Support for the EU has fallen in several European countries since the beginning of the financial crisis. Han Werts, Marcel Lubbers and Peer Scheepers assess the political effects of this rise in Euroscepticism using data from the European Social Survey. Their analysis shows that the probability of voting for radical right-wing parties increases substantially with levels of Euroscepticism

Lubbers, Marcel

Scheepers, Peer

Werts, Han

LSE Research Online

08/07/2013Rising Euroscepticism is positively linked to increasedsupport for radical right-wing parties.blogs.lse.ac.uk /europpblog/2013/07/08/rising-euroscepticism-is-positively-linked-to-increased-support-for-radical-right-wing-parties/Support for the EU has fallen in several European countries since the beginning of the financial crisis. HanWerts, Marcel Lubbers and Peer Scheepers assess the political effects of this rise inEuroscepticism using data from the European Social Survey. Their analysis shows that theprobability of voting for radical right-wing parties increases substantially with levels ofEuroscepticism.In many European countries, a notable decline in political and public support for the EuropeanUnion has been observed. There is also some evidence from Eurobarometer studies that the recenteconomic crises in Greece and Cyprus and the unstable economic situation in the other SouthernEuropean countries has decreased support for the European Union further and vice versa hasincreased Euroscepticism.As Figure 1 shows, the populations of Greece, Italy and Spain contained only small proportions thatevaluated membership of the EU as ‘a bad thing’, certainly compared to the UK: they actually wereamong the lowest in Europe, with figures below 10 per cent from the turn of the century on.However, since the start of the economic crisis, these proportions have increased in Italy and Spainto 17 per cent in 2011, and even to 33 per cent in Greece. However, Euroscepticism is also nowmore widespread in countries like France, the UK and Germany than it was 10 years ago. In 2005,the popular rejections of the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands showed thatnumerous citizens are hesitant about supporting further European integration.Figure 1: Percentage of citizens that view membership of the EU as a ‘bad thing’Source: Eurobarometers 2001-2011 – Eurobarometer interactive search system1/4All across Europe, we have witnessed radical right parties successfully mobilising national identity considerationsagainst the European Union. In several European Parliamentary elections in recent years, radical right-wing partiesin particular have used the rhetoric of anti-EU sentiment and, paradoxically, gained seats in the EuropeanParliament. These parties see further integration into a political European Union as a threat to the sovereignty of thenation state: nearly all radical right-wing parties agree that the EU is bad and should be either reformedfundamentally or abolished. Yet, the issue of how relevant Euroscepticism is for the general EU public in terms ofvoting for radical right-wing parties in contemporary Europe has received little empirical attention in previousstudies.In a recent study, we focused on the relationship between Euroscepticism and radical right-wing voting in nationalelections in 18 European countries between 2002 and 2008. We took advantage of high-quality cross-nationalEuropean data selected in the European Social Survey programme. These are surveys that are conducted underthe highest scientific standards. We included only those countries with a radical right-party. First, we focused onsocial cleavages in radical right voting, e.g. social class and religiosity. Second, we examined the effects of severalcontextual characteristics, such as the economic situation and the level of migration. Third, we took diverse socio-political attitudes into account, among which we had a focal interest in the role of Euroscepticism. We testedwhether Euroscepticism affects voting for the radical right, over and beyond other relevant attitudes of the votersthat have previously been proposed to determine radical right-wing voting.We found evidence that Euroscepticism indeed contributes to the explanation of voting for the radical right, beyondthe huge effects of perceived ethnic threat and political distrust. Euroscepticism turned out to be a key politicalmotive, actually the third-strongest socio-political determinant, to explain radical right-wing voting in Europe. Theeffect of Euroscepticism is, however, relatively smaller than of perceived ethnic threat and political distrust.Moreover, while perceived ethnic threat does well in explaining why particular social categories, i.e. lower educatedpeople, manual workers, unemployed people and non-churchgoers are more likely to vote for the radical right thanothers; Euroscepticism hardly explains these differences. Figure 2 shows the relationship between Euroscepticismand the probability of voting for a radical right-wing party.Figure 2: Probability of voting for a radical right-wing party by level of EuroscepticismSource: European Social Survey (2002–2008); own calculations (based on MLWin parameters).2/4What do these findings imply? One of the expectations may be that political parties that identify and magnify politicalissues (possibly) indicating institutional weaknesses of the EU – and on this issue radical right-wing parties aredominant – may get even more electoral ground, since the euro and the EU in general are suffering from economicweakness. Whereas some mainstream political parties tend to support greater integration, political parties on theflanks emphasise that more powers should be returned to national governments. Moreover, we expect thatEuroscepticism, contemporarily fed by the economic and financial crisis around the euro and political debates on theEU budget, as in the recent cases of Greece and Cyprus, may attract more voters to radical right-wing parties, asEuroscepticism may rise even further.However, radical right parties cannot be overly optimistic with this scenario. The Dutch 2012 elections have shownthat playing the anti-Eurosceptic card during economic hardship may function like a boomerang. Economic crisestend to shift the focus to the economic domain, stimulating a confrontation between right and left-wing politics in theclassical meaning: between those in favour of austerity measures and those opposing it. Previous research hassuggested that the radical right gains less from economic downturns when the political salience of the economy inleft-right terms increases, at the cost of cultural and identity related concerns. Still, our research shows that radicalright-wing parties gain electorally by Euroscepticism. We expect that due to further EU enlargements and increasedmigration from new EU member states to the richer EU member states, because of the crisis around the euro, andbecause of debates around the budget of the EU, Euroscepticism will turn out to be an even stronger determinant ofradical right-wing voting in the near future.For a longer discussion of the topic covered in this article see:  Han Werts, Marcel Lubbers, and Peer Scheepers(2013) ‘Euro-scepticism and radical right-wing voting in Europe, 2002–2008: Social cleavages, socio-politicalattitudes and contextual characteristics determining voting for the radical right’, European Union Politics, vol. 14 no.2: 183-205.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy,nor of the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/14uYLe1 _________________________________About the authorsHan Werts – Radboud University Nijmegen Han Werts is a Policy Officer at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.––Marcel Lubbers – Radboud University NijmegenMarcel Lubbers is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Radboud UniversityNijmegen in the Netherlands.––Peer Scheepers – Radboud University NijmegenPeer Scheepers is Professor of Methodology and Social Science Research within the Faculty of Social Sciences atRadboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.3/44/4

Rising Euroscepticism is positively linked to increased support for radical right-wing parties.

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