Publications
Journal Articles
Appeasement or Solidarity? Uncovering the Drivers of European Public Opinion on the War in Ukraine
with Alexandru D. Moise. European Union Politics, Forthcoming.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine and its implications for European security is a matter of grave concern. However, we understand relatively little about how European public opinion forms regarding potential escalation or de-escalation strategies in the conflict, a question with critical implications for policy-making and European unity. This paper investigates this issue, focusing specifically on the role of economic interest considerations, threat perception, and political orientation in shaping attitudes towards the conflict. We utilise an original 2-wave panel survey in five countries (Poland, Hungary, Italy, France, and Germany) to examine the relationship between these factors and public attitudes towards different policy options. Our analysis reveals that economic concerns, threat perception, right-wing ideology and strong national identity tend to drive support for de-escalation strategies. These findings shed light on the complex dynamics underpinning European public opinion on the Ukraine conflict. Moreover, they contribute to broader theoretical debates on the drivers of public opinion in international conflicts, highlighting the interplay of economic, psychological, and political factors.
What Happened to Putin’s Friends? The Radical Right’s Reaction to the Russian Invasion
with Argyrios Altiparmakis. European Union Politics, Forthcoming.
The Ukrainian crisis has significantly shifted public opinion against Russia and Putin, placing politicians with prior Russian ties in a precarious situation. This paper tracks how parties that had some affinity to Putin have pivoted after the outbreak of war. Through computational text analysis of a decade of Facebook posts from eleven European radical right parties, we investigate their stance evolution towards Russia and their strategic management of public sentiment and Russian relationships. The results show that most radical right parties, after the invasion, neither tried to remain pro-Russia nor focused their attention on shifting their prior position. Instead, they engaged in blurring the issue, diverting attention away from the war and using the events in Ukraine to assert their anti-EU positions.
Two Functionalist Logics of EU Polity Formation Under External Threat: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
with Alexandru D. Moise, Ioana-Elena Oana and Zbigniew Truchlewski. European Union Politics, Forthcoming.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine challenged the EU polity exceptionally, affecting many policy domains. We argue that the external threat triggers different logics of (in)security which can result in polity formation across policies. Two functionalist logics put pressure on the EU to centralize policies that 1) help it meet the geopolitical challenge set by Russia and 2) maintain unity among member states in the face of the challenge. We test this theory with a conjoint survey experiment in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Hungary, where we vary refugee, energy, costs of living, and defence policies. Our results show that there is strong solidarity for sharing the costs of refugees, which cuts across ideological and identitarian groups, and across countries. Other policy areas show more contentious support.
The COVID-19 Lockdown Paradox: Democratic Support during Democratic Restrictions
with Ioana-Elena Oana and Abel Bojar. European Political Science Review, Online First.
Previous research has shown that positive perceptions of government performance are linked to higher levels of citizens’ support for democracy. However, the policy response to the COVID-19 crisis presented a unique paradox as relative success in preventing the virus spread depended on expanding executive powers, often at the cost of individual freedoms. Exploring this paradox, we investigate whether the link between perceptions of government performance and support for democracy holds in a situation where positive performance essentially means a restriction of freedoms. Using original survey data from seven European countries, we show that notwithstanding the democratic sacrifices, people with positive evaluations of the government’s response are more likely to maintain support for the democratic system. Nevertheless, people weighed responses to the health domain more heavily than to the economic domain, suggesting that the output legitimacy – democratic support link varies across domain-specific evaluations.
The Short-lived Hope for Contagion: Brexit in Social Media Communication of the Populist Right
with Joan Miró and Argyrios Altiparmakis. West European Politics, Vol. 47, Iss. 5, 2024, pp. 1097-1120.
Brexit was perceived as a Pandora’s box moment by both Eurosceptic and pro-integration parties in the EU, as they expected it would embolden Euroscepticism by providing a paradigm to be followed. The protracted negotiations between the UK government and the EU could have provided a platform for extended campaigns by Eurosceptic parties. This article explores the initial reactions of nine Populist Radical Right parties to Brexit and how they evolved in tandem with the unfolding of negotiations. It also discusses possible reasons for the differentiation in the responses of those parties, from triumphant to moderated reactions. Our empirical basis is a dataset that contains the public communications of these parties on Twitter between 2015 and 2020. The results show that, although there was initial differentiation with some parties calling for referenda in their own countries, by 2017 every party’s communications on Brexit drastically decreased, and by the time the UK left the EU (January 2020), calls for secession had disappeared from their discourse.
A Unified Autonomous Europe? Public Opinion on EU’s Foreign and Security Policy
with Alexandru D. Moise. Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 30, Iss. 8, 2023, pp. 1679-1698.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU into a new phase where both the political elites and the public start to rethink its foreign and security policies. This paper uses a unique survey in seven European countries in the wake of the war to examine European public opinion on how the EU’s foreign and security policies should be made and how autonomous they should be. We find that Europeans not only favour increasing military capacity at the national or NATO level but also prefer increasing military capacity at the EU level, though to a lesser degree. We also show that perceptions of both short-term and long-term threats, European identification and mainstream left-wing ideology lead Europeans to favour a more militarily powerful, unified and autonomous EU.
