What difference does the framing of a crisis make to European Union solidarity?

Abstract

Does the framing of crises shape public support for inter-state solidarity? We focus on three dimensions that have been salient in the characterisation of European Union crises and may affect public support for solidarity more generally: (a) how country-specific or common a crisis is; (b) whether policymakers are seen as responsible for the crisis or not; and (c) how existential or manageable the threat posed by a crisis appears. We employ a pre-registered factorial vignette experiment conducted in 15 European Union countries to assess how characterising a hypothetical crisis affects voter support for fiscal and financial solidarity. Our results show that exposure to different crises frames shapes public support for risk-sharing in the European Union. Changes in solidaristic attitudes vary significantly with the means of fiscal risk-sharing proposed.

Bounded solidarity? Experimental evidence on cross‐national bonding in the EU during the COVID crisis

“…The third quadrant of solidarity combines weak European bonding and strong bounding: this weak European solidarity is perhaps best epitomized by the European stability mechanism, which was bounded to EU members but was weak in terms of bonding. Such solidarity happens rarely, perhaps only during crises that justify one-off help between member states because they are beyond the control of member states (Bremer et al, 2020;Ferrara et al, 2023) or to prevent spillover effects like in the Euro Area crisis and to insure tail risks of economic integration (Schelkle, 2022). If citizens prefer such solidarity, loyalty mechanisms are weak at the EU level and thus do not constitute a firm basis for polity building.…”

“…Third, we take issue with the conclusion of Gerhards et al according to which 'the EU should refrain from developing supranational institutions warranting European solidarity and should look for alternative solutions' (2019, p. 10). If the recent literature on European solidarity during COVID-19 has highlighted anything, it is that instruments of solidarity matter as much as their content (Beetsma et al, 2022;Bremer et al, 2021;Ferrara et al, 2023). Third, we seek to go beyond the generic 'fiscal' solidarity field and ask whether preferences implied by the bounding-bonding mechanism can vary by policy dimension.…”

“…The nature of bounded solidarity. Our article builds on a large literature on European solidarity during crises (Gerhards et al, 2019) like the Euro Area (Bechtel et al, 2014;Franchino & Segatti, 2019), immigration, refugees, inequality and welfare state (Burgoon, 2009;Finseraas, 2008) and the COVID-19 crises (Beetsma et al, 2022;Bobzien & Kalleitner, 2021;Cicchi et al, 2020;Ferrara et al, 2023), to name but a few. We aim to further explore whether the design of solidarity has an impact on preferences for redistribution.…”

“…Thus, the demand for common solidarity may have been higher both due to temporal reasons and due to the peculiarities of the crisis itself. While transboundary crises like COVID-19 or war can spur bounded solidarity (Freudlsperger & Schimmelfennig, 2022), asymmetric crises do not necessarily do so (Bremer et al, 2020;Ferrara et al, 2023). It can also be that bounded solidarity dissipates over time and thus repeated measurements are important.…”