Measuring and Analysing the Politicisation of Europe before and after the Eurozone Crisis

Project Information

MAPLE

Grant agreement ID: 682125

DOI

10.3030/682125

Project closed

EC signature date 27 July 2016

Start date 1 August 2016

End date 31 October 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 592 859,00

EU contribution

€ 1 592 859,00

Coordinated by

INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS SOCIAIS
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - MAPLE (Measuring and Analysing the Politicisation of Europe before and after the Eurozone Crisis)

Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed? The Eurozone crisis forces us to reconsider the conventional wisdom that “Europe” has little effect on national electoral politics. MAPLE’s central goal is to analyse the degree of politicisation the European issue has acquired following before and after the Eurozone crisis, in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain in 2000-2016, and to focus on its consequences for voting behaviour. We are particularly interested in change that may have occurred in the vote function because of the EU politicisation. Namely, whether short-term factors of voting behaviour, such as economic perceptions may have been structurally diminished in the countries that have seen bailouts and where citizens increasingly perceive the main economic policy decisions as supranationalised. More generally, MAPLE focused on how the structural rise in importance of Europe may impact electorates across Europe.

Why is it important for society? MAPLE’s fundamental question – the way in which politicisation of the EU after the Eurozone crisis may impact on the domestic vote calculus has a potentially huge impact on the way in which we understand how European democracies function today in a multilevel setting. It would imply abandoning a purely national model to account for electoral dynamics. This is important because it raises issues of democratic accountability.

What are the overall objectives? MAPLE’s overall objectives is to analyse the degree of politicisation the issue of Europe has acquired before and after the onset of the Eurozone crisis, and its consequences at the level of political attitudes and voting behaviour. To that end, large datasets on parliamentary debates and media outlets were collected and coded for salience and polarisation of the European issue. The analysis of voting behaviour following the onset of the Eurozone crisis a multi-methods framework in order to test the relationship between increased politicisation of the EU and short-term effects.

Conclusions of the Action
The action was able to develop three main strands of empirical research which are considerably innovative to the understanding of politics and voting in Europe. Firstly, we found that the media and parliamentary debates follow different logics, with contestation being substantially higher in the media than in Parliaments. Secondly, that while economic voting appears to be as strong in the EU as in more studied contexts such as the USA, the analysis of its conditionality suggests that it might be necessary to consider the politicisation of responsibility distribution. Thirdly, we provide 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. 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 European Union accountable.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The MAPLE project was implemented partly during the pandemic. This was a considerable challenge, which led to some delays and the Project’s extension. With the ERC’s flexibility, it was possible to implement all the project’s Work Packages.

Work Performed:
The MAPLE Project consisted in three building blocks: a media, a parliamentary and a multiple survey dataset, covering the period 2002-2021. Following the completion of these datasets, it has been possible to measure, through qualitatitive and automated methods the trends in EU politicization in two forums- media and parliamentary debates. These indicators were then used to explain voting behaviour using different methods, namely experiments as well as observational data collected in online surveys which went into the field from 2019-2021. We have been involved throughout in data analysis with the MAPLE team as well as other scholars who joined us in this endeavour. We have also been able to publish in a number of outlets the results of our research, which is already being cited, as it does contribute to innovation in the field of voting behaviour.

Overview of the results and their exploitation and dissemination
MAPLE has been able to produce one special issue which included 7 articles, another 6 articles in prestigious journals, an edited book with Palgrave MacMillan, as well as several reports and conference papers (for details see www.maple.ics.ulisboa.pt). Within MAPLE, two PhD students defended their theses, and a third PhD student is about to complete his thesis. Despite the pandemic, the team members participated in offline and online conferences throughout the Project. In addition, two online MAPLE Spring Schools were organized in 2021 and 2022. They attracted students from different European countries, and some of the PhD students who attended then borrowed the data to include in their research. The data has been disseminated widely: the parliamentary dataset has been deposited at Harvard Dataverse, and the integrated surveys will also be deposited in an online archive in 2023, so that they can be accessed and used by the scientific community. Before depositing online our survey datasets, we have been able to share the data with several PhDs who are planning on including our data in their research.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The action was able to innovate three main strands of empirical research. Namely, MAPLE contributed both methodologically and theoretically to the following fields: EU politicization, economic voting in Europe and its conditionality following EMU, and EU issue voting and its contexts.
Methodological innovations: Regarding EU politicization, we were one of the first to measure it using automated methods, both at the media and parliamentary level, and to compare the trends. Regarding the importance of EU for voting we employed experiments which were implemented simultaneously in six countries. The experimental design enables us to determine causality which has rarely been attempted previously.
Theoretical innovations: Regarding EU politicization, we found that the media and parliamentary debates follow different logics, with contestation being substantially higher in the media than in Parliaments.
Secondly, that while economic voting appears to be as strong in the EU as in more studied contexts such as the USA, the analysis of its conditionality suggests that it might be necessary to consider the politicisation of responsibility distribution. Thirdly, we provide 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. EU attitudes matter for both main mainstream and challenger parties, for parties which are Eurosceptic but also pro-EU parties. Yet, EU issue voting is much less important than the left-right dimension in explaining vote in Europe. 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 European Union accountable.

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