were playing a leading role in steering the main contents of the party-system agenda, sedating the EU “giant”, with protest parties being kept at the margins of the so-called cartel. 6.2.2

EU Issue Voting in the Euro Crisis Period (2014)

The 2014 EP elections mirrored the widespread electoral turmoil of the time, documented in several works assessing the rise of the protest parties

170

L. CARRIERI

that were winning votes and seats right across Western Europe (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). Popular opinion on EU institutions had rapidly deteriorated (Nielsen and Franklin 2017), with citizens increasingly blaming them for the unpopular economic policies implemented at the domestic level (Hobolt and Tilley 2014). Consequently, Eurosceptic entrepreneurs sought to exploit this changing demand-side of politics to increase their votes. Table 6.2 captures a set of trends concerning the proximity variables in 2014, which were partially unforeseen. First and foremost, no marked increase in EU issue voting occurred, resulting in being quite stable. In model 1, the 2014 coefficient (−0.840*** ) did not undergo any significant increase compared to 2009, but reflected a more moderate growth, inconsistent with H3. Nevertheless, the interaction coefficient indicates protest parties as being more likely to electorally benefit from EU proximity than the mainstream parties (see: Fig. 6.2 in the appendix). Through their entrepreneurial endeavours, these actors may have achieved a voter realignment along this dimension, being rewarded more on the pro-/anti-EU issue proximity. This electoral outcome is not unexpected, corroborating a punctuation point resulting from the financial crisis. The finding is somewhat consistent with other contributions, which have recognised individual Eurosceptic attitudes as votes drifting away from the mainstream towards the protest parties (Magalhães 2017). It is worth noting that voters had become more aware of protest party (re)positioning along the pro-/anti-EU dimensionality, electorally rewarding their Eurosceptic cueing in 2014. Although these parties had criticised the mainstream on this dimension, they were not able to reshuffle the main foundations of political contestation in Western Europe. The pro/anti-EU issue proximity remained a minor voting predictor compared to other issue variables, chiefly influencing voting preferences in Western Europe. Carmines and Stimson (1986, 1989) have posited that important electoral realignments imply a redefinition of the issue dimensions, with political entrepreneurs founding a new terrain of contestation. However, this empirical round demonstrates that protest success on the pro-/antiEU dimension was not accompanied by any growing politicisation. This electoral change seems to be simply due to a major voter understanding of and congruence towards protest Eurosceptic stances, resulting from a strategy of entrepreneurship increase achieved by these parties. In brief, the electoral profitability of Euroscepticism was not linked to any major autonomy and importance of pro-/anti-EU issues, which had been a subordinate voting driver.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

Table 6.2 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2014)

Ptv Gender (y-hats) Age cohort (y-hats) Education (y-hats) Unemployment status (y-hats) Retrospective economic (y-hats) Party closeness Left-right distance Pro-/anti-immigration distance Pro-/anti-EU distance

2014 Model 1

2014 Model 2

0.548*** (0.052) 0.621*** (0.034) 0.566*** (0.048) 0.307*** (0.064) 0.468*** (0.022) 5.538*** (0.040) −3.661*** (0.058) −0.980*** (0.049) −0.840*** (0.045)

0.543*** (0.052) 0.624*** (0.034) 0.569*** (0.048) 0.311*** (0.064) 0.471*** (0.022) 5.527*** (0.040) −3.745*** (0.078) −0.997*** (0.050) −0.594*** (0.053) 0.333*** (0.057) −0.814*** (0.098) 0.114 (0.120) 5.191*** (0.160) −0.758** (0.237) 0.949*** (0.003) 0.405 52745

Mainstream vs protest (1 = protest) Protest x pro-/anti-EU distance Protest x Left-right distance Intercept Var. Comp. country level Var. Comp. Ind. level R2 N

171

5.285*** (0.157) −0.771** (0.237) 0.950*** (0.003) 0.404 52745

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Moreover, the pro-/anti-EU proximity is not the only factor behind the propensity to vote for protest parties. In 2009, the left–right proximity had been the core electoral determinant in Western Europe, with mainstream parties reaping many more electoral benefits than the protest parties along this dimension. In 2014, this scenario suddenly changed,

172

L. CARRIERI

disrupting the previous equilibrium. The left–right dimension did not lose much of its explanatory power, though its coefficient slightly declined. However, by looking at the coefficient for the interaction term, multiplying the party type for the left–right proximity, its significance dropped. Hence, no significant difference was seen as to which party type would have been more likely to capitalise on the left–right issues, with mainstream electoral advantages being nullified on this dimension. In the Euro crisis aftermath, the main source of mainstream electoral support faded, resulting in a very critical stage for these political formations. In short, the mainstream electoral stagnation cannot only be explained by the pro-/anti-EU proximity, with these parties being punished along the left–right dimension. Mainstream lukewarm strategic responses may have overstepped the rise of a fully salient and polarising pro-/anti-EU dimension, but without preventing protest actors from gaining electoral advantages along this divide. Furthermore, their ability in linking voters across the left–right super issue suddenly lessened, with these parties notably converging on economic policies, thus reducing their responsiveness to domestic constituencies (Clements et al. 2018; Scharpf 2015). Conversely, the protest parties did not exclusively rely on the subsidiary pro-/anti-EU dimension, having also benefitted from voter realignments along the left–right dimension. Although this work has not linked electoral change to a specific entrepreneurial activity on the issues compounding the left–right conflict, it has discerned how much protest actors had profited from multiple sources of voting. Apart from the EU proximity, voters may have supported these parties on the basis of several issues, such as redistribution or immigration-related policies. The Euro crisis had more than likely undermined mainstream party legitimacy, leading to a widespread political crisis in the once dominating cartels of governing parties, which was already developing in Western Europe. The 2014 electoral round also highlighted the clear increase in the explanatory power of the pro-/anti-immigration proximity, which emerged as one of the core determinants in affecting electoral preferences. Those issues subsumed by the pro-/anti-immigration conflict appeared to be more autonomous than the left–right issues, almost becoming a dimension in its own in 2014. In short, this empirical round mainly demonstrated a politicisation of the chief issue compounding the cultural dimensionality, confirming some background findings related to the globalisation/demarcation cleavage (Kriesi et al. 2006), which was notably strengthened by the financial crisis. Despite a country-based variance in

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

173

the conflict configuration deserving closer attention, the models provide some interesting voting trajectories in Western Europe. At the same time, although the EU proximity had substantially explained protest parties’ voting preferences, European integration did not experience any increase in politicisation in 2014. 6.2.3

EU Issue Voting in the Multiple Crises Period (2019)

The 2019 EP elections had been preceded by the outbreak of the migration crisis (2015) and the so-called Brexit referendum (2016), both apparently exacerbating Eurosceptic orientations. The consequences of the economic crisis still could be felt in the South of Europe, while the North-West of Europe had gradually regained its pre-crisis macroeconomic performance levels (Bremer et al. 2020). Between 2015 and 2019, all the countries studied witnessed favourable electoral trends for the protest parties, increasing their votes almost everywhere, and providing parliamentary support for minority governments (Portugal and Spain) or gaining governmental office themselves (Greece and Italy). However, the 2019 EP elections did not mark a watershed in the EU-wide electoral alignments, with the Eurosceptic Euro-groups (GUENGL, ECR, EFDD and ENF/ID) stabilising, rather than increasing their number of seats. Under the aegis of Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega), the far-right EP group—Identity and Democracy (ID)—carried out a successful coalition-building strategy by including new parties (AfD, etc.), thus, reducing this camp’s fragmentation. Meanwhile, the Europhile bloc was undergoing a major upheaval, with many seats shifting from the once hegemonic EP groups—S&D-EPP—towards the Greens-EFA and ALDE/RE (Mudde 2019). All things considered, these elections did not constitute a critical moment, mirroring an overall pattern of voting stability. Table 6.3 discloses several startling findings, drastically reversing the previous results. EU proximity gained an important share of explanatory power, with the coefficient doubling its effects on voting preferences compared to 2009. In the multiple crises context, European integration increased its politicisation in the West European political systems, becoming a more powerful and autonomous voting predictor. Following Carmines and Stimson’s schema (1986, 1989), parties may have established a deep-seated issue clarity over time, with voters altering their cognitive and emotional perceptions on partisan positioning along the

174

L. CARRIERI

Table 6.3 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in Western Europe (2019)

Ptv Gender (y-hats) Age cohort (y-hats) Education (y-hats) Unemployment status (y-hats) Retrospective economic (y-hats) Party closeness Left-right distance Pro-/anti-immigration distance Pro-/anti-EU distance

2019 Model 1

2019 Model 2

0.557*** (0.073) 0.813*** (0.031) 0.202* (0.088) 0.545*** (0.104) 0.597*** (0.018) 4.641*** (0.045) −3.207*** (0.072) −1.083*** (0.062) −1.298*** (0.057)

0.533*** (0.073) 0.794*** (0.031) 0.198* (0.087) 0.546*** (0.104) 0.586*** (0.018) 4.614*** (0.045) −2.993*** (0.094) −1.124*** (0.062) −1.668*** (0.068) 0.109 (0.069) 1.118*** (0.121) −0.835*** (0.144) 4.726*** (0.118) −1.108*** (0.241) 0.982*** (0.004) 34319 0.408

Mainstream vs protest (1 = protest) Protest x pro-/anti-EU distance Protest x left-right distance Intercept Var. Comp. country level Var. Comp. Ind. level N R2

4.720*** (0.109) −1.175*** (0.241) 0.985*** (0.004) 34319 0.405

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

pro-/anti-EU dimension. This is a fundamental condition for politicising new issues. This politicisation had begun during the Euro crisis, involving a growing elite entrepreneurship, with the EU proximity becoming a prominent voting predictor during the multiple crises period. This result empirically supports H3, with the EU party–voter proximity turning out

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

175

to be a more prominent driver of electoral preferences during the multiple crises era. As posited in the introduction, EU politicisation is not a shortterm process, and requires a complex interplay of elite actions and public opinion responses, with three exogenous shocks apparently contributing as interrelated catalysts for political transformation. Furthermore, the pro-/anti-EU proximity has exceeded the explanatory power of that of pro-/anti-immigration in the multiple crisis period. The major development of this voting predictor is a core finding in this empirical analysis, reflecting a boost in European integration as a source of political conflict in Western Europe. However, the increasing EU politicisation in Western European political systems has resulted in different outcomes to those presented in the hypotheses. Indeed, by observing the coefficient for the interaction term between the party type and the pro-/anti-EU distance (see Table 6.3, Model 2), the mainstream parties greatly benefitted from this voting predictor. The interaction term and the margin plot (see: Fig. 6.3 appendix) leave no doubt whatsoever that the mainstream parties held many more electoral advantages than the protest parties on this issue dimension, hence, rejecting H4. Therefore, since the outbreak of the multiple crises, mainstream parties have been more likely to electorally benefit from EU proximity than the protest parties. This finding raises several questions about the overall efficacy of the Eurosceptic strategies, with the most active policy entrepreneurs being less likely to be rewarded on EU issues. The EU proximity turned out to be a minor source of protest support, promptly overturning the 2014 Eurosceptic voting. Nonetheless, this result is congruent with the mainstream increasing entrepreneurship described in Chapter 4, highlighting a widespread pattern of Europhile strategies across Western Europe. After the outbreak of the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum, many citizens have been more likely to reappraise the benefits of European integration. The British withdrawal aroused popular fears concerning the potential threats of a political disintegration (De Vries 2018). Furthermore, voters have also developed positive attitudes to further integration steps, such as the coordination of asylum seeker relocation and pan-European social policies (Conti et al. 2019; Stockemer et al. 2019; Ferrera and Burelli 2019). Consequently, mainstream parties sensed the electoral opportunity arising from this popular shift, increasing their EU issue entrepreneurship. The interesting finding is that the electorate immediately followed this new structure of Europhile cueing, being more likely to reward the mainstream over the

176

L. CARRIERI

protest parties. This could be qualified as a Europhile backlash, which has largely revolved around the rise of mainstream actors’ politicisation agency. It is worth noting that this electoral trend took place in a period of growing EU politicisation, with EU issue voting strongly increasing across the continent. In the 2009 EP elections, Hobolt and Spoon (2012) showed that those countries experiencing a more intense conflict politicisation were less affected by Eurosceptic voting. Similarly, by making the EU more salient and disclosing information on party positions along this divide, protest parties may have indirectly provided shortcuts on mainstream pro-EU stances in 2019. Mainstream parties have been forced into competing on the pro-/anti-EU dimension, increasing their EU issue entrepreneurship and producing a widespread Europhile backlash. Indeed, the rising politicisation of this conflict also involved pro-EU responses, with voters negatively reacting to the protest Eurosceptic shortcuts. The paradox is that by mobilising the European integration conflict so as to win more votes, protest parties, instead, ended up in providing advantages for their opponents. Thus, these parties do not currently hold any strategic incentives in reshaping the foundations of conflict dimensionality, with Eurosceptic voting resembling a short-term electoral punctuation in the immediate Euro crisis aftermath (2014). This finding needs to be complemented by the other interaction coefficient, which disproves H4b, drawing another unexpected voting pattern. In fact, by examining the coefficient, its negativity and statistical significance indicates a clear evolving trend, with protest parties more likely to benefit from the left–right issues (see: Fig. 6.4 in the appendix). In the multiple crises era, the left–right proximity has gradually decreased its effects on mainstream voting, with the protest parties emerging as the most responsive actors along this dimension. This trend indicates a fully fledged transformation of the protest anti-European type, which appears to have undergone a process of political normalisation. Before the crises, these parties had been more likely to profile themselves as “niche” parties, (Meguid 2005; Adams et al. 2006), aiming at challenging the traditional economic dimension. They had occupied a peripheral location within the domestic party systems, mainly providing voters with a single-issue policy appeal. Being more likely to succeed along the general left–right dimension, protest parties left behind their “nicheness”, taking on a “catch-all” profile. The empirical models corroborate a scenario, whereby the protest

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

177

parties have probably developed new winning formulas along the left– right dimension, displaying an evident programmatic complexity. Protest preferences were mainly affected by their proximity to voters on the left– right dimension, which is currently their major electoral strength in party competition, and a device to defeat mainstream parties. The literature has largely addressed the growing mismatch between external responsibility and domestic responsiveness. A core dichotomy has come into being, with mainstream parties prioritising responsibility rather than responsiveness, and protest parties focusing on responsiveness rather than responsibility. By adopting a populist-branded rhetoric, protest parties have pledged to deliver policy results neglected by the responsible parties, fulfilling a representative function (Kriesi 2014; Plescia et al. 2019). In the multiple crises period, these parties have filled this void along the left–right dimension, not only involving cultural issues, being free from the responsibility ties affecting the mainstream economic policies. A promising new avenue of study should identify whether these parties have deliberately pursued a path towards normalisation or not, perhaps by moderating their position or emphasising economic issues. Nonetheless, unexpectedly, to win more support, protest actors are now holding the incentive to prioritise the traditional foundation of Western European conflicts, while European integration has become a hurdle for any further electoral breakthrough. In the meantime, Euroscepticism can be considered as an anti-cartel tactical device, which has proved to be effective in overcoming a political insulation that had been impairing protest party performance prior to the outbreak of the crises. These parties have exploited this ideological facet to differentiate themselves from the mainstream parties. The increasing EU entrepreneurship strategy had actually been quite successful in the Euro crisis aftermath, allowing them to break into the core of West European party systems. Conversely, in the multiple crises period, once having consolidated their position within domestic party systems, they have rapidly toned down their strategic efforts on EU issues, perceiving some electoral threats related to the politicisation conflict. Protest actors stood out for their flexibility on the European integration conflict dimension, showing, to some extent, an awareness of their unstable structure opportunity along this dimensionality. Indeed, a Eurosceptic identity became an electoral liability rather than an electoral resource. By priming this anti-EU issue, protest parties probably fostered the emergence of the Europhile coalition of voters, which have rewarded the mainstream

