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The willingness of voters on the losing side to accept electoral outcomes – losers' consent – is essential to democratic legitimacy. This article examines the role of emotions in shaping people's perceptions of electoral fairness, arguing that voters on the losing side who feel angry are less willing to accept democratic outcomes. This is examined in the context of the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as the 2019 UK general election, using original survey data and an experiment in which specific emotional responses (anger and happiness) are induced to test the causal effect of emotions. The results show that losers who felt angry about an electoral outcome are less likely to accept the legitimacy of the democratic process and that anger has a causal effect in reducing losers' consent. These findings suggest that politicians may be able to influence voters' faith in democracy by mobilising emotional responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do governments ensure public compliance with protective policies that restrict individual liberties during a crisis? In this article, the British public's reaction to mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic is examined. We argue that providing information about health risks makes people more willing to comply and that the effectiveness of the information depends on the source. This argument is tested with the help of aggregate public opinion and individual-level experimental data collected in the UK in 2020 and we find that the British public adapted its willingness to wear a mask rapidly and in line with government regulation. Moreover, results from a survey experiment show that simply providing information about risk is sufficient to elevate people's willingness to wear masks. Interestingly, there is no clear partisan divide in the willingness to comply, suggesting that government messages about risk and responsibility encourage individuals to make sacrifices in times of crisis regardless of which party they support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the range of issues voters care about and party system polarization impact democratic outcomes? Recent debates have focused on the negative effect of polarized systems on democratic quality. However, the extent to which this polarization is channeled or diffused over a wide range of issues on the public agenda has not been analyzed systematically. Using data from 31 European countries from 2003 to 2018, we show that party polarization indeed has a negative effect on people's satisfaction with democracy. Importantly, however, we demonstrate that at high levels of issue diversity, the negative effect of polarization is minimized. Drawing on the deliberative democracy literature, we argue that at low levels of issue diversity, polarization makes compromise in society less likely and the political discourse more antagonistic. However, at higher levels of issue diversity, contestation and conflict can be diffused over a large range of issues, providing more favorable conditions for collective will formation and, ultimately, higher levels of satisfaction with democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the contemporary global order under threat? This contribution weighs the case for and against the notion that we are witnessing an existential challenge to the contemporary global order. We show that there are grounds for optimism with respect to the endurance of the first two ordering principles of the contemporary global order: a state-led global order and economic liberalism, because states remain key actors in the current world order and because overall support for economic liberalism remains strong. However, we see greater challenges to the procedural principle of inclusive, rule-based multilateralism, such as unilateral disintegration challenges and rising popular scepticism about international institutions that provide considerable reasons to worry about the future of the global order. Yet, given that the global order has proven robust time and again in the past, we see some reasons for cautious optimism overall, despite considerable risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-making in the Council of the European Union appears highly consensual at the voting stage. However, we focus on Council deliberations, where we find higher levels of contestation. What drives government opposition in the Council? Using a novel approach of studying the Council through video footage of its public deliberations (DICEU – Debates in the Council of the European Union), we demonstrate that contestation between governments is, at least in part, driven by their responsiveness to domestic public opinion. Analysing deliberations on legislative packages in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council between 2010 and 2015, we show that governments are responsive to public opinion when setting out their policy positions, but primarily when the policy issues are salient domestically. Our study thus contributes to our understanding of government responsiveness in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As political competition is becoming increasingly multi-dimensional in Europe, voters often face the challenge of choosing which issues matter most to them. The European integration issue presents a particular difficulty for voters, since it is not closely aligned to the left-right dimension. We test the impact of the EU issue in the first parliamentary election following the UK's divisive Brexit referendum. We argue that while the EU issue was salient to voters, EU issue voting was inhibited by the indistinct and ambiguous positions adopted by the two major parties. To examine this, we combine an analysis of British Election Study data from the 2017 General Election with a conjoint experiment that allows us to present voters with a range of choices on both dimensions. Our findings show that the EU dimension has the potential to become a cross-cutting dimension that rivals the left-right dimension in British electoral politics, but this crucially depends on party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the nature of these constraints, we must also examine what drives public opinion towards some of the key Europe-wide issues of the day and how these EU issues shapes electoral behaviour and party competition. The article demonstrates that while the EU issue was salient to voters after the Brexit referendum, EU issue voting was inhibited by the indistinct and ambiguous positions adopted by the two major parties in the 2017 general election. They explain this counterintuitive finding with the overlap in targeted voters between left-wing mainstream parties and far right challengers, arguing that both social democratic parties and right-wing populist parties are targeting the working-class. In sum, these articles provide insights into the dilemmas facing mainstream parties as they to navigate the changing dynamics of electoral competition, suggesting that the EU and immigration issue have become decisive in party competition and that simply ignoring these issues is not an option. [Extracted from the article]

