Consequences of the Eurozone Crisis for Party. Competition in the EU

Transcription

1 Consequences of the Eurozone Crisis for Party Competition in the EU Steffen Blings Department of Government Cornell University Ithaca, NY Mini - Paper prepared for the Conference The Euro Crisis and the Future of the EU, Syracuse, NY, September I would like to thank Chris Anderson for his extremely helpful comments. Note: Please do not cite without permission. Comments are very much appreciated.

2 Economic crises are no new phenomenon in the European Union and in the past European citizens have reacted to them by withdrawing support for European integration (Anderson/Kaltenthaler 1996). One plausible explanation for this pattern is that European citizens consider the integration process as a luxury good as described in Robert Durr s (1993) luxury goods model of economic voting. In an analogy to economic theory, Durr argued that in good economic times, when the good of individual wealth maximization is well supplied and its returns are diminishing, voters become more sympathetic to investment in other ( luxury ) goods, as for instance welfare polices (Durr 1993: 159). While his model was originally formulated for the American political context, Randolph Stevenson (2001) demonstrated that this mechanism, which increases the demand for left polices in good and for right polices in bad economic times, is also at play in European politics. Thus, voters considering European integration as a luxury good helps us to make sense of the diminishing support during economically hard times we have observed in the past. This empirical pattern does provide incentives for political parties to pick up the issue of European integration as a dimension to compete on in the current economic crisis. I will argue that the potential of the Eurozone crisis to establish European integration as a central issue in national elections varies across countries and depends on two factors: first the socio-demographic structure of the respective national electorates and second the (incentives for) strategic behavior of parties. Clearly not all voters consider European integration as a luxury good and become disenchanted with it in times of economic crisis. Which groups of voters then should we expect to be most likely to become less supportive of European integration and thus more susceptible to 1

3 mobilization on an anti-integration platform? 1 I hypothesize that citizens who are likely to lose from economic integration in general (see Gabel 1998) and now will also be among the potential losers of the attempts to stabilize the Eurozone will constitute the core of potentially mobilizable voters. 2 One group that should be especially skeptical to further integration is composed of those that rely, or are likely to rely in the future, on welfare benefits. 3 This expectation is based on two reasons. First, the European governments have been extremely cautious not to link the (potential) contribution to financial stability in the Eurozone to tax increases in order to avoid the impression that their citizens directly pay for what they see as the financial folly and long time overspending in other countries. Thus, the only way to actually raise additional funds is to cut expenses and the largest and most easily available area for this is often welfare spending. While this might not occur in the form of direct cuts, it might very well lead to governments increasingly using their leverage to limit spending in this area, e.g. by not raising benefits at least according to inflation. Unemployment benefits are also an attractive target, because the unemployed oftentimes have no political party to represent their interest. David Rueda (2005) argues that even the parties on the political left, traditional associated with those interests, have every incentive to concentrate on 1 Theoretically both pro- and anti-european mobilization is possible. However, negative mobilization has been the norm, which is unsurprising, since rejection requires less agreement on the underlying reasons than mobilization in favor of European integration. 2 I focus this discussion on the large majority of European states that are not currently seeking help from the EU. The consequences for countries that receive help like Greece and for countries that are potentially in need of help, but currently contribute to the efforts to contain the crisis are certainly different and beyond the scope of this paper. 3 Previous research has already demonstrated that welfare state regimes, and the possibility of convergence towards a conservative regime, have an influence on support for European integration. Those on the political left are less and those on the right are more supportive of integration in countries with social-democratic welfare regimes, while the situation is reversed in liberal regimes (cf. Brinegar/Jolly/ Kitschelt 2004; Marks/Hooghe 2004). This effect however is caused by considerations regarding redistribution within countries, while the discussion here centers on redistribution across states. 2

4 winning over insiders (those with secure employment) rather than outsiders (unemployed persons or those with highly insecure jobs). Thus countries in which the unemployed, older, poorer and manual workers (as those least likely to profit from integration but most likely to lose their jobs) represent a larger share of the electorate should have a larger potential for mobilization along a pro-/anti-european dimension. But this potential is unlikely to be realized on its own. Previous research has made clear that especially regarding an opaque issue like European integration political parties have opportunities to employ the issue strategically. Kai Oppermann (2008), for instance, has shown that the Blair government successfully lowered the salience of the European integration, in order to avoid punishment by an anti-european electorate for its relatively pro-european policies. Besides manipulating salience, parties can also attempt to directly influence their supporters stances on European integration as Leonard Ray (2003) has demonstrated. For a long time however, parties have been reluctant to pick up European integration as a distinctive dimension to compete on. Previous studies indicate that while political parties often took identifiable positions on the issue these positions significantly overlapped with existing dimensions, like the left/right (Gabel/Hix 2002) or new politics dimension (Hooghe et al. 2002). These arguments (cf. also Mair 2000; Marks/Wilson 2000; Marks et al. 2002) imply that the positions parties take on European integration are intrinsically linked to their positions on other cleavages and thus their leverage for strategically employing the integration process as an issue in electoral competition is limited. It also follows that voters are forced to prioritize either European integration or the dimension it overlaps with when making their vote choice. Yet, several recent studies indicate that this situation was already chancing before the current crisis. Ryan Bakker, Seth Jolly and Jonathan Polk (2012), using expert survey data, find a three dimensional space that includes European integration as a separate dimension. Catherine de Vries 3

