Responding to the crisis: Eurosceptic parties of the left and right and their changing position towards
the European Union1
Daniela Braun; Sebastian Popa; Hermann Schmitt
Abstract
At the time of the election of the European Parliament in 2014, the European Union was heavily
affected by a multi-facetted crisis which had – and still has – far-reaching implications for the political
system of member-countries, but also for the European level of governance. Recently published
scholarly work illustrates that the electoral system has been affected by these crises. However, the
majority of publications devoted their attention in this regard to the voter’s side of the electoral
connection exploring the changing motives of voting behavior in the aftermath of the crisis. In contrast
to that, studies focusing on crisis reactions of political parties are much more scarce. Our study’s aim
is to investigate in which way political parties respond to the multiple crises of the EU. Against the
background of the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 EP elections our paper focusses on the issue
emphasis and the positioning of Eurosceptic parties on the left and on the right. Using data from the
Euromanifesto Project from 2009 and 2014 we analyze changes in emphases and positions in the
shadow of the multiple crises and try to uncover the reasons thereof. Our findings show that the issue
emphasis of parties in their election manifestos does not change much between 2009 and 2014, while
we also see a general anti-European shift both among Eurosecptic and mainstream parties. This shift
is moderated, for far-right Eurosceptic parties, by the level of public support for EU integration in their
national environment. Among far-left parties, by contrast, it is moderated by public attitudes about
the monetary union policy of the EU.
1
Supported by the EUENGAGE project funder the Horizon research and innovation programme under grant
agreement No 649281 — EUENGAGE — H2020-EURO-2014-2015/H2020-EURO-SOCIETY-2014
1
1. Introduction
At the time of the election of the European Parliament in 2014, the European Union (EU) was heavily
affected by a multi-facetted crisis. This crisis had its roots in the public-debt crisis of some of the
members of the Eurozone and in the migration crisis which originates in the provisions of the Single
European Market. All of this had – and still has – far-reaching implications for the political system of
EU member states, but also for the European level of governance (e.g. Schimmelfennig 2014; Tosun et
al 2014; Graziano and Halpern 2016). Recent studies investigating the implications of the crisis were
able to show that not only the political system as such – the polity dimension – may be affected by the
crises, but also the dimension of politics.
Greatest scholarly attention in this regard was dedicated to the demand-side of political competition
(e.g. Magalhães 2014), i.e. the investigation of crisis effects on citizens’ political attitudes towards the
national political system (Armingeon and Guthmann 2014; van Erkel and van der Meer 2016) and the
EU system of multi-level governance (Armingeon and Ceka 2014; Braun and Tausendpfund 2014;
Daniele and Geys 2015; Dotti Sani and Magistro 2016; Hobolt and Wratil 2015; Kuhn and Stoeckel
2014; Serricchio et al. 2013; Talving 2017). But also the question whether the crises has an impact on
electoral participation and voting decisions has been investigated to some degree (Lobo and LewisBeck 2012; Okolikj and Quinlan 2016). The empirical evidence shows that voting behavior has been
indeed affected by the crises, although the political implications differ strongly between countries
(Bellucci 2014; Indridason 2014; Kriesi and Pappas 2015; Magalhaes 2014; Marsh and Mikhaylov 2014;
Schmitt and Teperoglou 2015; Torcal 2014). In addition to that, scholars were able to show that the
financial crisis had an effect on the Eurosceptic vote (Braun and Tausendpfund forthcoming; Hobolt
and De Vries 2016; Treib 2014). Moreover, the motivation to vote for a Eurosceptic party in the shadow
of the crises differs with regard to political orientations (Hobolt and De Vries 2016b; Hobolt 2015). In
other words, the roots of Eurosceptic electoral support vary between far left and far right parties.
And this is where our study sets in. Although a bunch of theoretical and empirical studies so far were
interested in the emphasis parties put and the positions they take on political issues in general, but
also on European issues in particular, there is no empirical study addressing the specific question on
the reactions of the parties towards the crises. To fill this gap, the aim of our study is to identify the
changes in emphasis and positions of political parties in three broad EU issue areas that are affected
by, or causing the crises: polity issues, economic issues (including monetary policy issues), and
migration issues. We study pattern of changes between 2009 and 2014 (and have an additional look
at changes between 2004 and 2009 as a kind of robustness check). Moreover, due to the EU-wide
framework of our analysis, we are mainly interested in the specific reactions towards the EU of two
different party groups within the greater family of Eurosceptic parties: the Eurosceptic parties on the
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left and the right. The reasons for this are manifold: Due to the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014
election of the members of the European Parliament (Braun and Tausendpfund forthcoming; Hobolt
and De Vries 2016; Treib 2014) the reactions of these parties to the multi-facetted crisis constitute
important information not only for scientific research into electoral democracy but also, and arguably
more importantly, for the future development of the European Union. Recent research has shown that
the behavior of this party family has far reaching implications on the EU orientations of national party
systems (Meijers, 2015). Moreover, no matter whether they are located at the right or the left,
Eurosceptic parties react with different (anti-EU) policies to the challenges of the multiple EU crises
(e.g. Whitefield and Rohrschneider, 2015; Beaudonnet and Gomez 2016; van Elsas et al. 2016) .
Investigating these and related research questions, the paper is structured as follows: The second
section will prepare the ground for our inquiry and offer some definitions. We assume that in the
aftermath of the crises Eurosceptic parties a) put more emphasis on European issues, and b) take more
anti-European stances in this regard. Nevertheless, when talking about the idea of issue emphasis and
positioning of political parties, it is very important to be sure of the issue in question. Since European
issues are diverse and manifold, this section also presents a definition of what kind of European issues
we are talking about. The third chapter then reviews the literature on Euroscepticism and explains our
line of reasoning in more detail. In particular, we are interested in the reasons why Eurosceptic parties
on the left and right react differently towards the crisis. Based on that, we will formulate some
empirically testable hypotheses. Finally, we present our data and methods as well as the empirical
findings. A summary of our findings and their implications will conclude the paper.
2. Political parties and European issues: Issue emphasis, position taking and the complexity of
European issues
In terms of theory, we know that the emphasis parties put on issues are at least as important as the
position they take towards them. According to Wagner and Meyer (2014: 1019), issue emphasis is “one
of the most important decisions by political parties in election campaigns […] to determine which topics
to talk about and which ones to treat with comparative neglect”. The main reason for this is that
political issues that are raised by parties in their election campaigns as well as their election manifestos
might have an impact on the voting decisions of citizens. This is what the issue emphasis (or issue
ownership) theory (Budge and Farlie 1983; Petrocik 1996; Petrocik et al. 2003) claims. Moreover, the
party’s decision to (de-)emphasize an issue is not only important for its electoral success; the party
system’s issue agenda as a whole is determined by these decisions. In other words, if a party decides
to put emphasis on a particular issue, this is supposed to have an impact on the political debate (for a
similar explanation see Wagner andMeyer 2014: 1019). But not only the emphasis that parties put on
issues is a highly relevant research question. The associated question which position a political party
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takes towards a specific issue equally is a widely researched field. The baseline model in that case is
the smallest distance model of electoral behavior according to which parties position themselves on
relevant issue dimensions where they can expect to maximize their support; and voters support the
party which is closest to them (Downs, 1957; for many subsequent analyses, see e.g. Enelow and
Hinich, 1984).