178

L. CARRIERI

parties. In brief, the literature has recurrently posited how losing parties seek to mobilise new conflicts in order to defeat the current winners (De Vries and Hobolt 2012; De Sio and Lachat 2020). European integration had apparently epitomised a new conflict dimension on which to form a new voter majority to defeat mainstream parties. Instead, in the multiple crises period, protest parties have been favoured by the long-lasting left– right dimension, which is still the most important heuristic for Western European voters. The evolving trends in voting are equally surprising and interesting regarding mainstream parties. Scholars have continuously underlined that these actors were mainly static on this issue dimensionality, seeking to lock up the left–right-related conflicts to secure their electoral primacy and avoid intra-party factionalism (Hooghe and Marks 2009). However, they have gradually made more efforts along the pro-/anti-EU dimensionality, being more likely to prime Europhile messages. Since the outbreak of the multiple set of crises, mainstream parties have become less competitive on the left–right issues, which, instead, have provided electoral advantages for the protest parties. This finding does not suggest that the left–right congruence to voters currently represents a minor voting determinant for mainstream subjects, rather, it indicates that they are less likely to increase their preference along this dimension as compared to their opponents. Conversely, they established an unforeseen electoral pre-eminence on EU issues, which matches with their growing strategic endeavours on this alternative conflict. Europhile cueing activity has been important in (re-)mobilising the pro-EU bloc of voters. Mainstream parties have contributed to boosting the politicisation of a new issue dimension, with the information on party positioning becoming more available, also for pro-European voters. Empirical models have indirectly identified several critical moments, with the Euro crisis actually providing an impetus to a Eurosceptic momentum, witnessed by a transient voter realignment along the pro-/anti-European dimensionality. The effects of this have strengthened during the multiple crises period, ending up in a more pronounced EU issue voting, and resulting in a Europhile backlash.

6.3

EU Issue Voting in the Intervened Countries

Southern European party systems have shown a growing politicisation of the European integration conflict, with both party types colliding on the pro-/anti-EU issue dimension. After the Euro crisis, this path has been

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

179

quite consistent, steadily continuing during the multiple crises period, while the configuration of political conflict has become more complex due to the marked impact of the migration crisis, with Italy and Greece becoming the two key entry points for asylum-seekers (Pirro et al. 2018). In the pre-crisis period, widespread popular support for European integration had substantially hampered party-based entrepreneurship, with protest actors holding weak incentives to politicise this conflict. These party systems were mirroring a recurrent government turnover of mainstream centre–right and mainstream centre–left parties, even if they displayed a great variety of trends in government stability and electoral volatility (Bosco and Verney 2016). The 2009 electoral round (Table 6.4, Models 1–2) reveals an overwhelming dominance of the left–right proximity as a voting predictor, which was heavily swaying voter preferences. Conversely, the pro-/antiEU proximity resulted in a low impact, turning out to be a minor determinant in voting. Interaction coefficients between party types and EU proximity also proved that neither mainstream nor protest parties held any electoral advantages on this issue dimension. Furthermore, the immigration proximity yielded no impact at all, not being statistically significant. The latter finding signals the fundamental weakness of cultural-based voting predictors in this group of countries, which did not reflect the emergence of a demarcation-integration cleavage. On the contrary, the left–right divide was a chief source of cue-taking for voters, probably absorbing all the main cultural issues and, hence, aligning voters and parties along a conflict super-dimension. Cultural issues showed no autonomous effects in swaying voter preferences, revealing the unimportance of the “silent revolution” in the intervened countries. It is also worth noting that the left–right dimension did not provide any ulterior advantages for the mainstream parties compared to their protest counterparts. Thus, some degree of ideological polarisation may have predated the outbreak of the multiple set of crises, with protest parties drawing support from extreme voters, who were not completely marginal in the South of Europe. The 2014 electoral round abruptly undermined the stability of these systems, experiencing unprecedented levels of electoral volatility and government turnover (Bosco and Verney 2012). In the 2014 EP elections, this volatility mainly occurred as voting shifts away from mainstream pro-EU parties towards protest anti-EU parties (Magalhães 2017). The latter had increasingly distinguished themselves based on their

180

L. CARRIERI

Table 6.4 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in the intervened countries (2009, 2014 and 2019) 2009 Model 1 Ptv Gender 0.690*** (0.166) (y-hats) Age cohort 0.400*** (0.085) (y-hats) Education 0.501*** (0.097) (y-hats) Unemployment status 0.857*** (0.207) (y-hats) Retrospective 0.427*** (0.034) economic (y-hats) Party closeness 5.438*** (0.073) Left–right distance −3.467*** (0.104) Pro-/-anti−0.0691 immigration (0.088) distance Pro-/anti-EU −0.298*** (0.086) distance Mainstream vs protest (1 = protest) Protest x pro-/-anti-EU distance Protest x left–right distance Intercept 3.756*** (0.191) Var. Comp. country 1.012** (0.359) level Var. Comp. Ind. level 1.030*** (0.006) 0.377 R2 N 16385 Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

2009 Model 2

2014 Model 3

2014 Model 4

2019 Model 5

2019 Model 6

0.690*** (0.166) 0.399*** (0.085) 0.498*** (0.097) 0.856*** (0.207) 0.428*** (0.034)

0.883*** (0.140) 0.474*** (0.060) 0.439*** (0.120) 0.234* (0.116) 0.479*** (0.034)

0.879*** (0.139) 0.475*** (0.060) 0.413*** (0.120) 0.241* (0.115) 0.501*** (0.034)

0.580*** (0.147) 0.797*** (0.059) 0.121 (0.110) 0.701** (0.218) 0.497*** (0.024)

0.572*** (0.147) 0.795*** (0.059) 0.114 (0.110) 0.679** (0.218) 0.485*** (0.024)

5.445*** (0.073) −3.337*** (0.139) −0.0673 (0.090)

5.644*** (0.065) −2.767*** (0.094) −0.099 (0.081)

5.621*** (0.064) −2.653*** (0.125) −0.208* (0.081)

5.216*** (0.065) −3.092*** (0.111) −0.993*** (0.095)

5.202*** (0.065) −3.026*** (0.153) −1.084*** (0.095)

−0.287** −0.448*** (0.103) (0.072) 0.133 (0.117) −0.0322 (0.193)

−0.036 −0.657*** (0.0871) (0.090) 1.134*** (0.087) −0.915*** (0.157)

−0.972*** (0.120) 0.298** (0.096) 0.524** (0.177)

−0.311 (0.208) 3.712*** (0.192) −1.022** (0.360) 1.030*** (0.006) 0.377 16385

−0.815*** (0.185) 4.086*** (0.187) −1.034** (0.359 0.916*** (0.005) 0.396 18609

−0.355 (0.209) 4.114*** 0.196) −0.996** (0.359) 0.949*** (0.0056) 0.470 14198

4.430*** (0.188) −1.011** (0.358 0.922*** (0.005) 0.388 18609

4.152*** (0.182 −1.058** (0.360) 0.951*** (0.006) 0.467 14198

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

181

Eurosceptic appeals, seen as a novel tactical device to reverse voting preferences. The EU-driven austerity policies had prevented the national governments from dealing with the crisis outcomes, strongly hindering domestic responsiveness and prioritising external responsibility on the EU/Troika (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino 2018). Hence, voters were probably more likely to blame EU multilevel governance for these policy outcomes, providing protest actors with more room of agency in priming Eurosceptic cues. However, the empirical results did not reveal a major change in the EU issue voting trends (see Table 6.4, Models 3–4), with this proximity coefficient undergoing a modest growth. The interaction term (Protest x EU Proximity) supports the major ability of the protest actors to draw electoral support from EU issues compared to their mainstream counterparts (see: Fig. 6.5 in the appendix). The finding is quite important, as it seems to suggest a sudden electoral realignment along the pro-/anti-EU divide, steered by the politicisation agency of protest actors after the onset of the crisis. Indeed, these parties actually succeeded in reaping electoral benefits on Euroscepticism, which may partially explain the shift in votes away from the mainstream parties. Nonetheless, the main finding revolves around the second interaction term (Protest x Left–Right Proximity, see: Fig. 6.6), with the protest parties being more likely to electorally benefit from the left–right proximity than the mainstream. At the aggregate level, this result occurred in the multiple crises period, probably reflecting a normalisation among protest actors trying to heighten their coalition potential. In the intervened countries, this trend had already emerged during the Euro crisis, and is likely to mirror a distinct trajectory. Several works have discussed the complex interplay between the economic and political crises in these countries, with the implementation of austerity policies interacting with a dissatisfaction of how democracy works at a domestic level and in the EU (Hernández and Kriesi 2016). The crisis of responsiveness has been particularly dramatic on economic policies, with austerity measures affecting governments’ capability in being able to cope with the outcomes of the recession. Unsurprisingly, many protest parties have combined their Eurosceptic narrative with an anti-austerity platform, coming up with electorally winning formulas (Calossi 2016; Carrieri 2020). Undoubtedly, popular attitudes towards the EU were largely shaped by the orientations on the left–right dimension, with those rejecting the austerity policies being more likely to become Eurosceptic (Otjes and Katsanidou 2017). Consequently, protest actors, such as Podemos, M5S,

182

L. CARRIERI

SYRIZA BE, etc. may have tapped into the responsiveness void, promising social investments and opposing the economic embodiment of the EU. In doing so, protest parties also eroded the support for mainstream parties along the economic left–right dimension, which had been forced to abide by the EU-level binding rules. In the aftermath of the Euro crisis, the RLPs became the Southern European success story, being pivotal actors in their respective party-systems sharpening their blackmail and coalition potentials. These parties were able to electorally profit from their opposition to the EU-led austerity policies, winning more votes along both the left–right and the pro-/anti-EU conflict dimensionalities. The 2019 EP elections have drawn a different picture for the electoral performance of both the protest and mainstream parties in the South of Europe. Although there occurred some changes between the BE and the CDU in terms of votes, the Portuguese case was the only one to mirror the resiliency of the protest electoral support. On the contrary, the three most successful protest actors during the Euro crisis period, SYRIZA, Podemos and M5S, lost substantial shares of votes compared to the 2014 EP elections. These parties were adversely affected by some issues entering the agenda which did not establish favourable conditions for gaining more votes (e.g. the Catalan issue in Spain, the Macedonian issue in Greece and immigration policies in Italy). In a nutshell, the pro-/anti-austerity became less electorally profitable for these parties, which were exploiting to a lesser degree a left-biased Euroscepticism. On the contrary, the migration crisis may have resulted in an identitarian Eurosceptic frame for the RRPs coming to the fore, revolving around the protection of domestic borders, and the cultural anxieties linked to European integration. In Italy, the co-governing League, led by the Minister for the Interior, Matteo Salvini, won 34.3% of votes. This party rallied the voters on a clear Eurosceptic platform, pledging to secure the EU borders (Giannetti et al. 2018). The Spanish party-system experienced the landmark electoral success of a radical-right actor—Vox1 (Voice)—which had become the main Eurosceptic actor in Spain, opposing any further authority transfers to the EU.

1 The previous empirical step had not included Vox, because of its absence from the 2017 CHES data. Given the success of this party in the 2019 elections, it has been included in the voting round, by using the voter perceptions on party positioning on both the left−right and pro−/anti−EU dimension provided by the EES.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

183

Model 5 shows a substantial growth in EU issue voting, supporting H3. By observing the benchmark coefficient (2009), the EU Proximity variable became stronger in predicting voting preferences, corroborating a relative increase. In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises, the impact of EU proximity has increased as a determinant in electoral preferences in the intervened countries. This result reveals a scenario of a growing politicisation of the EU conflict in the Southern European political systems, where the supply-side of politics has been increasingly matched by voter responses on the EP dimension. Thus, the pro-/antiEU dimension appears to be more salient and polarising in these party systems, mainly affecting electoral preferences domestically. Furthermore, the intervened countries have not deviated from the trend seen at the aggregate level, with mainstream parties being more likely to reap electoral benefits on EU issues than the protest actors, hence, rejecting H4a. This pattern is quite consistent with the entrepreneurial fluctuations observed in Chapter 4, which described the protest parties’ dwindling efforts during the multiple crisis period. Even if these countries are still dealing with the consequences of the crisis, many citizens do not currently perceive any utilitarian benefits stemming from the Eurosceptic platforms. Indeed, many protest parties, especially the RLPs, have abandoned their harsher criticisms of the EU economic embodiment, moderating their stances on this ideological divide (see: Podemos, SYRIZA, CDU and M5S). In the aftermath of the Euro crisis, the electoral earthquake occurring in the South of Europe gradually resulted in bringing many of these actors into the governing arena (M5S, League, SYRIZA and ANEL) or into forming parliamentary coalitions (BE, CDU and recently Unidos Podemos). Thus, these parties have had to cope with the reality of being in government (see: SYRIZA) or with the constraints of inter-coalition bargaining (see: BE and CDU), decreasing their EU issue entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, a pool of strong Eurosceptic parties has survived in these countries (KKE, GD, League and Vox), strongly conveying antiEU messages to the voters. The League and Vox are the most interesting cases, with the former becoming the first electoral party in Italy, and the latter entering the EP for the first time. These parties are currently radicalising the electoral supply at the domestic level, with their Euroscepticism being an important factor. The League struck an agreement with another protest actor, M5S, to form a government, colluding on many cultural issues, including Euroscepticism (Giannetti et al. 2018). After the 2019

184

L. CARRIERI

EP elections, this government collapsed, with the League being replaced by the centre–left Europhile PD. The collapse of the cabinet was brought about by the M5S Europhile shift, endorsing the appointment of Ursula Van der Leyden as the head of the EC, while the League had persisted in its harsh criticisms of the EU. The Italian case seems to epitomise the importance of this dimension in steering cabinet formations, with the League’s Hard Euroscepticism becoming an obstacle for its aspirations to govern. Conversely, by acting as genuine Europhile issue entrepreneurs, the mainstream actors have contributed to politicising this conflict, perhaps driving an electoral realignment on the pro-/anti-EU dimension in these countries. Even if this work has not singled out a specific mainstream policy frame, it is worth noting that this bloc of parties maintained an ideological consistency on this dimension, being rewarded by the voters. During the multiple set of crises, many constituents appeared to have changed their opinion on further integration steps, probably identifying the EU as a shield rather than a liability in tackling many domestic problems, such as the growing migrant and asylum seeker influxes (Conti et al. 2019). In short, when European integration turned into a politicised issue at the party-system level, with mainstream parties openly colliding on these issues, Europhile information shortcuts became more available to voters, who understood the benefits related to multilevel governance. Meanwhile, H4b results in being rejected, with no party more likely to be rewarded on the left–right issues than their counterparts. This deviation from the general findings (see: Sect. 6.1) is probably entrenched in the peculiarity of the government turnover of these countries. In fact, protest actors had abruptly entered the government arena after the onset of the crisis, harnessing the lack of responsiveness of the governing mainstream actors. Protest parties rallied the voters by highlighting their major ability to deliver policy outcomes, especially promising expansionary welfare packages to end the impact of the austerity measures. By undergoing an earlier normalisation, these parties rapidly dealt with the same constraints as their predecessors, probably losing some electoral benefits on the left–right issue dimension. SYRIZA was a clear example of this pattern, becoming a centre-of-the-left party, forced to sign a new memorandum of understanding. Although many RLPs still hold a strong credibility over redistribution policies, many moderate left actors are currently competing with them on these issues (see: Socialists in the Iberian countries). The latter may have blended some pro-redistribution