The outcome of the British referendum on European Union (EU) membership sent shockwaves through Europe. While Britain is an outlier when it comes to the strength of Euroscepticism, the anti-immigration and anti-establishment sentiments that produced the referendum outcome are gaining strength across Europe. Analysing campaign and survey data, this article shows that the divide between winners and losers of globalization was a key driver of the vote. Favouring British EU exit, or ‘Brexit’, was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism. While there is no evidence of a short-term contagion effect with similar membership referendums in other countries, the Brexit vote nonetheless poses a serious challenge to the political establishment across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The eurozone crisis has altered the party political landscape across Europe. The most visible effect is the rise of challenger parties. The crisis not only caused economic hardship, but also placed considerable fiscal constraints upon a number of national governments. Many voters have reacted to this by turning their back on the traditional parties and opting instead for new, or reinvigorated, challenger parties that reject the mainstream consensus of austerity and European integration. This article argues that both sanctioning and selection mechanisms can help to explain this flight from the centre to challenger parties. First, voters who were economically adversely affected by the crisis punish mainstream parties both in government and in opposition by voting for challenger parties. Second, the choice of specific challenger party is shaped by preferences on three issues that directly flow from the euro crisis: EU integration, austerity and immigration. Analysing both aggregate-level and individual-level survey data from all 17 Western EU member states, this article finds strong support for both propositions and shows how the crisis has reshaped the nature of party competition in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Further integration in the European Union (EU) increasingly depends on public legitimacy. The global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area crisis have amplified both the salience and the redistributive consequences of decisions taken in Brussels, raising the question of how this has influenced public support for European integration. In this contribution, we examine how public opinion has responded to the crisis, focusing on support for monetary integration. Interestingly, our results show that support for the euro has remained high within the euro area; however, attitudes are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. While the crisis has been seen to deepen divisions within Europe, our findings suggest that it has also encouraged citizens in the euro area to form opinions on the euro on the basis of a cost–benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying primarily on national attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament promised voters that the 2014 elections would be different. According to its interpretation of the Lisbon Treaty, a vote in these European elections would also be a vote for the President of the Europe's executive, the Commission. To reinforce this link between the European elections and the Commission President, the major political groups each nominated a lead candidate, Spitzenkandidat, for the post. This article examines how this innovation affected the 2014 elections. It concludes that the presidential candidates did not play a major role in the election campaigns, except in a handful of countries, and thus had a limited impact on voter participation and vote choices. However, the European Parliament was very successful in imposing its interpretation of the new modified procedure for electing the Commission President, not shared by all national governments, and this will have important implications for the inter-institutional dynamics in the Union and the future of European democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of the European project often portray further enlargement of the European Union as a complement to the process of building an ever closer union. The eurozone crisis, however, has highlighted the risks associated with pursuing deeper integration in a diverse union and reignited the debate on differentiated integration. This contribution examines how public attitudes towards the processes of deepening and broadening are related and asks whether European citizens see them as complementary or conflicting. Using multilevel analysis of Eurobarometer data, the contribution examines the factors – individual and contextual – that shape attitudes towards enlargement and deeper political integration across the 27 member states. The findings suggest that the ‘winners’ of integration – high-skilled individuals in core eurozone countries – are most likely to support deepening, but oppose further enlargement out of fear that an ever wider union might be costly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates religiosity in relation to party choice in European Parliament elections. Conventional wisdom tells us that as Europe has secularised, the effect of religion on party choice should also have diminished. Yet, this cross-national and cross-temporal study of religious voting in European elections from 1989 to 2004 paints a more nuanced picture. It shows that a) the effect of religion has been declining, but has increased in recent years, b) religion matters in particular for voting for Christian Democratic parties and Conservative parties, c) while generational replacement reduces the overall effect of religion on electoral decisions, the effect of religion has recently increased within each generation, and d) the impact of religion depends on the religious context in which citizens live so that religion plays a bigger role in fractionalised societies. These findings are discussed in the light of a revived importance of religion for European politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how voters decide in referendums on European integration. More specifically, it analyses how political information influences voting behaviour. It argues that political information conditions the way in which people make decisions in referendums. The impact of political information is examined not only at the individual, but also at the contextual level. It is hypothesized that variations in the context of the referendum – the intensity of the campaign – produce differences in the way in which citizens act in referendums. As the intensity of the referendum campaign increases, more information is available to citizens and voters will rely more heavily on sophisticated criteria, such as attitudes and issue positions on the European Union (EU). While the informational context influences voting patterns, individuals also vary in their awareness of politics. It is argued that people with high levels of political awareness receive more information and consequently rely more on their own attitudes and less on elite cues when deciding. These theoretical propositions are tested by analysing survey data from EU referendums in Denmark, Ireland and Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces the articles in the July 2003 issue of the periodical 'Cambridge Review of International Affairs.' Debate over the accession of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia to the European Union; National identity in small nations; Examination of whether the accession process itself privileges Estonian ethno-linguistic control at the expense of minority political and cultural expression.