Following these theories of party competition, it is important to know what kind of issues political
parties emphasize, but also what positions they take on them. When it comes to the European Union
politics, European Union issues are increasingly relevant (e.g Hobolt and de Vries 2016). Nevertheless
one has to note that European issues are a rather complex and multidimensional phenomenon. This is
not least due to the particularities of the multi-level system of governance of the European Union
(Hooghe and Marks 2001) itself. Political parties are acting not only at one political level, but at multiple
levels of the multi-level electoral system (Deschouwer 2003; van der Eijk and Schmitt 2008; van Houten
2009) which leads to interdependencies between their behavior at the different levels at play. In
addition to that, the EU is experiencing permanent systemic changes and therefore aptly described as
a „moving target” (Hooghe and Marks 2008). European issues are even characterized as ‘wedge issues’
(van de Wardt et al., 2014) having the potential to restructure political competition.
For the purpose of our study, we simply note that European issues are a diverse and difficult to grasp
set of issues. Interestingly, scholars of EU politics put the spotlight increasingly on the salience of
Europe in party competition (e.g. Steenbergen and Scott 2004; de Vries and van de Wardt 2011; Spoon
2012), but they mostly treat European integration as a single political issue and ignore the inherent
complexity of it. Our general knowledge about the salience of Europe in EP elections is still fairly
limited. In a first attempt, Spoon (2012) was able to show that – in contrast to predictions of the
‘second order election’ model (Reif and Schmitt, 1980; Schmitt, 2005) – parties devote a significant
part of their EP election manifestos to European issues. But this analysis conceptualizes European
issues as unidimensional. Only most recently, Braun et al. (2016) have overcome this unidimensionality
by pointing to the need of distinguishing between constitutive and policy-related European issues (as
was suggested earlier by Bartolini (2005) and Schmitt (2007)). In doing so, the authors are able to show
empirically that European issues are much more salient than widely presumed. But it is not only the
emphasis political parties put on EU issues which was widely misconceived. The same can be said about
the issue positions of political parties regarding the EU and European integration more generally.
As pointed out above, we are interested in the issues Eurosceptic parties emphasize and the positions
they take towards the EU. More specifically, we aim to study the effect of the crises on the issues raised
by political parties. In doing so, we compare issue emphases and issue positions of political parties as
documented in their election manifestos of 2009 and 2014. We also need to define properly the issues
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we are interested in. As suggested by Braun et al. (2016), we first distinguish between polity and policy
issues. Second, we set out to disentangle the broad notion of position taking on the EU and
differentiate between different types of policy issues that are dealt with at the European level of
governance. On the policy level we distinguish issues regarding the economy and issues regarding (im)migration. The reason for this decision is in the different roots that Euroscepticism has for different
ideological orientations. Eurosceptic political actors on the far left are expected to care about
economic policies while Eurosceptic actors on the far right are expected to take Eurosceptic stances
both by contesting the mere existence of the EU, and by emphasizing cultural issues instead of
economic ones (e.g. Kriesi et al. 2008). These cultural issues can be best studied by focusing on the
(im-) migration policy of the EU.
3. Euroscepticism and the crises
Mainstream parties –known for their Europositive stances – as well as Eurosceptic parties of the left
and right are supposed to react with different policy proposals to the challenges of the multiple crises.
In this line of reasoning Europositive parties should have an incentive to revise specific EU policies to
overcome the crisis; e.g. to rework the Dublin Regulation with regard to the immigration crisis or to
initiate a debate about the means taken to face the financial crisis, as e.g. the European Financial
Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Eurosceptic parties, by contrast, might have a different approach to
encounter the crises.
Insights from public opinion studies: From public opinion studies, we know that the motivation that
fuels Eurosceptic attitudes differs as a function of citizens’ political orientation . The fundamental
difference seems to be that right-wing Eurosceptics are fundamentally opposed to the idea of
European integration, while left-wing Eurosceptics are more dissatisfied with the current functioning
of the EU. Furthermore, among right-wing oriented citizens Euroscpeticsism is mainly motivated by
opposition towards immigration, while among left-wing citizens Euroscpecticsism is more a function
of economic concerns (van Elsas et al. 2016). Citizens seem to be motivated by different issue concerns
when they cast their ballot for a Eurosceptic party on the right or on the left. Based on the European
Election Study 2009, Hobolt (2014: 7) shows that the support for left-wing Eurosceptic parties “was
not driven by a rejection of the European project, but by discontent with austerity policies and a desire
for more European solidarity. In contrast, support for the anti-EU radical right in the north was more
evidently motivated by an opposition to immigration and to transfers of funds to other Member
States.” This finding is strenthened by the investigation of Euroscepticism at the time of the 2014 EP
elections. Beaudonnet and Gomez (2016) show that the opposition towards EU membership leads to
increasing support of radical parties on the right, while supporters of extreme left parties are not
hostile of the European idea in general, but are critical about the economic situation in Europe.
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These insights fit nicely into our initial expectation of party behavior in the shadow of the multiple
crises. Assuming a corespondence between public opinion stances and party behavior in regards to
Euroscepticsim (Spoon and Klüver, 2014; Spoon and Williams, 2017; Steenbergen et al., 2007), we can
anticipate that Eurosceptic parties on the left are not criticising the European project as such, but
rather the economic policies of the European Union. Accordingly, we assume that these parties put
more emphasis on economic issues in the aftermath of the crises, and assume more negative stances
in this regard. In the same logic, we expect Eurosceptic parties on the right putting more emphasis on
immigration issues and take more negative stances in this regard.
Insights from the study of party-based Euroscepticism: While public opinion studies point to a clear
distinction between left and right-wing Euroscepticism the study of the supply side reveals a
somewhat murkier picture. It seems clear that Eurosceptic parties on the left and on the right are
responsive vis-à-vis a general anti-European shift in public opinion whereas mainstream-parties
largely retain their initial Europositive position (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2016). These authors
combine extreme right and extreme left parties under the label of Eurosceptic parties (for this, see
already Szerbiak and Taggert 2008). However, it seems obvious that extreme parties of the two
different poles of the ideological continuum differ to some important degree when it comes to
European issues. More in particular, we posit that the core ideological values of the two groups of
fringe parties provide a different base for their anti-EU stances.
