Magnus Blomgren

This time it’s different? Effects of the Eurovision Debate on young citizens and its consequence for EU democracy – evidence from a quasi-experiment in 24 countries

ABSTRACT For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties’ ‘lead candidates’. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU’s lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called ‘Eurovision Debate’, a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.

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.

Political Parties and the European Union

The role of political parties in modern democracies is contested. Traditionally, parties have been associated with a number of functions and, especially in a western European context, given a more or less hegemonic role over the political process. However, the question of whether political parties actually have (or should have) this prominent role in modern democracies has long been debated. In this so-called party decline debate, a number of tendencies, such as voter de-alignment and membership decline, are used to indicate the less dominant role of political parties, and it is argued that their adaptive capacity is poor (Webb, 2002: 3). Even though some of the critical remarks regarding the future role of political parties are pertinent, the ambition of this chapter is not to judge in this debate. It is rather written with the assumption that political parties are (still) indispensable parts of representative democracy as we know it, and if political parties fail to integrate the political system, express demands, represent various views and identify political leaders, democracy will lose in the end.

Sweden: Power to the Parliamentarians?

This final empirical chapter brings us to Sweden, the third EU member among the Nordic states. Sweden joined the Union at the start of 1995. Accession followed a referendum in October the previous year, in which the electorate approved the terms of membership by a fairly narrow margin. After that, opinion polls consistently showed Swedes to be among the EU’s least enthusiastic citizens. Although outright opposition to membership gradually diminished (Tallberg et al. 2010: 86–94), Euroscepticism remained represented in the party system.

Norway: Strong yet Marginalised Parties

This chapter turns to Norway which, like Iceland, remains outside the EU. On two occasions, in the early 1970s and the mid-1990s, the country’s government felt confident that Norwegian membership of the Union had been arranged, only to see its plans dashed by the electorate in consultative referendums. Thereafter Norway assumed the status of a semi-member state, accepting many of the constraints of membership, while — crucially for our project — lacking the political representation in EU decision-making that member states enjoy. How have the Norwegian political parties adapted to this limbo? How well does delegation and accountability in the intra-party channel work under these circumstances?

Denmark: Party Agents on Tight Leashes

In this first empirical chapter, we look at Denmark, the Nordic country with the longest-standing EU membership. The Danes joined the European Community (EC) in 1973, alongside Britain and Ireland (but not Norway, which, as we will see later in the book, declined to take up the terms of its accession). Denmark’s involvement in European integration has been far from smooth and unproblematic, however. Of all the Nordic countries, Denmark has easily the widest constitutional provision for direct democracy, and on two separate occasions Danish voters have opted to keep the country outside the most integrated parts of the modern Union. At the same time, the Danish public has been, and still is, split in its views on the EU and, as we will see, this cleavage is important for Danish political life. How has this status vis-a-vis Europe influenced the delegation and accountability that Danish political parties have been able to offer the country’s citizens?

Conclusions: Nordic Political Parties, European Union and the Challenge of Delegation

In the previous chapters of this book, we have looked at the way political parties are organised and take decisions in Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Our interest in the topic has been fired particularly by the debate about the effects of the European Union on the systems of democracy in its member states — and, indeed, in nearby states that are not actually members. Given the severe economic problems that gradually confronted much of Europe from around 2008, and the likely empowerment of European-level institutions as a response to them, the question of how democracy is to function has seldom been more current. In this concluding chapter, we reflect comparatively on what we have found.

Parties and the Challenge of Multi-Level Politics

For all the changes in European governance in recent decades, which some suggest have left the old ‘boundaries’ of the state out of sync with each other (Bartolini 2005), national democratic systems remain the centrepiece of politics. Moreover, despite their frequently alleged decline (see Daalder 1992), parties remain absolutely central to political competition. It is hard to envisage a genuine alternative to them so long as parliamentarism remains the democratic system of choice in the majority of European countries.

Finland: From Permissive Consensus to Angry Birds?

At the beginning of the 1990s, the debate on EU membership developed in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The main reason was the severe economic difficulties that hit these countries. However, in the Finnish case, another argument was relevant. Throughout its history, Finland has been strongly influenced by the fact that the country is situated between Europe’s east and west. As such, the tension with Sweden, on the one hand, and with Russia and the Soviet Union, on the other, has marked the country (Pesonen and Riihinen 2002: 23). Joining the EU was thus also a means of consolidating Finland in the Western political sphere.