* * * * Are governments responsive to public preferences when legislating in international organizations? This paper demonstrates that governments respond to domestic public opinion even when acting at the international level. Specifically, we examine conflict in the European Union's primary legislative body, the Council of the European Union (EU). We argue that domestic electoral incentives compel governments to react to public opinion. Analyzing a unique dataset on all legislative decisions adopted in the Council since 1999, we show that governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that extend the level and scope of EU authority when their domestic electorates are skeptical about the EU. We also find that governments are more responsive when the issue of European integration is salient in domestic party politics. Our findings demonstrate that governments can use the international stage to signal their responsiveness to public concerns and that such signals resonate in the domestic political debate.Key words: responsiveness, legislative behavior, Council, public opinion, European Union * The order of authors is determined alphabetically. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from TheLeverhulme Trust (RF-2013-345) Our findings demonstrate that governments' opposition to legislative proposals is indeed shaped by public opinion on European integration wherever these proposals extend the level and scope of European integration. We also find that governments are more likely to signal their positions in the Council when the issue gains importance in domestic party competition and that these signals resonate in the national public sphere. Our findings thus contribute not only to our understanding of policy-making in the EU, but may also have broader significance as IOs increasingly face pressures to deepen cooperation and increase transparency and accountability to domestic audiences. Moreover, our study enhances our understanding of democratic responsiveness by highlighting that governments use the international stage to signal to voters at home that they care about their views. Government Responsiveness in International OrganizationsThe relationship between public preferences and government policy is at the heart of theories of Hence, as there are few benefits (the policy will be passed by the majority in any case) and several costs, it is not surprising that opposition is still relative rare, accounting for less than 2 H1: Governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that affect the authority of the EU when domestic public opinion is negatively disposed towards the EU than when public opinion is positively disposed towards the EU.The extent to which governments wish to use opposition votes as a signal to their publics is also shaped by domestic political competition. We expect that governments' responsiveness is higher when the issue of European integration is salient in the domestic context. Since signal responsiveness aims at communicating positions (and shifts in pos...

Further integration in the European Union (EU) increasingly depends on public legitimacy. The global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area crisis have amplified both the salience and the redistributive consequences of decisions taken in Brussels, raising the question of how this has influenced public support for European integration. In this contribution, we examine how public opinion has responded to the crisis, focusing on support for monetary integration. Interestingly, our results show that support for the euro has remained high within the euro area; however, attitudes are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. While the crisis has been seen to deepen divisions within Europe, our findings suggest that it has also encouraged citizens in the euro area to form opinions on the euro on the basis of a cost -benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying primarily on national attachments.

A growing body of work adopts a "thin" ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties' electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular "thick" or "host" ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and proredistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and antiglobalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes.Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and 2 demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters.

Are national governments responsive to citizens’ opinions when negotiating policies in the Council of the European Union? Conceiving of the Council’s policy-making space as encompassing left-right and pro-anti integration issues, I argue that governments apply different ‘modes of responsiveness’ on these issues. As left-right issues are more reliably and intensely salient in domestic elections than pro-anti integration issues, governments’ responsiveness to left-right public opinion should be more systematic than to pro-anti integration opinion. Statistical analyses of 3700 policy positions of governments in the Council demonstrate that governments highly structure their responsiveness on left-right issues according to electoral cycles and systems (‘systematic mode’). However, they only sporadically respond to public opinion on pro-anti integration issues, when parties and events trigger the public salience of integration (‘sporadic mode’).

A key feature of federal systems is the representation of subnational units by "territorial representatives" in policymaking at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policymaking under territorial representation should be systematically skewed toward opinion in those states where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel data set of policy change in the European Union (EU), covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion-policy dyads. Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU-wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state-level opinion and EU-level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear-cut opinion in a member state is. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion-policy linkage under territorial representation.