The core value of far-right parties is the protection of the nation and national sovereignty. Since
European integration is the main threat of these goals it is no wonder that opposition towards
European integration (as a way to protect national sovereignty) constitutes the base of Eurosceptic
attitudes among far-right parties (De Vries and Edwards 2009; Hooghe et al. 2002). Hence we can talk
about an unconditional opposition to the EU among the extreme right (Conti and Memoli 2012: 105).
Furthermore, the protection of national sovereignty goes hand in hand with anti-immigration
stances, thus the Eurosceptic stance of the radical right are also closely linked to anti-immigration
stances (Hooghe et al. 2002). This link is further illustrated by recent research that groups anti-EU
and anti-immigration stances under the broader anti-globalization dimension of political competition
(Kriesi et al., 2012).
When it comes to far-left parties, their criticism of the EU is based on the fact that the neo-liberal
character of the EU represents a major threat to the welfare state, one of the core values of far-left
ideology. In other words, the far-left sees the EU as a fundamental threat to one of its most
cherished goals (Hooghe et al. 2002, 974). EU control of economic policies is viewed as a way of neoliberal elites to exert their power at the expense of lower classes (Halikiopoulou et al., 2012), and
thus contributing to the erosion of the welfare state and its values. The neo-liberal threat to the
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welfare state also brings economic insecurity that offer far-left parties further opportunities to voice
concerns against the EU (De Vries and Edwards, 2009). All in all the European economic and
monetary union with its single market represents a major threat from the point of view of far-left
parties and thus the base of their Eurosceptic stances.
The above suggests that the patterns of Euroscpectism among the public are roughly mimicked at
the party level. Eurosceptic parties of the left and the right differ in roughly the same aspects as their
core supporters. While radical parties of the left primarily tend to criticize economic issues such as
the monetary union, radical right parties refuse the European Union as a whole, and not least the
level of immigration that comes with it. These different issue foci have ideological roots, which
translate into past and present issue emphases and policy positions of these parties, and are widely
recognized by the public in which these parties operate. As previously discussed, this is what the
theory of issue ownership claims (see here the more recent literature by Bélanger and Meguid 2008;
Green and Hobolt 2008; van der Brug 2004 ). Given these ideologically rooted issue orientations, we
assume that the recent crises of the European Union have sharpened the societal conflicts on which
they are based, thus strengthening the bases of the respective anti-EU stances of far-left and farright parties.
4. Strategy of analysis and hypotheses
In electoral democracies, the process of political representation provides the link between evolving
social conflicts on the one hand and issue emphases and issue positions of political parties on the
other. Effective political representation is achieved through two complimentary processes: opinion
leadership and responsiveness of political parties. Opinion leadership, the top down (or elite-driven)
perspective, sees parties as “molding” or “shaping” public opinion in order to raise the salience of
issues in which they are perceived as competent problem solvers (e.g. Page and Shapiro 1992).
Responsiveness, the bottom-up (or mass-driven) perspective, conceives parties as responding to
evolving issue concerns in the public by adjusting their issue emphases and positions accordingly (e.g.
Stimson 1998). In studies focusing on the EU political process, the latter – mass-driven – perspective
has repeatedly been found to be the more effective of the two (e.g. Hermann Schmitt and Thomassen
2000; Steenbergen, Edwards, and de Vries 2007; Williams and Spoon 2015). By contrast, party cueing
– the elite-driven process – is portrayed as being rather deficient (Adams et al., 2014)
Based on these results of previous scholarship, we will investigate in the following what exactly it is
that political parties are responding to. We pursue three possible routes. First, we look at the multiple
crises of the European Union as one uniform shock that hit the European Union as a whole, or
“globally”. In this perspective, political parties – far-right and far-left as compared to mainstream – put
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more emphasis on “their” issue areas and assume a more critical EU stance. More specific we expect
that:
H.1 General shift in Eurosceptic stances.
H.1a: In the course of the multiple crisis far-right parties take more negative stances towards
the EU polity as well as immigration issues.
H.1b: In the course of the multiple crisis far-left parties take more negative stances towards
EU economic issues pursued by the Eurozone.
However, the recent crises of the EU have not hit all of the member-countries of the European Union
equally hard. Hence as a second route of investigation, we consider that these multiple crises have
“local” manifestations – which is to say that they have hit different member countries with different
intensity. In the course of the crises, economic conditions for instance have most severely worsened
in the Southern periphery of the EU, while immigration has perhaps become more of a problem in the
Centre and the North. Political parties when drafting national manifestos for the elections of members
of the European Parliament may be expected to respond to the problem agenda in their immediate
national environment (not least because it is on the national level that they are rewarded or punished
for their campaign communication). This leads us to expect far-right Eurosceptic parties to worsen the
tone of their evaluation of the EU polity when immigration is high, while far left parties are doing the
same when the economy is doing badly. However, differences in the severity of a problem (economy,
unemployment) do have an objective and a subjective side. To the degree to which political parties
react in their position-taking regarding the EU polity to national gradations of severity of a problem
rather than the EU-wide situation, we expect the following:
H.2 Polity mood of the public and polity tone of Eurosceptic parties of the far-right:
H.2a: These parties become more critical about the EU polity in the course of the multiple EU
crises where immigration is objectively higher.
H.2b: These parties become more critical about the EU polity in the course of the multiple EU
crises where reactions to immigration are subjectively more severe.
H.3 Polity mood of the public and polity tone of Eurosceptic parties of the far-left
H.3a: These parties become more critical about the EU polity in the course of the multiple EU
crises where the economy is objectively doing worse.
H.3b: These parties become more critical about the EU polity in the course of the multiple EU
crises where the economy is felt to be doing worse.
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A third and final route assumes that political parties when reacting to the recent crises of the EU mainly
respond to the “polity mood” in the citizenry at large2. To be more specific, the responsiveness of
political parties could be less EU policy driven, but rather orient itself on the evaluations of the EU
polity in the national public. In this view, changes in the tone of a party’s evaluation of the EU polity
between 2009 and 2014 would depend on the EU evaluation of the median citizen of this party’s
country in 2013-2014. Given that, as previously mentioned, far-left Euroscepticism is motivated by
both the dissatisfaction with the current EU and its economic regime (most notably the single market),
we would expect that position of this country’s median citizen regarding these two aspects is most
likely responsible for the evolution of the EU polity tone of a far-left party. On the other hand as farright Euroscepticism is a reaction to a general opposition towards the process of European integration,
the position of the median citizen in relation to these aspects should be the one motivating shifts in
the tone towards EU polity among these parties.