Emergency Politics, Mass Sentiment and the EU during COVID
with Ioana-Elena Oana, Zbigniew Truchlewski and Abel Bojar. Comparative European Politics, Vol. 21, Iss. 4, 2023, pp. 491–514.
During crises, do emergency politics impair the EU polity by alienating Europeans? Recent literature suggests that executive decisions in hard times can spur negative European sentiment, increase polarisation in the public and thus create more problems than solutions. The Covid-19 pandemic offers an ideal opportunity to study this important issue. However, studying mass sentiment towards the EU is mostly constrained by imperfect survey data. We tackle this challenge with an empirical strategy that combines two original data sources: first, we use policy process analysis to identify key EU decisions; second, we leverage Twitter data to measure sentiment. As a result, we can study whether key EU decisions impacted EU sentiment and whether this impact is conditional on the level of EU competence, prior politicisation and problem pressure. We find that EU decisions impact EU sentiment positively and do not polarise it (even among highly politicised decisions). Low prior politicisation and healthcare-related decisions increase the positive impact of EU actions. There is thus no punishment of the EU for acting outside its remit. Our findings have important implications for the politics of polity maintenance in the EU.
The Effect of Austerity Packages on Government Popularity during the Great Recession
with Abel Bojar Björn Bremer and Hanspeter Kriesi. British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, Iss. 1, 2022, pp. 181-199.
During the Great Recession, governments across the continent implemented austerity policies. A large literature claims that such policies are surprisingly popular and have few electoral costs. This article revisits this question by studying the popularity of governments during the economic crisis. The authors assemble a pooled time-series data set for monthly support for ruling parties from fifteen European countries and treat austerity packages as intervention variables to the underlying popularity series. Using time-series analysis, this permits the careful tracking of the impact of austerity packages over time. The main empirical contributions are twofold. First, the study shows that, on average, austerity packages hurt incumbent parties in opinion polls. Secondly, it demonstrates that the magnitude of this electoral punishment is contingent on the economic and political context: in instances of rising unemployment, the involvement of external creditors and high protest intensity, the cumulative impact of austerity on government popularity becomes considerable.
A Cure Worse than the Disease? Exploring the Health-Economy Trade-Off during COVID-19
with Ioana-Elena Oana and Alessandro Pellegata. West European Politics, Vol. 44, Iss. 5-6, 2021, pp. 1232-1257.
Nationwide lockdowns implemented by governments to confront the COVID-19 pandemic came at a high economic price. The article investigates citizens’ evaluation of the trade-off between public health measures and their economic consequences. Using a vignette experiment conducted in June 2020 on 7,500 respondents in seven European countries the article tests whether perceived threats of the health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic affect citizens’ preferences for strict or mild lockdown measures. Findings show that European citizens tend to prefer strict measures protecting public health despite their damage to the economy. Even individuals more concerned about the pandemic’s economic impact do not prefer milder restrictions. Sociodemographic factors only indirectly affect public preferences, through perceived threats. Additionally, findings show that trust in experts and political orientations matter. These results resonate with previous research showing that public opinion in hard times is likely to be guided by risk perceptions and subjective attitudes.
Special Issues & Chapters
Division and Unity: Public and Party Perspectives on EU Integration under External Threat
Guest Editor with Alexandru D. Moise. European Union Politics, Forthcoming.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has reshaped European politics, prompting the EU to take indirect actions such as aiding Ukraine, accepting refugees, and imposing sanctions on Russia. This special section explores the implications of these events on European unity. Will the war highlight divisions among countries and ideological groups, as “postfunctionalists” would predict? Or will the external threat, in line with the “bellicist logic”, and EU solidarity, in line with the “polity formation” literature, foster increased EU policy coordination and centralization? The contributions assess the war’s impact on the supply (political parties) and demand (public opinion) sides of the politics of European integration. The articles show moderate support for the “bellicist” mechanisms of threat and consensus. They also find solidarity and unity for refugee and energy policy, with greater ideological and country divisions over economic policy, defence policy, and appeasement strategies towards Russia.
EU Polity Building after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Guest Editor with Alexandru D. Moise, Marcello Natili, Ioana-Elena Oana, Zbigniew Truchlewski and Francesco Visconti. Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 30, Iss. 8, 2023.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has posed unprecedented challenges for the European Union (EU) across several policy domains, activating two key logics of polity formation: external security and social security. The external security logic, driven by the ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect, suggests that war threats could foster EU unity and centralisation in defence and foreign policy, traditionally outside the EU’s competence. Recent scholarship debates whether this could lead to a ‘Tillian moment’, with implications for collective EU capacities in areas like military aid and sanctions. Conversely, the social security logic addresses internal challenges from dwindling energy resources, higher prices, and distributional conflicts, which may escalate demands for risk sharing and social safety among EU citizens. This approach aims to maintain citizen loyalty amidst the invasion’s economic impacts but may create policy inconsistencies and exacerbate trade-offs with ongoing crises like climate change. This symposium explores these logics through empirical studies and common questions, assessing political divisions within and between member states. It investigates whether the invasion has increased public demand for supranational interventions, fostering polity building, or heightened divisions. Initial unity over sanctions against Russia has given way to emerging fractures as the invasion’s costs become clearer.
