Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DISINTEGRATION (The Mass Politics of Disintegration)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-11-01 al 2022-04-30
In the past few years, there has been a growing popular backlash against international institutions. Examples include the 2015 Greek bailout referendum, the 2016 Brexit referendum, or the 2016 election of a US President determined to withdraw the US from various international treaties. The implications of these voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions, in which countries unilaterally try to renegotiate the terms of or withdraw from existing international agreements, reach far beyond the countries in which they originate. Not only do the success and consequences of such disintegration bids depend on how the international institution’s other member states respond to a unilateral bid to unilaterally change or terminate the terms of an existing international agreement. Voter-endorsed disintegration bids also pose considerable political contagion risks by encouraging disintegrative tendencies in other countries.
Because our theoretical tools to understand such international disintegration processes are underdeveloped, DISINTEGRATION therefore conducts a broad, systematic, and comparative inquiry into the mass politics of disintegration to better understand these challenges and their reverberations abroad. The project explores when and how one country’s voter-endorsed disintegration experience encourages or deters demands for disintegration in other countries, how these contagion effects are transmitted through domestic elites and domestic discourse, and how the remaining member states respond during disintegration negotiations. Moreover, it puts these challenges into the wider context of the popular backlash against globalization and studies how such disintegration bids compare to other challenges faced by international institutions.
To answer these questions, DISINTEGRATION large-scale data collection designed to capture the evolution of public opinion, elite discourse, and negotiation positions both across and within countries. The project has a strong comparative focus, but also pays particular attention to two cases in which disintegration bids have been particularly salient in recent years: Brexit (and its reverberations in the EU27 and in Switzerland) and Swiss-EU relations, which have been heavily contested in recent years and where concrete proposals about both strengthening and weakening Swiss cooperation with the EU have been on the table in recent years. The project studies these two ongoing processes in real time.
DISINTEGRATION’s main objective is to develop a theory that helps us understand the transnational dynamics and interactions that unfold between governments, elites and the public when one member state seeks to change the membership terms of or to withdraw from an international institution on the basis of widespread popular support. In doing so, DISINTEGRATION makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to an area of both academic and real-world significance.
Because our theoretical tools to understand such international disintegration processes are underdeveloped, DISINTEGRATION therefore conducts a broad, systematic, and comparative inquiry into the mass politics of disintegration to better understand these challenges and their reverberations abroad. The project explores when and how one country’s voter-endorsed disintegration experience encourages or deters demands for disintegration in other countries, how these contagion effects are transmitted through domestic elites and domestic discourse, and how the remaining member states respond during disintegration negotiations. Moreover, it puts these challenges into the wider context of the popular backlash against globalization and studies how such disintegration bids compare to other challenges faced by international institutions.
To answer these questions, DISINTEGRATION large-scale data collection designed to capture the evolution of public opinion, elite discourse, and negotiation positions both across and within countries. The project has a strong comparative focus, but also pays particular attention to two cases in which disintegration bids have been particularly salient in recent years: Brexit (and its reverberations in the EU27 and in Switzerland) and Swiss-EU relations, which have been heavily contested in recent years and where concrete proposals about both strengthening and weakening Swiss cooperation with the EU have been on the table in recent years. The project studies these two ongoing processes in real time.
DISINTEGRATION’s main objective is to develop a theory that helps us understand the transnational dynamics and interactions that unfold between governments, elites and the public when one member state seeks to change the membership terms of or to withdraw from an international institution on the basis of widespread popular support. In doing so, DISINTEGRATION makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to an area of both academic and real-world significance.
The DISINTEGRATION project is divided into several work packages, each of which investigates a different aspect of the questions outlined above.
Work package 1 (WP1) focuses on public opinion across countries, a central aspect of investigating “mass-based” disintegration. Here, we have completed six waves of the cross-national tracking survey (WP1a) and successfully fielded a four-wave panel survey in Switzerland (WP1c). On this basis, we have analyzed how Brexit has affected public opinion in remaining member EU-27 states (Walter 2021a, Malet and Walter 2021a), the effects of he Brexit process on the opinion of Swiss citizens about the country’s evolving relationship with the EU (Malet and Walter 2021b), and contagion dynamics (Malet 2021) and the importance of expectations more generally (Grynberg, Walter and Wasserfallen 2020). The cross-national survey (WP1b) has been delayed by the COVID-19 crisis, which has changed the international setting to such a degree that we need more time to develop a questionnaire that takes into account this new setting.
