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This article investigates how parties can influence the level of political sophistication their supporters have. Although the importance of parties in providing their supporters with political information was first suggested in early studies of voting behaviour, this level of analysis has been omitted from individual studies of political sophistication. Focusing on the political environment of post-communist societies, where parties played a key role in helping citizens understand politics, I theorize both a direct and an indirect path through which parties can contribute to the level of sophistication of their supporters. Using cross-national data from the Eurequal 2007 project on 13 post-communist countries, I show three characteristics related to parties' motivation to mobilize the electorate against the status quo that have an impact on individual level political sophistication. Results from a multi-level model suggest that supporting a non-incumbent, smaller or right-wing party is related, either directly or in interaction with individual characteristics, to higher levels of political sophistication. These findings shed light on how looking at political parties can help us better understand the differences in the levels of political sophistication among citizens.

AbstractIn which ways and under what conditions do the procedural and economic performance of political systems matter for citizens' political trust? While this question has been a recurring theme in research on political support, we still lack a clear understanding of the conditional nature of the performance-trust nexus. In this study, we focus on the affective and cognitive foundations of the performance-trust nexus, arguing that the impact of objective procedural and economic performance on political trust is conditioned by citizens' political allegiances (i.e., status as electoral winner or loser) and political sophistication (i.e., political knowledge and political interest). Our empirical analysis using comparative survey data from two European high-quality surveys (European Election Study 2014 and European Social Survey 2002–2018) shows that procedural and economic performance feature particularly prominently in the trust calculus of politically more knowledgeable and interested citizens as well as electoral losers, while being less relevant for the political trust of less sophisticated citizens and electoral winners. Moreover, the analysis provides evidence that cognitive orientations are overall more important than affective ones in moderating the performance-trust nexus. These findings offer important implications concerning the nature and meaning of feelings of disenchantment and distrust in contemporary democracies.

Evidence suggests that incidental national flag exposure activates nationalistic feelings and that incidental exposure to the EU flag can affect citizen attachments to Europe. However, we know little about what inferences citizens make based on the EU flag when they see it displayed by parties in an electoral context. To test the expectation that this display affects citizens' evaluations of party elites' EU attachment, we conducted a large-scale experiment embedded in a Swedish survey in which respondents were exposed to communications from one of the two main Swedish parties, containing or not containing the image of the flag. We find that simple visual display does little to move perceptions. However, if citizens perceive that a particular party displayed the flag, then they are more likely to evaluate its party elites as more attached to Europe.

The architects of the European project made a significant effort to create a set of symbols for the community (such as the EU flag, the map of Europe, the anthem, etc.), and recent evidence suggests that the main European values are nowadays spontaneously associated with them. We know little, however, about if and when national political actors choose to display these symbolic visual manifestations of Europe. In this study, we examine the presence of such symbols in parties' Euromanifestos since the first European elections. The presence of EU community symbols is correlated with several factors, suggesting that the display is consistent both with a policy-driven and with a vote-seeking logic. We explore at length the implications of these results for future visual analysis of parties' European messages and for the larger issue of European identity.

Die Studie umfasst Parteiprogramme, die vor den Europawahlen von 1979 bis 2014 von den Parteien herausgegeben wurden. ; The study includes party programmes issued by the parties before the European elections from 1979 to 2014. ; Ca. 1000 Wahlprogramme/Manifeste von relevanten Parteien in der EU vor der Wahl zum Europäischen Parlament. Als relevante Parteien in der EG/EU waren Parteien definiert, die im Europäischen Parlament wenigstens einmal vertreten waren. ; Approx. 1000 election programmes/manifestos of relevant parties in the EU before the European Parliament Elections. Relevant parties in the EC/EU were defined as parties that had been represented in the European Parliament at least once. ; Vollerhebung; Auswahlverfahren Kommentar: Totalerhebung von Parteimanifesten in der EU. Ausgangspunkt für die Verkodung eines Euromanifestos ist die erstmalige Wahl einer Partei in das Europäische Parlament. ; Total universe/Complete enumeration ; Die verkodete Version der Parteiprogramme ist als Datensatz unter ZA-Studiennummer 5102 verfügbar. ; The coded version of the party programmes is available as a data set under ZA study number 5102. ; Self-administered writings and/or diaries

This article examines the impact that unemployment and low-quality work conditions have on young adults' work values. Academic theory suggests that harsher economic conditions will make people prize extrinsic work values (income, security) more and intrinsic work values (creative, independent working conditions, autonomy) less. We apply this reasoning to study young Europeans' response to unemployment and low-quality work conditions, expecting that those who have these experiences will value extrinsic values more and intrinsic work values less than those who do not have these experiences. Using the CUPESSE dataset of 18- to 35-year-olds in eleven European countries, we do not find support for the effect of previous unemployment experience on intrinsic or extrinsic work values. However, when it comes to the effect of low-quality work conditions, there are mixed results. We find that one dimension of low-quality work conditions—overqualification—does have a positive effect on extrinsic work values. Further, we find that age has a moderating effect: unemployment and low-quality work conditions have a larger impact on the younger workers in our sample than their older counterparts.

At the time of the election of the European Parliament (EP) in 2014, the European Union (EU) was heavily affected by a multifaceted crisis that had – and still has – far‐reaching implications for the political system of its member countries, but also for the European level of governance. Against the background of the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 EP elections, this study aims to investigate in which way Eurosceptic parties of the left and the right respond to the multiple crises of the EU. Using data from the Euromanifesto Project from 2004/2009 and 2014, changes in the party positions towards the EU are analysed in the shadow of the multiple crises and the reasons thereof are explored. The findings show a general anti‐European shift among the two types of Eurosceptic parties. Nevertheless, the changes in the EU polity tone are not determined by issue‐based repercussions of the multiple crises, but by the EU‐related evaluation – the polity mood – of the national citizenry. For far‐right Eurosceptic parties, the shift is moderated by the level of public support for EU integration in their national environment. Among far‐left Eurosceptic parties, by contrast, it is moderated by the more specific public attitudes about the monetary union policy of the EU. Consequently, political parties when drafting their manifestos for EP elections are not so much guided by the objective severity of political problems or by the evaluations of these problems by the citizenry. What matters in the end is the link that citizens themselves are able to establish between the severity of political problems, on the one hand, and the responsibility of the EU for these problems on the other. This has important consequences for understanding of the nature and substance of political responsiveness within the EU system of multilevel governance.