H.4 “Polity mood” of the public and “polity tone” of far right parties
H.4: The EU polity tone of far right parties become more critical in the course of the multiple
EU crises the more negative the general polity mood in regards to the European project of the
median citizen is.
H.5 “Polity mood” of the public and “polity tone” of far left parties
H.5a: The EU polity tone of far left parties becomes more critical in the course of the multiple
EU crises the more the median citizen is dissatisfied with the current state of the EU.
H.5b: The EU polity tone of far left parties becomes more critical in the course of the multiple
EU crises the more negative the polity mood of the median citizen is with regard to the
economic regime of the EU is.
Last but not least, we cannot ignore the possible shift in the Eurosceptic tone of mainstream parties as
a response to the multiple EU crises. Still we need to acknowledge that previous research identified
minimal shifts in the position of these parties (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2016). Thus in what
follows the change in the EU polity tone of these parties will serve more as a benchmark that will help
us evaluate the magnitude of possible negative shifts in the EU stances of extreme parties.
H.6: In comparison to both far-right and far-left parties, mainstream parties retain their initial
Europositive stance in comparison to 2009.
4. Data
2
We note in passing that “policy mood” is a term borrowed from Stimson and adapted to the multi-level
character of the EU system of governance (see Stimson 1998; also Erikson et al. 2002).
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In order to test our expectations, we make use of the Euromanifesto Study (Schmitt et al. 2016) which
was realized within the EUENGAGE framework. The study collected all manifestos of relevant parties
competing in the 2014 EP elections, which are digitized in a machine-readable format and then
manually coded by country experts. For the coding we utilize an updated version of the Euromanifestos
Coding Scheme (EMCS) (see Braun et al. 2015)3. Although the Euromanifesto coding scheme focuses
on the content of EP election manifestos instead of national election manifestos of political parties,
the coding scheme is an adaptation/extension of the one used by the MARPOR (the former MRG/CMP)
project. The final 2014 Euromanifesto data set consists of the coded manifestos of the 199 relevant
parties (the number also includes the six manifestos of the EP party groups) across the 28 EU member
states in the 2014 EP elections. As part of the EUENGAGE project we merged this data with the 19792009 Euromanifesto Study (Braun et al. 2016) that uses the EMCS to classify the manifestos of all
relevant parties competing in EP elections from 1979-2009. For the specific purpose of this project we
only rely on data based on the 2009 and 2014 manifestos. Making use of this data enables us to study
both the change in emphasis in regards to European issues among parties as well as the change in tone
towards these issues as a result of the multi-faceted EU crises.
But what do we actually measure when using this kind of data? In line with manifesto research, it can
be assumed that issues which are emphasized by political parties in their manifestos are to a large
extent consistent with the policies they advocate in parliaments and governments(Schmitt et al. 2016;
Budge et al. 2001; Klingemann et al. 1994). Moreover, these are also the campaign documents that
are most likely to represent the collective internal expression of policy preferences of a party (Ceron,
2012). Furthermore, in the elaboration of their manifestos, parties consider the stances of their
supporters on general and on European issues in particular (Adams et al., 2004; Popa and Dumitrescu,
2015). Consequently, despite the common criticism that manifestos are drafted by a rather small group
of experts within a party, we can act on the assumption that the content of election manifestos reflects
the official position a party covers on specific issues. In our case, the space a party dedicates to EU
related topics reflects the general relevance of these topics for the party. Even if only a negligible
fraction of citizenry reads the manifestos, as they are published close to the elections, citizens are
expected to pay attention to the elite communication concerning them and the media coverage of
them (Topf, 1994).
4.1. Dependent variable: In order to capture how the multi-faceted crises impacted the salience as
well as the position taking of parties towards European affairs we go further than analyzing the general
EU issue (Spoon and Williams, 2017) and also incorporate in our analysis how parties relate to
economic and immigration issues at the EU level. This is insofar necessary as previous research
3
The EMCS coding scheme is available here: info1.gesis.org/dbksearch/file.asp?file=ZA5162_r.pdf
10
suggests that the “European integration is diverse […]. It depends on what issue one is talking about”
(Marks 2004: 241; but see also Bartolini 2005; Braun, Hutter, and Kerscher 2016; Schmitt and
Thomassen 1997). Thus, we argue that Europe as an issue needs to be disentangled into its various
components and analyze separately the stances of parties towards three facets of the EU politics: EU
polity issues, EU economic issues and EU immigration policy.
Unlike other research investigating the topic which considered Euroscepticism as a unidimensional
phenomenon (Williams, 2015), we acknowledge that the origins of Eurosceptic attitudes are likely to
be different for left-wing and right-wing voters (van Elsas et al., 2016).
EU polity issues capture debates over the constitutive EU matters. To be more specific categories
related to the fundamental features of the EU’s political system, such as the competencies of different
European institutions, membership issues or questions related to the legitimacy or complexity of the
EU (Bartolini, 2005: 310; Braun et al., 2016). The following EMCS coding categories are incorporated in
this variable: Europe, European Community/ Union in general, Transfer of Power to EU/EC,
Competences of the European Parliament, Competences of the European Commission, Competences
of the European Council/ Council of Ministers, Voting Procedures in the (European) Council,
Competences of the European Court of Justice, Competences of other EU/EC Institutions, Mentions of
European Central Bank (until 1993), EU/EC Enlargement, Membership Turkey, Complexity of EU/EC
Political System, EU Integration, Constitutionalism, Decentralization, National Way of Life4. As such the
stances parties adopt in relation to these subcategories are indicative of the general position of the
parties towards the European project and the prospects of European integration.
EU economic policy captures the position of parties towards the economic policy prerogatives of the
EU and the issues surrounding the Common market. Therefore, the following EMCS sub-categories are
included in constructing this variable: European Central Bank, European Monetary Union/ European
Currency, EC/EU Structural Funds, Single Market, Labour Migration and Financing the EC/EU5.
EU immigration policy reflects the stances of parties towards policies concerning immigrations and the
rights of immigrants. Subsequently the following EMCS sub-categories are combined: Multiculturalism,
Immigration, Immigrants and Foreigners and Labour Migration6.
To capture the position of parties towards these issues we make use of the difference between the
negative and positive mentions for each category. Following Lowe et al. (2011), we measure the tone
4
With the exception of Constitutionalism, Decentralization, National Way of Life, where only the EU level is
used, for the other domains we use all level categories (i.e. national, EU, and unspecified).
5
With the exception Labor Migration, where only the EU level is used, for the other for the other domains we
use all level categories (i.e. national, EU, and unspecified).
6
In this case only the EU level category is used.
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(𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑣𝑒+0.5)
towards the issues as: log (𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒+0.5), with high values indicating a positive tone and low
values indicating a negative tone.