Economic Grievances, Political Grievances, and Protest
with Hanspeter Kriesi, Thomas Kurer and Silja Häusermann. in Contention in Times of Crisis: Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries, Cambridge University Press, 2020, Chapter 15, pp. 149-183
The chapter establishes that economic and political grievances matter for economic protest in general and public economic protest in particular. In addition, it shows that, during the period covered, political grievances have been strongly influenced by economic grievances across Europe, but most clearly in southern Europe. While the rapid recovery of the countries of north-western Europe and the pain tolerance in the countries of central and eastern Europe probably served to limit the impact of the economic grievances on political dissatisfaction, the fact that the southern European countries not only were hard hit by the economic crisis, but also experienced a relative decline with regard to the other parts of Europe, most likely enhanced the impact of economic on political grievances in this part of Europe. Moreover, it is also above all in southern Europe that the effect of economic on political grievances was conditioned by state capacity and IMF interventions: while weak state capacity enhanced the effect of the former on the latter, IMF interventions attenuated it. Finally, a core finding of this chapter is that economic protest was most heavily influenced by the joint effect of economic and political grievances. Protest mobilization was particularly pronounced whenever dire economic conditions and dissatisfaction with the political system rose together and reinforced each other.
Working Papers
All papers that are not online are currently under revision and available upon request. Please email me at chendi.wang[at]vu.nl.
The Streets Speak: Unravelling the Impact of Austerity Packages on Public Protests during the the Great Recession
Under Review
This paper examines the impact of austerity policy announcements on protest mobilisation in 16 European countries during the Great Recession. It argues that austerity policies politicised grievances and enabled blame attribution, while institutional constraints and protest fatigue dampened reactions to later policies. Using monthly protest event data and systematically coded austerity policy announcements, the study utilises an interrupted time series design to analyse austerity announcements as shocks to protest levels. The findings indicate that earlier austerity announcements significantly increased economic protest levels, while later announcements had no effect or even decreased protest. Furthermore, the impact of austerity on protest was conditioned by economic and political contexts. Austerity had a larger effect when accompanied by rising unemployment, worsening household finances, external actor involvement, and higher prior protest levels. The study contributes to understanding varied public reactions to austerity and the dynamics between economic crisis, government policies, and contentious politics.
Austerity Measures and Political Backlash: Protest, Election, and Fiscal Policy Dynamics Across Europe
Under Review
A body of literature claims that austerity policies are surprisingly popular and have little political costs. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics in electoral and protest arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic issues. This paper argues that the joint consideration of these two arenas provides new insights into the political consequences of austerity policies. The empirical analysis to study political consequence of austerity relies on an original protest event data-set combined with electoral outcomes and detailed taxation and expenditure data in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The results of this paper show that citizens are not entirely fiscally conservative but ideologically conflicted. They dislike large deficits and government debt, but they also resist austerity and punish the government, either at polls or in the streets or both, depending on the composition of austerity packages and the party colour of the incumbents. Additionally, when taking into account the interaction dynamics between protest and electoral politics, this chapter shows that the electoral impact of consolidation measures is amplified by protest in the streets in Europe.
The Political Dynamics of Contentious Policymaking
Under Review
What is the political dynamics of contention policymaking? This paper zooms in on the interactions between the governments and their challengers in reaction to contentious policy-making process and tests the impact of contention on government popularity and vice versa empirically. With data on actions in 60 contentious policymaking episodes in twelve European countries during the Great Recession, the panel vector autoregression analysis reveals that the relationship of contentious interactions between actors and government popularity is not uni-directional but endogenous, and each plays a critical and interdependent role in the system in shaping the dynamics of the contentious policy-making process.The findings show that government repression tended to increase challenger radicalisation, supporting a “threat” theory of repression, while challenger radicalism also led to heightened government repression. Challenger radicalism decreased government popularity as expected, while government repression increased popularity, indicating a public preference for “consistency.” Government popularity then reinforced government repression but also increased challenger radicalisation, as popular governments attracted more opposition.
Electoral Politics in Extraordinary Times: The Effects of Policy Assessments and Trust in Government on Electoral Change during the COVID-19 Crisis
with Hanspeter Kriesi and Elie Michel. Under Review
Based on a five-wave panel survey in eleven countries during the Covid-19 crisis, we study the effects of policy assessments (satisfaction with the way the government handled the crisis) and trust in government on vote intentions. For the analysis, we rely on well-known concepts from theories on economic voting and political support. The results indicate that both policy assessments and trust in government had massive effects on vote intentions during the Covid-19 crisis. Contrasting with previous results, we do not find a negativity bias of voters during the pandemic. Our results also show that voters perceived the Covid-19 through their partisan perceptual screen (retrospective vote choice and partisan identification), which largely influenced their vote intentions. We conclude that the Covid-19 crisis did not disrupt electoral politics but that voters specific and diffuse support for the government shaped the fate of incumbent governments.
