Research on differentiated integration has paid considerable attention to its causes. However, we know very little about its consequences. Using the synthetic control method and interactive factor models, this article investigates the effects of differentiated integration on citizens’ support for the EU. We find that in cases where member states are granted an opt-out or are allowed to integrate into a policy area they were previously excluded from, support increases. In contrast, support decreases when member states are not granted a requested opt-out or are excluded from a policy area they would like to join. These findings carry important implications for the EU's legitimacy. While differentiated integration has the potential to enhance citizens’ legitimacy perceptions, it can also undermine them simultaneously.
Many authoritarian political regimes hold multiparty elections in which the opposition often stands a chance to defeat the incumbent. How do ordinary citizens perceive the integrity of elections in such systems? We argue that government supporters follow the incumbent's narrative in considering elections fair and legitimate. In contrast, opposition supporters regard elections in such systems as biased and not meaningful. We provide evidence from cross-country public opinion data and the unexpected 2018 Turkish snap election announcement to examine long- and short-term patterns of perceived electoral integrity. We find that the partisan gap in perceived electoral integrity is more substantial under electoral authoritarianism than under democratic rule. In the short term, electoral events can boost incumbent supporters' confidence in the quality of elections. Our study yields implications for the dynamics between elites and citizens in authoritarian regimes in which elections remain the primary source of legitimacy.
Datasets on subnational election results in Europe frequently do not match with regional statistics available for cross-national research, mainly because territorial statistical units change over time and do not map onto the national electoral districts. This hinders consistent comparative research across time. This research note introduces EU-NED, a new dataset on subnational election data that covers national and European parliamentary elections for European countries over the past 30 years. EU-NED’s major contribution is that it provides election results on disaggregated levels of the statistical territorial units used by Eurostat with an unprecedented consistency and temporospatial scope. Moreover, EU-NED is integrated with the Party Facts platform, allowing for a seamless integration of party-level data. Using EU-NED, we present first descriptive evidence on the European electoral geography and suggest avenues of how EU-NED can facilitate future comparative political science research in Europe.
This paper argues that the local electoral context conditions the degree of losers’ consent after a democratic vote. Focusing on the case of Brexit, we hypothesize that ex-post knowledge of holding a minority position in the local constituency pushes individuals to adjust their policy preferences about UK-EU relations, thus changing policy preferences towards the democratic majority in their residential surroundings. We employ a regression discontinuity design in the context of local Brexit vote outcomes and find that the local average treatment effect of residing in a Leave constituency boosts preferences for independence from the EU. This effect is mainly driven by Remain voters, who show an increased preference for an independent UK if they end up in a local minority position. These findings provide causal evidence on how local context shapes losers’ consent to democratic decisions.
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