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

185

appeals with Europhile stances, highlighting the use of EU funds to sustain economic growth and welfare policies. Nevertheless, Model 5 has also unveiled a fundamental change in the structure of the conflicts, with pro-/anti-immigration proximity suddenly becoming stronger in influencing votes. Previous voting models unveiled the null impact of this determinant, being statistically insignificant. The refugee crisis probably reversed this picture, with migration policies becoming foremost in the concerns of these voters. In 2019, the explanatory power of this variable notably exceeded that of the EU proximity, which had undergone a steady but moderate growth. The rise of the EU and migration issues appeared to reinforce the cultural foundation of political conflicts in these countries. In the pre-crisis era, cultural issues had clearly stood out as lacking in any structuring capacity in Southern European countries, notably diverging from the contestation pattern of North-Western Europe. By extending the span of time and covering the demand-side of politics, this work argues that the multiple crises led to a growing importance of both immigration and EU issues as predictors of voting preferences. Cultural issues increasingly shaped the patterns of electoral contestation, with these proximity variables taking on a fundamental role in conditioning voting preferences. Thus, the multiple crises prompted more political homogeneity in Western Europe, with a demarcation/integration conflict characterising both intervened and nonintervened countries. As far as the EU conflict is concerned, it has clearly become more politicised in these political systems, with the EU voter– party congruence enhancing its impact on electoral preferences. The EU management of the crisis led to different political outcomes in these countries, constraining domestic responsiveness and giving rise to a more party-based Euroscepticism, which has been matched by consistent voter reactions. Conversely, after the multiple set of crises, this conflict politicisation has reached its peak, stabilising into a more Europhile direction and providing electoral advantages for mainstream parties.

6.4 EU Issue Voting in the Non-intervened Countries Chapter 4 has highlighted the widespread fluctuations of the supply-side of politics, with the EU conflict being increasingly politicised in the nonintervened party systems, corroborating the transformative effects of the multiple set of crises. However, before these shocks, the North-Western

186

L. CARRIERI

democracies had already been displaying some degree of EU politicisation, with protest parties seeking to prime Eurosceptic shortcuts to win more votes. Thus, party-based Euroscepticism stood out as an ideological feature within these party systems, with many RRPs (FN, PVV and UKIP) and RLPs (Vas and SP) seeking to reshape the foundations of electoral contestation in the pre-crisis period. This protest-based entrepreneurship was probably hampered by the de-politicisation strategies of the mainstream parties, which blurred this alternative conflict to lock up their electoral fortunes along the left–right dimension. The 2009 electoral round substantiates this (see: Table 6.5, Models 1–2), with the attempts of protest parties to profit from Euroscepticism being worthless in the pre-crisis period. Conversely, mainstream parties were clearly dominating the overarching left–right dimension, securing a dominant position in their respective party systems (see: Table 6.5, Model 2, Protest x Left–right Distance; Fig. 6.8). The EU proximity variable had a strong impact on voting preferences, however, it did not provide any advantages for the anti-EU parties. By blatantly characterising themselves as Eurosceptic entrepreneurs, the protest parties were not likely to gain more support on EU issues than their counterparts (see: Model 2 Protest x Pro-/-Anti-EU Distance). This set of findings suggests some clear features of the protest parties, which were suffering from a clear “nicheness” in their policy appeals. Indeed, these parties had probably aimed at challenging the traditional economic dimension, without coming up with an electorally winning formula on the alternative EU dimensionality. Some works have highlighted the pre-existing spread of Eurosceptic sentiments in several of these countries, with a lacking party entrepreneurship preventing this conflict from becoming politicised (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004). On the contrary, the protest parties were already acting as political entrepreneurs, but without spurring voter responses on the anti-EU side of the political contestation. To some extent, this result contradicts the “sleeping giant” hypothesis, showing, instead, that voters were not at all open to responding to protest cueing. On the other hand, mainstream parties were able to steer political conflicts at the domestic level, marginalising the protest parties from the hegemonic cartel of governing parties. At this stage, the mainstream-protest dichotomy strongly overlapped with the cartel-/anticartel dichotomy, with governing centrist parties successfully sedating Eurosceptic voting. The pro-/anti-immigration proximity appeared as a minor predictor, with this important proxy of the cultural dimension not

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

187

Table 6.5 Linear (OLS) regressions with random intercept for countries (standard errors in parentheses) in the intervened countries (2009, 2014 and 2019)

Ptv Gender (y-hats) Age cohort (y-hats) Education (y-hats) Unemployment status (y-hats) Retrospective economic (y-hats) Party closeness Left–right distance Pro-/antiimmigration distance Pro-/anti-EU distance Mainstream vs protest (1 = protest) Protest x pro-/anti-EU distance Protest x Left-right distance Intercept

2009 Model 1

2009 Model 2

2014 Model 3

2014 Model 4

2019 Model 5

2019 Model 6

0.796*** (0.072) 0.767*** (0.045) 0.612*** (0.057) 0.534*** (0.093)

0.802*** (0.071) 0.774*** (0.045) 0.627*** (0.057) 0.528*** (0.093)

0.466*** (0.056) 0.657*** (0.041) 0.567*** (0.053) 0.355*** (0.076)

0.477*** (0.056) 0.668*** (0.040) 0.569*** (0.053) 0.357*** (0.076)

0.583*** (0.085) 0.810*** (0.037) 0.312* (0.140) 0.513*** (0.119)

0.552*** (0.085) 0.788*** (0.037) 0.305* (0.140) 0.529*** (0.119)

0.479*** 0.487*** 0.460*** 0.456*** 0.660*** 0.653*** (0.052) (0.052) (0.029) (0.029) (0.026) (0.026) 4.918*** 4.820*** 5.461*** 5.442*** 4.193*** 4.158*** (0.061) (0.061) (0.051) (0.051) (0.061) (0.062) −4.075*** −4.219*** −4.200*** −4.259*** −3.310*** −2.951*** (0.080) (0.101) (0.073) (0.095) (0.095) (0.119) −0.307*** −0.324*** −1.415*** −1.384*** −1.143*** −1.178*** (0.070) (0.070) (0.062) (0.062) (0.081) (0.081) −0.753*** −0.647*** −0.975*** −0.767*** −1.656*** −1.967*** (0.066) (0.077) (0.057) (0.065) (0.074) (0.084) −0.133 0.108 −1.310*** (0.085) (0.076) (0.102) 0.0247 (0.146)

1.591*** (0.168) 4.718*** 4.907*** (0.175) (0.184) Var. Comp. Country −0.966** −0.917** level (0.319) (0.319) Var. Comp. Ind. 1.037*** 1.029*** (0.004) (0.004) Level R2 0.313 0.324

−1.044*** (0.131) 0.712*** (0.156) 5.766*** 5.749*** (0.222) (0.233) −0.713* −0.669* (0.318) (0.318) 0.958*** 0.956*** (0.004) (0.004) 0.418 0.420

1.314*** (0.172) −1.310*** (0.202) 5.115*** 5.111*** (0.098) (0.098) −1.668*** −1.707*** (0.332) (0.333) 1.002*** 0.999*** (0.005) (0.005) 0.362 0.366

(continued)

188

L. CARRIERI

Table 6.5 (continued)

N

2009 Model 1

2009 Model 2

2014 Model 3

2014 Model 4

2019 Model 5

2019 Model 6

30966

30966

34136

34136

20121

20121

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

notably driving any voting alignments. Many studies heralded the potential consequences of globalisation and de-nationalisation in transforming the domestic configuration of political conflicts in these countries (Kriesi 2016; Kriesi et al. 2006). Although this work does not explore the overall complexity of a potential cultural dimension of contestation, the structuring capacity of the demarcation/integration cleavage appeared to be quite limited in the pre-crisis era. The Euro crisis brought about a growing electoral instability in the non-intervened countries, which had experienced many shifts in votes from mainstream to protest parties (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). In the 2014 EP elections, the RRPs increased their share of votes and seats in France, Sweden and the UK, which saw the electoral consolidation of the pre-established actors (FN, SD and UKIP). The German landscape witnessed the emergence of the AfD, which filled the radical-right space, empty since the end of World War II, gaining 7.0% of the valid votes. The RLPs electoral performance was more stagnant (FG and LINKE), but they remained core actors in their respective party systems. During the Euro crisis period, protest parties increased their anti-EU entrepreneurship, aiming at responding to the popular Euroscepticism arising at the mass level. Instead, mainstream parties were more lukewarm issue entrepreneurs in de-politicising this conflict, though German and Dutch centrist actors were already setting into motion a pro-EU response. In 2014, the degree of EU issue voting increased, indicating a substantial variation in this conflict politicisation. Nonetheless, the fundamental transformation regarded the reversal of the electoral benefits linked to the party types, with protest actors becoming more likely to harness the EU proximity than the mainstream parties. Indeed, the interaction term (Model 4: Protest x EU Distance) resulted in being significantly negative, with the intervals of confidence not overlapping, supporting the

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

189

Euro crisis impetus in realigning voter preferences along the pro-/antiEU dimension. The second Greek bailout gave rise to public concerns on pan-European inter-state solidarity issues, with several RRPs (AfD, PVV, SD and UKIP) opposing net fiscal contributions to the EU and nonintervened countries. Furthermore, the cultural-based explanations may have played an essential role in conditioning these electoral responses. Indeed, the RRPs consistently framed their Euroscepticism in culturalidentitarian terms, drawing attention to the EU-related threats regarding border controls and to the national culture. In 2014, these countries were already experiencing growing levels of immigration (see: EUROSTAT), with its opposition being likely to predict a Euroscepticism (Otjes and Katsanidou 2017). During the Euro crisis period, their Eurosceptic appeals had probably been embedded in anti-immigration issues, with the RRPs pledging to take back control of the domestic borders by reversing the EU integration process (Basile and Mazzoleni 2019). It is worth noting that the immigration proximity increased in its impact, with the Euro crisis strengthening the cultural bases of conflicts. The structuring capacity of the cultural issues was entrenched in a long-term ideological reconfiguration of these party systems, stemming from the “silent” revolution. In fact, the Green-Ecologist parties and RRPs had already reshaped the main contents of the cultural dimension of conflict, which was revolving around a cosmopolitan-nationalist divide in the pre-crisis context. However, these models suggest a more abrupt transformation of the demand-side of politics, rather than a pre-dating importance of the overall cultural issues as voting predictors. The Euro crisis had a catalyst effect in these countries, magnifying some pre-existing trends that were developing. During this span of time, these systems showed their peculiar structure regarding opportunities for protest actors, hinging upon a mismatch between external responsibility and domestic responsiveness. Yet, this weakening of the representative role appeared to involve the cultural divide more than the economic. The Euro crisis actually pushed mainstream parties towards the strengthening of a proEU consensus, with the more centrist actors converging on the rescue packages for the debtor countries. Furthermore, these parties clearly kept their commitments to the Schengen embodiment of the EU, with the free circulation of people among member states remaining uncontested. This policy collusion opened up several windows of opportunity for the protest parties, especially the RRPs, which were able to develop new electorally winning formulas by blending Euroscepticism with anti-immigration cues.

190

L. CARRIERI

Conversely, the protest parties did not overtake the mainstream on the left–right dimension, with the latter still dominating the traditional conflict foundations. This finding notably differentiates the nonintervened from the intervened countries, where the left–right proximity had resulted in important advantages for the protest actors. This seems to reflect the weak structuring power of the pro-/anti-austerity divide in the North-West of Europe, where mainstream parties had been more responsive to economic issues. Many protest parties (FN, FG, SP and LINKE) employed an anti-austerity discourse in the non-intervened countries, but without succeeding in realigning the voters along the left–right dimension. Consequently, the protest actors held less incentives to prime left–right-related issues, while their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship proved to be a fundamental tactical device to gain more votes. After the onset of the Euro crisis, protest-based entrepreneurship did not bring about any great increase in EU politicisation in these political systems, but it may have set in motion a Eurosceptic momentum. To some extent, this scenario confirms the protest parties’ “nicheness” in this county cluster, with these actors remaining the political losers along the dominant dimension of contestation, still occupying an ideological fringe. In the 2019 EP elections, the protest party vote share remained fairly stable, although this camp mirrored some internal fluidity, especially in the Dutch and British cases.2 Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the migration crisis and Brexit referendum, these parties have toned down their EU issue entrepreneurship, aiming at competing on other issues. In particular, the RLPs have changed their position, adopting more neutral stances to blur this conflict dimension. Conversely, Europhile issue entrepreneurship has flourished, with a large pool of mainstream parties reacting to the postcrisis protest-based entrepreneurship. The Europhile bloc of parties has not solely included minor formations, which had been traditionally EuroEnthusiasts (such as EELV, D66, GL, Liberal Democrats and Greens), but also major governing actors (such as CDU, SPD and REM). Hence, these party systems have epitomised a pattern of systemic entrepreneurship, which could actually pave the way for the increasing levels of EU issue voting. 2 The dominant party in the Dutch radical−right camp became Forum for Democracy (FvD), with the PVV becoming more electorally marginal. Similarly, Nigel Farange, the former leader of the UKIP, founded the Brexit Party, winning 30.5% of valid votes and drawing support from the UKIP.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

191

Indeed, Model 5 reveals the growing impact of the EU proximity, which had multiplied its effects on voting. The coefficient became the second most important issue predictor, after the left–right proximity, outweighing the explanatory power of the immigration issue. After the multiple set of crises, the impact of EU party–voter proximity has increased as a determinant of electoral preferences in North-Western Europe, lending support to H3. Nevertheless, the EU proximity had been more likely to provide electoral advantages to mainstream parties, rejecting H4a and fitting into the general trend found at the aggregate level. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, the party supply had consistently moved towards an increasing Europhile entrepreneurship, resulting in important popular responses. Voters responded to these shortcuts, probably expressing concerns on the hard Eurosceptic stances of the protest actors in the aftermath of the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. The end of the crisis probably gave rise to more trust in the overall EU building, with voters appraising the benefits related to their country’s membership. In fact, a growing percentage of citizens have actually perceived the EU as being the more adept in tackling some policy issues. There is evidence of a growing public opinion in support of several integration steps involving immigration, defence, foreign, security and social policies (Angelucci and Isernia 2020; Conti et al. 2019; Ferrera and Burelli 2019). Mainstream parties may genuinely have tried to politicise the EU conflict by rallying the voters on further integration steps concerning several crucial policy areas. This country cluster includes the British case, which more than likely reflects the rise of the “leave/remain” divide, which is not completely consistent with the wording of the EES questionnaire. By running a separate test for the UK, H4a resulted in being rejected, not diverging from the general trajectory of the entire group of countries. It is worth noting that the absence of the Conservative Party, which cannot be associated with a mainstream pro-EU nor protest anti-EU party type, may have skewed the results of the model. Nevertheless, the UK witnessed a Europhile backlash, with the Greens, Liberal Democrats, SNP and Plaid Cymru seeking to drive a pro-remain counter-mobilisation. Therefore, the fully fledged politicisation throughout the multiple crises period has provided advantages for the pro-EU actors, with protest parties rapidly losing their benefits along the pro-/anti-EU dimension. The latter parties had historically initiated this politicisation, but were not able to maintain electoral profitability on the Eurosceptic positions. Indeed, these parties

192

L. CARRIERI

had minimised this source of conflict, understanding the extent to which the negative sentiments towards the EU were likely to be volatile, turning into a liability rather than a resource. However, protest parties have tended to increase their voting preferences along the traditionally dominant conflict dimensionality, with their left–right proximity coefficients significantly exceeding the mainstream ones. This result blatantly rejects H4b in the non-intervened countries, posing several interpretation issues. Prior to the crises, several works had questioned the structuring power of the left–right superdimension, positing, instead, the rise of a two-dimensional policy space in the North-West of Europe, made up of an economic and a cultural divide (Kriesi et al. 2006). These works had often considered the EU issues as a subsidiary parcel of the cultural dimension, which encompassed a wide array of policies, pitching nationalists against cosmopolitans. The models have shown the transformations triggered by the crises, which not only propelled a major polarisation and saliency of a cultural divide, but also reinforced the politicisation of the economic dimension in the non-intervened countries. The RRPs have shared a nativist and populist economic outlook, probably developing a distinct profile on these set of policies. Among the RRPs, the most important common denominator has been welfare chauvinism, which revolved around an exclusionary model of solidarity, aiming at excluding the non-native population from access to social services (Otjes et al. 2018). These parties sought to gain the electoral support of the economic globalisation losers, cueing the voters on the welfare shortages related to the immigration flows. This party family is now expressing a clearer economic agenda, interacting with their culturally conservative platform, and resulting in a new electorally winning formula along the left–right super-dimension, representing the most important issue predictor. In the meantime, the RLPs had clearly relinquished their EU entrepreneurship, stabilising their linkages with voters on economic issues. After the multiple set of crises, the North-Western European radical left has mainly profiled themselves as credible actors on the issues related to economic redistribution, with their (Soft) Euroscepticism turning into a minor tactical device. Apart from Mélenchon’s FI in France, the RLPs demonstrated a certain strategic flexibility on EU issues, facing less reputation constraints than the RRPs and, thus, promptly adopting a depoliticisation agency. In short, the protest parties have been more likely to match voter demands on the left–right dimension during the multiple

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

193

crises period, probably filling the lacking mainstream policy distinctiveness on this issue dimension. In the aftermath of the Euro crisis, these countries took a different trajectory to the South of Europe, the recession not dramatically exacerbating government constraints in tackling the economic problems. Thus, the mainstream parties gained more votes on the left–right issues than the protest parties, which sought to politicise a new pro-/antiEU issue dimension to win more preferences. These strategic efforts did not produce a major conflict politicisation, but simply resulted in an ephemeral Eurosceptic realignment on this issue dimension, providing protest actors with some electoral payoffs. Conversely, the migration crisis and Brexit referendum have brought about a new wave of public support for EU issues, swinging from a permissive to a dynamic consensus, unleashed by active Europhile entrepreneurs. This mainstream mobilisation strategy has generated a more intense EU conflict politicisation in the North-Western political systems, witnessed by the increase in EU issue voting. By strengthening a pro-EU consensus, mainstream parties left some policy space vacant along the left–right dimension, quickly filled by the protest parties. These parties were less committed to characterising themselves as Eurosceptic parties, probably broadening their policy appeals. Previous paragraphs have already advanced some potential explanations, with both the RLPs and RRPs being more likely to develop more cross-cutting policy commitments, including many left– right-related issues within their platforms. This work cannot identify if the protest actors actually carried out strategic adjustments on the left– right dimension or not, nor which policies they picked up. Nonetheless, by electorally succeeding along the left–right dimension, these parties did not profile themselves as niche or single-issue parties, overtaking former winners (mainstream) on the dominant dimension of contestation. It is worth noting that the RRPs probably achieved a major issue clarity on the economic dimension by drawing attention to welfare chauvinism, leading to voter realignments on this issue dimension. Meanwhile, many Social Democratic parties were strongly colluding on pro-austerity policies with their centre–right counterparts (see: PS, SPD and PvdA), opening up some windows of opportunity for the RLPs to own and prime redistribution policies.

194

L. CARRIERI

6.5

Conclusions

Sections 6.2–6.4 has tackled the political system politicisation, which hinges on a further element, namely voter–party congruence on the pro-/anti-EU issue dimension. Indeed, “To politicise a conflict in the political system, the voter responses should match party policy (re-) positioning, revealing a party-voter congruence on the new issues, which become significant electoral determinants ” (Carrieri 2020, 54). The first step of the conflict politicisation has ascertained systemic EU issue entrepreneurship in Western Europe, with political parties becoming increasingly committed to clarifying the EU-related messages at the party-system level. This chapter has addressed the fluctuations in the EU party–voter proximity, evaluating the impact of the multiple set of crises in politicising the EU conflict in Western European political systems. The EU Issue Voting Hypothesis (H3) has been confirmed, with the EU proximity enhancing its impact on the voting preferences in the multiple crises period. On the contrary, H4a and H4b cannot be supported, with the multiple shocks exerting a differentiated impact. The Euro crisis has reinforced the Eurosceptic voting, with the EU proximity probably becoming a prominent explanation for the drift of votes away from the mainstream to the protest parties. This pattern has resulted in being quite ephemeral, with the migration crisis and Brexit referendum producing a Europhile momentum across the continent. The latter punctuation has led to electoral advantages for the mainstream parties, which had drawn more voting support on the EU issue than the protest parties. These results have substantially held for the two country clusters, which have both experienced an apex of EU party–voter proximity as a voting determinant. The crises have cumulated their effects over time, with EU voter–party issues becoming more important. The Euro crisis had set this underway, subsequently being reinforced by the further crises, paving the way for the rise in EU political system politicisation. However, these crises have opened up different windows of opportunity for these parties, with the Euro crisis acting as a Eurosceptic catalyst and the migration crisis and Brexit as Europhile catalysts. This scenario seems to indicate the extreme context-dependency of EU issue voting, with the strategic incentives for the different party types being very unstable. The systemic politicisation of the EU throughout the multiple crises period has led to electoral benefits for the mainstream parties. The migration crisis and spill-over effects of the Brexit referendum have slowed down the Eurosceptic momentum,

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

195

being conducive to pro-EU responses at the mass level. During this time, EU-related cues and voter responses have been more than likely to be congruent, with this conflict becoming more politicised within these political systems. Indeed, the EU party–voter proximity has clearly impacted more on electoral preferences, with this alternative conflict dimension increasingly structuring the electoral contestation. There is no definitive evidence on whether the pro-/anti-EU dimension actually constitutes, or not, an autonomous comprehensive source of political conflict vis-à-vis the left–right and the pro-/anti-immigration conflict. The pro-/anti-EU divide may be entrenched within a broader cultural dimension, loading other polarising issues and, thus, establishing a fully fledged controversy between nationalists and cosmopolitans. Nevertheless, European integration does not seem to be a negligible element in a far-reaching conflict, but appears to play a major role in structuring the political configuration of Western European political systems. In short, the transformative effects unleashed by the multiple set of crises have resulted in being supported, with EU voter-party proximity becoming a more important electoral determinant over time, politicising this conflict in the Western European political systems.

Appendix The appendix presents the marginal plots (95% Cls), showing the composite effect (constitutive term + interaction), which cannot be calculated in the regression table alone. The coefficients have already been displayed in the regression tables throughout the main text, referring to the appendix Figs. 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10, 6.11, and 6.12. Thus, marginal plots are hereby presented to interpret the actual significance of the interaction term, with each figure being linked to the number of the regression table and the coefficient model under analysis. The figures presented.

196

L. CARRIERI

Fig. 6.1 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2009). See Table 6.1, Model 2

Fig. 6.2 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2014). See Table 6.2, Model 2

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

197

Fig. 6.3 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2019). See Table 6.3, Model 2 Average Marginal Effects of Party Type x left-right with 95% Cls

Fig. 6.4 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in Western Europe (2019). See Table 6.3, Model 2

198

L. CARRIERI

Fig. 6.5 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in the intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.4, Model 4

Fig. 6.6 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in the intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.4, Model 4

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

199

Average Marginal Effects of Party Type x EU proximity with 95% Cls

Fig. 6.7 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.4, Model 6 Average Marginal Effects of Party Type x left-right with 95% Cls

Fig. 6.8 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2009). See Table 6.5, Model 2

200

L. CARRIERI

Fig. 6.9 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.5, Model 4 Average Marginal Effects of Party Type x left-right with 95% Cls

Fig. 6.10 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2014). See Table 6.5, Model 4

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

201

Fig. 6.11 Average marginal effects of EU proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.5, Model 6 Average Marginal Effects of Party Type x left-right with 95% Cls

Fig. 6.12 Average marginal effects of left–right proximity by party type (95% CIs) in non-intervened countries (2019). See Table 6.5, Model 6

202

L. CARRIERI

Bibliography Adams, James, Michael Clark, Lawrence Ezrow, and Garrett Glasgow. 2006. Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 513–29. Alonso, Sonia, and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. 2018. The Costs of Responsibility for the Political Establishment of the Eurozone (1999–2015). Party Politics. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1354068818766182. Angelucci, Davide, and Pierangelo Isernia. 2020. Politicization and Security Policy: Parties, Voters and the European Common Security and Defense Policy. European Union Politics 21 (1): 64–86. Basile, Linda, and Oscar Mazzoleni. 2019. Sovereignist Wine in Populist Bottles? An Introduction. European Politics and Society 21 (2): 151–62. Bosco, Anna, and Susannah Verney. 2012. Electoral Epidemic: The Political Cost of Economic Crisis in Southern Europe, 2010–11. South European Society and Politics 17 (2): 129–54. ———. 2016. From Electoral Epidemic to Government Epidemic: The Next Level of the Crisis in Southern Europe. South European Society and Politics 21 (4): 383–406. Bremer, Björn, Swen Hutter, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2020. Dynamics of Protest and Electoral Politics in the Great Recession. European Journal of Political Research 59: 1–25. Calossi, Enrico. 2016. Anti-Austerity Left Parties in the European Union: Competition, Coordination and Integration. Pisa: Pisa University Press. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1986. On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution. American Political Science Review 80 (3): 901–20. ———. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Carrieri, Luca. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica 50 (1): 52–67. Clements, Ben, Kyriaki Nanou, and José Real-Dato. 2018. Economic Crisis and Party Responsiveness on the Left-Right Dimension in the European Union. Party Politics 24 (1): 52–64. Conti, Nicolò, Danilo Di Mauro, and Vincenzo Memoli. 2019. Citizens, Immigration and the EU as a Shield. European Union Politics. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1465116519834648. De Sio, Lorenzo, Mark N. Franklin, and Till Weber. 2016. The Risks and Opportunities of Europe: How Issue Yield Explains (Non-)Reactions to the Financial Crisis. Electoral Studies 44: 483–91. De Sio, Lorenzo, and Romain Lachat. 2020. Making Sense of Party Strategy Innovation: Challenge to Ideology and Conflict-Mobilisation as Dimensions of Party Competition. West European Politics 43 (3): 688–719.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

203

De Vries, Catherine E. 2010. EU Issue Voting: Asset or Liability? How European Integration Affects Parties’ Electoral Fortunes. European Union Politics 11 (1): 89–117. ———. 2018. Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–68. Ferrera, Maurizio, and Carlo Burelli. 2019. Cross National Solidarity and Political Sustainability in the EU After the Crisis. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 57 (1): 94–110. Giannetti, Daniela, Andrea Pedrazzani, and Luca Pinto. 2018. The Rising Importance of Non-Economic Policy Dimensions and the Formation of the Conte Government. Italian Political Science 13 (2): 27–44. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hernández, Enrique, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. The Electoral Consequences of the Financial and Economic Crisis in Europe. European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 203–24. Hobolt, Sara B., and Jae-Jae Spoon. 2012. Motivating the European Voter: Parties, Issues and Campaigns in European Parliament Elections. European Journal of Political Research 51 (6): 701–27. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2014. Blaming Europe? Responsibility Without Accountability in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis. West European Politics 39 (5): 971–91. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine De Vries. 2016. Turning Against the Union? The Impact of the Crisis on the Eurosceptic Vote in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. Electoral Studies 44: 504–14. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2009. A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 1–23. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1995. Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party. Party Politics 1 (1): 5–28. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2014. The Populist Challenge. West European Politics 37 (2): 361–78. ———. 2016. The Politicization of European Integration. JMCS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54: 32. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Roman Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheus Frey. 2006. Globalization and the Transformation of

204

L. CARRIERI

the National Political Space: Six European Countries Compared. European Journal of Political Research 45 (6): 921–56. Magalhães, Pedro C. 2017. Bailout Countries and Others in 2014: Austerity and Government Defection. In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen and N. Franklin Mark, 197–222. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mair, Peter. 2008. The Challenge to Party Government. West European Politics 31 (1–2): 211–34. Meguid, Bonnie. 2005. Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success. American Political Science Review 99 (3): 347–59. Mudde, Cas. 2019. The 2019 EU Elections: Moving the Center. Journal of Democracy 30 (4): 20–34. Nielsen, Julie Hassing, and Mark N. Franklin. 2017. The 2014 European Parliament Elections: Still Second Order? In The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections, ed. Julie Hassing Nielsen, and Mark N. Franklin, 1–16. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Otjes, Simon, and Alexia Katsanidou. 2017. Beyond Kriesiland: EU Integration as a Super Issue After the Eurocrisis. European Journal of Political Research 56 (2): 301–19. Otjes, Simon, Gilles Ivaldi, Anders Ravik Jupskås, and Oscar Mazzoleni. 2018. It’s Not Economic Interventionism, Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties. Swiss Political Science Review 24 (3): 270–90. Pirro, Andrea L.P., Paul Taggart, and Stijn van Kessel. 2018. The Populist Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: Comparative Conclusions. Politics 38 (3): 378–90. Plescia, Carolina, Sylvia Kritzinger, and Lorenzo De Sio. 2019. Filling the Void? Political Responsiveness of Populist Parties. Representation 55: 1–21. Riker, William H. 1986. The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Scharpf, Fritz W. 2015. Political Legitimacy in a Non-Optimal Currency Area. In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, ed. Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, 19–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stockemer, Daniel, Arne Niemann, Doris, Unger and Johanna Speyer. 2019. The ‘Refugee Crisis,’ Immigration Attitudes, and Euroscepticism. International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319879926. Van der Brug, Wouter, Cees Van der Eijk, and Mark N. Franklin. 2007. EU Support and Party Choice. In European Elections & Domestic Politics, ed. Van der Brug Wouter and Cees Van der Eijk, 168–88. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Van der Brug, Wouter, and Joost Van Spanje. 2009. Immigration, Europe and the ‘New’ Cultural Dimension. European Journal of Political Research 48 (3): 309–34.