Drivers and Consequences of Protest Mobilisation in European Crises
with Ioana-Elena Oana, Hanspeter Kriesi and Argyrios Altiparmakis. Under Review
Protest activities have long been regarded as important for expressing grievances and achieving goals in democracies. This paper tackles the questions of why and how people mobilise and investigates the consequences of such mobilisation by engaging with the major theories of social movement mobilization and applying them to three major crises (Eurozone, Refugee, and COVID) that have hit European Member States and the EU. Using an original protest event dataset integrated with data on public opinion and supply-side salience spanning the period 2008-2021 in eight countries, we attempt to examine the relationship between the crisis-specific problem pressures, political pressures coming from public opinion, supply-side dynamics, and the nature and extent of political protest. By integrating demand-side indicators in terms of crisis-specific issue salience and supply-side indicators in terms of salience of crisis-specific issues among the elites we aim to analyse the drivers and consequences of protest under the same empirical umbrella. In terms of drivers, we examine the protest activation potential of the crises by looking at how the extent of protest responds to crisis-specific problem pressures resulting in higher grievances and to its wider political context regarding the salience of crisis-specific issues among publics. We show that protest is strongly reactive to crisis-specific problem and political pressures. Heightened problem pressure in terms of economic hardship, refugee arrivals, and covid pressure all increase crisis-specific protest in the same month. With regard to political pressure, the salience of crisis-specific issues in the public also drives protest related to these crises. In terms of consequences, we attempt to gauge the extent to which protest can be a driver of heightened salience of crisis-specific issues on the supply side, but also of government approval. Our results show that protest has an agenda-setting effect on the elites and influences government approval rates in particular crises.
A New Bayesian Scaling Approach to Party Position and Issue Salience
with Haoyu Zhai.
In this paper we develop a new Bayesian scaling method for estimating party policy preferences (position and salience) from the popular Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) data. Our method uses a Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach that integrates theory-driven model specification with data-driven parameter estimation, to achieve meaningful and flexible measure construction from the entire CMP dataset. In particular, it (1) takes more appropriate distributional assumptions about observed data, (2) incorporates multiple levels of information (party, election, and country) into the model, and (3) estimates the full set of parameters at the same time, that improves upon the quality, generalisability, and efficiency of the resulting measures. Our method also allows for scale decomposition at different levels of analysis as well as uncertainty quantification through built-in procedure. Compared to existing measures using the CMP data, our new scales are shown to have superior performances in capturing parties’ latent strategic preferences across countries and electoral contests. Beyond the CMP data, our method can also be readily applied to other types of pre-processed text data for latent feature recovery and measure construction.
The Impact of Issue-Specific Electoral Campaigns on the Vote Choice of Europeans
with Hanspeter Kriesi and Argyrios Altiparmakis.
We study the effect of issue-specific electoral campaigns on the vote. To this end, we adopt a structural approach and rely on a combination of European Social Survey (ESS) data (for the demand side) and electoral campaign data (for the supply side) and test our hypotheses using a Bayesian hierarchical model. We confirm that party identities together with block identities and issue-specific predispositions stabilize the vote choice, independently of electoral campaigns. Within the constraints imposed by these stabilising forces, we identify new kinds of effects of electoral campaigns – polarisation, salience and distinctiveness effects. Systemic polarisation during campaigns weakens the dominant parties of the past, while it reinforces the new parties representing the emerging structural conflict, and the liberals. With respect to the campaigning of individual parties, we find only very limited or even counter-productive effects for the parties on the left, while the campaigns of the parties on the right appear more effective – especially the campaigns of the liberals and the radical right.
Too Fragile to Succeed? Electoral Strength, Austerity and Economic Confidence
with Thomas Sattler and Federico Maria Ferrara
In the wake of the Great Recession, European governments implemented harsh fiscal austerity measures to restore economic confidence Yet, the economic success of these policies varied significantly. This raises the question of whether and under what conditions austerity is an effective policy strategy to restore economic stability. This study shows that the impact of austerity on economic confidence is conditioned by an important political factor, namely the electoral strength of the government. Our macro-level time series analysis tracks the impact of austerity announcements on economic confidence over time in 15 European countries during the Great Recession, showing that austerity leads to a decrease in economic confidence However, the negative impact is substantially smaller when austerity is announced by an electorally strong government vis-à-vis a fragile one. Our individual-level survey experiment with a total of 7,500 respondents in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain indicates that the negative effects of spending cuts on both pocketbook and sociotropic concerns are particularly pronounced when austerity policies are announced by governments that are losing electoral support. Austerity, therefore, is perceived as more credible and effective when carried out by electorally strong governments compared to weak ones.
Electoral Campaign Effects: An Aggregate Analysis
with Hanspeter Kriesi and Argyrios Altiparmakis. Under Review
This study examines the impact of electoral campaigns on voting behaviour across 15 European countries from 1988 to 2023, encompassing 684 parties in 113 elections. While existing literature, particularly in the American context, often highlights the minimal effects of campaigns on voter choice, our analysis investigates the European context, focusing on issue-specific strategies. We explore four main strategies: salience, politicization, ambivalence, and moderation, and their effects on electoral outcomes. The findings reveal that campaigns primarily reinforce pre-existing voter intentions and mobilize party supporters. However, issue-specific campaigns show varying degrees of impact depending on the party’s ideological position and contextual factors such as economic crises and public issue salience. Mainstream parties tend to benefit from ambivalence and moderation, whereas challenger parties often gain from politicizing specific issues. This study underscores the complexity of campaign effects, influenced by historical legacies, contemporary electoral configurations, and exogenous shocks. Our results contribute to the understanding of how electoral strategies shape political outcomes in multiparty systems, highlighting the constrained yet significant role of campaigns in European elections.