As a reminder we expect that the ways parties approach these topics in their manifestos is at least
partly a result of the multi-faceted EU crises. Furthermore, we also expect that the response of farright and far-left parties to these crises is conditioned by the “nature” of their Euroscepticism. Hence
far-right parties should emphasize and be more critical of EU polity issues and EU immigration policies,
while far-left parties should be more preoccupied with EU economic issues.
4.2. Independent variables
Our main independent variable is derived from the left-right placement of parties according to the
Chapel Hill Expert Study (Bakker et al., 2015)7. Given that we expect far-right, far-left and mainstream
parties to have a substantially different reaction to the crises in the way they approach EU topics, we
rescale the continuous variables, which originally range from 0 “far left” to 10 “far right”, into a set of
three discrete variables. We consider as far-left parties that have scores between 0 and 0.249 in the
original variable (N=34), mainstream parties are those with score between 2.5 and 7.5 (N=128) and
far-right parties are those that have score between 7.51 and 10 (N=35)8.
We also investigate if the way in which parties responds to the crises is conditioned by its objective
and subjective consequence. We use two indicators to measure the objective consequence of the
multifaceted crises. We use the change in GDP per capita (expressed in Purchasing Power Standards)
between the first quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2014 as indicator of the negative economic
consequences of the Euro zone economic crisis (Eurostat). Furthermore we use the number of refugees
(as a proportion of the total population) to capture the extent of the immigration crisis that the EU
started to face from the summer of 2013 (The World Bank). Still as previously mentioned it might not
be the objective indicators of the crisis that influence the behavior of parties but how the public
perceives the consequences of the crises. The perception about current state of the economy, ranging
from (”1=very-good” to ”4=very-bad”) as reflected by EB 79.3 is used to measure the subjective impact
of the economic crisis (we rescaled the variable to take values between (”0=very-good” to ”1=verybad”). The impact of the immigration crisis on public opinion is best capture by the attitudes of citizens
towards immigrants. We measure this aspect using a battery of two items that taps into feelings
7
For parties for which this was not available we complemented the measure with the evaluation of the leftright position of the parties done by the Euromanifesto country expert. For the set of parties available in both
datasets the correlation between the two measures is 0.9 statically significant at p<0.01.
8
The face validity of the categorization was judged as satisfactory by the authors. Furthermore, moving the
threshold for far-left to 2.99 and for far-right to 7.01 revealed a very similar pattern of results. We also need to
note that setting apart mainstream parties of the right and mainstream parties of the left did not reveal any
substantive or statically significant difference.
12
(ranging from “1=Very positive” to “4=very negative) towards immigrants from both inside and outside
the EU (see EB82.3). We average the two items and rescale them so that 0 reflects “very- positive”
feelings towards immigrants and 1 reflects “very negative” feelings towards immigrants.
In relation to the median citizen position, we consider several aspects
We further consider that the degree of Euroscepticism in the public (i.e. the position of the median
citizen in this regard) is important for the position taking of parties in relation to EU policies. Unlike
other research investigating the topic which considered Euroscepticism as a unidimensional
phenomenon (Spoon and Klüver, 2014; Spoon and Williams, 2017), we acknowledge that the origins
of the far-left and far-right parties are like to adjust their tone towards the EU in response to different
Eurosceptic attitudes among the public. Hence we differentiate between dissatisfaction towards the
current state of the EU as a characteristic of left-wing Euroscepticism, and a clear cut opposition
towards the EU as a characteristic of right-wing Euroscepticism (van Elsas et al., 2016). Following the
work of van Elsas et al. (216), we measure dissatisfaction with the current state of the EU using the
general trust towards the EP (i.e. ‘1=Tend to trust” vs. “2=Tend not to trust”). We measure opposition
towards the EU as such using a single item single item that capture attitudes towards the process of
European integration (i.e. ‘European unification has gone too far or should be pushed further’ ranging
from 0 to 10).Furthermore, we also consider attitudes towards the single market (i.e. “1=For” or
“2=Against” “A European economic and monetary union with one single currency, the euro”) as
relevant for the position taking of parties in relation to the EU. This is especially important given that
opposition towards the EU among far-left parties is further motivated by their criticism of the
economic regime of the EU. All these “attitudinal” variables are re-scaled to take values between 0
(reflecting pro-EU attitudes), and 1, (reflecting anti-EU attitudes). The mean value of these measures
in a given country reflect the position of the median citizen that should guide parties in their attempts
to maximize votes. Since manifestos drafted in early 2014 can only reflect attitudes expressed before
that point we rely on data from EB data collected in May 2013 (EB 79.3) to measure the position of the
median citizen9.
Our multivariate analysis further control for the size of the party (i.e. share of vote in national
elections), government status, size of the manifestos, the type of manifestos (i.e. if this is an official
manifestos or another type of document issued by the party at the time of the elections), and the value
of the dependent variable in 2009.
9
The only exception is opposition towards the EU which was not present in any of the EB surveys carried in
2013, for this reason we measure the attitudes towards European integration using idem QPP18 of the EES
2014, Voter Study (Schmitt et al., 2015)
13
5. Analyses
We present our empirical in three stages. First, we investigate the change in position taking towards
European topics between the 2009 and the 2014 EP elections by simply looking at the descriptive
statistics to. In a second stage, we use multilevel regression models to further check the robustness of
our finding by testing whether the results hold when controlling for a number of other factors. In a
third stage we analyze the possible factors that lead parties to shift their positions between in critical
in the course of the multiple EU crises
Figure 1: Salience of EU topics in Euromanifestos, descriptive analysis
Before analyzing the shift in position between 2009 and 2014 in relation to our three topics of interest,
we first need how salient they are for parties. In Figure 1 we show the overall emphasis that parties
devote to EU related topics at the time on the 2009 and 2014 EP elections. We note that most mentions
of parties related to the EU revolve around the EU polity issue. In comparison to these the other two
EU issue domains we focus on, i.e. EU economic issues and EU immigration policy, are far less salient
for parties. We further note that far-right parties put more emphasis on EU polity issues in comparison
to both far-left and mainstream parties. When looking at the change of emphasis as response to the
multi-faceted EU crises (i.e. the change in salience from 2009 to 2014) we can only observe small
difference. Although in 2014 far-right parties seem to devote more space to EU polity issues and farleft parties more space to EU economic issues these changes are only marginal when compared to
2009. Furthermore the change in the emphasis towards EU issues among these fringe parties (i.e. the
14
far-left and far-right parties) does not seem to be substantially different from what we can observe for
mainstream parties. All in all Figure 1 confirms previous findings that point to the relative stable
salience of these three we topics across time (Braun et al., 2016).