Work package 2 (WP2) focuses on elite discourse, both with regard to national politicians and parties (WP2a) and with regard to national media discourse (WP2b). In WP2a we have collected Twitter data on Swiss Brexit- and EU-related elite discourse on Twitter. After a switch in the team, the focus on the work package now turns more to parliamentary discourse (Hunter 2021). In WP 2b, we have built up a major corpus of news texts on European integration and Brexit that consists of nearly 1 million news articles, which have been published since 2012 in over a dozen European countries. Based on data from this corpus we have started an in depth investigation of contagion effects in elite discourse on European integration. Focusing especially on media coverage of nationalist parties, we find that nationalists in Europe have significantly moderated their demands to leave the EU over the course of the Brexit negotiations (Martini and Walter 2021).
Work package 3 (WP3) examines the international negotiations that follow unilateral challenges to international institutions and thus shifts focus from the national to the international level. Three analyses (Walter 2020a, b, Jurado, Léon and Walter 2021) have focused on the trade-offs and dilemmas that the EU-27 face in negotiating the terms of Brexit. The work package also examines disintegration negotiations in a comparative perspective. I have completed a set of comparative mini-case studies of the seven instances in which disintegration bids were endorsed by referendum, with a particular focus on how the respective international institution and its member state reacted to this challenge and how it played out (Walter 2021). The next step is to significantly broaden the scope of the project and to examine renegotiations and withdrawal negotiations for a much wider set of cases.
The final work package (WP4) aims to synthesize the insights generated in work packages 1-3 and to develop an encompassing comparative theoretical framework of the dynamics and contagion effects between public opinion, elite discourse, and international negotiations that characterize disintegration processes. Research in this work package so far has concentrated on broad, general questions and issues, such as the role of the public for international cooperation (de Vries, Hobolt, and Walter 2021) or the globalization backlash (Walter 2021b). In the next phase of the project, this work package will also work towards developing a better understanding of how mass-based disintegration relates to other forms of international non-cooperation and to explore the normative challenges that mass-based disintegration poses for international cooperation, democracy, and national sovereignty.
Work package 1 (WP1) focuses on public opinion across countries, a central aspect of investigating “mass-based” disintegration. Here, we have completed six waves of the cross-national tracking survey (WP1a) and successfully fielded a four-wave panel survey in Switzerland (WP1c). On this basis, we have analyzed how Brexit has affected public opinion in remaining member EU-27 states (Walter 2021a, Malet and Walter 2021a), the effects of he Brexit process on the opinion of Swiss citizens about the country’s evolving relationship with the EU (Malet and Walter 2021b), and contagion dynamics (Malet 2021) and the importance of expectations more generally (Grynberg, Walter and Wasserfallen 2020). The cross-national survey (WP1b) has been delayed by the COVID-19 crisis, which has changed the international setting to such a degree that we need more time to develop a questionnaire that takes into account this new setting.
Work package 2 (WP2) focuses on elite discourse, both with regard to national politicians and parties (WP2a) and with regard to national media discourse (WP2b). In WP2a we have collected Twitter data on Swiss Brexit- and EU-related elite discourse on Twitter. After a switch in the team, the focus on the work package now turns more to parliamentary discourse (Hunter 2021). In WP 2b, we have built up a major corpus of news texts on European integration and Brexit that consists of nearly 1 million news articles, which have been published since 2012 in over a dozen European countries. Based on data from this corpus we have started an in depth investigation of contagion effects in elite discourse on European integration. Focusing especially on media coverage of nationalist parties, we find that nationalists in Europe have significantly moderated their demands to leave the EU over the course of the Brexit negotiations (Martini and Walter 2021).
Work package 3 (WP3) examines the international negotiations that follow unilateral challenges to international institutions and thus shifts focus from the national to the international level. Three analyses (Walter 2020a, b, Jurado, Léon and Walter 2021) have focused on the trade-offs and dilemmas that the EU-27 face in negotiating the terms of Brexit. The work package also examines disintegration negotiations in a comparative perspective. I have completed a set of comparative mini-case studies of the seven instances in which disintegration bids were endorsed by referendum, with a particular focus on how the respective international institution and its member state reacted to this challenge and how it played out (Walter 2021). The next step is to significantly broaden the scope of the project and to examine renegotiations and withdrawal negotiations for a much wider set of cases.
