Michael Bruter

Winning hearts and minds for Europe: the impact of news and symbols on civic and cultural European identity

This article empirically explores the impact of symbols of European integration and good or bad news about Europe on individuals’ European identity. The analysis is based on a distinction between civic and cultural components of identity, which enables testing of the model in a way that could not be done with existing survey instruments. The model depicts these two components as conceptually and empirically distinct and responding differently to various cues in the environment. The findings showthat many respondents identify with Europe and the EU, mostly in civic terms, and explain how citizens and institutions interact to nurture identities. They show the strong impact of symbols and news on European identity. Other findings include the predominant effect of symbols on cultural identity and news on civic identity. The results have profound implications for our understanding of European integration, political behavior, and minority integration in multicultural societies.

Time Bomb?: The Dynamic Effect of News and Symbols on the Political Identity of European Citizens

Based on a three-wave, six-country comparative panel study experiment with 1,197 participants, this article shows how in the long term, political institutions and the media can affect the European identity of citizens. It shows not only that exposure to good or bad news on Europe and to symbols of the European Union has an effect on European identity but also that news works as a powerful time bomb. It suggests that whereas increasingly cynical European citizens first resist perceived attempts of political manipulation, the effect of news ultimately kicks in and so influences citizens’ European identity with remarkable efficiency in the long term. The 2.5-year study demonstrates this time bomb effect of news, as well as an immediate but growing effect of political symbols on citizens’ identity.

Tomorrow’s Leaders? Understanding the Involvement of Young Party Members in Six European Democracies

Using a mass survey of young members of 15 parties in six European democracies, this article explores their motivations, perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. In a context of general disenchantment with politics and febrile participation, particularly among young citizens, this article explains why a large number of youngsters still decide to get involved in one of the most traditional forms of activism: party membership. The study uses a comparative survey of 2,919 young party members ages 18 to 25 and shows that they fit into three categories: moral-, social-, and professional-minded. Young party members significantly differ in terms of their perceptions, preferences, behavior, and desired future involvement. The findings shed unprecedented light on the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s political leaders, a subgroup of professional-minded young party members who distinguish themselves from the majority of ideologically driven, moral-minded activists and some less motivated, disciplined, and reliable social-minded members.

The Difficult Emergence of a European People

When academics and journalists alike think of the ‘failures’ of European integration, one of the most usual arguments to be heard is that 60 years of European integration have yet failed to create a widely felt sense of European identity. This ‘non-identity’ thesis takes a more formal meaning in academic research, whereby scholars complain that there is no such thing as a ‘European demos’ (for example, Gabel and Anderson 2001; Scharpf 1999). For too long, the notion that there is no such thing as a European demos has been accepted as a given despite remarkably little conceptual precision and empirical evidence.

The Future of Our Democracies

The young party members whom we surveyed and interviewed have taken us on an original and fascinating journey in their hearts and minds: Why and how do they join? What do they do? How does their membership change their life? How do they evaluate their party, and their democracy? And finally, what do they imagine, hope, and dream that their future will be like?

Model and Methods

We have seen from the previous chapter that young party membership as a phenomenon has largely been overlooked in a comparative manner and we have gained a better sense of the current challenges faced by political scientists who specialise in party politics in order to focus our attention on the complex nature and world of young party activists. In this chapter, we detail the ambition and scope of this book. We plan to analyse the underexposed world of young party membership in Europe in a way that will enable the reader to take a journey through the lives of young party members and offer them a glimpse into the hearts and minds of young party activists.

Through the Polling Booth Curtain: A Visual Experiment on Citizens’ Behaviour Inside the Polling Booth

While many biological and psychological experiments rely on a visual observation of subjects’ behaviour under given experimental circumstances, nobody has yet filmed what happens inside a polling booth. Teaming up with professional film-makers, we conducted an experiment whereby we film the shadow of 145 voters while they are inside the polling booth casting their vote. We observe their emotions but also measure how long they think before casting their vote using three different electoral ballots/voting machines showing that the average thinking time varies from 20 s to a full minute with the exact same candidates and instructions depending on the procedure used. We believe that our experiment opens new way to directly measure electoral behaviour without relying on respondents’ self-reporting while avoiding the use of intrusive equipment that ‘feels’ artificial to subjects and respecting every key ethical condition of experimental research including anonymity and informed consent.

Concluding Thoughts and Tribulations

We have written this book against a backdrop of great upheaval in Europe, the same backdrop against which the research was conducted. More than half a decade of austerity measures in many countries has seen the rise and fall of entire parties, of coalition governments, of the far right, of populist nationalism and new political movements based on attempts at direct and delegative democracy.

Participation of Youth in Elections: Beyond Youth Apathy

Voting has historically been the gold standard form of political participation in liberal democracies, and the main point of reference of those who have tried to assess whether democratic participation of given groups has been healthy or in crisis. In this book, we are explicitly considering the various modes of political participation in its broadest sense, but there is no doubt that, as we will see in the next few pages, elections hold a special place in the heart of many young people themselves as a channel of democratic expression and efficacy.

Youth Participation Beyond Voting: Volunteering and Contestation

This chapter goes to the heart of our research question about the extent to which youth participation in democratic life may be described as being ‘in crisis’. We begin this chapter by building on our insights from earlier chapters and on data from wider research in this area. Participation by young people in democratic life on a local, national, regional or international basis is not a new phenomenon. Attention to this phenomenon, however, has been increasing.