Portugal: EU Issue Voting in Mainstream and Challenger Parties

One of the “bailout countries” during the Great Recession, Portugal is an interesting case-study to analyse EU politicisation and its effects at the national level. In this chapter, media, parliamentary and voting data provide a comprehensive picture of the role of EU politicisation in Portuguese political behaviour. Trends of EU issue politicisation are presented using salience and tone in mainstream media and parliamentary debates from 2002 to 2019. As expected, the post-2009 period exhibits an increase in politicisation both in media and parliamentary debates. Yet, in a post-bailout stage, and especially since the left coalition government took office in 2015, a degree of depoliticization of the EU issue is detected, with tone improving among the left parties in Parliament. A comprehensive vote model is then set up, using data from a post-2019 election online survey, to examine the degree to which EU issue voting matters, benchmarking with other political issues which were deemed relevant in the election. EU issue voting occurs among Communists but also for the PSD—signalling its importance not only for challenger but also for mainstream parties. Moreover, it matters more than the other socio-economic political issues included in the model.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Impact of EU Politicisation on Voting Behaviour in Europe

This open access book focuses on the importance that EU politicization has gained in European democracies and the consequences for voting behaviour in six countries of the EU: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In this book we argue that to understand how EU accountability works, it is necessary to focus instead on national elections and the national political environment. Through a detailed, multimethod analysis this book establishes rigorously the paths of European accountability at the national level, its propitious contexts in the media and parliamentary debates, and whether the paths are similar from Greece to Germany. The findings have implications for both national and European Union democracy, underlining the importance that national institutions have in enabling citizens to hold the EU accountable.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Holding Europe Accountable Nationally: Media, Parliaments and Voting in Europe

While the EU’s importance has grown for decision-making, both in politics and policies, following a decade of crises, its accountability mechanisms at the EU level have remained largely untouched. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In this book, we argue that to understand how EU accountability works, it is necessary to focus instead on national elections and the national political environment. While this channel of accountability has been long established, it still remains, to this day, poorly understood. Beyond establishing its importance, with a multi-methods approach and in comparative perspective, the book explores the national contexts which foster or discourage the expression of EU preferences at the national ballot box. Through a detailed analysis of longitudinal trends in EU politicisation in media and parliamentary debates from 2002 to 2019, as well as their impact on EU issue voting in national elections held between 2019 and 2021 in six European countries, the book establishes rigorously the paths of European accountability at the national level, its propitious contexts, and whether the paths are similar from Greece to Germany. The findings have implications for both national and European Union democracy, underlining the importance that national institutions have in enabling citizens to hold the EU accountable.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Consequences of EU Politicisation for Voting in National Elections

In this Chapter, the conclusions of the research in the book as a whole are discussed. The book provides very strong multimethod evidence of the ability of voters to express their EU preferences when selecting national representatives at legislative elections, and how media and parliamentary parties condition it. Our double perspective on EU politicisation in the media and parliamentary debates lead to novel findings on the concept. In terms of salience and contestation, we found that the media and parliamentary debates follow different logics, with contestation being substantially higher in the media than in Parliaments. In terms of EU dimensions, we found that it is mostly policies being discussed in relation to the EU in both arenas. Yet, in this respect there are differences between countries: while Germany and Ireland discuss EU policies per se to a larger extent, in Southern Europe EU policies are discussed in relation to domestic issues. Looking at the consequences of politicisation, through experimental analysis, it is established that EU attitudes are a cause rather than a consequence of voting behaviour. Using observational data, we find that EU attitudes matter for both main mainstream and challenger parties, for parties which are Eurosceptic but also pro-EU parties, even if they do not replace the importance of the left-right dimension. Politicisation in both media and parliamentary debates are associated with the strength of EU issue voting. We conclude that the national channel of EU accountability, and namely the domestic institutions which contribute to it, need to be placed at the centre of the debate on how to hold the EU accountable.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Voting under EMU: economic perceptions, responsibility attribution and EU politicisation

The article analyses the effects of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on economic voting. Theories of responsibility attribution suggest that voters are less likely to consider the economic situation when they realise that the national government is not completely in charge of economic policy. However, some aspects of the theory are being questioned, and its empirical application to EMU has yielded inconclusive results. The article uses experimental data from six EU countries to provide both a theoretical and a methodological contribution to the debate. Theoretically, we argue that to analyse the effects of EMU on economic voting, it is important to consider voters’ and parties’ positions on EU integration. The Europeanisation of economic policy has become a politicised issue over the last years. Consequently, voters are likely to combine functional considerations about who is in charge of economic policy with political considerations about the desirability of this distribution of responsibility. Methodologically, the article provides an analysis of the conditionality of economic voting that considers different sources of endogeneity. The results confirm the relevance of economic perceptions in voting and provide some support for the idea that voters’ EU positions matter when it comes to the effects of EMU on voting.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Experimental Evidence of EU Issue Voting

The chapter focuses on the consequences of EU politicization on electoral behaviour. It investigates whether and under which conditions EU citizens consider their EU positions when casting a vote in national elections. First, we use a conjoint experiment to investigate the magnitude of EU issue voting in six EU countries. This design allows us to cope with possible endogeneity problems while simulating the complexity of the task faced by real voters. Second, we link the media data presented in the previous chapters to the experiment’s results to explore how EU issue voting is influenced by the informational context. The main results and several robustness checks show that in almost all the countries analysed respondents are more likely to vote for a party that shares their own position on the EU than for a party that does not. However, it seems that not all types of voter-party incongruence have the same electoral consequences. Finally, the findings also suggest a relationship between media content and EU issue voting.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

What explains preferential voting? A field experiment in Portugal

This article analyzes the predictors of preferential voting in flexible list systems, focusing on political sophistication, voting rules and district size. It relies on a field experiment carried out in Portugal on the 2015 legislative election day. We found that the effect of district size depends on the nature of the voting rules introduced (optional or compulsory preferential voting). Also, political interest tends to lose its significance when preferential voting is compulsory. Thus, preferential voting does not constitute an obstacle for those with less political sophistication to express a vote, especially when the voting rules make preferential voting compulsory.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Personality Goes a Long Way

This article reviews books which test the personalization of politics, looking at different dimensions of the growing importance of leaders over time, namely for political parties, in electoral behaviour and in the media. Only recently have wide-ranging comparative longitudinal studies on leaders been carried out. The personalization thesis is not equally demonstrated across all dimensions. Indeed, we find something of a puzzle: There is no strong trend towards personalization of party organizations, whereas in electoral behaviour the evidence points to the increasing use by voters of leaders as heuristics. This attests to the decline of the importance of parties. The personalization of media may be the mechanism which explains the change in voting behaviour, and the third and final section of the review looks into that arena. We conclude with some suggestions on further research on the personalization of politics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Highlighting supranational institutions? An automated analysis of EU politicisation (2002–2017)

This article examines, using automated text analyses, the EU politicisation in the media of six Eurozone countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain), between 2002 and 2017. By contrasting creditor and debtor countries, the article analyses how the Eurozone crisis affected the politicisation of the EU and its institutions using a unique dataset of 165,341 articles from 12 newspapers. The results show that the Eurozone crisis increased the politicisation of the EU, particularly in the countries that were at the forefront of the Eurozone bailouts. Importantly, the crisis contributed as well to a more multifaceted news coverage of the European Union, namely with a greater emphasis given to supranational institutions vis-à-vis intergovernmental ones. Yet, this supranational coverage was associated with the increasingly negative tone of articles. To that extent, this study shows that greater mention of EU institutions may not necessarily contribute to a Europeanisation of public debates. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1910778info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio