{"title":"Gordon Smith and Vincent Wright Memorial Prizes 2023","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2294416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2294416","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"54 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139005056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anna Elomäki, Johanna Kantola, Petra Ahrens, Valentine Berthet, Barbara Gaweda, Cherry Miller
{"title":"The role of national delegations in the politics of the European Parliament","authors":"Anna Elomäki, Johanna Kantola, Petra Ahrens, Valentine Berthet, Barbara Gaweda, Cherry Miller","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2275387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2275387","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"86 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139221754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Un-solvable crises? Differential implementation and transboundary crisis management in the EU","authors":"L. Cabane, Martin Lodge","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2282284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2282284","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Much has been said about how crises in the EU create disintegration or differentiation pressures. Considerable attention has been paid to EU crisis governance mechanisms. Yet, less attention has been paid to the anticipation of effects of differentiated implementation on transboundary crisis management regimes. This article asks how differential policy integration accommodates the anticipation of differential implementation through institutional choices in transboundary crisis management regimes. Concerns about the consequences of national customisation influence the way in which transboundary crisis management regimes develop in terms of allocation of authority and constraints on member state discretion. The paper compares EU transboundary crisis regimes in four sectors: banking, electricity, youth unemployment, and invasive alien species. Concerns with ongoing differential implementation of transboundary crisis management generate further inevitable tensions in governance systems, leading to continued contestation over institutional arrangements.","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"26 33","pages":"491 - 514"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139239662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Markus Hinterleitner, Valentina Kammermeier, Benjamin Moffitt
{"title":"How the populist radical right exploits crisis: comparing the role of proximity in the COVID-19 and refugee crises in Germany","authors":"Markus Hinterleitner, Valentina Kammermeier, Benjamin Moffitt","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2275892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2275892","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies the conditions required by populist radical right actors to convincingly create a sense of crisis. The article draws on the literature on political blame games and policy feedback to argue that it is not only the salience of an event that determines its ‘populist exploitability’, but also its proximity to mass publics – or more simply, how directly and closely it affects citizens. In the study, Moffitt’s stepwise model of populist crisis performance is extended and expectations are formulated regarding how the proximity of an event influences the various steps of crisis performance. The article then tests this theoretical argument with a within-unit analysis of the crisis performance of a populist radical right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), during the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis suggests that the pan-demic’s proximity to people’s daily lives narrowed and complicated the AfD’s crisis performance in important ways. The article sheds light on the determinants of the success of populist radical right parties and nuances our understanding of the broader relationship between populism and crisis.","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"205 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139253424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Competing on competence: the issue profiles of mainstream parties in Western Europe","authors":"C. Green-Pedersen, H. Seeberg","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2278334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2278334","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139259164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attributing blame: how political parties in Germany leverage cooperative federalism","authors":"Antonios Souris, Sabine Kropp, Christoph Nguyen","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2274719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2274719","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThis study investigates how political parties used the federal structure of government for discursive blame attribution strategies in parliamentary debates during the Covid-19 crisis. The analysis focuses on the German case which is considered an embodiment of cooperative federalism. Largely intertwined responsibilities and joint decision making provide incentives for self-serving blame attribution strategies. The empirical investigation includes a qualitative content analysis of 212 parliamentary debates in the Bundestag and the 16 state parliaments. Overall, 2067 statements were manually coded and integrated into a novel dataset. The data reveal a more diverse discursive toolkit of blame attribution strategies than commonly conceptualised. The study demonstrates that parties, especially when they are involved in intergovernmental bodies and coalition governments, resort to ‘softer’ forms of blaming. The vertical integration of the party system also creates an effective blame barrier, containing self-serving strategies even during the prolonged crisis and several election campaigns.Keywords: Cooperative federalismblame attributionparty competitionparliamentary debatesCovid-19 AcknowledgementsWe thank the two reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article and Akseli Paillette-Liettilä, Jonathan Röders, Polina Khubbeeva, Yannis Wittig, and Marek Wessels for their valuable research assistance.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The dataset, codebook, and further project documentation are available at the data repositorium of GESIS: https://doi.org/10.7802/2627.2 The existing literature uses both the term ‘blame attribution’ and the term ‘responsibility attribution’. While the literature on voters and their perceptions of multilevel systems generally uses the term ‘responsibility’, the more institutionally oriented contributions focus on the term ‘blame’. However, federalism research usually means by the term ‘responsibility’ the legal or constitutional competences of federal entities in federal systems. Therefore, we prefer to use the term ‘blame’ to delineate formal responsibilities from discursive ascriptions.3 Infection Protection Act of 20 July 2000 (BGBl. I: 1045), last amended by Article 8b of the Act of 20 December 2022 (BGBl. I: 2793).4 It was not possible to analyse all parliamentary debates on Covid-19. Based on the protocols of the plenary sessions in the Bundestag and the 16 Landtage, we initially marked all procedures related to managing Covid-19 that were debated there between 1 February 2020 and the federal elections on 26 September 2021. In total, we have identified 3117 procedures in this period.5 Regular discussions as well as the joint specification of definitions and coding instructions ensured a common understanding among the team members on how to code the debates. The Landtage were coded by five coders. Each coder reviewe","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":" 26","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135240838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How do voters interpret social class appeals? Lessons from open-ended responses","authors":"Rune Stubager, Mads Thau","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2274726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2274726","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractRecent research has shown that parties’ group appeals, particularly working class appeals, can raise electoral support. But how do such effects come about? This article explores the mechanisms underlying group appeals by content analysing voters’ open-ended responses to working class and upper middle class appeals in a survey experiment in Denmark. The results show that voters generally connect class-based rhetoric from candidates to issues of inequality with some also reacting emotionally. Furthermore, the effect of class appeals on electoral support is conditioned by the considerations activated by the appeals, with stronger effects observed among voters who focus on the groups involved. Finally, while voters recognise traditional class-party alliances, such stereotypes do not undercut the effectiveness of the appeals; thus, also candidates from right-wing parties can use working class appeals to their benefit. These findings advance our understanding of the role of social groups in party electoral strategies.Keywords: Group appealsclass votingexperimentopen-ended responsescontent analysis AcknowledgementsThe authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Joshua Robison in collecting the data and Lasse Endby Pedersen who coded the open-ended responses. Previous versions of the article were presented at the ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck, 2022, the annual meeting of the Danish Political Science Association, 2022 as well as at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. The authors are thankful for all the helpful comments received on these occasions.Ethical approvalThe data for the analysis was collected in accordance with Danish law regarding participant consent and ethical approval and is available at https://osf.io/zh43j/?view_only=9fae5d6ce51749039a47adca497806e9.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We define considerations as any type of thought that appears in a voter’s mind when exposed to a certain stimulus – a group appeal in this case – and assume that these can be, at least partly, measured via an open-ended question (see below).2 Robison et al. (Citation2021) find that this result applies for all classes except upper middle class identifiers who tend not to react to the appeals. We return to this point below.3 On a 0 to 10 sympathy scale like the one introduced below, all four groups mentioned in the treatments scored between 7.1 and 7.4 – essentially the same, in other words.4 Note that in Denmark high school teachers are university graduates with a master’s degree, thus representing an upper middle class occupation.5 Respondents were debriefed at the end of the survey.6 In the Danish electoral system, voters have the option of voting for specific candidates, as well as for parties, implying that evaluations of single candidates based on their statements is an externally valid exercise.7 70 respondents gave responses regarding the second vignette revealing t","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":" 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135240964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen, Josefina Sipinen, Peter Söderlund
