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Of National Politics Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/qoe Zooming in on the ‘Europeanisation’ of national politics: A comparative analysis of seven EU Citation: Mariano Torcal, Toni Rodon (2021) Zooming in on the ‘Europeanisation’ countries of national politics: A comparative anal- ysis of seven EU countries. Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale – Italian Journal of Electoral Studies 84(1): 3-29. Mariano Torcal1,*, Toni Rodon2 doi: 10.36253/qoe-9585 1 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, ICREA Research Fellow, 0000-0002-0060-1522 Received: August 10, 2020 2 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 0000-0002-0546-4475 *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Accepted: March 24, 2021 Published: July 20, 2021 Abstract. This article empirically revisits and tests the effect of individual distance from parties on the EU integration dimension and on the left–right dimension for Copyright: © 2021 Mariano Torcal, Toni Rodon. This is an open access, peer- vote choice in both national and European elections. This analysis is based on the reviewed article published by Firenze unique European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey panel data from seven EU coun- University Press (http://www.fupress. tries. Our findings show that in most countries the effect of individual distance on com/qoe) and distributed under the the EU integration dimension is positive and significant for both European and terms of the Creative Commons Attri- national elections. Yet the effect of this dimension is not uniform across all seven bution License, which permits unre- countries, revealing two scenarios: one in which it is only relevant for Eurosceptic stricted use, distribution, and reproduc- voters and the other in which it is significant for voters of most parties in the system. tion in any medium, provided the origi- The first is mainly related to the presence of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the party nal author and source are credited. supply, but the second, which indicates a more advanced level of Europeanisation of Data Availability Statement: All rel- party systems, is not explained by most current theoretical and empirical contribu- evant data are within the paper and its tions. We conclude by proposing two additional explanations for this latter scenario Supporting Information files. in which the EU integration dimension is present for most voters in both type of elections, including those voting for the main parties. Our findings and further dis- Competing Interests: The Author(s) cussion have implications for the understanding of the Europeanisation of national declare(s) no conflict of interest. politics and its relationship with vote choice. Keywords: europeanisation, European elections, national elections, party supply, con- ditional logit. 1. INTRODUCTION What is the effect of individual positioning on the EU integration dimension of vote choice? Does this dimension shape vote choice both in the EU and national elections, or are its effects only present for the supranational elections? Scholars have examined whether the EU is a salient dimension in individual vote choice ever since the first elections for the European Parlia- ment (EP). Yet, and despite a significant number of empirical contributions, the question remains not fully and satisfactory answered. The lack of a definitive answer is partly explained by the changing nature of the European project, which forces scholars to continue revisiting their Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale – Italian Journal of Electoral Studies 84(1): 3-29, 2021 ISSN 0392-6753 (print) | DOI: 10.36253/qoe-9585 4 MarianoMariano Torcal1,*, Torcal, Toni Toni Rodon2 Rodon theoretical and empirical expectations. Thus, the study different European countries using a unique panel data- of the effect of the EU issues on vote choice has been fre- set, the European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey quently framed using the second-order elections (SOE) panel that includes two waves in seven then-EU member model. This framing posits that European elections have states1: Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, the Unit- been less relevant to the electorate because, together ed Kingdom and Greece. One of the waves took place as with other factors, the issue at stake, Europe, does not part of the 2014 European post-electoral survey and the matter to voters (Schmitt and Toygür 2016). Yet this other as part of a national post-electoral survey of the understanding has traditionally coexisted with several same seven countries. This dataset allows, for these two studies showing that, under some circumstances, Euro- types of elections, an assessment of the significance and pean issues matter (Ferrara and Weishaupt 2004; Reif magnitude of the EU integration dimension vis-à-vis the 1984; van der Eijk 1996). However, no overall conclusion left–right dimension, the other dimension against which was reached and many scholars still concluded that the the EU dimension is usually compared for both elec- EU dimension did not matter or was largely irrelevant tions and