How Europeans View Democracy at the European Level
with Hanspeter Kriesi and Ben Crum
The European Union has long been critiqued for its “democratic deficit,” with debates often focusing on institutional design and technocratic policymaking. However, less attention has been given to the citizens’ perspectives on democracy at the EU level. This study explores how European citizens view and evaluate democracy in the EU, using data collected across 16 member states during the 2024 European Parliament election. Drawing on the literature of democratic models and civic culture, we distinguish between citizens’ democratic expectations and their evaluations of democracy, developing a typology of democrats ranging from assertive to delegative. The study further examines the role of factors such as knowledge about European integration, trust in EU institutions, and perceptions of democratic responsiveness in shaping these views. Our findings suggest that while a majority of Europeans are satisfied with EU democracy, a substantial proportion lack clear opinions, and a sizeable minority are disaffected democrats who express dissatisfaction without a desire for greater democratisation. We find that pro-European citizens are more likely to demand greater democracy and express higher satisfaction with EU democracy, particularly when they possess greater knowledge about EU institutions. Trust in the European Parliament significantly boosts both satisfaction with and demand for EU democracy, while feeling represented primarily enhances satisfaction. Interestingly, Eurosceptics are just as likely to hold opinions about EU democracy as pro-Europeans, revealing broader engagement with the topic than expected. These results highlight the complexity of democratic attitudes within the EU and underscore the importance of knowledge, institutional trust, and national political context in shaping citizens’ views of EU democracy.
Political Trust and Fiscal Reliance under Authoritarian Context
This paper looks at how regional fiscal self-reliance is associated with political trust of citizens under authoritarian context. Exiting literature finds that there exists a positive relationship between fiscal decentralisation and trust in government, following the argument of governments’ improved responsiveness to preferences of citizens once they decentralised fiscal systems. Even though fiscally decentralised system has been preferred by many government when implementing reform, the superiority of decentralisation is also challenged, especially concerning the democratic premises on which decentralisation theory based. When these preconditions cannot be met in non-democratic regimes, fiscal decentralisation does not necessarily come with glad tidings. Using provincial fiscal data and individual-level survey data from mainland China, this paper finds that there exist a negative relationship between regional fiscal self-reliance and trust in central government.
Work in Progress
Substantive
Fiscal Preference after the Pandemic: A Conjoint Experiment
Pre-registered on EGAP.
The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic presents economic challenges that governments must address to prevent prolonged recession. Beyond monetary policies, effective fiscal strategies are crucial. As governments deploy vast fiscal stimulus packages, resulting in significant deficits and surging debt, the question arises: how will these be financed? Recalling the Great Recession, governments turned to austerity measures post-bailouts, facing public opposition. Fiscal policies will be pivotal in post-pandemic governance, making it essential to understand citizens’ perspectives on these policies. Using a conjoint experiment fielded during the pandemic in the UK, Italy, Austria and New Zealand, I aim to examine citizens’ preference in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents are asked which policy package they would like the government to adopt after the pandemic. The policy package covers six policy domains - (i) budget deficit; three taxation arrangements - (ii) income tax rate for high income earners, (iii) income tax rate for average income earners, and (iv) green tax; and two expenditure arrangements - (v) public health spending, and (vi) spending on unemployment benefits and social assistance. I measure respondents’ within-domain preference, as well as the trade-off across different issue domains. In addition, I also check heterogeneity in fiscal preference of the public and assess the influence of political ideology, party cueing and other contextual factors.
Buried in Public Debt: Europeans’ Concern over Public Debt during the Pandemic
The COVID-19 crisis has demanded governments to implement huge stimulus packages to get back on track. To finance this, governments need to run deficits on a large scale, which will increase government debt dramatically. This paper intends to analyse the determinants of the Europeans’ perception towards the increase of public debt as a result of the lockdown during the COVID-19 crisis. I particularly focus on the influence of trust in government, satisfaction with government, partisanship/ideology and authoritarian-technocracy orientation on the concern over public debt. To examine these relationships, I fielded a comparative survey fielded during the first wave of the pandemic in seven European countries.
The Austerity Persuasion: How Different Explanations Impact Public Acceptance and Party Fortune
This study aims to investigate the causal effect of different explanations provided by political parties when advocating for austerity on public attitudes towards austerity and public support for the party. Existing literature lacks a convincing demonstration of such causal effects. The study employs a two-step approach, with the first step focusing on aggregate-level observational data during the European sovereign debt crisis and the second step involving a survey experiment, specifically a vignette experiment analysing citizens’ preferences towards various aspects of austerity policy in European countries. It will assess how different justifications and excuses for austerity measures affect public support and the potential moderating effects of proposing party, severity of measures, and economic context. Using aggregate-level analysis, the study identifies patterns of explanations for austerity and examines the impact of these explanations on aggregate level public opinion. Individual-level analysis, on the other hand, analyses the preferences of respondents towards policy decisions, party opinions, and satisfaction with explanations.
Simply Running out of Money? Natural Resource Price Shock and Tax Introduction
with Youssef Mnaili
The development of fiscal capacity is crucial for state building, with taxation serving as the cornerstone of this process. While previous research has focused on a limited number of factors - such as war, democratisation, and socio-economic modernisation - to explain the evolution of revenue instruments, we seek to complement the existing strands of research on tax innovation by focusing on the relationship between tax introductions and a specific type of fiscal shock, natural resource price change in the international market, as commodity price shocks constitute a potential critical juncture where rentier governments have to tap into alternative sources of revenues. To do so, we combine global data on tax introductions and real commodity prices dating back to the 1800s. Using event history analysis and case studies, we empirically test how natural resource price shock affect the introduction of different types of taxes. Moreover, we also examine how the effects of price change on tax introductions are conditioned by regime types and global ideological alliances.
