Project description
Political parties and public opinion
Defining the relationship between public opinion and political parties remains a challenge for political scientists. One long-standing assumption is that political parties provide citizens the information they need to build policy opinions. However, this is contested by recent literature that suggests political parties contort citizens’ opinions and can transform them into dogmatic party defenders. The EU-funded PARTYOPINION project will develop a new research approach to understand how political parties influence citizens’ opinions. It will advance a new observation tool to map how citizens perceive what parties stand for and conduct innovative research across party systems to understand parties’ influence on individuals. The project will answer how current transformations of party systems affect citizens’ ability to participate meaningfully in democracy and if parties still play a role in that process.
Objective
Citizens opinions about public policy lies at the heart of democracy. A long-standing, but little researched, claim in political science is that political parties provide a vital informational basis that citizens can use to inform their policy opinions. However, current literature shows the opposite: Parties distort citizens decision-making and make them dogmatic defenders of their party without caring about policy substance. Therefore, we lack a theory of how or even if parties can provide policy information citizens use to inform their opinions.
This project advances a new research agenda to examine the informational role of political parties in citizens opinion formation. The project is not only pioneering in developing a novel theoretical model of when and how citizens use parties to inform their opinions; it also breaks new ground methodologically by combining experiments with a cross-national design. The project is unique in that it integrates macro-level party characteristics with micro-level opinion formation, helping scholars ask new questions and seek novel answers to how parties affect citizens opinions.
As key empirical contribution, the project will develop a new survey instrument to offer the first mapping of how citizens view parties policy reputations; develop and use new measures of citizens policy reasoning; conduct a series of innovative survey experiments across party systems to obtain generalizable causal estimates of when and how parties inform opinions across individuals, parties and countries in Western Europe; and implement a panel survey to track how parties inform opinions during a real-world debate.
The project will significantly improve our understanding the relationship between citizens and political parties. Timely and innovative, the project will answer how current transformations of party systems affect citizens ability to participate meaningfully in democracy, and if parties still play a role in that process.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences political sciences political policies public policies
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2019-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.