Abstract
This latest European Social Survey (ESS) webinar will feature presentations from researchers who have conducted analysis of data collected over the first 20 years of the project (2002-22).
Organised by the ESS HQ based at City, University of London, five external academics will showcase their research that assesses European attitudes towards democracy and politics.
Harley Roe (Florida State University) will discuss levels of governmental satisfaction amongst respondents who identify as far-right, conservative, liberal, far-left and other political party supporters.
There will be a specific focus on whether far-right political party supporters are less satisfied than others, both when in opposition and in government, and whether far-right democratic representation erodes support.
Klára Plecitá (Czech Academy of Sciences) will present on levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works amongst respondents who perceive to be discriminated against.
The research seeks to understand whether those who are discriminated against because of colour/race, nationality, religion, language, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, disability or other grounds are less satisfied than other respondents.
Giuseppe Ciccolini (European University Institute) will focus on whether support for populist radical right political parties is boosted by respondents who face a loss of economic status.
Ciccolini also used Eurostat data to create a positional measure of income to help provide cultural and economic explanations of the reasons some vote for these types of party.
A paper by Marta Kołczyńska (Polish Academy of Sciences) analyses the effects of political polarisation on citizens' political engagement.
Using data from the majority of ESS countries who participated in the first nine rounds (2002-19), Kołczyńska will explore whether polarisation has an effect on different forms of political participation and support, and whether the effect varies across societal groups.
Mikkel Haderup Larsen (University of Copenhagen) will discuss the effect of democratic representation of radical right-wing political parties on attitudes towards the welfare state.
It will address the right-wing populism literature that suggests radical right parties erode welfare solidarity in European democracies when they pit “the people” against immigrants and ethnic minorities.
A Q&A chaired by ESS deputy director, Dr. Eric Harrison, will follow the presentations.
1-1.20pm: Satisfaction with government and the cost of governing for far-right parties
In instances when far-right parties participate in or support the executive, they incur a higher cost of governing compared with other parties.
Theories of the anti-establishment nature of these parties suggest that their voter base may be generally less satisfied with government performance than other voters.
This project asks if satisfaction with government varies between party families both in government and in opposition.
Using data from nine waves of the ESS, I compare variation in satisfaction between far-right, conservative, liberal, far-left and other party supporters, both in opposition and in government.
I find that, on average, far-right party supporters are dissatisfied with government while in opposition but become more satisfied than most other parties after they are invited to participate in government.
These findings suggest that the relationship between executive participation and support withdrawal in subsequent elections is less tied to voters’ evaluations of government performance than expected.
About the speaker
Harley Roe is a PhD candidate at Florida State University. He studies comparative political institutions and behaviour, with a focus on populist and radical right-wing parties, support for them, and effects they have on policy and public goods provision.
1.20-1.40pm: Perceived discrimination and judgement of the quality of democracy
Using an integrated file of ESS data (rounds 5-9), I explore the link between membership of discriminated groups and satisfaction with the way democracy works in European countries.
ESS observes discrimination felt by respondents. It focuses on ascriptive grounds of discrimination - colour/race, nationality, religion, language, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, disability - and other grounds.
Results of the analysis show that the prevalence and grounds of perceived discrimination, and satisfaction with the way democracy works vary across countries and ESS rounds.
Membership of a discriminated group is negatively correlated with satisfaction with the way democracy works in all of the analysed countries, although the strength of the relationship differs across countries and ESS Rounds.
About the speaker
Klára Plecitá is head of value orientation in society and senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She has served as the ESS national coordinator for Czechia since Round 9 (2018/19).
Her research interests include democracy, national identity, ancestry and religion.
1.40-2pm: Left behind whom? Economic status loss and populist radical right voting
Citizens’ resentment at losing out to the rest of society is commonly regarded as the foundation of the demand for the populist radical right (PRR). Yet whether this motive has an objective economic basis remains disputed.
Relying on ESS individual-level data from 23 elections across Western Europe, combined with Eurostat data, I demonstrate that the PRR polls better among social classes facing economic status loss. To do so, I leverage a novel positional measure of income.
This approach allows me to gauge economic status loss as a distinct experience from worsening financial circumstances - which empirical research has chiefly focused on.
Evidence that the former, rather than the latter, is the economic engine of PRR support is further corroborated by data on cultural stances and redistributive preferences.
My study confirms the complementarity of cultural- and economic-based explanations of PRR voting and reveals one electoral consequence of rising economic inequalities.
About the speaker
Giuseppe Ciccolini is a PhD Researcher in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI).
He is completing a PhD dissertation about the relation between socio-economic inequalities and electoral behavior in Europe.
He currently also freelances for the OECD as a statistical analyst for the project “Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions”. He was Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf during the last two academic years.
He holds a two-year MRes in Political science from Sciences Po (Paris), a MA in European studies from Sciences Po Strasbourg.
2-2.20pm: Does political polarisation increase citizens’ political engagement?
Increasing political polarisation is often considered as one of the contemporary evils, driven by the recent political, social, and economic developments, including the financial crisis and international migration.
High polarisation, among other consequences, is said to reduce social cohesion and increase acceptance of non-democratic alternatives.
A parallel strand of literature has studied levels of political engagement, frequently lamenting its low levels and declines.
Combining the two literatures, the present paper examines the effects of political polarisation on different forms of citizens’ political engagement in European countries over the last two decades.
This presentation is a product of collaboration with Andrej Kirbiš (University of Maribor) and Martin Dolezal (University of Salzburg, University of Graz, Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna) within the project: “Political participation in the age of polarization: Austria, Poland, and Slovenia from a comparative perspective.”
About the speaker
Marta Kołczyńska earned a PhD in sociology from The Ohio State University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Her research interests include political attitudes and behaviour in comparative perspective, as well as on methodological challenges involved in analysing cross-national survey data.
Her current research focuses on the causes and consequences of political trust, and on the links between political polarisation and participation.
2.20-2.40pm: Once they are seated: The negative association between the political representation of the radical right and welfare solidarity
A close reading of the right-wing populism literature suggests that radical right parties erode welfare solidarity in European democracies when they pit “the people” against immigrants and ethnic minorities.
I extend this claim by proposing that national representation improves the radical right’s conditions for spreading nativist messages that erode welfare solidarity with recent immigrants and minorities.
To test this claim, I combine nine waves of ESS data with data on national elections spanning the period 1999-2020.
Two-way fixed effects models and a regression discontinuity type design estimate that the radical right’s representation in the national parliament is negatively associated with public support for redistribution.
The magnitude of the association is around 14% of a standard deviation. Moreover, I show that this negative association is stronger in countries with weak integration policies.
The findings persist across a wide range of robustness checks, however, threats to identification such as non-parallel pre-trends, lack of testing the proposed mechanism, and unobserved confounding means that one should be cautious in interpreting the observed relationship causally.
About the speaker
Mikkel Haderup Larsen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen.
His research focuses on the relationship between diversity and solidarity, as well as their political and social consequences.
His work has appeared in European Political Science Review, European Sociological Review, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration studies.
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This event has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871063.
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