6

EU POLITICISATION IN WESTERN EUROPEAN POLITICAL …

205

Van der Eijk, Cees, and Mark N. Franklin. 2004. Potential for Contestation on European Matters at National Elections in Europe. In European Integration and Political Conflict, ed. Gary Marks, and Marco R. Steenbergen, 32–50. Cambridge University Press. Van der Eijk, C., L. De Sio, and C. Vezzoni. 2019. The Generic Approach to Analysing Contextual Moderation of the Vote Calculus. Unpublished paper to be presented at MPSA, 2019. Van de Wardt, Marc, Catherine E. De Vries, and Sara B. Hobolt. 2014. Exploiting the Cracks: Wedge Issues in Multiparty Competition. The Journal of Politics 76 (4): 986–99.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusions: A History of a Europhile Backlash

7.1 The Party-System Politicisation: Propositions on the EU Supply-Side Chapter 4 tackled the party system politicisation, which is defined as the “process of the transformation of previous non-contentious issues into an object of public contestation, which is mobilised by the parties, emphasising and polarising the new issues within the party system” (Carrieri 2020, 53). By combining issue emphasis and positional polarisation, the entrepreneurship yardstick has allowed for assessing to what extent parties seek to politicise/de-politicise EU issues in the party system. The results concerning the first set of hypotheses (H1 and H2) are summarised in Table 7.1, reporting the findings for each country cluster under study. The table unveils the growing levels of party-based entrepreneurship, showing the catalyst effects of the multiple crises in hastening EU politicisation in the Western European party systems. Indeed, the increasing entrepreneurship has been a constant phenomenon, involving both party types within the country blocs, supporting H1 and rejecting H2. Protest Entrepreneurship Hypothesis: The Great Recession opened up further windows of opportunity for the protest parties, which have increased their level of entrepreneurship in almost all the party systems under analysis. During the Euro crisis period, the party location along the left–right dimension was notably linked to a clear incentive, with the protest actors strategically mobilising the European integration conflict. © The Author(s) 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2_7

207

208

L. CARRIERI

Table 7.1 Protest entrepreneurship and mainstream entrepreneurship in Western Europe, non-intervened and intervened countries

Western Europe

Non-intervened countries Intervened Countries

Protest parties

Mainstream parties

EU issue entrepreneurship Increase EU issue entrepreneurship Increase EU issue entrepreneurship Increase

EU issue entrepreneurship Increase EU issue entrepreneurship Increase EU issue entrepreneurship Increase

By sensing a political opportunity, these actors have become the strongest political entrepreneurs in Western Europe. Conversely, the migration crisis and Brexit referendum have been less favourable punctuation points for reinforcing the Eurosceptic entrepreneurship, with many citizens re-evaluating the benefits of European integration (Conti et al. 2019; Stockemer et al. 2019; De Vries 2018). However, the protest levels of politicisation have remained higher compared to pre-crisis levels, perhaps resulting in leaving deep traces in the West European party systems. In the non-intervened countries, the protest parties have held some long-term incentives, which had predated the Great Recession. In the aftermath of the Euro crisis, the figures reflect the increasing importance of Eurosceptic cueing activity among protest parties in this bloc of countries. Protest actors have potentially relied on the established Eurosceptic credibility, which they had developed before the crisis. This ideological background has been an important feature of the non-intervened party systems, marking a notable difference with Southern European countries. Even if this credibility has been an important element of their strategies, these parties have focused on saliency and positional adjustments, as reflected in the entrepreneurship figure fluctuations. On the contrary, the multiple crises period reveals a degree of stagnation in these protest strategies, toning down their entrepreneurship efforts. Nonetheless, three out of five of the non-intervened countries—France, Germany and the UK—showed a higher degree of protest entrepreneurship compared to the pre-crisis period, with European integration becoming a more politicised source of conflict in these party systems. Even though their efforts in highlighting EU issues did not vanish, they did diminish after the

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

209

onset of the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. Thus, H1 cannot be rejected for this cluster of countries, receiving a notable degree of support. However, the protest parties have revealed a non-linear pattern of entrepreneurial increase, with their strategies being strongly dependent on changing contexts and incentive systems. Instead, the South of Europe has signalled another pattern in protest entrepreneurship. The Euro crisis was a major catalyst, with the intervened countries suffering from the binding rules fixed by the EU. The Europhile popular disposition had been rapidly overturned by the introduction of the EU-led austerity policies, with the protest parties increasingly priming Eurosceptic messages. Consequently, a Eurosceptic supply promptly flourished, with both new and revitalised protest actors channelling negative sentiments towards Europe. Protest parties were committed to building up their anti-European credibility, which had not been evident before the financial turmoil. Thus, the protest entrepreneurial increase was sudden in these countries, constituting an unprecedented party system development, without being structured in a long-term process of change. Although the migration crisis and Brexit referendum have not strengthened the protest Eurosceptic entrepreneurship, the latter has resulted in being much higher than in the pre-crisis period, fully confirming H1 in the non-intervened countries. Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis —On the other hand, the multiple set of crises resulted in a homogenous reaction within the pro-European parties, which have increased their EU issue entrepreneurship, with H2 being clearly rejected. Both the aggregate analysis and country-level do not lend support to the foreseen mainstream decreasing entrepreneurship, with another result appearing in Western Europe, contradicting this hypothesis and drawing a complex picture. Mainstream actors have strategically competed on the pro-/anti-EU dimension, even though their Eurosceptic opponents have been the chief politicisation agents. Ideological radicalism is not the only driver in politicising European integration, with centrist actors profiling themselves as conflict mobilisers. Non-intervened countries do not corroborate H2, with the British, French, German and Dutch mainstream parties achieving an entrepreneurship increase in the post-crisis period. This pattern was quite uniform in this bloc, sufficing to reject H2. These tactical endeavours probably reflect the abrupt reversal of the previous Eurosceptic

210

L. CARRIERI

orientations at the public level, spurred by the petitioning for further integration steps related to the migration crisis and the widespread anxiety catalysed by the Brexit referendum. Moreover, mainstream parties may have emphasised the results obtained at the intergovernmental level, signalling their responsiveness to local constituents (Schneider 2020). Thus, many domestic constituents may have once again leaned towards Europhile orientations, providing mainstream parties with room of agency to develop a Europhile narrative. In the intervened countries, mainstream actors have enhanced their EU issue entrepreneurship, outlining a pro-European political supply. These strategic efforts were quite unforeseen, because of the strength of the EU-led binding rules endured by the South European governments during the crisis. Southern European countries have described a systematic entrepreneurship, with mainstream parties being outspoken pro-European channels. Once again, this country group identifies the transformations set in motion by the multiple set of crises, with the EU conflict politicisation becoming more prominent in the party system. Consequently, two propositions emerge: Proposition 1 In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , the protest anti-European parties have increased their level of EU Issue Entrepreneurship, confirming H1. Proposition 2 In the aftermath of the multiple set of crises , the mainstream pro-European parties have increased their level of EU Issue Entrepreneurship, rejecting H2. By confirming H1 and disconfirming H2, an increasing party system politicisation of the EU conflict has been identified, becoming more contested in the multiple crises period. This empirical step has substantially demonstrated the different impact of the multiple set of shocks, which have produced a complex interplay of party-based incentives. On the one hand, the Euro crisis represented a genuine Eurosceptic punctuation across the continent, allowing protest parties to reinforce the anti-EU politicisation. On the other hand, subsequent shocks have not hampered the emergence of the EU conflict, propelling a mainstream counter-mobilisation of the Europhile bias. Thus, EU politicisation actually reached a peak in the multiple crises period, with the Euro crisis initiating this pattern and further shocks exacerbating the trends towards the establishment of a more salient and polarised pro-/antiEU dimension of conflict. However, the protest/mainstream dichotomy

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

211

cannot be supported where strategic efforts on EU issues are concerned. The transformative effects of the crises have affected the overall ideological spectrum, blurring a strategic difference between these party types and unleashing a systematic EU issue entrepreneurship. The latter phenomenon is clearly more conducive to politicising the EU conflict within the party system, with both party types colliding on this conflict dimensionality.

7.2 Political System Politicisation: Propositions on the EU Demand-Side Chapter 6 has addressed the political system politicisation, introducing a novel dimension, the voter–party congruence: “To politicise a conflict in the political system, the voter responses should match the party policy (re)positioning, revealing a party-voter congruence on the new issues, which become significant electoral determinants ” (Carrieri 2020, 54). This empirical step analyses the variations in the EU voter–party proximity as a determinant of electoral preferences, assessing the transformative effects of the multiple set of crises on EU politicisation in the political systems. Three core findings have emerged, showing unexpected voting trajectories in Western Europe. These results have been summarised in Table 7.2, which presents the EU issue voting trends and party voting patterns in the different country blocs. EU issue voting increase has been widespread in Western Europe, reaching a peak during the multiple crises period, with the empirical models fully corroborating H3. Conversely, the expectations related to the protest and mainstream have been fully refuted, with these results Table 7.2 EU issue voting, protest voting and mainstream voting in Western Europe, non-intervened and intervened countries

Western Europe Non-intervened countries Intervened countries

EU issue voting

Protest voting

Mainstream voting

EU issue voting increase EU issue voting increase EU issue voting increase

Left-right proximity benefits Left-right proximity benefits None

Pro-/anti-EU proximity benefits Pro-/anti-EU proximity benefits Pro-/anti-EU proximity benefits

212

L. CARRIERI

holding in each country bloc, rejecting H4a and H4b. These findings reveal the different catalyst effects of the exogenous shocks. The Euro crisis clearly produced a Eurosceptic punctuation, with voters becoming more likely to electorally reward protest parties on the EU proximity variable. Conversely, the migration crisis and Brexit referendum triggered Europhile reactions, with the mainstream parties benefitting more from the EU proximity than the protest parties. Instead, protest parties have turned out to be more electorally competitive along the left–right dimension, though this voting trajectory has not been substantiated in the intervened countries. In spite of the convergence trend towards the EU issue voting increase, some important differences have occurred in the different country clusters. The non-intervened countries have seen an important growth in EU issue voting, going well beyond the impact of the immigration proximity. In this bloc of countries, the EU conflict has seemed to constitute a subsidiary element within a broader cultural dimension of contestation, however, it has not gained in strength in structuring political conflicts, supporting H3. Party-based Euroscepticism was not a novelty in these party systems, preceding the set of shocks occurring on the continent. Nonetheless, the mainstream parties had been able to dampen this source of voting before the outbreak of the Euro crisis, securing their electoral dominance on left/right-related issues. The Euro crisis clearly set in motion a phenomenon of Eurosceptic voting, with voters punishing mainstream parties on the pro-/anti-EU dimension. The EU-driven policy outcomes magnified the growing dissatisfaction linked to European integration, with protest parties electorally seizing on voter concerns. During the multiple crises period, popular Euroscepticism did not stabilise as an electoral asset for the protest parties, with public opinion rapidly reappraising the benefits related to European integration, rejecting H4a in the non-intervened countries. Conversely, the protest actors gained more voter preferences on the left–right dimension than the mainstream parties, rejecting H4b in this country cluster. Governing mainstream parties had been expected to trigger a major issue congruence with the voters on this super-dimension, in not dealing with the policy constraints faced in the South of Europe. Instead, the protest parties electorally succeeded along the left–right dimension, probably profiling themselves as more catch-all parties, leaving behind their niche appeals. The intervened countries had witnessed a very low degree of the EU issue voting during the pre-crisis period, with the left–right dimension

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

213

encompassing the main issues of political contestation. The Euro crisis period resulted in a transformation in the pattern of EU issue voting, with the Eurosceptic parties exploiting this source of voting. Moreover, the protest parties managed to become more responsive along the left– right dimension, extensively opposing the austerity issues and pledging to reverse this EU-led policy course. The 2014 electoral round revealed the hurdles faced by the mainstream parties in responding to voter demands at the domestic level, being more likely to lose votes on both these issue dimensions in the South of Europe. After the multiple crises period, the EU proximity has enhanced its explanatory power on voting preferences, lending support to H3 in the intervened countries. Nonetheless, the growing politicisation of this conflict did not result in Euroscepticism becoming more profitable for protest parties, with voters mainly rewarding the mainstream Europhile positions, rejecting H4a. The trajectory of the left–right proximity followed a distinctive trend, with no party type being more likely to benefit from these issues compared to their counterpart, rejecting H4b. During the multiple crises period, the Southern European protest parties mainly held governing positions or provided mainstream governments with external support, coping with the EU external constraints. Unsurprisingly, this group of parties did not maintain their electoral benefits linked to the left–right general dimension, also losing the payoffs related to their Eurosceptic cues in the intervened countries. One of the striking findings related to the South of Europe was the sudden rise of the pro-/anti-immigration proximity as a voting determinant. While mainstream and protest parties had not been able to deliver policy results on the left–right dimension, migration issues increasingly structured the domestic contestation, epitomising the establishment of a cultural dimension in Southern Europe. In the multiple crises period, the joint effects of EU and migration issues probably politicised a broader cultural dispute in these countries, becoming more likely to share characteristics with the non-intervened countries. In the meantime, the EU issue voting trend did not corroborate the hasty politicisation of this conflict, which, instead, embodied a moderate and linear path in its growth. These findings allow for formulating three different propositions: Proposition 3 In the multiple crises period, the impact of EU party-voter proximity has increasingly determined electoral preferences, confirming H3.

214

L. CARRIERI

Proposition 4 In the multiple crises period, protest parties have electorally benefitted less from the EU proximity compared to the mainstream parties, rejecting H4a. Proposition 5 In the multiple crises period, mainstream parties have electorally benefitted less from the left-right proximity compared to the protest parties, rejecting H4b. The crises have resulted in a set of different impacts, driving party strategies and voter reactions in different directions. These crises belong to a continuum of cumulative transformative effects, increasingly affecting voter preferences by making EU issues more important. The Euro crisis had initiated this process of politicisation, which subsequently stabilised in the multiple crises period. By confirming H3, this work has unveiled an increasing political system politicisation of the EU in Western Europe, with no country group deviating from this trend. The systematic entrepreneurial efforts achieved by the parties stood out as a politicisation pre-condition, fostering a more deep-seated linkage between party cues and voter responses. By analysing a further compounding element in the politicisation notion—the EU voter–party congruence—this work has shown how political system politicisation has markedly developed over time, with voting preferences being more determined by EU issues. However, by rejecting H4a and H4b, this empirical step has also provided evidence on the different catalyst effects resulting from these crises, complementing the entrepreneurship results. The Euro crisis had presented a favourable window of opportunity for protest parties, which electorally profited from the spreading Eurosceptic attitudes. However, following, the subsequent shocks abruptly reversed the Eurosceptic voting trend, bringing about a major voter–party congruence on the Europhile position, establishing electoral advantages for the mainstream parties. By increasingly adopting a Europhile cuing, the mainstream more than likely benefitted from their EU proximity to voters, with the migration crisis and Brexit propelling the widespread resurgence of pro-EU orientations. Meanwhile, by deflecting their Eurosceptic entrepreneurship, the protest parties electorally capitalised on other issue predictors, becoming more ideologically rooted along the left–right dimension (especially in the North-West of Europe).