Episodes of Urgency: Politicisation Dynamics in the EU’s Refugee Crisis Management
This paper investigates the dynamics of politicisation in the Eu’s response to the refugee crisis, focusing on both EU-level and national-level responses. Using a dataset that allows for Policy Process Analysis (PPA), the study examines key policy episodes from 2015-2019 and explores how varying levels of problem pressure and political pressure influenced politicisation across different phases of the crisis. The analysis reveals that both crisis-specific factors and the institutional context of the EU polity shaped the degree of politicization, highlighting the asymmetric impacts on frontline and destination states. EU initiatives often faced the challenges of divergent national interests, while national responses varied widely, reflecting domestic political landscapes and public opinion dynamics. The study also finds that politicization fluctuated across different crisis phases. This research contributes to understanding EU governance under crisis conditions by detailing the mechanisms of politicisation and the complex interplay between different levels of governance.
Unravelling the Complex Web of Conflict: Disentangling Conflict Structures in EU Crisis Policymaking through Network
This study aims to understand the strategic interplay of international, national, and transnational conflict structures during crisis times in the EU. It aims to elucidate these dynamics by first formalising the strategic behaviour of key actors and derive key propositions regarding actors’ decisions and policy outcomes during major crises. To empirically test these propositions, I leverage a dataset which offers detailed relational measures of actor interactions during major crises and employing network models to analyse the endogenous effect of each actor’s strategic moves on all other actors in the system, both directly and indirectly, accounting for the complex dynamics driven by the interplay of conflict structures. This study sheds light on the complex, endogenous dynamics shaping the EU’s policy-making process during crises.
Daily Battles: Dissecting the Impact of Campaigns on Vote Intention
with Evelyne Brie
Elections are pivotal in democracies, and discerning factors influencing voting is essential. This study examines if and how electoral campaigns sway vote choices, focusing on the 2017 German federal elections. By integrating the POLDEM National Election Campaigns (COSA) Dataset and the Wahl Navi electoral compass, we utilise time-series regression models in the ARFIMA-MLM framework, leveraging the repeated cross-section design of the electoral compass and the COSA dataset’s temporal detail, to track daily vote intention shifts. We assess the prominence of issues and party stances as predictors of daily vote preferences. We expect campaigns have varied effects across regions and party groups, emphasising the complexities of electoral dynamics. These insights are crucial for party strategies, underscoring the importance of understanding regional and party-specific campaign impacts. This study contributes to debates on campaign effectiveness, issue versus partisan voting, and the interplay of short-term campaign dynamics with long-term voter influences.
Print and Post: Comparing Political Campaign in Traditional and Social Media
with Ofra Klein
This study delves into the dynamics of political communication, examining issue emphasis and conflict representation across traditional mass media and social media platforms. It scrutinises political parties’ campaign strategies in five European countries (Germany, France, UK, Poland, and Italy) from 2010 to 2022, aiming to discern differences in issue-specific campaigning between these two media environments. The research further explores the prevalence and nature of negative campaigning, particularly parties’ targeting of other parties and individuals. By comparing the incidence of such strategies in traditional and social media, the study highlights potential variations in the conduct and manifestation of negative campaigning across diverse media contexts. Empirical evidence is garnered from the election campaigns dataset for newspaper coverage analysis. To dissect social media data, we employ machine learning to classify the issue, target, and stance towards the target and issue in social media posts. We aim to illuminate the complexities of issue representation and negative campaigning within and across media types, enriching our understanding of contemporary political communication practices.
Interconnected Battlegrounds: A Multilevel Network Approach to Party Conflicts
How to better account for endogenous influence between parties in strategic multidimensional issue competition? Leveraging detailed relational data of party interaction with one another and concerning policy issues, we in this study propose a multilevel network approach to analysing electoral dynamics within the party system. Specifically, we conceptualise the electoral space of multiparty issue competition as a two-level network, wherein the parties constitute one layer of vertices and the issues the other layer, and in which directed ties are used to represent inter-party conflicts both directly with each other and indirectly over shared issues. We employ multilevel exponential random graphs models (MERGMs) to study the endogenous effect of each party’s strategic moves on all the other parties in the system, both directly and indirectly. With model results for every election in each country, we aim to show that this two-layer modelling approach aptly captures the complex, endogenous dynamics shaping party issue competition, predominantly arising within the party system itself. These endogenous effects of having shared ties in certain issues also exhibit a notable intensification in the immediate aftermath of different crises that slowly dissipates overtime, suggesting a short-term as well as long-term effect of the events on European party politics.
