0000000000082596
AUTHOR
Alexandru Filip
Conclusion and Discussion
It would seem that European Politics are currently enrolled in a constant flux of uncertainty and anxiousness. The Institutional Matrix and Community of states that make up the Union seemingly cannot catch a break as they meander through a succession of crises and challenges. These are taking their toll on the EU, its unity in decision making, and countries’ commitment to ever closer Union. The sovereign debt crisis and so-called Greek Euro Crisis shook the tacit belief in the current economic architecture of the bloc and questioned the belief in intra-European solidarity. Shortly thereafter, the refugee crisis saw European States adopt ad hoc and sometimes contradictory measures for border…
Eurosceptic Contagion and European Elections
At the onset, the starting perspective here has been that the main arena for political struggle is the national one. One of the most influential approaches in the study of European and European Union politics has been the second-order election thesis (Reif & Schmitt, 1980). According to this school of thought, elections to the European Parliament have actually functioned as somewhat less important national elections (hence second order, akin to US midterm elections), and the main arena for political conflict over EU policy lies at the national level. This book has so far largely shared these assumptions and premises and has as a consequence focused on the effect of Eurosceptic Parties’ succ…
The Rodrik Trilemma and the Dahrendorf Quandary: An Empirical Assessment
Rodrik’s Trilemma rests on the incompatibility of democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration: any two can be combined, but never all three simultaneously and in full. Addressing the same problèmatique but from a different perspective, Dahrendorf’s Quandary posits that, over time, maintaining global economic competitiveness requires countries either to adopt measures detrimental to the cohesion of civil society or to restrict civil liberties and political participation. The purpose of this article is to examine the empirical foundations of Rodrik’s and Dahrendorf’s propositions. When one assesses developed market economies from 1991 to 2014, evidence suggests that only …
Theoretical and Analytical Framework
Analytically, the present work relies on two foundations, Anthony Downs’ (1957) Proximity model of electoral competition which states that political parties or candidates will seek to position themselves as close as possible to the (preferred) policy positions of voters and Ian Budge’s past election model (1994), according to which parties and candidates use the results of past elections in order to gain information about the electorate landscape. Both models rely on a ‘marketplace’ analogy with demand and supply. Candidates, parties, and politicians supply policies (advertised as policy positions), while the electorate, voters, and constituencies demand policies. Just like in a marketplace…
The Evolution and Trends of Eurosceptic Success
The evolution of Euroscepticism in the countries of Western Europe has not had a linear character—parties of various ideologies and political colour have taken up the mantle of Euroscepticism over the years, while their success has risen and waned. While the aim here is to provide nomothetic, ceteris paribus results that provide an overview of Eurosceptic Contagion at the level Western Europe as a whole (and makes the argument that the shift in policy positions is an EU15 wide phenomenon), it is important to see how the fate of Eurosceptic Parties has risen and declined at various times in individual, discrete countries. A simple glance at this more descriptive data reveals various interest…
The Circumstances and Dynamics of Eurosceptic Contagion
This part of the book tries to explore to what degree the process under study is itself influenced—mitigated or amplified—by the decorum in which Eurosceptic Parties do well and in the process tests the corresponding hypotheses from the theoretical framework. I tackle possibility of Eurosceptic Contagion being part of a self-reinforcing mechanism, whereby growing public discontent with integration, growing popularity of antisystemic fringe parties, and the growing salience of the EU issue might go hand in hand, strengthening each other’s effect over time. The rise of Eurosceptic actors has been a dynamic phenomenon, closely intertwined with the development of the European Union, as well as …
“Managing the Impossible?” Comparing How Countries Address the Dahrendorf Quandary
This paper examines the policy approaches and measures that developed market economies countries have adopted to “manage” what has become known as the Dahrendorf Quandary, a profound challenge facing globalizing economies: over time, staying economically competitive requires either adopting measures detrimental to the cohesion of society or restricting civil liberties and political participation. Examining a range of countries over time, it is found that their policy choices and subsequent performance are too varied to support the inevitable, almost mechanical, incompatibility the Quandary implies. While balancing the relationship between economic globalization, social cohesion, and democra…
Do Eurosceptic Parties Influence Their Party Systems?
This book is written around—and anchored in—the Radical Party Hypothesis, which states that the success of Eurosceptic parties leads to changes of policy position/preferences by the other parties. In order to test it, it seeks to analyse whether the position changes of centrist parties on the issue of European Integration correlate with the electoral success of Eurosceptic Parties in those aforementioned parties’ countries, when controlling for a variety of factors, such as public opinion/sentiment on EU integration, socio-economic factors, time, as well as characteristics of those parties whose position changes this study measures: their size, their ideological orientation, their electoral…
Explaining Contagion: Tactical, Ideological, or Geographical Impulses?
Elections are a zero-sum game, and the gain of one party equals the loss of another party. Likewise, the vote gains of some groups of parties have parallel losses among other party groups or party families. Political Parties do not operate in isolation. When Eurosceptic parties are successful, pro-European parties tend to lose votes as a consequence. Would a political party decide to adjust its position every time a Eurosceptic Party gains votes? The assumption here is that if a political party gains votes from one election to another (or at least does not lose votes), the information that the election result is communicating to it is that it is doing something right. A party might take not…