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

215

7.3 The Growing Politicisation of the EU in Western Europe: Linking the Supply and Demand Side of Politics According to several studies (Grande and Kriesi 2016; Green-Pedersen 2019), the Euro crisis was a critical point, opening up a window for a Eurosceptic supply, reinforcing the EU politicisation, though in all likelihood not a long-lasting trend. Börzel and Risse (2018) argued that pro-EU mainstream parties have successfully de-politicised this conflict, not fully developing after the Euro crisis. However, these studies have recurrently advanced a politicisation notion that hinge upon issue saliency and positional polarisation (Hutter and Grande 2014), exclusively drawing attention to the supply-side of politics. By introducing a further compounding element in the politicisation concept—the party–voter issue congruence—this work has sought to account for the demand-side of politics, decoupling this notion into a party system (supply-side) and a political system (demand-side). Therefore, the complexity of the politicisation process emerges here, which cannot be solely described by the party system altering supply but, instead, requiring a deep-seated linkage with the voters. Voters may follow changing partisan cues, which play a major role in introducing a new source of political contestation. Nonetheless, popular reactions are not given outcomes stemming from the mutable structure of the party system supply, which must bring about voter responses to produce electoral realignments (Carmines and Stimson 1986, 1989). Indeed, the supply-side and the demand-side of politics have often been mismatched, revealing the absence of voter–party issue congruence on EU issues (Mattila and Raunio 2012). Two different strands of literature have been employed here to capture the two-fold notion of politicisation. On the one hand, the notion of EU issue entrepreneurship combines issue saliency and positional polarisation (Hobolt and De Vries 2015; De Vries and Hobolt 2012), allowing for analysing party politicisation efforts. On the other hand, by using the Downsean proximity theory (Downs 1957), this work has addressed the party–voter congruence, delving into the fluctuations in EU issue voting. This revisited notion of politicisation has lent strength to individuating the catalyst effects resulting from several exogenous shocks—the Euro crisis, migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. These catalysts have been a part of a continuum of transformative events, setting in motion

216

L. CARRIERI

the gradual increase in the European integration conflict. At the beginning, public attention was brought to the EU issues by the Euro crisis. Following, the migration crisis then further exacerbated the drawbacks related to the absence of pan-European policy responses to the growing influxes of migrants and asylum-seekers. Finally, the Brexit referendum became a continental-wide focus regarding European (dis-)integration. The transformative powers of the multiple set of crises has been largely confirmed by the empirical analyses, though taking a different direction to what had been forecasted, ending up in a systematic entrepreneurship. The party system politicisation of the EU clearly increased over time, with both party types acting as conflict-mobilisation agents. Hence, ideological radicalism has not emerged as the only driver in predicting this EU issue entrepreneurship increase, which had spread across the entire ideological spectrum. The growing party system politicisation has produced mass reactions, with voters responding to party cueing activities. This trend can be seen in the increasing degree of EU issue voting, leading to electoral advantages for mainstream Europhile parties. Thus, the EU conflict became more politicised in these political systems, with the EU issue voter–party congruence progressively influencing voting preferences in Western Europe. Furthermore, the different country clusters have experienced similar trajectories in their patterns of EU conflict politicisation, with the multiple crises impacting across all of Western Europe. In spite of their historical differences, the intervened and nonintervened countries have clearly undergone a major convergence in the aftermath of the multiple crises. In North-western Europe, the RRPs (New Right) and Green Ecologist parties (New Left) parties have already reinterpreted the contents of the cultural dimension, introducing new issues, such as migration, environmentalism and European integration (Kriesi 2019). The crises have reinforced the politicisation of the EU conflict, gaining a growing autonomy in structuring the electoral competition. Some works are currently raising the question of the absence of a relationship between the attitudes on migration and those on Europe (Stockemer et al. 2019; Conti et al. 2019). Thus, the evolving trends in EU issue voting appear to be becoming detached from those of the migration proximity, reflecting the independence of the pro-/anti-EU as a source of voting in the non-intervened countries. Before the crises, the South of Europe had not experienced any content reconfiguration on the cultural dimension, appearing to be dominated

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

217

by the traditional religious divide, pitching secularised against denominational parties. Moreover, the economic dimension was considered to be comparatively strong, accounting for the long-lasting presence of class politics, while post-materialistic values had not been channelled by new parties (Kriesi 2016). The crises have often been interpreted in a political fashion, with the issue of political renewal and more genuine populist issues arising within the Southern European political market (Morlino and Raniolo 2017; Kriesi 2019). By covering the demand-side of politics, this work reviews this backdrop, showing the growing impact of EU and migration issues. It can be seen that European integration and migration have reshaped the content of domestic conflicts in Southern Europe, which have probably developed a fully fledged cultural dimension, presenting some similarities with the intervened countries. However, the two country groups still maintain some clear differences, with the North-West seeing a widespread presence of Green-Ecologist parties, quite absent in the South of Europe. This work has captured the growing politicisation of the EU conflict, which has extensively reshaped the electoral supply and party preferences in Western Europe. Consequently, the analysis has revealed the congruence between changing electoral supply and fluctuations in electoral preferences. Altering partisan strategies have produced clearcut voter responses, with the pro-/anti-EU dimension becoming a more autonomous source of political contestation. Further investigations should provide more evidence on the establishment of a new dimension of contestation, which may have broadened its content and meaning. The crises have acted as powerful catalysts, leading to some notable realignments along the left–right and pro-/anti-EU dimension. As well, EU issue voting has increased due to the multiple set of crisis, which have led to other forms of electoral renewal along the classic left–right dimension. It can be seen that the elite actions of the parties have proved to be effective in linking voter preferences along the pro-/anti-EU issues. By rejecting the validity of the Mainstream Entrepreneurship Hypothesis (H2), this work reverses some previous findings on this conflict, which have identified that mainstream entrepreneurial weakness was the main liability in hindering this politicisation (Grande and Kriesi 2016; Börzel and Risse 2018). On the contrary, mainstream parties have reinforced this conflict politicisation, transforming their supply and responding to voter demands. This observation clearly corroborates a theoretical background, which hinges on a top-down approach to politics, where parties

218

L. CARRIERI

have been considered as the masters in unleashing new conflicts. West European parties have succeeded in setting underway a deeper issue evolution, realigning voters along the pro-\anti-European issue dimension. Consequently, there has been a boost to the politicisation of the European integration conflict. To sum up, the following propositions on politicisation can be advanced: Proposition 6 By emphasising and polarising EU issues in the party systems, parties have transformed this previously overridden conflict into an object of public contestation. Proposition 7 Voters have increasingly matched party (re-)positioning on the EU issues, revealing a growing party-voter congruence on the new issues, which have become more significant electoral determinants in the political systems.

7.4

Re-assessing Party Types: Responsiveness, Sovereignty and Europeanisation

This work has relied on a core distinction between two party types— protest anti-EU and mainstream pro-EU parties. This dichotomy has been predicted to account for a two-fold system of strategies and voting trajectories, which have interacted with transformative effects of the multiple set of crises. A pre-existing system of cleavages has influenced party type positioning on general integration policies (Marks and Wilson 2000), with the relationship between the left–right and the pro-/antiEU dimensions describing an inverted U-curve (Marks et al. 2002). The protest anti-EU parties have mainly belonged to the radical left and radical right ideological families, occupying the fringes of the domestic party systems. Thus, these parties appear to have held incentives to mark themselves as being Eurosceptic, establishing new terrain for political contestation to weaken their mainstream counterparts (De Vries and Hobolt 2012; Hobolt and De Vries 2015). The core prediction revolved around the effects of the crises, which would have gradually strengthened those incentives for the protest parties to play up the Eurosceptic card. On the contrary, the findings suggest that the protest parties have recurrently adjusted their EU issue entrepreneurship, perceiving smaller gains on this alternative conflict in the medium term. Protest-based entrepreneurship became a constant of the West European party systems

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

219

after the onset of the Euro crisis, with these parties benefitting more from the EU proximity to voters than the mainstream ones. In the aftermath of the multiple crises, the patterns of EU issue voting have been reversed, with Euroscepticism becoming a hurdle for the protest parties. Many of these parties, namely the RRPs, have attempted to use the refugee crisis to their advantage, playing up the terroristic and cultural threats, with an anti-EU rhetoric as a complementary tactical device (Mudde 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019). Nonetheless, the growing influx of foreigners into Western Europe has not been favourable to Euroscepticism. Even if several works have discussed the failures in the EU’s management of this emergency (Börzel and Risse 2018; Schimmelfennig 2018), no further Eurosceptic sentiments across the continent have been aroused. Instead, European citizens may have actually developed a favourable orientation to the EU, in its potential to address such a transnational issue as migration (Conti et al. 2019; Stockemer et al. 2019). The RLPs have ceased to polarise their EU positions, with the pro/anti-austerity divide losing its saliency over time, and depriving the radical left of a Eurosceptic frame. The growing media focus on the migration crisis has magnified some cultural aspects of European integration, which has been incompatible with the RLPs’ ideological background. Thus, these parties have had less opportunities to draw attention to the economic anxieties regarding European integration. The Brexit referendum has resulted in even more negative outcomes for the RRPs, which have faced clear-cut public opinion constraints over the EU membership issue. The majority of EU citizens have rejected the potential benefits of the “leave” option, not following the example set by the UK (De Vries 2018). In brief, the Brexit referendum have been critical in clarifying a partisan divide over EU membership issues. Protest parties encountered a popular dissent over their hard Eurosceptic stances, which have concerned EU constitutive. The matter of EU membership has sparked off internal divisions within the protest parties, pitching hard Eurosceptic factions against the softer Eurosceptic ones (Van Kessel et al. 2020). Nonetheless, the protest parties have been able to successfully drive an electoral realignment along the left–right dimension, being more electorally rewarded by these issues than the mainstream ones. These parties have probably undergone a political normalisation, leaving behind their niche or single-issue appeals, adopting clear-cut positions on economic issues. By effectively using a crisis in responsiveness at the domestic level, the protest parties have set themselves apart from the mainstream

220

L. CARRIERI

consensus, outlining policy packages based on left–right issues. Indeed, the binding rules established by the European treaties have clearly reduced the set of policy options at the disposal of governments, catalysing a long-lasting lack of responsiveness domestically. Consequently, the protest parties have perhaps modified the electoral supply to occupy some policy space left vacated by the mainstream parties along the left–right dimension. Mainstream pro-EU parties have been those located in centrist positions of party systems, largely monopolising governing offices in the post-World War II period. These parties have originated from a complex system of cleavages, which have influenced their positive orientation to European integration (Marks and Wilson 2000). They have traditionally colluded on European integration, exploiting a widespread silent consensus on this set of policies. Mainstream parties were expected to de-politicise the EU conflict, which potentially undermine their electoral fortunes and unleash party factionalism (Taggart 1998; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). However, the empirical analysis has reversed this expectation, demonstrating a mainstream adaptation to the protest-based entrepreneurship, refuting a pattern of the strategic inflexibility of these parties. Mainstream parties have responded on EU issues, acting as genuine Europhile entrepreneurs in mobilising pro-EU votes. The growing media coverage and protest entrepreneurship have probably pushed mainstream parties to react along the pro-/anti-EU dimension, contributing to politicising this conflict. As previously mentioned, the migration crisis and the Brexit referendum have established a degree of favourable conditionality in producing this Europhile entrepreneurship, reshaping public orientation on European integration. This shift in public opinion has made pro-EU narratives more available, with many voters positively reassessing new integration steps and benefits of their country’s EU membership (Conti et al. 2019; De Vries 2018; Stockemer et al. 2019). This phenomenon has already been qualified as a Europhile backlash, with mainstream parties realigning voter preferences along the pro-/anti-EU dimension. In brief, the mainstream-protest distinction has been used to forecast a two-fold set of strategic efforts and voting trajectories, with this dichotomous categorisation not being fully supported by the empirical analysis. Indeed, these party types have not fundamentally diverged in their entrepreneurship increase, though they have adopted a different timing in these strategies. At the same time, they have taken divergent

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

221

voting trajectories, with the two-issue dimensions under study, left–right and pro-/anti-EU, providing different kinds of electoral benefits for the mainstream and protest parties. The impact of these two dimensionalities on voting preferences has probably been a result of the different terms on which these parties have claimed to achieve a domestic responsiveness. The mainstream parties may have benefitted from the Europeanisation of politics, which does not necessarily pose external constraints, offering governments the chance to frame the responsiveness. Governing parties can exploit EU intergovernmental bargaining to demonstrate their policy responsiveness before the domestic electorate. According to Schneider (2020), to signal this responsiveness, governments tend to make public commitments before elections, defending their voter interests through Council negotiations. During the Euro crisis, it was an easy task for many protest (opposition) parties to discredit the mainstream (governing) parties’ ability to champion their country’s general interests in Europe. The end of the crisis has led to some EU-driven constraints being relaxed, paving the way for a new mainstream pro-EU frame, which hinges upon being more able to handle the hard negotiations at the EU level. Mainstream parties may present themselves as the most credible actors in pursuing a set of policies in Europe, which match with voter demands at the domestic level. These parties have probably framed their issue congruence to voters through the Europeanisation of politics. Given the difficulty in positioning themselves along the left–right dimension, with many economic policy devices being unavailable, mainstream parties have resorted to their pro-EU identity, relying on their major credibility in the intergovernmental hard bargaining. Consequently, the EU proximity has increasingly conditioned mainstream party preferences, probably absorbing many issues previously grounded in the left–right dimension. On the contrary, protest parties have capitalised on the erosion of state-based sovereignty due to the authority transfer to the European institutions, pledging to regain control and re-territorialise state power (Basile and Mazzoleni 2019). The RLPs and RRPs have broadly emphasised issues inherent to national, popular and economic sovereignty, opposing the internationalisation and Europeanisation of politics. Specifically, their economic sovereignty commitments may have matched the popular concerns over the loss of jobs and lacking welfare protection, providing electoral payoffs for them. The RRPs have continuously underlined the migrant threats regarding work and welfare, linking economic sovereignty to a welfare chauvinistic approach (Otjes et al. 2018). As well,

222

L. CARRIERI

RLPs have persistently identified the nation state as the natural vehicle to achieve their economic objectives, pledging to restore sovereignty to counter inequalities (Halikiopoulou et al. 2012). By asserting the reversal of the authority transfer, these parties have framed the nation state as the only device to achieve responsiveness, becoming more likely to benefit from the left–right proximity to voters. The tension between Europeanisation and domestication of responsiveness seems to account for these peculiar dynamics of issue voting, with these party types exploiting different proximity variables. On the one hand, by outsourcing their responsiveness to the EU level, mainstream parties have probably been abler in harnessing their congruence to voters along the pro-/anti-EU issue dimension. On the other hand, by promising to regain control of nation state sovereign prerogatives, protest parties have been more likely to be rewarded along the left–right dimension by voters. The impact of the proximity variables is probably interwoven with voter preferences on the most adequate level—the nation state versus the EU—to tackle specific policies. This work has advanced a party typology revolving around long-lasting partisan ideological commitments and their belonging to different party families, stemming from a complex system of cleavages. However, party types have also been characterised by their nuanced responsiveness appeals, with their location along a sovereigntist-internationalist divide probably influencing their voting determinants.