The final work package (WP4) aims to synthesize the insights generated in work packages 1-3 and to develop an encompassing comparative theoretical framework of the dynamics and contagion effects between public opinion, elite discourse, and international negotiations that characterize disintegration processes. Research in this work package so far has concentrated on broad, general questions and issues, such as the role of the public for international cooperation (de Vries, Hobolt, and Walter 2021) or the globalization backlash (Walter 2021b). In the next phase of the project, this work package will also work towards developing a better understanding of how mass-based disintegration relates to other forms of international non-cooperation and to explore the normative challenges that mass-based disintegration poses for international cooperation, democracy, and national sovereignty.
DISINTEGRATION breaks new theoretical ground, engages in large-scale data collection, and provides insights into an issue that is not just of academic importance, but is also politically relevant – the declining popular support for the institutions that underpin the contemporary global liberal world order.
DISINTEGRATION breaks new grounds conceptually by introducing the notion of voter-endorsed disintegration episodes for a set of processes that have so far mostly been treated as sui generis phenomena. It also innovates theoretically by generating a better understanding of the trade-offs and dilemmas that unilateral challenges to international organizations pose for international institutions. It does so by bridging strands of research that so far often exist in isolation from each other – such as research on Euroscepticism and international organizations– and thus contributes to theory-building relevant for both European Union and International Relations research.
DISINTEGRATION also makes important empirical contributions through large-scale data collection efforts that captures the dynamic evolution of public opinion, elite discourse, and negotiation positions in Europe and beyond in the face of growing popular opposition to international cooperation. Altogether, the project is on course of producing six datasets on the evolution of public opinion, domestic discourse, and the Brexit negotiations. Full datasets will be made available to the public upon project completion and replication datasets for individual articles have already been published.
Finally, DISINTEGRATION makes a contribution that is relevant from a societal and political standpoint. In light of serious concerns about the risks that current developments pose to international cooperation, DISINTEGRATION provides insights about the nature of this risk and the mechanisms by which it may spread, but also about how policymakers at both the domestic and the international level may contain these risks. For example, our work has important implications for the governments of the member states of international institutions facing unilateral withdrawals or renegotiation bids. We show that when negotiating new, post-disintegration arrangements they need to balance the lure of maintaining cooperation gains with the risk of encouraging further disintegration pressure by being too accommodating. This information will be of use to policymakers involved in disintegration negotiations, and could also guide wider strategies to better communicate to the public the benefits and costs involved in international cooperation.
DISINTEGRATION breaks new grounds conceptually by introducing the notion of voter-endorsed disintegration episodes for a set of processes that have so far mostly been treated as sui generis phenomena. It also innovates theoretically by generating a better understanding of the trade-offs and dilemmas that unilateral challenges to international organizations pose for international institutions. It does so by bridging strands of research that so far often exist in isolation from each other – such as research on Euroscepticism and international organizations– and thus contributes to theory-building relevant for both European Union and International Relations research.
DISINTEGRATION also makes important empirical contributions through large-scale data collection efforts that captures the dynamic evolution of public opinion, elite discourse, and negotiation positions in Europe and beyond in the face of growing popular opposition to international cooperation. Altogether, the project is on course of producing six datasets on the evolution of public opinion, domestic discourse, and the Brexit negotiations. Full datasets will be made available to the public upon project completion and replication datasets for individual articles have already been published.
Finally, DISINTEGRATION makes a contribution that is relevant from a societal and political standpoint. In light of serious concerns about the risks that current developments pose to international cooperation, DISINTEGRATION provides insights about the nature of this risk and the mechanisms by which it may spread, but also about how policymakers at both the domestic and the international level may contain these risks. For example, our work has important implications for the governments of the member states of international institutions facing unilateral withdrawals or renegotiation bids. We show that when negotiating new, post-disintegration arrangements they need to balance the lure of maintaining cooperation gains with the risk of encouraging further disintegration pressure by being too accommodating. This information will be of use to policymakers involved in disintegration negotiations, and could also guide wider strategies to better communicate to the public the benefits and costs involved in international cooperation.