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

Abstract

Abstract. 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 party's 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.

When politics prevails: Parties, elections and loyalty in the European Parliament

“…: 10). A similar mechanism has been identified in political parties divided on the issue of Europe: before an election, when vote‐seeking becomes the dominant motivation and inconsistent messaging a risk to success, the leadership suppresses intraparty conflict more effectively (Hellström & Blomgren : 268, 269, 279). Evidence of intensifying national control before European elections also comes from the formal analysis of legislative voting in EP5 (Lindstädt et al.…”

Eager to leave? Populist radical right parties’ responses to the UK’s Brexit vote

“…A study of Steenbergen and Scott (2004) suggested that parties that are internally divided on Europe aim to de-emphasise the issue. This strategy will be successful insofar as the intensity of the internal dispute over EU issues is moderate and can be tamed by the party leadership (Hellström and Blomgren, 2016).…”

Backlash politics against European integration

“…Opposition to European integration has been driven by new challenger parties from the radical left and the radical right, while established parties have resorted to a vast array of strategies to depoliticise European integration in national politics (De Wilde and Zürn, 2012; Green-Pedersen, 2012; Hooghe and Marks, 2018; Schimmelfennig, 2018). To be sure, mainstream parties have not always succeeded in their attempts to depoliticise the issue (Dolezal and Hellström, 2016; Hellström and Blomgren, 2015), as is vividly illustrated by the British Conservatives, but they have generally attempted to keep it off the agenda. Given that opposition to European integration has come both from the radical left and the radical right suggests that the answer to the question is not an unambiguous one: while the Euroscepticism from the radical right qualifies for ‘backlash politics’, the Euroscepticism from the radical left does not at first sight, although it also shows some traces of this kind of politics.…”