Johan Hellström

Partisan responses to Europe: the role of ideology for national political parties' positions on European integration

This article re-examines and evaluates several hypotheses regarding the way national political parties position themselves with respect to European integration. By using a pooled cross-sectional panel of data on references to Europe in the election manifestos of political parties in 16 West European countries between 1970 and 2003, I present further evidence that their stances on European integration are largely determined by their ideology, here measured by the locations of the parties within party families and their general orientation along the left/right ideological continuum. However, notable changes have occurred and the influence of ideology has diminished, as most parties have adopted more favourable positions towards the European project over time. Nonetheless, it is too early to disregard the connection between left/right and pro/anti integration, since many marginal parties are still taking oppositional stances that are strongly related to their ideological commitment.

Who Gets into Government? Coalition Formation in European Democracies

This article investigates different dynamics in government formation in 16 Western and 10 Central-Eastern European democracies during the post-war period. The study provides the first systematic comparison of determinants of participation in government in the East and the West. Applying mixed effects logit regression models while taking into account missing values in the dataset, the results demonstrate substantial differences between the two regions and show that most of the existing findings about participation in government are driven by Western democracies. Policy-based factors are relevant in Western countries, but no indications were found for these factors in Central-East European democracies where membership of government is mainly the result of electoral gains and losses.

Conditional Hypotheses in Comparative Social Science: Mixed-Method Approaches to Middle-Sized Data Analysis

This paper discusses under which circumstances and how configurational comparative methods (i.e. QCA) and statistical methods can be combined to provide tests for the ‘quasi’-sufficiency of any given set of combination of causal conditions. When combined, QCA provides the ability to explore causal substitutability (i.e. multiple paths to a given outcome) and the ways in which many multiple causes interact with one another to produce effects, while the statistical elements can provide robust indications of the probable validity of postulated hypotheses. The potential utility of the mixed-method approach for analyzing political phenomena is demonstrated by applying it to cross-national data regarding party positions on European integration and party-based Euroscepticism in Western Europe. The findings show that oppositional stances to European integration are partly associated with non-governmental ideological fringe parties on both the left and right. The empirical example presented in this paper demonstrates that configurational methods can be successfully combined with statistical methods and supplement the QCA-framework by providing statistical tests of ‘almost sufficient’ claims. However, combining QCA with statistical methods can sometimes be problematic in middle-sized data analysis, especially as the latter usually cannot handle limited diversity (i.e. insufficient information) in the data and/or overtly complex relationships (i.e. having a large number of conjunctional conditions or interacting variables).

Party debate over Europe in national election campaigns: Electoral disunity and party cohesion

Few political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a partys voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns.

Blaming Europe? Responsibility Without Accountability in the European Union

Assigning responsibility in the multi-level system of the EU is not an easy task for the voters. But when do voters get it right or wrong when it comes to assigning responsibility in the EU? This book sets out to determine how citizens can attribute responsibility in the EU and whether they understand ‘who is to blame’ for policy outcomes. It also investigates what affects voters’ perceptions of responsibility and how such perceptions matter for voters’ choices in European elections and for trust in European institutions. In the book, Hobolt and Tilley argue that the multi-level structure of EU decisionmaking makes it hard for voters to correctly attribute responsibility for policy outcomes. That voters find it difficult to hold EU politicians accountable via the ballot box is neither surprising nor something we did not know before. It is not here that the main contribution of the book lies. Rather, its key contribution is to explore under which circumstances voters gets it right and wrong. Hobolt and Tilley focus on whether three different factors matter in this regard: the institutional context (i.e. if there is a difference between countries inside and outside the Euro-zone); the quantity and quality of information from politicians and the media about responsibility and the EU; and individual biases – that is, attention to politics and general attitudes to the EU. Hobolt and Tilley use both a clear theoretical framework and rich data (originating from projects that the authors have been involved in or directed). The empirical material consists of political expert survey data contrasted with public opinion polls. Thus, the authors use experts’ survey responses to identify which level of government is responsible for different policy areas, and then use these as benchmarks for comparisons with citizens’ evaluations. Hobolt and Tilley find that both experts and the public in Eurozone countries think the EU has more responsibilities than experts and the public in countries outside the Euro-zone. The book also looks at media content. The authors present both the visibility of EU-related issues in the media, but also show how the media affects citizens’ views of EU responsibility. In addition, the authors demonstrate how existing attitudes make a difference in this regard. When conditions are thought to be worsening, people who are sceptical about the EU tend to blame it. Thus, people who dislike the EU project blame the EU, but EU enthusiasts tend to clear the EU of any blame. One of the chapters in the book also investigates how heads of government (in three countries) assign credit and blame for the financial and economic crisis (the Great Recession). Empirically, except for one chapter (about the heads of government), the chapters rely heavily on surveys designed for the 2009 European Parliament (EP) elections. In four of the eight empirical chapters, the data for the EP elections are accompanied by survey data from the UK context. In the chapter on how politicians try to shift the blame to the EU, the data cover, in addition to the UK, also Germany and Ireland. Thus, many of the claims made in the book are mainly based on data that do not cover the entire EU. The empirical analyses in the book are overall compelling and thorough.