Figure 2: Tone of EU topics in Euromanifestos, descriptive analysis
Figure 2 shows the tone regarding the three EU issue domains in 2009 and 2014. In regards to EU polity
issues all three party groups become more negative in 2014 as compared to 2009. This is particularly
surprising for mainstream parties, but it points to the fact that even mainstream parties had to adjust
their positive stance towards the European project in response to the multi-faceted EU crises10. As
expected, the biggest change is recorded among the far-right group. Furthermore, also confirming
initial expectations, this is the only group who adopted more negative stances towards EU immigration
policies in 2014. In relation to EU economic issues, we note again that all groups adopted a more
negative tone in 2014. However, contrary to our expectations it is not the far-left but the far-right who
became more negative in this regard. Thus, the initial evidence suggests that far-right parties are the
ones who took the most advantages of the circumstance offered by the multi-faceted crises across the
EU and switched to more Euro-critical stances in the hope to gain from the backlashes of the crises.
This is even the case for EU economic issues that are traditionally viewed as the policy focus of the farleft.
10
Given the pattern of changes in Euromanifestos registered in from 2004 to 2009 (see Appendix 1), we are
confident that the changes recorded between 2009 and 2014, and not those recorded between 2004 and 2014
(see Appendix 2), accurately capture the reaction of parties to the EU crises.
15
Table 2: Multivariate models, change in tone 2009-2014
Intercept
Far-left
Far-right
Vote last
Government party
Policy tone 2009
Proper manifest
Manifesto size
2014
Manifesto size
2009
AIC
BIC
Log Likelihood
N (Parties)
N (countries)
(Variance) Country
(Variance) Far-left
(Variance) Far-right
(Variance) Residual
Model 4: EU Polity
issues tone
-0.878***
(0.330)
0.520*
(0.309)
0.626**
(0.288)
-0.556
(0.637)
0.023
(0.178)
0.685***
(0.076)
-0.655**
(0.265)
0.052
(0.491)
-1.455
(0.919)
413.833
461.126
-190.917
142
28
0.099
0.799
0.610
0.674
Model 5: EU
Economic issues tone
-0.214
(0.293)
0.233
(0.254)
1.000***
(0.268)
-1.586**
(0.624)
-0.178
(0.170)
0.544***
(0.058)
-0.100
(0.264)
-0.664
(0.470)
-0.005
(0.897)
408.021
455.315
-188.011
142
28
0.269
0.281
0.378
0.601
Model 5: EU Immigration
Policy tone
-0.643**
(0.279)
0.076
(0.218)
0.893***
(0.253)
-0.060
(0.571)
0.244
(0.156)
0.674***
(0.068)
0.043
(0.237)
-0.354
(0.429)
0.424
(0.775)
383.648
430.941
-175.824
142
28
0.458
0.227
0.574
0.458
Note: Table entries are unstandardized regression coefficients , standard errors in parenthesis; *** denotes p < 0.01, ** denotes p < 0.05, *
denotes p < 0.1
Nevertheless, it might be the case that our descriptive analysis only captures aggregate trends across
party families, which could conceal party level changes between 2009 and 2014. Furthermore, the
descriptive analysis could also depict patterns that are a result of some unobserved spurious relations.
Therefore, in the next step of our analysis we provide more rigorous quantitative analysis of the way
in which parties change their stances towards the EU in response to the multi-faceted EU crises. To
accurately test this relation we rely on a series of multilevel regression models with random country
intercepts and random slopes for party type. In these models, we control for both a series of party
characteristic (i.e. size of the party and government status) and the characteristic of the manifestos
(i.e. size of the manifestos and type of manifestos) that could also influence the EU position taking of
parties. We measure the change in tone by subtracting the tone of party statement towards a
respective domain in 2014 from the tone of the party statements in 2009. Thus, high positive values
16
indicate that parties switched to more Eurosceptic stances, while low negative values indicate that
parties shifted towards more positive stance. Having this in mind the results in Table 2 show that in
comparison with mainstream parties far-right parties switch in a statistically significant way to more
negative stance across all three domains between 2009 and 2014. At the same time far-left parties
adopt a more negative tone in comparison to mainstream parties only regarding EU Polity issues. For
a better representation of these effects we turn to Figure 3.
Figure 3: Predicted change in tone of EU topics, multivariate analysis 11
However, as expected, far-left parties also become more critical in relation to EU economic issues, but
in this case, the change in stances is not significantly different from mainstream parties. Thus, we find
evidence to support H.1b as this shift is not a specific characteristics of far-left parties. In terms of EU
Polity issues far-left parties likewise adopt more negative stances in 2014 in compassion to 2009 (the
difference is statically significant at p<0.05). The distinction from EU economic issues is that in the case
of EU Polity issue the shift in tone of far-left parties is more negative in comparison to what we observe
for mainstream parties (statically significant at p<0.1).
We further have to note that for mainstream parties the results presented in Figure 3 again confirm
our partial conclusions based on the descriptive analysis (see Figure 2). Although their tone shift
towards EU skeptic stances is less pronounced than that of fringe parties, mainstream parties also had
11
All predicted probabilities are computed using simulations based on the normal distribution of coefficients,
while keeping all continuous variables at their mean and all categorical variables at zero. All random effects are
collapsed.
17
to adapt their tone towards the EU in response to the consequences of the multi-faceted EU crises and
their repercussions in public opinion. Thus in comparison to 2009, in 2014 mainstream parties became
more critical towards EU Polity issues and EU Economic issue. The exception is represented by their
stance towards EU immigration policies, which slightly moved towards a more EU positive tone. Still,
any change that we note for mainstream parties is substantively and statically this change is smaller
than what we note for fringe parties hence supporting our initial expectations (i.e. H7).
Given the quasi-general tendency of parties to adopt more Eurosceptic stances at the time of the 2014
EP elections we further investigate the possible reasons that could explain this shift in stances. As a
reminder, we group our expectations in three categories. First, we expect that parties adopt more
negative stances towards the EU as a response to the negative consequences of the economic crisis
(i.e. the drop in GPD per capita as compared to 20009) and the immigration crisis (i.e. the higher
numbers of refugees registered in 2014). Second, as the perception of the public should matter more
for the behavior of parties than the objective conditions in the country, we hypothesize that the
public’s perception of the crises are the ones that matter. To be more precise, the perceived effects of
the economic crisis (i.e. the perceptions regarding the state of the economy) and the negative impact
of the immigration crisis on the public opinion (i.e. negative feelings towards immigrants) are the ones
that shape the position taking of parties in relation to the EU rather than objective indicators. Third,
we expect that the position taking of parties is influenced by the position of the median citizens, thus
it is the attitudes of citizens towards the EU are the ones that motivate parties to change their stance
at the time of the 2014 EP elections. This is not to say that the position of citizens towards the EU is
not affected by the crises. In fact previous literature suggest that when faced with the negative
consequences of the multi-faceted EU crises citizens adopted more Eurosceptic stances (Braun an
Tausendpfund forthcoming; Hobolt and De Vries 2016; Treib 2014).
