The nuclear option: Voting for the pan-European party Volt
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165231193814 |
| Author | Simon Otjes,André Krouwel |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The nuclear option: Voting
for the pan-European
party Volt
Simon Otjes
Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
André Krouwel
Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
Abstract
Volt is a pan-European, Eurofederalist party that seeks to deepen and democratize
European Union integration. It participated in elections in nine European countries
and won representation in the Dutch Parliament and German constituency for the
European Parliament. We examine Volt Netherlands, which studies the possibilities of
a pan-European party. We look at the importance of its pro-European positions for vot-
ing for this party; this is an issue that all national branches of Voltshare. We also examine
the specific political opportunity structure of the Netherlands, where pro-nuclear envir-
onmentalism was an open niche. In this way, we weigh the importance of the party’s pan-
European appeal and the country-specific political opportunity structure. We show the
importance of the country-specific factors for new party support and thus cast doubt on
the ability of pan-European parties to mobilize voters all over Europe with the same
message.
Keywords
Political parties at the European level, voting behaviour, EU integration dimension,
nuclear energy, new political parties
Corresponding author:
Simon Otjes, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden Wassenaarseweg 52, The Netherlands.
Email: s.p.otjes@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Article
European Union Politics
2023, Vol. 24(4) 726–750
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165231193814
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
In the wake of Brexit, a new pan-European party was founded: Volt. What set this party
apart from the other parties in the European Union (EU) was not necessarily its social-
liberal, environmentalist and pro-European agenda but rather its organization: where
other political parties in Europe are organized primarily as national parties that can
work together in a European federation of national parties (called ‘party at the
European level’formally and ‘Europarties’informally), Volt is a pan-European party
that has national branches (Kolster and Homeyer, 2019; Leruth, 2021; Lefkofridi,
2020). These national branches see different levels of success. The German branch
won a single seat in the European Parliament in 2019, the Dutch branch won three
seats in the lower house of the Dutch parliament in 2021 and, in the same year, the
Bulgarian branch won two seats in the Bulgarian parliament as part of an electoral
coalition.
The central question of this article is under what conditions do voters vote for Volt?Is
the pro-European profile of this party a major part of its attraction? Or does it appeal to
specific national constituencies based on a specific national profile? In other words, is the
pan-European nature of the party an electoral advantage of the party? Or does it appeal to
specific national electorates with specific messages, like members of other European pol-
itical families?
This study examines the Dutch voters for Volt. As is detailed below, the Dutch case
provides a crucial case to study Volt for one because it has been most successful (winning
national representation on its own), but also because it provides enough information for
systematic study. This does not mean to say that this electorally most successful branch of
the party is representative or that we expect the patterns we find here to be valid for Volt
in other countries. Yet, by understanding whether the drivers of its success are related to
its pan-European manifesto or to a national political opportunity structure, we can get a
grasp of under what circumstances Volt can be successful in other countries.
This article speaks to a number of different literatures. Firstly, the literature on new
party formation. One of the ways in which new parties develop is ‘branching’, where
the impetus for organization comes from a transnational party that decides to organize
itself in a new country (Krouwel and Lucardie, 2008). While there is an extensive litera-
ture on new party success (Van De Wardt and Otjes, 2022), we know little about whether
this kind of branching strategy is electorally successful. By studying the success of one
national Volt branch, we can get a grasp on this.
This article also speaks to the literature on political parties at the European level (Day, 2005;
Herter, 2013; Hix, 2002; Holmes and Lightfoot, 2013; Poguntke et al., 2007; Johanson, 2009;
Johanson and Raunio, 2019). While the development has mostly been top-down (Johansson
and Raunio, 2005), Volt’s model of a pan-European party was developed bottom-up. This
article answers the question of whether this kind of new pan-European party model offers a
viable alternative for the existing political parties at the European level.
In this article, we examine which voters voted for Volt in 2021. We ground our expec-
tations in the literature on new parties and political parties at the European level
and develop two expectations. The first is based on the ambition of Volt to be a
Otjes and Krouwel 727
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