7.5 The Evolution of the EU Conflict in Western Europe: Between Volatile Trends and Potential for Stabilisation The work has traced the transformation of party supply and voter demands on the EU issues, identifying the politicisation of the EU conflict at both the party and political system levels. The aim was to improve the understanding of the politicisation phenomenon, moving beyond the party system realm and grasping the reactions of the non-elite actors populating the political system. The consequences of a set of political shocks have been conducive to setting underway a deeper politicisation process. The partisan supply alterations have reshaped the voting preferences, with the EU party–voter congruence increasing its effects on electoral preferences in Western Europe. The fundamental assumption has

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

223

revolved around party manipulative capabilities concerning the politicisation of new conflicts, which must be complemented by clear-cut voter responses on the issues emerging in the party systems. The empirical results mainly confirm this, although they raise another question to be further considered. The dilemma regards the instability of these trends, which may simply reflects some highly volatile context-based explanations. Some conditionality, such as positional polarisation and issue emphasis, has been conducive to propelling a higher degree of EU issue voting, with voters becoming more likely to recognise partisan shortcuts. The elite actions have the potential to politicise a new conflict, with people’s reactions to partisan supply representing an imperative step in improving this process (Carmines and Stimson 1986, 1989). This essential nexus between elite strategies and voter responses has actually materialised, supported by the empirical analyses. However, there is no clear-cut evidence that this phenomenon will be long-lasting, stabilising its structuring power in Western Europe. The sudden shift from a Eurosceptic punctuation towards a Europhile reaction may typify the intrinsic volatility of this conflict, mostly reflecting an erratic dynamic of issue voting, instead of a stable basis in a social cleavage. The literature background has provided evidence of the high degree of context-dependency of the EU issue voting phenomenon (media, coverage, party politicisation, etc.), which lessens when the conditionality vanishes (Hobolt and Spoon 2012; De Vries et al. 2011). The Euro crisis established a favourable context for the protest antiEU parties, which sought to transform the EU into a more politicised conflict, bringing about the rise of Eurosceptic voting in Western Europe. Nonetheless, the additional crises have dampened protest-based entrepreneurship, with these parties facing several constraints on drawing attention to Eurosceptic issues. On the contrary, mainstream parties have taken on a more favourable popular disposition on the EU, developing a Europhile issue entrepreneurship to mobilise a majoritarian coalition of pro-EU voters. These swinging trends reveal a snapshot of the growing, but perhaps, ephemeral politicisation of the EU conflict, with these fluctuations being notably interrelated with the ever-changing contextual explanations. The question is whether the above will represent, or not, a critical moment for an enduring politicisation of the EU conflict, surviving the catalyst effects of the multiple crises. In their path-breaking work

224

L. CARRIERI

on the evolution of the race issue in the USA, Carmines and Stimson (1989) identified the notion of “critical point”, regarding the unambiguous signals for clarifying new party positional divides on the emerging issue. These critical points may generate a dynamic process of change, describing a gradual adaptation to the new issues rather than a sudden response to them. The different crises have clearly epitomised critical points, setting in motion a clearer electoral supply on the EU issues. Protest anti-EU parties perceived the potential benefits of these issues in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, which was, itself, an important critical point for mobilising Eurosceptic attitudes. The centrifugal forces stemming from the Euro crisis, originating from outside the party systems, were immediately taken up by pre-existing political entrepreneurs (FN, UKIP, League, SYRIZA, etc.), also fostering the emergence of new protest actors (AfD, M5S, Podemos, etc.). These parties have increased their EU issue entrepreneurship, reaping electoral benefits along this dimension. This sudden change has been followed by the strategic response of the mainstream parties, which have adapted to this changing context, mobilising pro-EU attitudes. Hence, this politicisation has not embodied a one-point sudden transformation, but has been consistent with an inert process of change, producing a gradual widespread adaptation among parties and voters. This dynamic of change could unleash a long-term stabilisation of this political conflict, which may become less dependent on context-based factors. It is worth noting that once this set of partisan shortcuts had been grounded in the party systems, voters have not displayed any cognitive problems related to these cues. The complexity of the EU issues has not turned out to be detrimental to the politicisation of this conflict, but has, instead, made voters more reliant on partisan entrepreneurial strategies. The question is whether the voters will continue to maintain this strong reliance on the everaltering partisan supply. Voters are certainly governed by the party framing concerning these issues, which reduces their information costs. Nonetheless, these critical points may have resulted in a set of more structured public attitudes to European integration, with voters having developed a durable cognitive awareness of these issues. Many citizens have politically socialised during a time span of growing EU politicisation, acquiring a set of norms and values, which may become a long-lasting “perceptual screen” (see: Campbell et al. 1980).

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

225

However, a definitive politicisation of the conflict cannot be maintained. This work has shed light on its growing magnitude throughout a multiple set of crises, which have provided a very unstable set of party-based incentives. At the moment, current results have identified the growing structuring capacity of the EU conflict, which reached a peak in the multiple crises period. Hence, the pro-/anti-EU dimension currently constitutes a more robust heuristic for the voter compared to pre-crisis period. The politicisation phenomenon will certainly require a constant monitoring to assess if it will stabilise, moving beyond some punctuation points, or whether it will simply remain dependent on these critical events.

Bibliography Basile, Linda, and Oscar Mazzoleni. 2019. Sovereignist Wine in Populist Bottles? An Introduction. Euopean Politics and Society 21 (2): 151–162. Börzel, Tanja A., and Thomas Risse. 2018. From the Euro to the Schengen Crises: European Integration Theories, Politicization, and Identity Politics. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 83–108. Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1980. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1986. On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution. American Political Science Review 80 (3): 901–20. ———. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Carrieri, Luca. 2020. The Limited Politicization of European Integration in Italy: Lacking Issue Clarity and Weak Voter Responses. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 50 (1): 52–67. Conti, Nicolò, Danilo Di Mauro, and Vincenzo Memoli. 2019. “Citizens, Immigration and the EU as a Shield.” European Union Politics: 1465116519834648. De Vries, Catherine E. 2018. Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, Catherine E., Wouter Van der Brug, Marcel H. Van Egmond, and Cees Van der Eijk. 2011. Individual and Contextual Variation in EU Issue Voting: The Role of Political Information. Electoral Studies 30 (1): 16–28. De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs. European Union Politics 13 (2): 246–68. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy 65 (2): 135–50.

226

L. CARRIERI

Grande, Edgar, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016. Conclusions: The Postfunctionalists Were (Almost) Right. In Politicising Europe, ed. Swen Hutter, Edgar Grande, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 279–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2019. The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-Setting and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halikiopoulou, Daphne, Kyriaki Nanou, and Sofia Vasilopoulou. 2012. The Paradox of Nationalism: The Common Denominator of Radical Right and Radical Left Euroscepticism. European Journal of Political Research 51 (4): 504–39. Hobolt, Sara B., and Jae-Jae Spoon. 2012. Motivating the European Voter: Parties, Issues and Campaigns in European Parliament Elections. European Journal of Political Research 51 (6): 701–27. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2014. Blaming Europe?: Responsibility without Accountability in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobolt, Sara B., and Catherine E. De Vries. 2015. Issue Entrepreneurship and Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1159–85. Hutter, Swen, and Edgar Grande. 2014. Politicizing Europe in the National Electoral Arena: A Comparative Analysis of Five West European Countries, 1970–2010. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52(5): 1002–18. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2016. The Politicization of European Integration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54: 32–47. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2019. Conclusion: A Critical Juncture for the Structuration of Party Systems? In European Party Politics in Times of Crisis, ed. Hanspeter Kriesi (New York: Cambridge University Press), 355–82. Marks, Gary, and Carole J. Wilson. 2000. The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration. British Journal of Political Science 30 (3): 433–59. Marks, Gary, Carole J. Wilson, and Leonard Ray. 2002. National Political Parties and European Integration. American Journal of Political Science 46(3): 585– 94. Mattila, Mikko, and Tapio Raunio. 2012. Drifting Further Apart: National Parties and Their Electorates on the EU Dimension. West European Politics 35 (3): 589–606. Morlino, Leonardo, and Francesco Raniolo. 2017. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mudde, Cas. 2019. The 2019 EU Elections: Moving the Center. Journal of Democracy 30 (4): 20–34. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2019. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Otjes, Simon, Gilles Ivaldi, Anders Ravik Jupskås, and Oscar Mazzoleni. 2018. It’s Not Economic Interventionism, Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right-wing Populist Parties. Swiss Political Science Review 24 (3): 270–90.

7

CONCLUSIONS: A HISTORY OF A EUROPHILE BACKLASH

227

Schimmelfennig, Frank. 2018. European Integration (Theory) in Times of Crisis. A Comparison of the Euro and Schengen Crises. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (7): 969–89. Schneider, Christina J. 2020. Public Commitments as Signals of Responsiveness in the European Union. The Journal of Politics 82 (1): 329–344. Stockemer, Daniel, Arne Niemann, Doris Unger, and Johanna Speyer. 2019. The ‘Refugee Crisis,’ Immigration Attitudes, and Euroscepticism. International Migration Review 54 (3): 883–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/019791 8319879926. Taggart, Paul. 1998. A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems. European Journal of Political Research 33 (3): 363–88. Van Kessel, Stijn, Nicola Chelotti, Helen Drake, Juan Roch, and Patricia Rodi. 2020. Eager to Leave? Populist Radical Right Parties’ Responses to the UK’s Brexit Vote. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22(1), 65–84.

Index

A Abou-Chadi, Tarik, 18, 40, 56 AfD. See Alternative for Germany (AfD) Alonso, Sonia, 7, 8, 11, 44, 63, 88, 91, 100, 167, 181 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 61, 72, 105, 106, 114, 126, 173, 188, 189, 224 ANEL. See Independent Greeks (ANEL) Anti-EU, 9, 20, 84, 90, 92 Anti-immigration, 18, 56, 102, 154, 189 Asylum seeker, 175, 184 Austerity, 213 Austerity measure, 8, 11, 12, 69, 92, 181, 184 Austerity package, 65, 89 Austerity policy, 31, 65, 88, 90–92, 94, 96–99, 104, 114, 156, 181, 182, 209. See also Austerity measure; Austerity package

Authority transfer, 32, 55, 182, 221, 222 Authority Transfer Hypothesis, 2, 20

B Bailout, 7, 11, 105, 112 BE. See Left Bloc (BE) Brexit, 9, 10, 69, 87, 114, 194, 214 Brexit party, 70, 72, 190 Brexit referendum, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 41, 86, 87, 89, 97, 101–103, 108, 113, 115, 116, 175, 190, 191, 193, 194, 208–210, 212, 215, 216, 219, 220

C Carmines, Edward, G., 10, 35, 37, 38, 141, 157, 215, 223, 224 Carrieri, Luca, 34, 36, 41, 55, 61, 64, 92, 105, 107, 116, 143, 145, 181, 194, 207, 211

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. Carrieri, The Impact of European Integration on West European Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48103-2

229

230

INDEX

Catalyst, 5, 6, 8–10, 16, 18, 30, 42, 43, 84, 90, 95, 98, 101, 105, 108, 114, 116, 117, 143, 175, 189, 194, 207, 209, 212, 214, 215, 217, 223 Christian Democrats, 16, 58, 62–64, 66, 71 Cleavage, 17, 19, 61–63, 65, 71, 91, 100, 148, 172, 179, 188, 218, 220, 222, 223 Conservatives, 16, 18, 56, 62–64, 66, 71, 105, 112, 114, 192 Constraining dissent, 32 Conti, Nicolò, 8, 18, 86, 89, 90, 92–94, 98, 99, 102, 175, 184, 191, 208, 216, 219, 220 Cosmopolitan, 56 Critical juncture, 2, 10, 17 Cultural dimension, 179 Currency, 103, 105. See also Single currency

D Demand-side, 3, 5, 8, 18, 21, 70, 141, 170, 185, 189, 215, 217 Demarcation–Integration, 100, 179, 185, 188 De Sio, Lorenzo, 18, 33, 37, 69, 143, 147, 148, 151, 165, 167, 177, 178 De Vries, Catherine, 15, 34, 37–40, 53, 55, 56, 58, 63, 68, 83, 87, 89, 114, 115, 143, 145–148, 150, 156, 157, 167, 175, 178, 208, 215, 218–220, 223 Di Mauro, Danilo, 8, 18, 86, 89, 92, 93, 102, 175, 184, 191, 208, 216, 219, 220 Downs, Anthony, 4, 16, 34, 36, 53, 143, 149, 151, 215 Downsean proximity model, 15

E EC. See European Commission (EC) Economic dimension, 17, 40, 59, 95, 176, 186, 192, 193, 217 Electoral behaviour, 1, 21, 151 Electoral preference, 4, 5, 10, 32, 34, 36, 62, 66, 146, 154, 156, 157, 172, 175, 183, 185, 191, 195, 211, 217, 222 EMU. See European Monetary Union (EMU) Entrepreneurs, 9, 37, 39, 42, 58, 66, 93, 107, 109, 115, 170, 175, 184, 186, 188, 193, 208, 220, 224 Entrepreneurship, 2, 4, 13, 21, 35, 41–45, 68, 69, 71, 83–92, 94–100, 102–108, 110, 112– 117, 141, 167, 170, 174, 175, 177, 179, 186, 188, 190–192, 207–210, 214, 216, 218, 220, 223 EP. See European Parliament (EP) EU constitutive issue, 56, 114 EU issue entrepreneurship, 4, 32, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 66, 68, 69, 71, 83, 84, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95–97, 101, 103, 106, 108–111, 113, 116–118, 122, 126, 130, 146, 157, 175, 176, 183, 190, 194, 209–211, 215, 216, 218, 224. See also Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship EU issues, 3–5, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 30–35, 37, 38, 40–43, 55, 56, 63, 65–69, 83–87, 90, 94–96, 102–106, 112, 115, 117, 142, 145–148, 167, 175, 177, 178, 181, 183, 185, 186, 192–194, 207, 208, 211, 214–216, 220, 222, 224

INDEX

EU issue voting, 15, 21, 32, 42, 44, 117, 142, 143, 145, 147–149, 153, 156, 157, 166, 167, 169, 170, 176, 178, 181, 183, 188, 190, 193, 194, 211–213, 215–217, 219, 223 EU policy issue, 55 EU polity issue, 55 Euro, 60, 105 Euro crisis, 3, 5–7, 9–13, 15, 18, 20, 31, 41, 44, 56, 59, 69, 83–92, 94–96, 98–108, 110–112, 114– 116, 156, 167, 169, 172, 174, 176–178, 181, 182, 188–190, 193, 194, 207, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215, 219, 221, 223, 224. See also Great recession Euroenthusiast, 190 European Commission (EC), 7, 93, 112, 184 European integration, 1–7, 9, 10, 13–17, 19–22, 29–32, 35, 42–45, 53–57, 59–61, 63, 64, 66, 68–71, 83, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 94, 98–100, 102, 103, 105–107, 109, 111–115, 142, 145–148, 152, 156, 167, 169, 173, 175–179, 182, 184, 195, 207–209, 212, 216–220, 224 European Monetary Union (EMU), 2, 7 European Parliament (EP), 61, 64, 65, 68, 96, 110, 146, 147, 149, 150, 157, 169, 173, 176, 179, 182–184, 188, 190 Europhile, 16, 37, 54, 66, 68, 85–87, 90, 92, 99, 104, 106–109, 112, 113, 115, 116, 149, 173, 175–178, 184, 185, 190, 191, 193, 194, 209, 210, 212–214, 216, 220, 223 Europragmatic, 89