{"title":"Mummy’s girls, daddy’s boys: the gendered transmission of political engagement in families","authors":"Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen, Josefina Sipinen, Peter Söderlund","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2275447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2275447","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractDespite gains in women’s education, workforce participation, and leadership roles, a gender gap in political self-efficacy persists across European nations. Women consistently report lower confidence in their ability to participate in and understand politics compared to their male counterparts. This study posits that, although society inherently signals to boys their place in politics, a politically engaged mother can counteract this by providing her daughter with a positive role model and fostering her interest in politics, thereby bolstering the daughter’s political self-efficacy. Drawing from survey data of 15–16-year-old Finnish students (n = 5220) from 2021, the findings reveal two critical insights: fathers tend to boost political self-efficacy more in sons than in daughters. In contrast, the political engagement of mothers has a stronger positive association with their daughters’ confidence in politics. Moreover, parents’ political involvement fosters political interest in their children, which then enhances the latter’s sense of political self-efficacy.Keywords: Political self-efficacygenderpolitical engagementadolescents Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Table A1 in the appendix addresses potential gender differences in assessing parents’ political engagement. For example, gender roles may influence how boys and girls evaluate their parents. However, the differences are generally small. First, daughters tended to have more positive evaluations of both their parents’ political engagement. For the first three items, both sons and daughters rated their fathers’ political engagement more positively than their mothers’, but the gaps were, at most, 0.03 points greater among sons. Sons also had more favourable evaluations of their fathers’ encouragement on discussing political and social issues. Daughters, on the other hand, reported that their mothers were more encouraging in making independent decisions, with a gap of 0.12 points. In terms of the indexes, sons had somewhat more positive evaluations of their fathers’ engagement, while daughters had more positive evaluations of their mothers’ engagement.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the project Education, Political Efficacy and Informed Citizenship (EPIC), funded by Academy of Finland (project number 323608).Notes on contributorsElina Kestilä-KekkonenElina Kestilä-Kekkonen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tampere University and one of three principal investigators of the 2023 Finnish National Election Study. Her main research interests are political socialisation and inequalities in political engagement. She has published in journals such as European Journal of Political Research, European Political Science Review and Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. [elina.kestila-kekkonen@tuni.fi]Josefina SipinenJosefina Sipinen is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with both the Fac","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":" 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135290900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do more inclusive parties change less? Intraparty democracy and programmatic change","authors":"Sofia Marini","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2272117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2272117","url":null,"abstract":"The extent to which political parties change their policy positions and the emphasis they give to different topics is crucial for the representativeness and responsiveness of contemporary political systems. This article aims to clarify the role of intraparty democracy in explaining the amount of such change. Previous research has shown that a stronger empowerment of members decreases programmatic change. This hypothesis is tested here more broadly, looking at both position shifts and emphasis change, adopting a more comprehensive definition of intraparty democracy and unpacking the Left-Right scale into an economic and cultural subdimension. It is further argued that the effect of intraparty democracy is moderated by the relative salience of the economic vs. cultural subdimensions of political competition. The empirical analysis of 47 parties in 10 countries between 1995 and 2019 confirms that more internally democratic parties change less, while evidence concerning the moderating effect of relative salience is more mixed.","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"105 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135476425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turning assertive? EU rule of law enforcement in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine","authors":"Gisela Hernández, Carlos Closa","doi":"10.1080/01402382.2023.2268492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2023.2268492","url":null,"abstract":"When dealing with EU’s rule of law (RoL)-related issues, the Commission has often adopted a forbearance approach and the actions taken have crystallised in soft enforcement mechanisms directed at Poland. However, the use of the Conditionality Regulation as an enforcement instrument in 2022 in relation to (lack of) RoL compliance signalled a change into an assertive approach towards Hungary. Why so? This paper argues that exogenous events may change policy priorities and linkage of issues explain this change. Russian aggression against Ukraine prompted a shift in the priorities of member states’ governments making them more receptive towards EU Commission enforcement actions. The Hungarian government’s friendly attitude towards Russia clashes with the position of most member states and the Commission itself. Orban’s partial isolation makes the Commission more willing to exercise RoL enforcement initiatives. Hence, supranational RoL-related forbearance is, at least in critical situations, affected by the calculus of opportunity that the Commission derives from other policy areas. Empirically, the process is traced through official/public documents and statements made by EU actors.","PeriodicalId":48213,"journal":{"name":"West European Politics","volume":"16 24","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135589202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}