How our neighbourhoods shape our European and national identities

How does the diversity of a neighbourhood affect the political identities of the people who live there? Drawing on new research, Dominik Schraff and Ronja Sczepanski show that those who live in neighbourhoods with a diverse mix of western and non-western immigrants are more likely to have strong European identities

United or divided in diversity? The heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity on European and national identities

In this article, we argue that the size and cultural proximity of immigrant populations in people's residential surroundings shape national and European identities. This means that the type of migrant population activates cultural threat perceptions and opportunities for contact to varying degrees. Geocoded survey data from the Netherlands suggests that large non-Western immigrant shares are associated with more exclusive national identities, while mixed contexts with Western and non-Western populations show more inclusive identities. These results suggest that highly diverse areas with mixed immigrant populations hold a potential for more tolerance. In contrast, exclusive national identities become strongly pronounced under the presence of sizeable culturally distant immigrant groups

Labour market disadvantage, political orientations and voting: how adverse labour market experiences translate into electoral behaviour

How does labour market disadvantage translate into political behaviour? Bringing together the literatures on political alienation, redistribution preferences and insider-outsider politics, we identify three mechanisms by which labour market disadvantages influence voting behaviour. Disadvantages can increase support for redistribution, reduce internal political efficacy or lower external political efficacy. This translates into support for pro-redistribution parties, vote abstention or support for protest parties. Using the Dutch LISS survey, we observe a twin effect of increased support for redistribution and decreased external efficacy. Mediated through redistributive preferences, we find a positive effect of labour market disadvantage on voting for left parties. Mediated through external efficacy we find a positive effect of labour market disadvantage on protest voting. In contrast, we do not find any effect of labour market disadvantage on internal efficacy. Hence, the observed effect of labour market disadvantage on political abstention is entirely mediated by external efficac

EU funding policies may be undermined by regional authorities using structural fund allocations to win votes at the local level

More than half of the EU budget is dedicated to Structural Funds, which are allocated across EU regions with the aim of promoting economic and social development. Lisa Dellmuth, Michael Stoffel and Dominik Schraff write that the use of decentralised authorities to allocate structural funding can create substantive problems for the EU’s policy goals. They illustrate that the distribution of funds often reflects local political concerns, with districts that support the regional government’s party receiving disproportionate shares of funding

Asymmetric ratification standards and popular perceptions of legitimacy

The ratification of EU agreements is characterized by the application of different democratic procedures across member states. Building on the demoi-cratic theory of legitimate global governance, I argue that citizens benchmark their national procedure against highly visible direct democratic ratification votes held in other member states. If citizens experience unequal influence on EU decision-making, the perceived legitimacy of the EU regime erodes. I test this argument with a research design that combines a population-based survey experiment and a quasi-experiment. First, a survey experiment in Germany reveals that information about asymmetric ratification standards decrease fairness perceptions and satisfaction with EU democracy. Second, a natural experiment around the 2005 French vote on the EU constitutional treaty shows that the referendum decreased satisfaction with EU democracy in states with pending and indirect ratification. These findings suggest that asymmetric access of citizens to EU decision-making can decrease popular support for EU governance.ISSN:1350-1763ISSN:1466-442

Political trust during the Covid‐19 pandemic: Rally around the flag or lockdown effects?

How can we explain the rise in diffuse political support during the Covid‐19 pandemic? Recent research has argued that the lockdown measures generated political support. In contrast, I argue that the intensity of the pandemic rallied people around political institutions. Collective angst in the face of exponentially rising Covid‐19 cases depresses the usual cognitive evaluations of institutions and leads citizens to rally around existing intuitions as a lifebuoy. Using a representative Dutch household survey conducted over March 2020, I compare the lockdown effect to the dynamic of the pandemic. I find that the lockdown effect is driven by pre‐existing time trends. Accounting for non‐linearities in time makes the lockdown effect disappear. In contrast, more flexible modelling techniques reveal a robust effect of Covid‐19 infections on political trust. In line with an anxiety effect, I find that standard determinants of political trust – such as economic evaluations and social trust – lose explanatory power as the pandemic spreads. This speaks to an emotionally driven rally effect that pushes cognitive evaluations to the background. © 2020 European Consortium for Political Research.ISSN:0304-4130ISSN:1475-676

Estimating subnational preferences across the European Union

ISSN:2049-8489ISSN:2049-847

Regional redistribution and Eurosceptic voting

<p>Anticipating the competitive disadvantage of economically weak regions in an integrated European single market, the European Union (EU) redistributes money to alleviate economic inequalities and increase cohesion. However, the amount of European redistribution is very moderate and the recent years have shown that Eurosceptic parties gain ground, especially in economically weak areas. So is Eurosceptic voting related to an insufficient compensation of the losers of EU integration? Combining European Social Survey data with information on regional funding for 123 EU regions, I demonstrate that the probability of a Eurosceptic vote is highest under insufficient compensation. Insufficient compensation occurs among middle income regions that are cut-off from the bulk of funding due to the regional policies’ targeted approach. Moreover, some of the poorest regions miss out as well, as the more developed areas among the poor are favored in funds allocation. A taming effect of funding on Eurosceptic voting is therefore restricted to the more prosperous regions in Europe’s lagging areas.</p