Are UK citizens losing out in Brussels? Not really

A common criticism of the EU is that Britain lacks influence in Brussels and Strasbourg and can be overruled by other nations. Christopher Wratil uses data from Eurobarometer surveys to analyse whether the EU does act in accordance with public opinion and, specifically, how well the views of UK citizens are represented compared to citizens in other EU countries

Europe’s Choice Populist attitudes and voting intentions in the 2019 European election. Bertelsmann Policy Brief 01.2019

Representation gaps cause populism: those who feel that they are poorly represented are more populist in their thinking and at the polls. The same also applies to the 2019 European elections. However, populist citizens only agree on two things: they are sceptical towards Europe and dissatisfied with EU democracy. When it comes to substantive political issues, left-wing and right-wing populist voters are even more divided than the voters of the mainstream parties. This makes it more difficult to form new majorities in the next European Parliament

Which argument will win the referendum – immigration, or the economy?

The UK is set to vote on its EU membership on Thursday. Which arguments have resonated most with voters throughout the campaign? Sara Hobolt and Christopher Wratil present survey evidence indicating that immigration and the economy have been the most prominent topics. Undecided voters have, however, been less moved by these issues and cite misinformation and distrust in politicians as their reasons for remaining on the fence

Paths to constructive processes in RNA-based early life

The work presented in this thesis aimed to bridge missing gaps in our knowledge of the emergence of primitive nucleic acid-based lifeforms. Specifically, I demonstrate two prebiotically plausible means by which longer and more complex RNA may have formed from pools of short oligomers. Firstly, I reconcile the remarkable utility of a phosphate source, diamidophosphate (DAP), in stably activating oligoribonucleotides under mild aqueous conditions amenable to the activity of the hairpin ribozyme. The reported approach provides long-lived 2’,3’-cyclic phosphate oligomers whose hydrolysis products can be reactivated over weeks in a one-pot reaction. This stands in contrast to conventional laboratory methods that generate potent and short-lived activated RNA substrates to drive constructive processes such as polymerization and recombination. Secondly, while the candidacy of phase-separated droplets as a primitive protocellular environment has long been proposed, only destructive ribozyme catalysis such as cleavage of substrate RNA has thus far been shown therein. Here, I demonstrate robust and versatile constructive ribozyme activity within droplets formed from simple cationic peptides and short oligomers. In both investigations, I report the assembly of a complex >180 nt RNA polymerase ribozyme from simple <30 nt oligomers. Taken together, the described work advances our understanding of how constructive nucleic acid-based processes toward molecular evolution and – eventually – life may have occurred

The myth of the 'boring election': populism and the 2017 German election

The German federal elections scheduled for 24 September are widely expected to produce another victory for Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU. As Fabian G. Neuner and Christopher Wratil highlight, however, Merkel's dominant position in the polling has potentially masked some interesting developments during the campaign. Chief among these is that there has been a rise in populist sentiment in Germany, which is fuelling support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) and damaging the CDU/CSU more than any other party

The Populist Marketplace: Unpacking the Role of “Thin” and “Thick” Ideology

A growing body of work adopts a “thin” ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties’ electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular “thick” or “host” ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and pro-redistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and anti-globalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes. Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters

Will Italy’s post-Renzi government be led by a technocrat?

Already before Matteo Renzi had lost his constitutional referendum, media around the world claimed that a ‘government of technocrats’ was the most likely option to follow Renzi in case of electoral defeat. Drawing on their analysis of all technocratic governments appointed in 30 European democracies after 1977, Christopher Wratil and Giulia Pastorella estimate a rather low probability of 12-18% for the next Italian administration to be led by a technocrat. A technocratic government is therefore definitely possible but not as likely as suggested by the media

Contestation and Responsiveness in EU Council Deliberations

Decision-making in the Council of the European Union appears highly consensual at the voting stage. However, we focus on Council deliberations, where we find higher levels of contestation. What drives government opposition in the Council? Using a novel approach of studying the Council through video footage of its public deliberations (DICEU – Debates in the Council of the European Union), we demonstrate that contestation between governments is, at least in part, driven by their responsiveness to domestic public opinion. Analysing deliberations on legislative packages in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council between 2010 and 2015, we show that governments are responsive to public opinion when setting out their policy positions, but primarily when the policy issues are salient domestically. Our study thus contributes to our understanding of government responsiveness in the EU

Multidimensional Representation

The study of representation is a major research field in quantitative political science. Since the early 2000s, it has been accompanied by a range of important conceptual innovations by political theorists working on the topic. Yet, although many quantitative scholars are familiar with the conceptual literature, even the most complex quantitative studies eschew engaging with the “new wave” of more sophisticated concepts of representation that theorists have developed. We discuss what we take to be the main reasons for this gap between theory and empirics, and present four novel conceptions of representation that are both sensitive to theorists’ conceptual impulses and operationalizable for quantitative scholars. In doing so, we advance an alternative research agenda on representation that moves significantly beyond the status quo of the field