Friends and Foes: European Public Opinion of Major World Powers
with Alexandru D. Moise
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed Europe into a new phase where both the political elites and the public start to rethink its geopolitical future. How to deal with the major powers in the World? Which major powers can be trusted? And which are the potential threats in the long run? European governments might have a more or less unified stance regarding Russian regional territorial incursions and China’s increasing assertiveness on the global stage. It is less clear whether the European public has similar beliefs in which powers to trust and which pose long-term threats. And it is equally unclear what factors influence these opinions. Therefore, this paper aims to examine European public opinion of major powers, namely the US, Russia and China. Utilising an original panel survey in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Finland and Portugal, this paper first describes public opinion on trust in and perceived threat from major powers at the national level. Second, this paper aims to identify the factors that influence public opinion on these issues at the individual level. Four sets of factors have been emphasised: (a) threat perception of the current Russian invasion, (b) democratic support and authoritarian attitudes, (c) their conceptualisation of what the EU stands for, and d) ideology.
Public Opinion in Multi-Level Governance: Understanding the Role of Clarity of Responsibility
with Hongyi She
This study examines how citizens’ understanding of and opinions on the European Union are shaped by information about the distribution of competences between the EU and member states. Using a survey experiment in 16 European countries, we manipulate both the level of EU competence in different policy domains and the provision of information about the division of competences between the EU and national governments. We argue that providing this information will increase the accuracy of responsibility attributions, with effects moderated by the level of politicization in policy areas, asymmetries in how policy areas affect member states, a country’s level of integration, and individual characteristics such as political knowledge, party affiliation, attitudes toward the EU, and perceptions of the relative performance of the EU compared to national governments. Specifically, we expect stronger effects in less politicized policy areas, in policy areas that affect member states asymmetrically, in member states with a lower degree of integration, and among respondents with moderate initial political knowledge, moderate attitudes, weaker loyalties to nationalist-conservative parties, or favourable views of the EU’s performance relative to their national government. The study also examines how updated beliefs about EU competences influence support for further integration. By manipulating both policy areas and information provision, our experimental design allows for causal identification of how variations in EU competence, political context, and individual perceptions affect public understanding of and support for European integration. The findings will provide insights into the micro-foundations of EU attitudes and offer strategies for bridging the gap between citizens and EU institutions.
The Balance of Power: Exploring EU Competence through Party and Citizen Perspectives
This study, set against the backdrop of the 2024 European Parliament elections, explores how political parties and citizens perceive and prefer the EU’s competence across various policy areas. By examining public opinion and party positions on EU competence—exclusive, shared, and supporting/coordinating—across critical policy domains, we aim to uncover insights into the desired balance of power between the EU and its member states. We utilise data from the 2024 EP election survey conducted across 16 countries and party-level data from the Voting Advice Application (VAA). The EU’s competence in different policy areas significantly influences public sentiment and political party strategies. This paper investigates key policy areas to understand broader implications of these preferences. It examines exclusive competences such as monetary policy, shared competences like security and defence, asylum and immigration, environmental policy, and fiscal policy, as well as supporting/coordinating competences including rule of law and institutional powers. Grounded in public opinion data from the EP election survey and party-level data from the VAA, this analysis offers insights into the alignment and divergence in preferences regarding EU competence. Understanding these preferences is crucial for reflecting deeper attitudes towards the balance of power within the EU and its member states, contributing to ongoing debates on EU governance.
Political Methodology
Non-stationarity and Fractional Integration in Panel Setting? Panel State-Space Approach and Bayesian Hierarchal Approach Compared
Comparativists frequently use time-series cross-section (TSCS) and panel data to account for temporal variation. A common issue in dynamic models, the heterogeneity in cross-sectional unit dynamic structures and non-stationarity of some units, poses challenges in inference. In this study, I conduct a comprehensive analysis comparing the efficacy of panel state-space models and Bayesian hierarchical models in applied political science research. This study, aiming to addresses the challenge of modelling heterogeneity in unit dynamics in time-series cross-section data, tries to (1) provide a rigorous comparison of these two modelling approaches in handling non-stationarity and unobserved heterogeneity, (2) assess their performance in accurately estimating the effects of interest, and (3) establish best practices for applied political science research when dealing with heterogeneity of unit dynamics. The project employs Monte Carlo experiment to evaluate the models under various scenarios relevant to political science, such as different types of non-stationarity, levels of heterogeneity, and sizes of T and N.
European Values in Flux: A Bayesian Latent Variable Approach
This study focuses on measuring European values of the European public. I employ a Bayesian latent variable approach to capture the dynamic and multidimensional nature of European values. This project leverages data from various surveys to estimate latent traits capturing fundamental European values. The Bayesian latent variable model allows for the nuanced examination of these values, providing a detailed picture of the range of European values in the population. Crucially, the model incorporates a time dimension, enabling the exploration of how these latent European Values evolve over time. The results of this research will provide valuable insights into the structure, dynamics, and temporal evolution of European values, contributing to our understanding of the complex landscape of political attitudes in Europe.
Regularisation vs. Bayesian Shrinkage in VAR: Applications in Political Science
This study compares regularisation and Bayesian approaches in the context of Vector Autoregression (VAR) models, with a specific focus on applications in political science. The study will first delve into the intricacies of these methodologies, exploring how they address the pervasive issue of overfitting in VAR models. The comparison will consider less predictive accuracy but will emphasise more the stability, interpretability, and credibility of parameter estimates, aligning with the inferential objectives of empirical social science research. Further investigation will be on the sensitivity of these methods to model assumptions and their performance under varying conditions, such as different sample sizes and numbers of endogenous variables. By applying these methods to real-world political data, the study aims to provide practical insights into their utility for understanding complex political dynamics.
