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How do foreign political events shape voters’ evaluation of policies whose outcomes are hard to observe? We argue that policy-specific political processes abroad provide information about the policy's feasibility and desirability that allows voters to update their preferences. We analyze how key events in British Brexit politics affected attitudes towards the European Union in other European countries. The results of ‘unexpected events during survey' designs, a natural experiment, and a panel analysis show that events highlighting the difficulties of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union led to a higher support of European integration in remaining member states, whereas an event highlighting the opportunities of Brexit resulted in more Eurosceptic attitudes. The article demonstrates that foreign events can influence voters’ policy attitudes in other countries, highlighting the systemic consequences of events like Brexit.

A key Eurosceptic argument is that countries can selectively retain only those aspects of European integration from which they benefit, while opting out of those aspects they dislike. How convincing is this “have your cake and eat it, too” argument to voters? This article argues that voters can learn about the feasibility of such a strategy by looking at the experience of countries that pursued a similar path. Positive experiences can strengthen voters’ support for a similar strategy, while negative experiences can deter them. This argument is tested in a study of the effects of the Brexit negotiations on public opinion in Switzerland. Drawing on a panel survey fielded between 2019 and 2021, the article shows that Brexit had a small but non-negligible impact on Swiss voters’ expectations about the EU’s resolve, as well as on vote intentions on two EU-related policy proposals. These findings confirm that voters learn from foreign political developments about the costs of non-cooperation.

Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter summarise the findings of their recent research, which looks at how Brexit has impacted the way Europeans perceive the EU.

Do voters follow the preferences of foreign mass collectives? Despite the growing research on policy diffusion and theoretical debates on the emergence of transnational public spheres, we know little about the impact of foreign votes on domestic public opinion. Yet, the results of elections and referendums may provide a signal to people in other countries and trigger a process of contagion. This study leverages the coincidence of the 2005 French referendum on the European Constitution and the fieldwork of two surveys to analyze the causal effect of cross-national social influence. Results show that the French rejection increased public opposition to the Constitution abroad. A process of cognitive activation explains why knowledgeable voters also grew Eurosceptic after the vote. These findings attest to the interdependence of national publics and contribute to our understanding of mechanisms of social contagion.

A large body of research investigates the diffusion of policies and political developments across countries, and analyzes its consequences for mass preference formation and electoral accountability. While we know that voters look at policy outcomes abroad to assess domestic performance, the politics through which policies emerge can also be informative to voters. To understand whether voters learn from observing other countries’ domestic political struggles, we analyze the international reverberations of British Brexit politics. We argue that, although it may be too soon to assess the actual consequences of Brexit for the UK, political struggles during the negotiations may have provided information about the political feasibility and desirability of leaving the EU. We analyze three key events in recent British politics that happened during the fieldwork of two surveys, and a natural experiment that leverages random variation in exposure to Brexit-related information. Results confirm both a deterrence and an encouragement effect of Brexit on support for leaving the EU in remaining member states, and provide causal evidence of the benchmarking mechanism. These findings show how news coverage of other countries’ domestic politics can simplify voters’ decision-making by reducing the uncertainty associated with alternative policy choices. They have implications for theories of EU support and for the prospects of the current backlash against political globalization.

The rise of far-right parties represents one of the main challenges for European democracies. Previous research has shed light both on their electoral strategies, and on the nationalist attitudes of their electorates. Yet, the causal mechanism by which far-right party discourse activates voters’ preferences is still unclear. This paper revisits the literature on campaign effects in the context of challenger party entry, and argues that the activation of attitudes on “wedge issues,” such as immigration and European integration, is the outcome of a process of learning and partisan updating. The empirical analyses focus on the electoral breakthrough of far-right parties in Britain and Germany, and rely on three-wave panel surveys to address reverse causation. Results show that voters update their party evaluations in light of their Eurosceptic and xenophobic attitudes only when they learn the policy positions of the far-right party. These findings shed light on the nature of far-right party support, set a scope condition for research on priming and persuasion in election campaigns, and contribute to normative debates about the functioning of electoral democracy.

Mass domestic opposition increasingly challenges actors and institutions of the European Union. While scholars have analyzed the consequences of public contestation on cooperation among member states, less attention has been paid to its effects on cooperation with non-EU members. Yet, after the UK’s withdrawal, the risk of encouraging further exits has reduced the scope of differentiated integration for countries outside the EU. How do these changes in the bargaining space affect public support for international cooperation in non-EU countries? To answer this question, we exploit that voters in Switzerland have been faced with two EU-related policy proposals, one of which would considerably deepen relations with the EU, whereas the other would significantly lower levels of Swiss-EU cooperation. Drawing on a panel survey fielded between November 2019 and February 2021 and an embedded survey experiment, this paper shows how the ups and downs of the Brexit process altered the expected consequences of non-cooperative referendum outcomes, and in turn Swiss vote intentions in EU referendums. Our findings show how the withdrawal of individual countries from international organizations change public expectations about the costs of non-cooperation, and highlight the influence of the geopolitical context on support for international cooperation.