5 and her co-authors uncover evidence of EU issue voting across Europe (de Vries et al. 2011; de Vries/Tillman 2011), but the influence of European integration on the vote decision remains considerably smaller than that of the left/right dimension (cf. also Gabel/Anderson 2002, who find two closely related dimensions structuring voter attitudes, one expressing concerns about the loss of sovereignty and the other akin to the economic left/right divide). In order for the current crisis to increase the influence of European integration on vote choice and break the pattern of close association of European integration with another relevant dimension (left/right), parties on both ends of the political spectrum would need opportunities to portray European integration as a luxury good that is unaffordable during economic hardship. This seems to be the case, since the (extreme) left can cast its opposition to European integration as a defense of the welfare state and the necessary resources/leverage for national redistribution. The (extreme) right on the other hand can ground its opposition in the primacy of national welfare (as opposed to aid for foreign countries). Again, the incentives for parties at both ends of the spectrum are likely to vary cross-nationally. First, as Catherine de Vries and Sara Hobolt (2012) have recently argued, we should expect parties that have been electorally unsuccessful in the past to actively pursue the introduction of new dimensions like European integration on which they can hope to compete more successfully in the future. Second, parties that have traditionally been opposed to European integration like the UK Independence Party or the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) will likely seize their opportunity here. However, with the emphasis of the debate now centered on the economy, parties that have focused on cultural opposition to the EU in the past might have difficulties to successfully adapt to this new reality and could lose those looking to vote against (further) European integration to another party that more credibly represent an economically grounded opposition. This might 4

6 explain why the PVV in the recent Dutch elections lost considerable ground, while support for the Socialist Party, which campaigned against European bailouts and austerity polices advocated by Brussels, remained stable on a relatively high level. Independent of whether seizing the anti-european pole is driven by previously existing positions or the lack of success in the past, once an electorally viable party campaigns on the issue it will become harder for the (mostly pro-european) mainstream parties to ignore it (see Adam/Maier 2011 for evidence that the presence of Eurosceptic parties increases the prominence of EU issues in the campaigns of all parties). 4 Whether this mobilization against integration leads to the long-term establishment of a new pro- /anti-european cleavage will inter alia depend on the competence of the leadership in those parties that have an incentive to stress European integration as an issue. Since these are, as discussed above, often smaller, less successful or newer parties, there is some chance that their leaders are inexperienced and prone to mistakes that prevent them from successfully establishing European integration on the campaign agenda. Furthermore the length of the crisis will play a role, since a relatively quick end might allow mainstream parties to reduce the issues salience along the lines of the Blair government. In sum, I expect that two factors will influence whether a pro-/anti-european dimension is likely to be established. First, the fraction of voters who are likely to fear material losses due to the attempts to contain the crisis and accordingly see European integration as a luxury good. Second, whether there are parties that have an incentive to mobilize on the issue, either because they have so far lost out in electoral politics or because they have been trying to make the issue electorally salient for some time. We should expect smaller parties, as well as previously clearly anti- 4 This might even be in the mainstream parties interest as the recent Dutch elections exemplifies, since large groups of voters, while not enthusiastic regarding European integration, might be nervous about radical anti-european rhetoric and accordingly drawn to parties with more moderate positions on the issue. 5

7 European parties to portray integration as an unaffordable luxury good and they should be more inclined to do so and more successful in countries in which poorer, older, blue-collar and unemployed persons represent a larger share of the electorate. Survey data on forthcoming and recent elections as well as media analyses of the campaigns will allow testing these expectations. References Adam, Silke/Maier, Michaela (2011): National parties as politicizers of EU integration? Party Campaign communication in the run-up to the 2009 European Parliament election. In: European Union Politics, 12 (3), Anderson, Christopher J. /Kaltenthaler, Karl C. (1996): The Dynamics of Public Opinion toward European Integration, In: European Journal of International Relations, 2 (2), Bakker, Ryan/Jolly, Seth/Polk, Jonathan (2012): Complexity in the European party space: Exploring dimensionality with experts. In: European Union Politics, 13 (2), Brinegar, Adam P./Jolly, Seth K./Kitschelt, Herbert (2004): Varieties of capitalism and political divides over European integration. In: Marks, Gary/Steenbergen, Marco R. (eds.), European Integration and Political Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, de Vries, Catherine E./Edwards, Erica E./Tillman, Erik R. (2011): Clarity of Responsibility Beyond the Pocketbook: How Political Institutions Condition EU Issue Voting. In: Comparative Political Studies, 44 (3), de Vries, Catherine E./Tillman, Erik R. (2011): European Union issue voting in East and West Europe: The role of political context. In: Comparative European Politics, 9 (1), de Vries, Catherine E./Hobolt, Sara B. (2012): When dimensions collide: The electoral success of issue entrepreneurs. In: European Union Politics, 13 (2), Durr, Robert H. (1993): What moves Policy Sentiment? In: American Political Science Review, 87 (1), Gabel, Matthew (1998): Interest and Integration. Market Liberalization, Public Opinion, and European Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gabel, Matthew/Anderson, Christopher J. (2002): The Structure of Citizen Attitudes and the European Political Space. In: Comparative Political Studies, 35 (8),

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