Share on Share: A Combined Framework for Analysing Political Compositional Data
Focusing on compositional data which is widely used in political science research, this paper focuses on a novel methodological approach to analysing compositional data. This study introduces a combined framework of Dirichlet regression and Bayesian hierarchical linear log-contrast models to handle both compositional predictors and outcomes. This approach allows for the nuanced examination of complex political phenomena, such as the impact of budget allocations, demographic composition (compositional predictors) on election results (compositional outcome). The hierarchical component of the model captures the inherent group-level variation providing a more accurate representation of real-world political structures.
Piecing Together Political Dynamics: Compositional Data in Dynamic Setting
Political competition is inherently dynamic and often involves trade-offs across multiple categories. However, current empirical models often oversimplify these dynamics, focusing on trade-offs between one category and everything else. This study proposes a novel research strategy that addresses these limitations by introducing a Bayesian Hierarchical State Space Model for analysing dynamic compositional variables. This approach not only considers compositional dependent variables in a dynamic context but also compositional independent variables. By combining elements of Dirichlet regression and log-ratio transformations, this model allows for a nuanced examination of how a compositional predictor, e.g. media coverage, affects a compositional outcome, e.g. vote intention, over time.
ARFIMA-MLM Approach to the Repeated Cross-Sectional Design with Binary Outcome
Repeated cross-sectional (RCS) designs and binary outcomes (e.g. vote choice) are commonplace in political science research, yet the methodological approach to analysing such data in RCS designs remains underdeveloped. In this study, I proposes an extension of the Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average-Multilevel Model (ARFIMA-MLM) to accommodate binary outcomes. The ARFIMA-MLM approach, originally developed for continuous outcomes, is adapted to handle the unique challenges posed by binary outcomes. The first step involves applying ARFIMA to the aggregated series created from a binary outcome, addressing the issue of autocorrelation. The second step involves individual-level filtering of the binary outcome, transforming it into a continuous variable that retains the essential information about the binary outcome. The final step use MLM to model transformed binary outcome. The utility of this novel approach is demonstrated through Monte Carlo experiments comparing different modelling approaches and applied examples, highlighting its potential advantages in terms of interpretability and robustness to model assumptions. This research contributes to the methodological toolkit for political science research, offering a new way to analyse binary outcomes in RCS designs.
Bridging Temporal Divides: Applying Mixed Data Sampling Models in Political Science Research
It is commonplace in political science to encounter variables of interest that are recorded at disparate temporal frequencies. For instance, public opinion polls may be conducted daily, while social media activity are observed at shorter intervals. This mismatch in frequencies poses methodological challenges that traditional approaches often fail to adequately address. To tackle this, this study proposes the application of Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) models. MIDAS models offer a sophisticated solution, enabling the use of high-frequency data without resorting to simplistic temporal aggregation, thereby preserving valuable information that can enhance the accuracy of estimates and inferences. The flexibility of MIDAS models allows for the capturing of dynamic relationships between variables, an aspect often overlooked in conventional methods. By applying MIDAS models to real-world political science questions, this study aims to highlight the potential advantages of MIDAS in terms of flexibility and robustness in inference.
Finding Lorelei: Identifying Protest Cycle in Protest Event Time Series
with Amir Abdul Reda
Political scientists have long recognised the cyclical nature of certain political outcomes, yet a comprehensive methodological approach to understanding these cycles, especially in the context of protests, remains elusive. This study revisits Charles Tilly’s concept of “cycles of contentious action” and delves into the intricacies of protest cycles, emphasising their non-periodic nature. Drawing from a rich tapestry of prior research, this paper underscores the significance of cyclicality in contentious actions and the methodological gaps in accounting for it. To bridge this gap, we introduce novel mathematical expressions to measure protest cycles and their dynamics. Two key time-dependent measures, the Cyclical Severity Indicator (CSI) and the Cyclical Positionality Indicator (CPI), are proposed to quantify the intensity and temporal position of a protest cycle, respectively. Furthermore, this study differentiates between post-hoc and real-time measurements of the CPI, offering insights for both retrospective analysis and real-time policy-making.
Knowledge Graphs and Explainable Predictive Models for Electoral Politics
with Jieying Chen, Benno Kruit and David Tena-Cucala
This study leverages explainable machine learning (ML) methods, particularly monotonic graph neural networks (MGNNs), to analyse large datasets describing media coverage of election campaigns. Using data which capture media coverage of national election campaigns across European countries, we aim to uncover new insights about the relationship between party communication strategies and voter behaviour. Our approach involves several steps. First, we convert the campaign data into a semi-structured form suitable for MGNNs. MGNNs are then trained to predict the effect of political communication on voters using various training steps and parameters to maximize predictive performance. We employ Datalog rule extraction algorithms to explain relevant predictions and generate insightful patterns of behaviour.
Data
PolDem – Protest Dataset 30 European countries
with Hanspeter Kriesi, Bruno Wüest, Jasmine Lorenzini, Peter Makarov, Thomas Kurer, Silja Häusermann and many others.
This dataset covers protest events in the 27 EU member state and in four additional non-EU member states – the UK, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland – over a period of more than 20 years, from 2000 to present. The semi-automated coding procedure allows the extraction of relevant variables, such as location, number of participants, protest forms, actors involved, trigger of the events, and issues addressed, from news-wire reports.