Government coalitions and Eurosceptic voting in the 2014 European Parliament elections
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116519851566 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Francesco Zucchini,Stefano Camatarri |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Government coalitions
and Eurosceptic voting
in the 2014 European
Parliament elections
Stefano Camatarri
Centre de Science Politique et de Politique Compare
´e
(CESPOL), Universite
´Catholique de Louvain,
Louvain, Belgium
Francesco Zucchini
Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Milan, Milan, Italy
Abstract
The 2014 European elections were characterized in many countries by growing support
for Eurosceptic parties. This growth was not uniform and not clearly associated with the
economic performance of these member states. In this article, we investigate the role
played in the 2014 European Parliament elections by a country-specific factor – the
composition of government coalitions – different from economic performance. In par-
ticular, we argue that in those countries where moderately Eurosceptic parties were
more involved in the government, citizens with negative attitudes toward the European
Union were more likely to vote for highly Eurosceptic parties. This was especially the
case when the governments also included strongly pro-EU parties. The empirical analysis,
which is based upon the 2014 European Election Voter Study, the Chapel Hill Expert
Survey, and the Parliaments and Governments database, confirms our hypotheses.
Keywords
European Parliament elections, Eurosceptic parties, government coalitions, veto play-
ers, voting behavior
Corresponding author:
Francesco Zucchini, Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, via Conservatorio 7,
Milan 20122, Italy.
Email: francesco.zucchini@unimi.it
European Union Politics
2019, Vol. 20(3) 425–446
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1465116519851566
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
The 2014 European elections were characterized by a huge increase of votes for
anti-establishment parties that were also very critical of European institutions and
European policies (Treib, 2014).
1
At first glance, this phenomenon does not seem
very surprising; indeed, the recent economic and financial crisis has severely affect-
ed a considerable part of the European population. The European institutions and
many national governments have seemed unable to counter unemployment and
loss of income. Against this background, large sectors of the electorate may have
punished the traditional pro-Europe parties that were also the government parties
during the crisis years and just before the European Parliament (EP) elections
because of their poor economic performance (Herna
´ndez and Kriesi, 2016;
Hobolt and De Vries, 2016). Nevertheless, further analyses have shown that the
success of Eurosceptic parties in the 2014 EP elections, although undeniable,
cannot be explained by the economy alone. At the individual level, for example,
also policy attitudes have been found to contribute significantly to the explanation
of voting for Eurosceptic parties (Hobolt and Tilley, 2016). At the country level, it
has been found that these parties performed very well also in countries achieving a
relatively good economic performance (for instance, Denmark and the
Netherlands). By contrast, in those countries put under the tutelage of the
European institutions and the International Monetary Fund due to their financial
and economic conditions (for instance, Portugal and Spain), such parties were less
successful or proved to be an almost marginal phenomenon (De Sio et al., 2014;
Emanuele et al., 2016; Halikipoulou and Vasilopoulou, 2014).
To summarize, on the one hand, the great variance of Eurosceptic vote shares
among European countries suggests the importance of national contexts in
explaining the success of Eurosceptic parties; on the other hand, national economic
conditions do not seem to be a particularly promising explanatory factor.
In this article, we investigate the role played by a country-specific factor differ-
ent from economic performance: the composition of national government coali-
tions. This approach draws upon previous studies already focusing on the
explanatory importance of coalition outcomes for voting decisions (Blais et al.,
2006; Cox, 1997; Duch et al., 2010; Indridason, 2011). In particular, consistent
with previous articles arguing that high levels of policy stability induce extremist
voting (Kedar, 2005, 2009), we hypothesize that in countries where moderately
anti-European Union (EU) parties share governmental power with highly pro-EU
parties, citizens are generally more likely to vote for opposition Eurosceptic alter-
natives. We expect that, in the dimension that they consider salient, voters evaluate
comparatively the opposition platforms and the government performance in order
to choose the party for which to vote. In particular, when the status quo on a
particular policy issue cannot be changed (or can be only marginally changed)
because it is confined within the range of the relevant veto players, we assume
that voters favorable to a policy change will be more likely to vote for opposition
parties promising a radical shift in their desired direction. In our view, party
426 European Union Politics 20(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial