SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THE PEOPLE PROGRAMME MARIE CURIE ACTIONS – NETWORKS FOR INITIAL TRAINING (ITN) ELECDEM TRAINING NETWORK IN ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY GRANT AGREEMENT NUMBER: 238607 Deliverable D2.1 – Issues, values, ideologies and party choice final report Early Stage Research fellow (ESR) Agnieszka Walczak Host Institution University of Amsterdam The ELECDEM project was fund ed by the FP7 People Programme ELECDEM 238607 EARLY STAGE RESEARCH FELLOW (ESR) FINAL REPORT DELIVERABLE 2.1 Project acronym: ELECDEM Project full title: Training Network in Electoral Democracy Grant agreement no.: 238607 A. Abstract This report presents the work package 2 entitled “Issues, Values, Ideology and Party Choice”. This work package examines how left/right ideology and issues affect electoral processes in contemporary Europe. It focuses on the process of electoral choice and its outcome, namely political representation. This project takes a comparative cross-national approach by analysing and comparing party support and representation in 27 countries of the European Union, with particular attention to the differences between established democracies of Western Europe and consolidating democracies of East Central Europe. It employs two surveys from the PIREDEU network (“Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union”), namely the European Election Study 2009 and the European Parliament Election Candidate Survey 2009. The findings of this project explain differences between Western European and East Central European voters in how left/right ideology and issues determine party support, show differences across generations from the West and the East with regard to how long- and short-term factors affect party support as well as offer insights into the quality of representation across established and consolidating democracies. This report starts with an executive summary, then it outlines how work package 2 contributes to the overall goals of the ELECDEM network and subsequently evaluates the training within the ELECDEM network and the data employed in this project. The full report consists of the PhD thesis and encompasses introduction, four chapters forming separate articles and conclusions. 2 B. Table of Contents Content of the Dissertation Introduction 10 Chapter 1: The Electoral Trade-Off: How Issues and Ideology Affect Party 22 Preference Formation in Europe Chapter 2: Long- and Short-Term Determinants of Party Preferences: Analysis of 47 Inter-Generational Differences in Western and East Central Europe Chapter 3: The Lack of a Shared Belief System: Why Most European Voters Will 67 Not Have Their Attitudes Represented in the European Parliament? Chapter 4: Representation in the European Parliament: Factors Affecting Attitude 86 Congruence of Voters and Candidates in the EP Elections Conclusion: The Changing Role of Left/Right and Issues in Electoral Process 106 References 117 Appendices 135 List of Figures Figure 1.0: Causal Relationship between Socio-Structural Factors, Issue Attitudes 15 and Left/Right Self-Placement Figure 1.1: Basic Model of the Causal Relationships between Socio-Structural 26 Characteristics, Left/Right Self-Placement, Issue Attitudes and Party Preferences of Voters Figure 1.2: Regression Coefficients of the Impact of Left/Right Distance between 38 Voters and Parties on Party Preferences within Established and Consolidating Political Systems in the EU Figure 1.3: Regression Coefficients of the Impact of Various Predictors of Party 39 Preferences for Voters with High and Low Level of Sophistication in Austria Figure 1.4: Relationship between Ideological Constraint and the Effect of 43 Left/right on Party Preferences for Voters with High and Low Level of Sophistication Figure 2.1: Impact of Long- and Short-Term Determinants of Party Preferences in 61 Western Europe across Generations Figure 2.2: Impact of Long- and Short-Term Determinants of Party Preferences in 64 East Central Europe across Generations Figure 3.1: Position of MEP Candidates and Voters in the Two-Dimensional 80 Space in Western Europe Figure 3.2: Position of MEP Candidates and Voters in the Two-Dimensional 81 Space in East Central Europe 3 List of Tables Table 1.1: Relationship between Ideological Constraint, Perceptual Agreement 41 and Voter Polarisation and the Effects of Issues on Party Preferences Table 3.1: Dimensionality of Attitudes for Political Elites and Citizens 77 Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics for Outcome Variables 99 Table 4.2: Multilevel Analysis of Attitude Congruence between Voters and Party 100 Candidates in European Elections 4 C. Executive Summary The objective of the project “Issues, Values, Ideology and Party Choice” was to evaluate how electoral behaviour has changed in times of globalisation and which consequences these changes have for representation. This project examines the inter-relationship between left/right ideology and issue attitudes in electoral politics in a comparative research design in 27 countries of the European Union. The left/right dimension has been seen as a ‘super issue’, which structures attitudes of voters and political representatives towards a number of issues. The meaning of left/right ideology varies across countries and over time. Left/right ideology has been the most important determinant of party support so far i.e. voters vote for a party at the ballot box which is closest to their own position on the left/right dimension. However, there are indications that due to several developments in the recent decades left/right ideology has been losing its importance for party choice. Firstly, economic liberalisation has reshaped mass politics to the extent that traditional issues have become less salient and new ‘globalisation issues’ such as immigration and EU integration have become more salient. Secondly, there is a trend among mainstream parties to converge on the ideological centre, which can be traced both to historical developments and to processes of globalisation. Thirdly, the traditional meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ has been undermined by the emergence of parties that campaign on issues which are weakly related to the traditional left/right dimension, among them radical, post-materialist and often green political parties or right-wing populist parties. Last but not least, the meaning of left/right has been undermined by the change of character of political parties. In the recent years a shift towards a more presidential as opposed to a bottom-up form of decision-making in political parties has been observed, in combination with the emergence of cartelised party systems and the professionalization of the political leadership of parties. As a result of these developments, scholars expressed their concerns that left/right ideology may have become less understandable to voters and, thus, a less useful cue for making choices at the ballot box. At the same time, there are indications that other factors such as issue attitudes and performance evaluations have increased in importance for determining party support. Faced with such developments, this project enquires into the role of left/right and issue attitudes in contemporary electoral politics. It focuses on two aspects of electoral politics – the choice process and the outcome of this process, namely political representation. This project fulfils the objectives of the ELECDEM project in the following ways: • This project evaluates how globalisation influences the quality of electoral democracy. It does so by examining, firstly, how changes in electoral politics which related to globalisation have affected the way voters make electoral choices at the ballot box. Secondly, this project evaluates how well voters are represented in the contemporary electoral space and which factors account for the quality of representation. • This project takes a cross-national approach involving 27 countries of the European Union in order to compare and evaluate the quality of electoral democracy. This 5 contextual variation allows us to acquire interesting inferences on the cross-country differences in factors affecting party support and on factors which contribute to a higher quality of representation. • This project applies advanced techniques in quantitative methodology in order to evaluate the differences in the extent to which electorates in European countries make electoral choices and to assess the quality of representation and factors that affect it in contemporary Europe. This project consists of 4 chapters, two of which focus on party support, while the other two examine the quality of representation in contemporary Europe. The first chapter addresses the question, which factors explain cross-country differences in the effects of left/right ideology and issues on party preferences. The second chapter asks whether we can observe differences across generations in how the effects of left/right ideology and issues affect party preferences. The third chapter looks into whether voters and political elites share a common attitude structure, which has been seen as a precondition for effective representation. The fourth chapter studies which individual-, party- and system-level factors account for the quality of representation. The great advantage of this project lies in the fact that it allows for the comparison of all 27 countries of the European Union. This project compares how electoral support and representation evolves in established democracies of Western Europe and consolidating democracies of East Central Europe.