Government responsiveness in the European Union: evidence from council voting

Are governments responsive to public preferences when legislating in international organizations? This paper demonstrates that governments respond to domestic public opinion even when acting at the international level. Specifically, we examine conflict in the European Union’s primary legislative body, the Council of the European Union (EU). We argue that domestic electoral incentives compel governments to react to public opinion. Analyzing a unique dataset on all legislative decisions adopted in the Council since 1999, we show that governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that extend the level and scope of EU authority when their domestic electorates are skeptical about the EU. We also find that governments are more responsive when the issue of European integration is salient in domestic party politics. Our findings demonstrate that governments can use the international stage to signal their responsiveness to public concerns and that such signals resonate in the domestic political debate

The conditionality of the trade-off between government responsiveness and effectiveness: the impact of minority status and polls in the Canadian House of Commons

There is an extensive literature on the relative virtues of different electoral systems in producing more responsive and effective governments, but far less attention has been paid to role of dynamic factors. This article examines how government minority/majority status and popularity shape the trade-off between government responsiveness and effectiveness. We argue that minority governments face legislative constraints that incentivize them to be responsive to the public, but that this comes at the expense of legislative effectiveness. This trade-off between responsiveness and effectiveness is, however, conditioned by the government's standing in the polls. The more popular a minority government is in the polls, the less responsive and the more effective it becomes. These propositions are tested using original time-series data on public policy preferences, government popularity, legislative output and public expenditures in Canada from 1958 to 2009. Our findings demonstrate that minority governments are more responsive to the median voter but less legislatively effective than majority governments, and that these effects are moderated by the popularity of the government

Public opinion and the crisis: the dynamics of support for the euro

Further integration in the European Union (EU) increasingly depends on public legitimacy. The global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area crisis have amplified both the salience and the redistributive consequences of decisions taken in Brussels, raising the question of how this has influenced public support for European integration. In this contribution, we examine how public opinion has responded to the crisis, focusing on support for monetary integration. Interestingly, our results show that support for the euro has remained high within the euro area; however, attitudes are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. While the crisis has been seen to deepen divisions within Europe, our findings suggest that it has also encouraged citizens in the euro area to form opinions on the euro on the basis of a cost–benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying primarily on national attachments

Turning against the union? The impact of the crisis on the Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament elections were held against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in post-war Europe. The elections saw an unprecedented surge in support for Eurosceptic parties. This raises the question of whether the crisis, and the EU's response to it, can explain the rise of Eurosceptic parties. Our analysis of the 2014 European Election Study demonstrates that the degree to which individuals were adversely affected by the crisis and their discontent with the EU's handling of the crisis are major factors in explaining defection from mainstream pro-European to Eurosceptic parties in these elections. This suggests that far from being second-order national elections concerned only with domestic politics, European issues had a significant impact on vote choices

Brexit identities play a role in how people view the economy and immigration

There is a divide between how Remainers and Leavers perceive the UK's economic performance and other policy developments, explain Miriam Sorace and Sara B. Hobolt. A major consequence of this lack of agreement about basic facts is that reaching a consensus on how to navigate Brexit becomes even more complicated

Distorted perceptions: how Leavers and Remainers view the economy

There is a divide between how Remainers and Leavers perceive the UK's economic performance and other policy developments, explain Miriam Sorace and Sara B. Hobolt. A major consequence of this lack of agreement about basic facts is that reaching a consensus on how to navigate Brexit becomes even more complicated

Distorted perceptions: how Leavers and Remainers view the economy - and with what consequences

There is a divide between how Remainers and Leavers perceive the UK's economic performance and other policy developments, explain Miriam Sorace and Sara B. Hobolt. A major consequence of this lack of agreement about basic facts is that reaching a consensus on how to navigate Brexit becomes even more complicated

Voters and coalition governments

a b s t r a c t Coalition governments are the norm in parliamentary democracies. Yet, despite the predominance of this type of government, political scientists have only recently started to investigate how voters approach elections when a coalition government is the likely outcome. Such elections present additional uncertainty and complexity for voters compared with elections in plurality systems, where party choice translates more directly into a choice of government. These factors have lead to the assumption that strategic voting is unlikely to occur in systems that produce coalition governments. In this introductory article to the special issue on Voters and Coalition Governments, we consider whether voters have the capacity to anticipate specific coalition outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the conditions that lead to strategic voting in both plurality and proportional systems

Exploiting the cracks: wedge issues in multiparty competition

This study examines the extent to which opposition parties engage in wedge-issue competition. The literature on wedge-issue competition has exclusively focused on the two-party system in the United States, arguing that wedge issues are the domain of opposition parties. This study argues that within multiparty systems opposition status is a necessary but not sufficient condition for wedge-issue competition. Since parties within multiparty systems compete in the wake of past and dawn of future coalition negotiations, parties that are regularly part of a coalition are not likely to exploit wedge issues as it could potentially jeopardize relationships with future coalition partners. Conversely, it is less risky for parties that have never been part of a government coalition to mobilize wedge issues. These theoretical propositions are empirically substantiated by examining the attention given to the European integration issue between 1984 and 2010 within 14 Western European countries, utilizing pooled time-series regressions