for the same set of respondents. Crucially, we (Hix and Marsh 2007). also extend this analysis to examining whether the EU Over the last few years, this debate has once again dimension equally matters for the electoral support of all gained momentum by the contributions of an important parties in the party system. and growing literature on the politicisation of Europe. Our empirical analysis proceeds in two steps. In More concretely these contributions have started to show the first part, we analyse whether the European dimen- that European issues are increasingly present in national sion drives people’s vote in all seven EU countries. If the public opinion, gaining space in people’s discussions and process of Europeanisation referred to by the literature interests, and structuring national political competition is taking place, we should observe that individual posi- (Spanje and Vreese 2011; Wilde and Lord, 2016; Ares et tioning on the European dimension shapes people’s vote al., 2016; Hooghe and Marks 2018). There are contribu- choice, with its effects being similar to that of the left- tions pointing at that direction such the one by Hobolt right dimension. Our results show that individual posi- et al. (2008) showing that voters defect from governing tioning on the dimension has an effect on vote choice in parties because the government is generally far more all seven countries under analysis and it shapes people’s pro-European than they are. Similarly, Hobolt and political behaviour not only in European elections but Wittrock (2011) concluded that while voters base their also in national elections to a quite similar degree. Yet EP vote choices primarily on domestic preferences, those the effect of the European dimension is still much small- having additional information about the European inte- er than that of the left–right dimension. gration dimension are also more likely to vote on this In the second part, we look more closely at the vari- basis. As Hernández and Kriesi (2015) more recently ation in the effect of individual positioning on the EU pointed out the so-called ‘Europeanisation of National dimension, both across countries and between parties. Politics’ is gaining traction among specialists. On the one hand, we suggest that the EU integration However, despite all these significant contributions, dimension will likely be more salient to voters in party the empirical evidence is still inconclusive, especially systems that have ‘hard Eurosceptic parties’ (Hix and when it comes to comparing the micro-level explana- Marsh 2007, 2011; Hobolt and de Vries 2016). Therefore, tions of party support behind this process.There have the EU integration dimension becomes salient, but only certainly been several empirical attempts to show how to voters who support these political formations. For ‘Europe matters’ in national elections (Gabel 2002; de the remaining voters, the left–right dimension, strongly Vries 2007), but the literature has yet to fully explore the related to national issues, is still the only one that mat- effect of individual positioning on the EU dimension vis- ters. However, in other countries, the EU integration à-vis that of the traditional left–right dimension which dimension seems to be relevant also for the individual traditionally has been driving the competition at the national arena. In other words, there is still missing a 1 conclusive and comprehensive cross-national study com- For the first time, the EES 2014 includes an online panel compo- nent which consists of a number of online panel surveys that are paring the effects at the individual level of both dimen- administered in eight EU member countries for national and Euro- sions of party competition for both types of elections pean elections. This dataset does not allow us to extend our approach (for an exception see van der Eijk and Franklin 2004). to all EU countries. Yet the seven countries selected for the analysis This article aims at extending previous literature by (Austria is excluded due to the lack of some relevant variables for the analysis) vary both in the presence of Eurosceptic parties and the revisiting the (relative) effect of individual positioning type of party system. For more information about the role of the EES on the EU integration dimension of vote choice across 2014 project, go to: http://europeanelectionstudies.net/european-elec- tion-studies/ees-2014-study/panel-study-2014. Zooming in on the ‘Europeanisation’ of national politics: A comparative analysis of seven EU countries 5 vote choice of most parties and for both types of elec- remarkable if we consider that since the 2008 financial tions, suggesting a more advanced stage in the Europe- crisis and the refugee crisis that started in early 2014, EU anisation of national party systems. We suggest here that institutions have increasingly assumed, or been request- current explanations about the party supply are not able ed in other cases to play, a prominent role in political to explain that more advanced stage we observe in coun- decisions, triggering an intense debate about the extent tries such as Germany or Greece, proposing to focus and limits of EU integration.
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