The EU may have a democratic deficit, but national governments are facing an even greater legitimacy crisis

Trust in the EU has declined in several countries since the start of the financial crisis in 2007. Using Eurobarometer data, Besir Ceka compares trust in the EU with the trust citizens place in the national governments of EU states. He notes that while both have declined during the crisis, most states still show higher levels of trust in the EU’s institutions than they do in national governments. This suggests that concerns over the EU’s democratic deficit should be expanded to include the legitimacy of governments at the national level

The meaning of democracy changes for Europeans depending on their education status, income and national context

Most Europeans value democracy, but do all citizens have the same conception of what democracy is? Pedro C. Magalhães and Besir Ceka assess variations in how Europeans conceive of democracy and analyse the various factors which underpin different interpretations. Their findings indicate that there are a wide variety of conceptions of democracy across Europe. The key mechanism explaining this variation is that individuals in high education and high income groups tend to more readily support the kinds of democracy which represent the ‘status quo’ in their country than citizens from lower education/income groups

The perils of political competition: explaining participation and trust in political parties in Eastern Europe

This thesis investigates the determinants of conventional political participation such as voting, contacting officials and attending political meetings in Eastern Europe. The central argument of this paper is that, in postcommunist Europe, vibrant and robust political competition has stifled direct political participation of the citizens. To make this case, I analyze survey data to identify the individual and country level factors that determine the likelihood of political participation at the individual level. The results point in one direction: the postcommunist polities that saw vibrant political competition in their electoral arenas also witnessed the highest levels of disillusionment with political parties and, consequently, with the political system. Decades of monopolization of the electoral arena by communist parties left Eastern Europeans ill prepared to appreciate vigorous political competition, which, depending on the intensity of the competition, tended to depress trust in political parties as an institution and, consequently, stifled political participation

The Causes and Consequences of Political Trust and Satisfaction With Democracy in Eastern Europe

In my dissertation, I study the causes and consequences of political trust and satisfaction with democracy in Eastern Europe. The extent to which citizens trust key political institutions has significant ramifications for their political behavior, for electoral dynamics, and for the consolidation of democracy in a country. Three major questions about how citizens evaluate the performance of democracy and democratic institutions have shaped my research: (1) the causes of political trust; (2) the effect of media exposure on political attitudes; and (3) the political behavior of dissatisfied citizens. Thus, I investigate the main factors that explain political trust and satisfaction with democracy and then explore the consequences of such political attitudes for electoral behavior. My findings suggest that the intensity of political competition--and the extent to which opposition parties criticize, and expose the misdeeds of the government--has a significant effect on trust in political institutions. I also find that exposure to foreign owned media, which rely on sensationalist coverage, depresses political trust and satisfaction with democracy. The opposite is the case for state-owned media because most state-owned media in Eastern Europe are controlled by the governing parties of the day and, thus, the news coverage tends to be more positive and focuses less on the failures and more on the achievements of the government. As for the effect of political attitudes on electoral behavior, I find that citizens who do not trust key political institutions are less likely to be civically active and turn out to vote. If they do vote, however, I show that dissatisfied citizens are far more likely to vote for extreme nationalist and radical left parties than for other more moderate non-mainstream parties.Doctor of Philosoph

Discovering cooperation : endogenous change in international organizations

Published online: 14 December 2023Why do some international organizations (IO) accrete delegated authority over time while in others delegation is static or declines? We hypothesize that the dynamics of delegation are shaped by an IO’s founding contract. IOs rooted in an open-ended contract have the capacity to discover cooperation over time: as new problems arise these IOs can adopt new policies or strengthen collaboration in existing areas. This, in turn, triggers a demand for delegation. However, this logic is mediated by the political regime of the IO. In predominantly democratic IOs, delegation is constrained by politicization which intensifes as an IO’s policy portfolio broadens. These claims are tested using an updated version of the Measure of International Authority dataset covering 41 regional IOs between 1950 and 2019. Controlling for alternative explanations and addressing potential endogeneity across a range of model specifcations, we fnd robust support for our argument

Macedonia : a new beginning?

First online: 10 April 201

Discovering cooperation : a contractual approach to institutional change in regional international organizations

This paper offers a fresh perspective on institutional change drawing on recent advances in the economic theory of contracting. Contractual incompleteness enhances organizational flexibility, but only at the cost of perceptual ambiguity. We hypothesize that the willingness to engage in a highly incomplete contract depends on shared understandings which reduce the cost of perceptual ambiguity. These claims are evaluated using a new dataset on delegation of state authority to non-state actors in 35 regional international organizations from 1950 to 2010. We are able to confirm across a wide range of models and specifications that reform is guided by contractual incompleteness and that contractual incompleteness is rooted in shared historical experience

The loss of trust in the European Union during the great recession since 2007: The role of heuristics from the national political system

How can we explain the decline in support for the European Union (EU) and the idea of European integration after the onset of the great recession in the fall of 2007? Did the economic crisis and the austerity policies that the EU imposed—in tandem with the IMF—on several member countries help cause this drop? While there is some evidence for this direct effect of EU policies, we find that the most significant determinant of trust and support for the EU remains the level of trust in national governments. Based on cue theory and using concepts of diffuse and specific support, we find that support for the EU is derived from evaluations of national politics and policy, which Europeans know far better than the remote political system of the EU. This effect, however, is somewhat muted for those sophisticated Europeans that are more knowledgeable about the EU and are able to form opinions about it independently of the national contexts in which they live. We also find that the recent economic crisis has led to a discernible increase in the number of those who are disillusioned with politics both at the national and the supranational level. We analyze 133 national surveys from 27 EU countries by estimating a series of cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models

Do the Rich and the Poor Have Different Conceptions of Democracy? Socioeconomic Status, Inequality, and the Political Status Quo

In this study, we investigate how socioeconomic status is related to people's commitment to liberal democracy. Based on sociological and psychological theories of social conflict and dominance, we argue that those who enjoy a more privileged position in the social hierarchy tend to develop stronger preferences for the existing social and political order. Conversely, people in underprivileged positions tend to be less supportive of that order. Hence, we expect the relationship between socioeconomic status and commitment to liberal democracy to be context-specific: positive in liberal democracies but negative in autocracies. Furthermore, we argue that income inequality amplifies these dynamics, widening the gap between low and high status individuals. We test our hypotheses using the fifth wave of the World Value Surveys.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Diffuse support for the European Union: spillover effects of the politicization of the European integration process at the domestic level

This article investigates the link between attitude formation at the national and the supranational level of the European Union (EU). While the existing studies have provided strong evidence that attitudes towards national institutions fundamentally condition attitudes towards the EU, the mechanisms through which these spillovers occur are not clearly spelled out. Our main contribution is to theorize the complex ways in which the national politicization of the European integration process affects support for the EU by focusing on critical moments in the EU integration process and the electoral fortunes of the political parties doing the cuing. To test our theoretical claims, we employ multilevel models using six rounds of the European Social Survey combined with party-level data from Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and various country-level data. The analyses show that spillover effects are crucially conditioned by the level of politicization of European integration at the national level