Given that, EU Polity issues constitute the core of how parties shape their position towards the EU (see
Figure 1) we choose to further concentrate in the following on this dimension. In fact, this is a choice
that almost all researcher makes when studying the EU stances of parties based on their official
manifestos (Adams et al., 2011; Spoon and Klüver, 2014; Spoon and Williams, 2017; Williams and
Spoon, 2015). We test the above mention expectations by looking at hove these factors influence the
behavior of parties in general (see Table 3) and if they have a conditional impact across the different
type of parties (see Table 4).
18
Table 3: Expanded multivariate models, change in EU polity tone 2009-2014, main effects
Model 6: EU Polity
Model 7: EU Polity
Model 8: EU
Model 9: EU
tone, objective
tone, subjective
Polity tone,
Polity tone,
indicators of crises
indicators of crises
median citizen
median citizen
Intercept
-0.835 (0.324)***
-0.834 (0.322)***
-0.817 (0.327)**
-0.942 (0.315)***
Far-left
0.583 (0.330)*
0.604 (0.332)*
0.565 (0.325)*
0.555 (0.312)*
Far-right
0.760 (0.285)***
0.754 (0.286)***
0.740 (0.286)***
0.763 (0.263)***
Vote last
-0.847 (0.637)
-0.796 (0.634)
-0.820 (0.647)
-0.650 (0.614)
Government party
-0.005 (0.178)
-0.023 (0.179)
0.006 (0.179)
-0.009 (0.172)
***
***
***
Policy tone 2009
0.690 (0.076)
0.696 (0.076)
0.678 (0.076)
0.708 (0.073)***
Proper manifest
-0.642 (0.265)**
-0.643 (0.267)**
-0.604 (0.270)**
-0.637 (0.261)**
Manifesto size 2014
0.022 (0.482)
-0.040 (0.482)
-0.050 (0.509)
0.063 (0.463)
Manifesto size 2009
-1.421 (0.889)
-1.417 (0.895)
-1.398 (0.902)
-1.109 (0.844)
GDP change (14-09)
0.277 (0.943)
Refugees 2014
0.314 (0.249)
Perceived economic
-0.152 (0.567)
situation of country
Attitudes towards
-1.310 (1.054)
immigrants
Opposition towards the
-0.380 (1.154)
-0.357 (0.921)
EU
Dissatisfaction with
-0.045 (0.827)
curent EU
Opposition towards EU
1.586 (0.385)***
economic authority
AIC
399.804
397.792
398.746
388.633
BIC
452.494
450.483
451.436
441.324
Log Likelihood
-181.902
-180.896
-181.373
-176.317
N (Parties)
138
138
138
138
N (countries)
27
27
27
27
(Variance) Country
0.106
0.095
0.105
0.146
(Variance) Far-left
0.930
0.959
0.823
1.034
(Variance) Far-right
0.623
0.626
0.589
0.446
(Variance) Residual
0.668
0.665
0.676
0.632
Note: Table entries are unstandardized regression coefficients , standard errors in parenthesis; *** denotes p < 0.01, ** denotes p < 0.05, * denotes p < 0.1
Looking at the results presented in Models 6 to 9, the only factor that has a statistically significant
unconditional effect is the mean level of “Opposition towards EU economic authority” in a given
country. Our results show that in countries where a larger proportion of the public is against the “A
European economic and monetary union” parties are on average more likely to shift to more negative
stances towards the EU in 2014 compared to 2009 levels. Substantively put only the median position
of citizens in relation to this issue seem to motivate all party groups to shift their position towards the
EU. Nevertheless, we further take into account the distinct possibility that far-right and far-left parties
switch to more Eurosceptic stance in responds to different set of factors. We test for this possibility
using a of conditional models which are presented in Table 4.
19
Table 4: Expanded multivariate models, change in EU polity tone 2009-2014, conditional models
Intercept
Model 10: EU Polity
tone, objective
indicators of crises
Model 11: EU Polity
tone, subjective
indicators of crises
Model 12: EU
Polity tone,
median citizen
Model 13: EU
Polity tone,
median citizen
-0.800** (0.337)
-0.869** (0.340)
-0.913*** (0.343)
-1.118***(0.319)
Far-left
0.554 (0.353)
0.613 (0.357)
0.492 (0.356)
0.586** (0.296)
Far-right
0.761** (0.304)
0.743**(0.297)
0.528*(0.283)
0.654**(0.269)
Policy tone 2009
Vote last
Government party
Proper manifest
Manifesto size 2014
Manifesto size 2009
GDP change (14-09)
Refugees 2014
Far left Xgdp change
0.687***(0.077)
-0.914 (0.653)
0.008 (0.180)
-0.652** (0.277)
-0.025 (0.495)
-1.467 (0.911)
-0.082 (1.196)
0.284 (0.286)
-0.142 (3.140)
0.702*** (0.078)
-0.805 (0.642)
-0.028 (0.180)
-0.619** (0.275)
-0.051 (0.507)
-1.414 (0.929)
0.704*** (0.076)
-0.920 (0.642)
0.009 (0.178)
-0.583** (0.272)
0.264 (0.516)
-1.859** (0.896)
0.736***(0.073)
-0.734 (0.605)
-0.047 (0.170)
-0.534** (0.257)
0.324 (0.479)
-1.309 (0.820)
Opposition towards the EU
-1.046 (1.269)
-1.001 (1.133)
Dissatisfaction with curent EU
0.159 (0.960)
Far right Xgdp change
Far left X Refugee 2014
Far right X Refugee 2014
*
2.927 (3.273)
0.282 (0.963)
0.021 (1.345)
Perceived economic situation of
country
Attitudes towards immigrants
Far left X Perceived
economic situation
Far right X Perceived
economic situation
Far left X Immigration
-0.004 (0.662)
-1.799 (1.246)
-0.059 (2.105)
-2.754 (2.272)
2.119 (4.473)
Far right X Immigration
1.891 (3.910)
Far left X EU opposition
0.106 (4.249)
-1.027 (3.453)
Far right X EU opposition
10.238*** (3.895)
7.391** (3.408)
Far left X EU dissatisfaction
1.364 (2.714)
Far right X EU dissatisfaction
-4.834* (2.813)
EU economic authority
Far left X EU authority
Far right X EU authority
AIC
BIC
Log Likelihood
N (Parties)
N (countries)
(Variance) Country
(Variance) Far-left
(Variance) Far-right
(Variance) Residual
0.680 (0.563)
3.565** (1.408)
0.683 (1.306)
394.515
458.915
-175.258
138
27
0.112
1.092
0.782
0.670
388.609
453.009
-172.305
138
27
0.103
1.267
0.754
0.667
382.332
446.732
-169.166
138
27
0.105
1.045
0.550
0.658
373.375
437.774
-164.687
138
27
0.130
0.797
0.534
0.621
Note: Table entries are unstandardized regression coefficients , standard errors in parenthesis; *** denotes p < 0.01, ** denotes p < 0.05, * denotes
p < 0.1
20
The results presented in Table 4 confirm that indeed far far-left and far-right parties adjust their
position towards the EU in response to different concern among citizens. Before analyzing these
specific conditions, we need to mention that we did not find any evidence that the objective
subjective indicators of the crises influence the decision of parties to adopt a more Eurosceptic tone
at the time of the 2014 EP elections (i.e. H2 and H3). These factors do not have a statistically
significant effect for neither the general position taking among all parties (see Models 6 and 7) nor
for specific party groups (see Models 10 and 11)
Figure 4: Predicted change in tone of EU topics, depending on opposition towards the EU
Model 11 and Model 13 show that it is the attitudes of citizens towards the EU that influence the
position taking of parties in relation to EU matters. However, as expected , the far-right and the farleft respond to different concerns among the public opinion. Far-right parties are more prone to
adopt more Eurosceptic stances before the 2014 EP elections in countries where citizens are
opposed to European integration. This confirms our initial expectations as the Euroscpetic stances of
far-right parties are motivate by the full fledge opposition towards the idea of European integration
(van Elsas et al., 2016). In Figure 4 we offer a visual interpretation of this effect, the figure also
clarifies the switch in the position of far-right parties when compared to the other party groups.
