Inequality is a central explanation of political distrust in democracies, but has so far rarely been considered a cause of (dis-)trust towards supranational governance. Moreover, while political scientists have extensively engaged with income inequality, other salient forms of inequality, such as the regional wealth distribution, have been sidelined. These issues point to a more general shortcoming in the literature. Determinants of trust in national and European institutions are often theorized independently, even though empirical studies have demonstrated large interdependence in citizens' evaluations of national and supranational governance levels. In this paper, we argue that inequality has two salient dimensions: (1) income inequality and (2) regional inequality. Both dimensions are important antecedent causes of European Union (EU) trust, the effects of which are mediated by evaluations of national institutions. On the micro-level, we suggest that inequality decreases a person's trust in national institutions and thereby diminishes the positive effect of national trust on EU trust. On the macro-level, inequality decreases country averages of trust in national institutions. This, however, informs an individual's trust in the EU positively, compensating for the seemingly untrustworthiness of national institutions. Finally, we propose that residing in an economically declining region can depress institutional trust. We find empirical support for our arguments by analysing regional temporal change over four waves of the European Social Survey 2010-2016 with a sample of 209 regions nested in 24 EU member states. We show that changes in a member state's regional inequality have similarly strong effects on trust as changes in the Gini coefficient of income inequality. Applying causal mediation techniques, we can show that the effects of inequality on EU trust are largely mediated through citizens' evaluations of national institutions. In contrast, residing in an economically declining region directly depresses EU trust, with economically lagging areas turning their back on European governance and resorting to the national level instead. Our findings highlight the relevance of regional inequality for refining our understanding of citizens' support for Europe's multi-level governance system and the advantages of causal modelling for the analysis of political preferences in a multi-level governance system.
Subnational analyses of political preferences are substantively relevant and offer advantages for causal inference. Yet, our knowledge on regional political preferences across Europe is limited, not least because there is a lack of adequate data. The rich Eurobarometer (EB) data is a promising source for European-wide regional information. Yet, it is only representative for the national level. This paper compares state-of-the-art methods for estimating regional preferences from nationally representative EB data, validating predictions with regionally representative surveys. Our analysis highlights a number of challenges for estimating regional preferences across Europe, such as data availability, variable selection, and over-fitting. We find that predictions are best using a Bayesian additive regression tree with synthetic post-stratification.
The internationalisation of political authority elongates the chain of delegation between the citizen and elected representatives. It increases executive dominance while weakening parliamentary control. International Parliamentary Institutions (IPIs), parliamentary assemblies affiliated with international organisations, could potentially mitigate the ‘parliamentary deficit’ of global governance but are commonly criticised for their weak authority. This paper revisits this critical perspective and argues that IPIs provide access to information circumventing the privileged access of governments. Thereby, IPIs strengthen national parliaments’ capability to control the executive. This benefit explains the motivation of national MPs to attend IPIs. The study is based on novel data on the attendance of parliamentarians to the sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly from 2007 to 2015. The results speak in favour of intertwined parliamentary arenas, as attributes of national parliaments drive attendance. For one, parliaments with higher scrutiny capacity participate more in delegations to IPIs. Moreover, the composition of delegations is related to control incentives, causing a difference in attendance patterns of government and opposition parties.
This chapter lays out the theoretical framework for the study of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). First, it argues that IPIs display few of the functional benefits that are commonly associated with the delegation of competences to international institutions. Second, it claims that the assumption of normatively committed member states of international organizations (IOs) does not explain either the weakness of IPIs, their appearance in many IOs composed of non-democratic states, or their absence from IOs with a solid democratic membership. Third, we suggest that the creation and empowerment of IPIs is better understood as a legitimation strategy that governments employ strategically in response to challenges to the legitimacy of the organization. Maintaining or improving the legitimacy of an IO is important because it enhances the stability of cooperation and prevents the disruption of its operation, and international parliamentarization is specifically useful when democratic legitimacy is the standard by which relevant audiences judge an IO. Finally, we identify six structural conditions that generate variation in the normative cost–benefit calculus of governments. These relate to institutional characteristics of the IO itself (authority, purpose, and scope), as well as its domestic and international environment (democracy, governance failure, and diffusion).
This chapter analyses international parliamentarization in the Andean region. Andean integration has seen, first, the creation of the Andean Pact without an international parliamentary institution (IPI) in 1969, followed by the establishment of the Andean Parliament in 1979 and a slight IPI empowerment in conjunction with the foundation of the Andean Community in 1996. The Andean Parliament was created in the context of democratization in the region and a shift of the Andean Pact from a task-specific to a general-purpose organization. Whereas the conditions of parliamentarization continued to be favourable during the reform process leading to the Andean Community, none of them improved strongly enough to give a boost to parliamentary empowerment. Rather, institutional entrepreneurship was able to secure modest authority gains.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.