231

Euroreject, 54 Eurosceptic, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11–13, 16, 37, 54, 57–61, 68, 84–90, 92–112, 114–116, 147, 149, 169, 170, 173, 175–178, 181–183, 186, 190, 191, 193, 194, 208–210, 212–215, 218, 219, 223, 224 Euroscepticism, 9, 13, 33, 41, 44, 54, 57, 58, 61, 63, 71, 88–90, 99–102, 105–107, 109, 110, 112, 115, 170, 177, 181–183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 212, 213, 219 Exogenous shock, 3, 8–10, 13, 18, 20, 44, 86, 87, 101, 114, 116, 152, 175, 212, 215

F Fabbrini, Sergio, 2, 7, 8, 65 Farange, Nigel, 112, 190 Fiscal Compact, 7 Five Star Movement (M5S), 61, 72, 89, 92–94, 99, 127, 131, 181–184, 224 FN. See National Front (FN) France, 6, 19, 72, 73, 88, 100, 103, 104, 115, 188, 191, 192, 208 Franklin, Mark, N., 3, 10, 16, 35, 37, 38, 57, 69, 143–146, 148, 149, 154, 155, 167, 170, 186

G Germany, 6, 19, 72, 73, 88, 100, 106, 115, 191, 208 Globalisation, 17, 172, 188, 192 Grande, Edgar, 3, 7, 11, 13–15, 17, 19, 20, 29–33, 40, 41, 100, 114, 141, 215, 217 Great Recession, 7, 13, 60, 69, 92, 100, 112, 207

232

INDEX

Greece, 5, 9, 11, 19, 72, 73, 88, 97, 99, 173, 179, 182 Greek bailout, 97, 100, 189 Greek crisis, 11. See also Greek bailout; Greek debt crisis Greek debt crisis, 11 Greens, 63, 64, 73–75, 106, 107, 113, 125, 133, 173, 190, 191, 216 H Hard Euroscepticism, 184 Hobolt, Sarah Binzer, 4, 7, 8, 12, 34, 35, 37–40, 53, 56, 58, 65, 68, 69, 83, 86, 114, 115, 143, 147, 148, 156, 157, 167, 170, 176, 178, 188, 215, 218, 220, 223 Hooghe, Liesbet, 2, 7, 8, 14–16, 18, 30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 56, 58, 63, 65–67, 157, 178 Hutter, Swen, 3, 8, 11–14, 17, 20, 29–33, 41, 44, 55, 102, 141, 173, 215 I Ideological radicalism, 85, 87, 90, 209, 216. See also Radicalism Independent Greeks (ANEL), 72, 89, 96, 127, 183 Intervened countries, 11, 12, 44, 88–90, 99, 109, 179–181, 183, 187, 190, 198, 208–213, 217 Inverted U-curve, 16, 32, 58, 218 Issue, 2–4, 11, 14, 21, 30, 32–40, 42, 62, 83, 86, 94, 98, 99, 102, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 117, 141–146, 149, 152, 165, 169, 172, 175, 178, 179, 182, 184, 188, 191–194, 207, 212–214, 224 Issue clarity, 39, 173, 193

Issue evolution, 35, 37, 38, 69, 157, 218 Issue ownership, 18, 38 Issue position, 36, 38, 39, 68, 146 Issue saliency, 29, 39, 56, 68, 84, 141, 144, 147, 215 Issue voting, 222, 223 Italy, 5, 9, 11, 19, 64, 72, 73, 88, 90, 92, 93, 173, 179, 182, 183

K Krause, Werner, 18, 40, 56 Kriesi, Hanspeter, 6–8, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 30, 31, 33, 37, 41, 44, 56, 60–63, 90, 99, 100, 102, 111, 114, 141, 146, 153, 155, 172, 173, 177, 181, 188, 192, 215–217

L League, 72, 94, 99, 131, 173, 182–184, 224 Left–right conflict, 12, 99, 172 Left–right dimension, 3, 4, 12, 16, 53, 56, 58, 66, 65, 104, 142, 146, 167, 168, 172, 176–179, 181, 182, 186, 190, 192, 193, 207, 212–214, 217, 219–222 Left–right divide, 1, 145, 179 Left–right issues, 5, 16, 152, 153, 166, 172, 176, 178, 184, 193, 220 Left–right proximity, 147, 149, 151, 153, 166, 167, 171, 172, 176, 179, 181, 190–192, 196–200, 213, 222 Left Bloc (BE), 72, 90, 94, 95, 120, 123, 128, 132, 182, 183 Le Pen, Marine, 102, 103

INDEX

Liberal, 16, 31, 58, 62, 64, 66, 71, 73–75, 107. See also Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats, 74, 113, 190, 191 LN. See League; Northern League (LN)

M M5S. See Five Star Movement (M5S) Maastricht, 3, 32 Maastricht Treaty, 2, 19, 20, 32, 111 Macron, Emmanuel, 104 Mainstream, 3–5, 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 36, 40, 42, 43, 55–60, 63–66, 69–71, 83, 85, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–104, 106–108, 111, 113–116, 142, 143, 149, 151, 153, 157, 166–170, 172, 175–181, 184, 187, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 208–211, 213, 216–221 Mainstream party, 3–5, 15, 17, 18, 32, 33, 37, 40–44, 55, 57, 62, 63, 65, 71, 73, 85–87, 90, 92, 96, 99, 102, 104, 106–110, 113, 115, 116, 142, 149, 152, 153, 166, 167, 169–172, 175–179, 181–186, 188–191, 193, 194, 208–210, 212–215, 217, 220–224 Mair, Peter, 1, 36, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 146, 147, 169 Marks, Gary, 2, 7, 8, 14–16, 18, 30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 40, 55, 56, 58, 61, 63–67, 148, 157, 178, 218, 220 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc, 103, 104, 192 Memoli, Vincenzo, 8, 18, 86, 89, 92, 93, 102, 175, 184, 191, 208, 216, 219, 220 Merkel, Angela, 106

233

Migration crisis, 3, 5, 8–10, 13, 18, 41, 69, 83, 85, 86, 93, 97, 99, 101–103, 116, 173, 175, 179, 182, 190, 191, 193, 194, 208–210, 212, 214–216, 219, 220 Morlino, Leonardo, 8, 10, 12, 44, 58, 59, 61, 65, 88, 217 Mudde, Cas, 9, 54, 55, 57, 59–62, 64, 155, 173, 219 Multiple crises, 4, 10, 18, 20, 69, 70, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92–95, 98, 99, 101–104, 108, 110, 113, 114, 142, 143, 148, 152, 153, 166, 173–179, 181, 185, 191, 193, 194, 207, 208, 210–214, 216, 219, 223, 225. See also Multiple set of crises Multiple set of crises, 3, 4, 6, 21, 40, 42–44, 64, 71, 87, 88, 104, 106, 114, 116, 117, 142, 149, 167, 178, 179, 183–185, 191, 192, 194, 195, 209–211, 216, 218, 225

N National Front (FN), 72, 102–104, 114, 118, 122, 126, 130, 186, 188, 190, 224 Netherlands, 6, 19, 72, 74, 88, 100, 107, 109, 191 Non-intervened countries, 6, 11, 12, 20, 44, 88, 100, 101, 114–116, 185, 188–190, 192, 199–201, 208, 209, 211–213, 216 Northern League (LN), 59, 72, 90, 92, 93, 119, 123, 127 North-Western European, 12, 88, 192 North-West of Europe, 173, 190, 192, 214. See also North-Western European

234

INDEX

P Party for Freedom (PVV), 72, 107, 108, 114, 119, 123, 127, 131, 186, 189, 190 Party strategies, 4, 5, 14, 21, 33, 35–37, 40, 56, 58, 69, 71, 86, 90, 94, 102, 103, 115, 214 Party support, 5, 142, 146, 149, 169 Party system, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18–21, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 53, 57–59, 62, 66, 68–70, 85–92, 94, 95, 98, 99, 101–105, 107–110, 113– 118, 121, 143, 146, 152, 169, 176–179, 182–186, 188–190, 194, 207–212, 215, 218, 220, 222–224 Party system politicisation, 34, 38, 42, 45, 67, 70, 87, 90, 99, 102, 108, 114–116, 142, 207, 210, 216 Permissive consensus, 32, 105 Podemos, 72, 89, 90, 92, 128, 132, 181–183, 224. See also Unidos Podemos Polarisation, 14, 21, 30, 32, 34, 42, 94, 179, 192 positional polarisation, 39, 96, 116, 147, 207, 215, 223 Political change, 5, 10, 18 Political system, 14, 15, 21, 32, 35, 41, 141, 143, 145, 166, 167, 173, 175, 183, 185, 190, 193–195, 211, 215, 216, 222 Political system politicisation, 15, 32, 35, 45, 117, 150, 152, 156, 166, 194, 211, 214 Politicisation, 5, 10, 13–15, 18, 20–22, 29–36, 39, 41–44, 53, 55, 57, 58, 66, 68, 70, 85, 87, 91, 92, 94, 95, 98–101, 103–105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114–117, 141–143, 145, 150,

157, 169, 170, 172–178, 181, 183, 185, 186, 188, 190–194, 207–211, 213–218, 222–225 Populism, 60, 61, 92 Populist, 60, 61, 71, 72, 92, 110, 177, 192, 217 Portugal, 5, 11, 19, 72, 74, 88, 90, 94, 95, 173 Pro-/-anti-austerity, 91, 98, 182, 190, 193, 219 Pro-/-anti-EU conflict, 1, 56, 182 Pro-/-anti-EU dimension, 15, 16, 21, 35, 36, 55, 65, 66, 95, 116, 141, 143, 145, 170, 172, 174, 176, 182–184, 189, 191, 195, 209, 210, 212, 217, 218, 220, 225 Pro-/-anti-EU proximity, 169, 171, 172, 175, 179 Pro-/-anti-immigration proximity, 153, 154, 172, 185, 186, 213 Propensity to vote (PTV), 149–152, 154, 156, 165, 168, 171, 180, 187. See also Electoral preference; Party support, Probability to vote; Voting preference Protest Entrepreneurship, 87, 92, 97, 98, 100, 208, 209, 220 Protest party, 3–5, 12, 37, 38, 40–43, 53, 55–57, 59–61, 66, 71, 84–89, 91–95, 97–101, 103, 105–110, 113–115, 142, 147–149, 151–153, 155, 157, 166, 168–173, 175–179, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 190–194, 207–209, 212–214, 218, 219, 221, 222 Protest voting, 151, 211 Proximity theory, 144, 151, 215 PTV. See Propensity to vote (PTV) PVV. See Party for Freedom (PVV)

INDEX

R Radicalism, 71, 99, 110 Radical Left Parties (RLPs), 33, 57, 60, 61, 71, 92, 99, 114, 182–184, 186, 188, 190, 192, 193, 219, 221, 222 Radical Right Parties (RRPs), 9, 16, 60, 61, 71, 87, 90, 96, 102, 108, 114, 115, 155, 182, 186, 188, 189, 192, 193, 216, 219, 221 Refugee crisis, 3, 5, 18, 20, 41, 87, 92, 93, 102, 106, 108, 153, 185, 219 REM. See the Republic on the March (REM) Rescue package, 11, 97, 100, 101, 107, 189 Responsibility, 8, 18, 65, 88, 98, 99, 177, 181, 189 Responsiveness, 8, 65, 88, 98, 100, 107, 172, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185, 189, 210, 219–222 RLPs. See Radical Left Parties (PLPs) RRPs. See Radical Right Parties (RRPs) Ruiz-Rufino, Rubén, 7, 8, 11, 44, 88, 100, 167, 181 S Salvini, Matteo, 173, 182 Sartori, Giovanni, 1, 13, 30, 35, 58, 70 Scharpf, Fritz, 8, 12, 172 Schneider, Christina J., 107, 210, 221 Single currency, 16, 103, 107 Single-issue Eurosceptic party, 59 Sleeping giant, 3, 10, 13, 98, 99, 186 Social Democrats, 16, 58, 62, 66, 71 Soft Euroscepticism, 90 South European, 99, 210 South of Europe, 13, 88, 89, 173, 179, 182, 183, 193, 209, 212,

235

213, 216, 217. See also South European Sovereigntist, 222 Sovereignty, 8, 11, 15, 19, 56, 60, 108, 111, 221, 222 SP. See the Socialist Party (SP) Spain, 5, 11, 19, 72, 74, 88, 90–92, 173, 182 Stimson, James, A., 10, 35, 37, 38, 141, 157, 170, 173, 215, 223, 224 Supply-side, 3, 5, 8, 18, 21, 36, 56, 69, 70, 95, 108, 114, 141, 142, 183, 185, 215 Sweden, 6, 19, 72, 75, 88, 100, 109–111, 115, 188 Szczerbiak, Aleks, 9, 54, 59 T Taggart, Paul, 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 33, 37, 54, 56–59, 65, 179, 220 the Republic on the March (REM), 104, 130, 190 the Socialist Party (SP), 72, 108, 114, 119, 123, 127, 131, 186, 190 Troika, 11, 88, 94, 96, 181 Tsipras, Alexis, 72, 98 U Unidos-Podemos, 183 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 72, 111–114, 121, 125, 129, 133, 186, 188–190, 224 United Kingdom (UK), 6, 9, 19, 59, 72, 75, 88, 100, 111–113, 115, 188, 191, 208, 219 V Van der Brug, Wouter, 16, 38, 56, 58, 141, 143, 146, 147, 149, 151, 154, 167, 169

236

INDEX

Van der Eijk, Cees, 146, 155 Van Kessel, Stijn, 5, 9, 11, 56, 87, 93, 100, 102–104, 108, 179, 219 Vasilopoulou, Sofia, 53, 97, 100, 111, 222 Voter, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12–16, 21, 34–38, 40, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 85, 89, 92, 94, 98–100, 102–109, 116, 117, 141–147, 149–157, 165, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174–179, 181–186, 189–195, 212–225 Voter–party congruence, 145, 185, 194, 211, 214, 216 Voter responses, 10, 14, 22, 35, 141, 183, 186, 195, 214, 215, 217, 223 Voting behaviour, 4, 6, 11, 14, 20, 56, 145, 148, 154, 155, 169. See also Electoral behaviour

Voting determinant, 115, 148, 150, 178, 194, 213, 222 Voting predictor, 147, 153, 166, 169, 170, 173–175, 179, 189. See also Voting determinant Voting preference, 4, 15, 20, 38, 43, 142, 144, 145, 149, 152, 153, 155, 157, 167, 169, 170, 173, 181, 183, 185, 186, 192, 194, 213, 214, 216, 221, 222 Vox, 61, 70, 72, 92, 182, 183 W Welfare chauvinism, 192, 193 Western Europe, 5, 6, 13, 20, 21, 42, 44, 45, 53, 57, 60, 64, 67, 105, 116, 142, 143, 146, 149, 152, 156, 157, 167, 170–175, 185, 194, 196, 197, 208, 209, 211, 214, 216, 217, 219, 222, 223