Thus, we can note that far-right parties adopted a more negative tone towards the EU only in the
countries where the majority of the public is against the idea of European integration. At the same
21
time, we can note that far-left and mainstream parties are not responding to the position of the
median citizen in this regard (see flat lines in Figure 4). Finally, Figure 4 also reveals the far-right
parties switched to more negative stance towards the EU in comparison with mainstream parties
only when the position of the median citizens was leaning towards opposing European integration.
Figure 5: Predicted change in tone of EU topics, depending on opposition towards the EU economic
authority
When it comes to far-left parties, we find that they are especially responsive to public opposition
against the European economic and monetary union (see Model 13). This confirms our initial exception
as this effect fits with the general opposition of the left towards the neo-liberal character of the EU,
hence far-left parties should be especially responsive if the public opinion also opposes this aspect of
the EU. This effect is further illustrated in Figure 5 where we can note that indeed in 2014 far-left
parties adopt statically significant more negative position towards the EU in comparison to their
position in 2009. Furthermore, even if all party groups adopt Eurosceptic positions in countries where
citizens are more negative towards an EU wide economic union (see also results in Model 9), far-left
parties are the ones who, in comparison with mainstream parties, are most responsive to the position
of the median citizen in this regard.
22
6. Conclusions
At the time of the election of the European Parliament in 2014, the European Union was heavily
affected by a multi-facetted crises which had – and still has – far-reaching implications for the political
system of member-countries, but also for the European level of governance. Although a series of
recently published scholarly work illustrates that the electoral system has been affected as well, the
majority of scholars devoted their attention to the voter’s side exploring the different motives of voting
behavior in the aftermath of the crisis. In contrast to that, studies focusing on responses from political
parties are largely lacking so far. Our study’s aim was to investigate in which way these political actors
respond to multiple crises. Against the background of the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European
Parliament elections our paper investigates the issue emphasis and the position taking of Eurosceptic
parties on the left and on the right compared to mainstream parties. Using data from the
Euromanifesto Project from 2009 and 2014 we analyze the changes in issue orientations towards the
EU in the shadow of the multiple crises and identify some of the reasons thereof.
While the salience of EU matters remains largely unchanged in comparison to 2009, we find a general
anti-European shift in the manifestoes issued at the time of the 2014 EP elections. Both Eurosceptic
and (somewhat less so) mainstream parties become more Eurosceptic in the aftermath of the crisis,.
Far-right parties become more critical across the board, i.e. in terms of EU polity, EU economic issues
and EU immigration issues. In contrast to that, far-left become more critical in terms of both the
general principles of the EU polity and economic issues. These different reactions vis-à-vis the crises on
the left and on the right seem to suggest different implications for the future of the European Union.
Judging from their parties’ manifestos, the vote for Eurosceptic parties of the left seems to support a
revision of the present framework of the Union, i.e. the polity dimension, but also the prevailing
economic policies. In contrast to that support for Eurosceptic parties of the right seems to be support
more far-reaching consequences for the future of the Union since it involves the entire spectrum
including immigration issues which pertain to the cultural axis of the political sphere. Last but not least
we note that mainstream parties were not immune to the challenges of the multi-faceted EU crises. In
response to the backlash of EU support among the public they also had to adapt and articulate a
somewhat more negative tone towards the European project and also towards economic issues (but
not immigration issues) that fall under the jurisdiction of the EU.
All of this was based on the perspective that the crises hit the European Union as a “global” shock –
i.e. affected all the member countries and their party systems equally. However, we also acknowledged
“local”, i.e. national variations in the severity of the crises – both objectively and subjectively, and
considered that these local variations in the severity of economic and migration problems might have
had a stronger effect on the position taking of political parties regarding the European Union. It turned
23
out, however, that we did not find much issue-based repercussions on the general EU polity tone of
political parties, neither based on objective criteria nor on subjective perceptions of citizens.
What in the end mattered most was the EU-related evaluation of citizens (as indicated by the position
of the median citizen). The more this median citizen tends to see the EU economic regime critically,
the more skeptical is the EIU polity tone of far-left political parties. In addition, the more critical this
median citizen looks at the process of European Unification, the more skeptical is the EU polity tone
of far-right parties found to be. This obviously has important consequences for our understanding of
the nature and substance of political responsiveness. Political parties when drafting their manifestos
are not so much guided by the objective severity of political problems, nor by the evaluations of these
problems by the citizenry. What matters in the end is the link that citizens themselves are able to
establish (not in a communicative vacuum of course) between the severity of political problems on the
one hand, and the responsibility of the European Union for these problems on the other.
24
7. Literature
Adams J, Clark M, Ezrow L, et al. (2004) Understanding Change and Stability in Party Ideologies: Do
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Appendix 1: Change in party stances 2004-2009
Salience change 2004-2009
Tone change 2004-2009
30
Appendix 2: Change in party stances 2004-2014
Salience change 2004-2014
Tone change 2004-2014
31