International audience ; This article demonstrates that public attitudes towards EU enlargement are strongly affected by exposure to the mass media. It reveals `priming' effects by showing that media exposure affects the standards by which individuals evaluate the accession of potential candidate countries. To gain a more refined understanding about media effects on enlargement attitudes, we analytically separate three different factors that underlie EU enlargement support for a given candidate country: its economic performance, its state of democracy and its perceived cultural `match' with the EU. Employing an experimental design, we probe the media-induced effects of these factors on EU enlargement attitudes.
Together with its further widening and deepening, the character of the EU has changed fundamentally during the last two decades. Acknowledging this development, the politics-dimension has become visibly more relevant in research on the EU. This "politics turn" is accompanied by an increased interest in research on political behavior of individual and collective actors—voters, parties, interest groups, executive agencies, mass and social media—in the EU multi-level system. The objectives of this thematic issue are to conceptually, empirically, and methodologically capture the different facets of this newly emerged interest in actors' political behavior in the EU multi-level system. To this end, the thematic issue strives to highlight the connections between political processes and behavior at the European level and other political layers in the EU Member States' multi-level systems. In particular, we aim to broaden the scope of research on political behavior in the EU and its strong focus on electoral politics across multiple levels of government. To this end, the thematic issue links research on voting behavior with work on party competition, electoral campaigns, public opinion, protest politics, responsiveness, (interest group) representation, government and opposition dynamics, and parliamentary behavior more broadly to the multi-layered systems within EU Member States.
In the run-up to the elections to the European Parliament in 2014, EU citizens had the unprecedented opportunity to watch televised debates between the candidates running for president of the European Commission. The most important debate was the so-called "Eurovision debate", which was broadcasted in almost all EU member states. In this study we explore the responses of a sample of 110 young German voters, who watched this debate, to the candidates' messages and whether exposure to the debate caused a shift in the respondents' attitudes towards the EU. Combining data from a quasi-experiment, real-time response data, and data from a content analysis of the debate, we find that respondents' reactions to the candidates' statements were—on average—positive and that some respondents displayed attitudinal changes resulting in more favorable views towards the EU. Although the direct connection between real-time responses and post-debate attitudes is not as strong as expected, most of the measured effects indicate that a positive evaluation of the candidates' messages usually results in more pro-European attitudes. Furthermore, we find no strong evidence that political knowledge moderates debate effects. In general, differences between political 'novices' and political 'experts' tend to be rare.
Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are "Europeanized" primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany.
Supplementary material for Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Lisa Kriegmair, and Berthold Rittberger (2020). The EU Multi-level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games. In: Politics and Governance 8(1).
Supplementary material for Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Lisa Kriegmair, and Berthold Rittberger (2020). The EU Multi-level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games. In: Politics and Governance 8(1).
This paper was co-authored by Jurgen Maier, Thorsten Faas, Berthold Rittberger, Jessica Fortin-Rittberger, Kalliope Agapiou Josifides, Susan Banducci, Paolo Bellucci, Magnus Blomgren, Inta Brikse, Karol Chwedczuk-Szulc, Marina Costa Lobo, Mikolaj Czesnik, Anastasia Deligiaouri, Tomaz Dezelan, Wouter deNooy, Aldo Di Virgilio, Florin Fesnic, Danica Fink-Hafner, Marijana Grbesa, Carmen Greab, Andrija Henjak, David Nicolas Hopmann, David Johann, Gabor Jelenfi, Jurate Kavaliauskaite, Zoltan Kmetty, Sylvia Kritzinger, Pedro C. Magalhaes, Vincent Meyer, Katia Mihailova, Mihail Mirchev, Ville Pitkanen, Aine Ramonaite, Theresa Reidy, Marek Rybar, Carmen Sammut, Jose Santana-Pereira, Guna Spurava, Lia-Paschalia Spyridou, Adriana Stefanel, Vaclav Stetka, Aleksander Surdej, Róbert Tardos, Dimitris Trimithiotis, Christiano Vezzoni, Aneta Vilagi & Gergo Zavecz. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of European Public Policy on 20 January 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13501763.2016.1268643. ; For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties' 'lead candidates'. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU's lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called 'Eurovision Debate', a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.
Supplementary material to: Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Bernhard Zangl, Berthold Rittberger, and Lisa Kriegmair: Blame Shifting and Blame Obfuscation: The Blame Avoidance Effects of Delegation in the EU. In: European Journal of Political Research.
Supplementary material for the article "Divided They Fail: The Politics of Wedge Issues and Brexit" (Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Lisa Kriegmair, Berthold Rittberger, and Bernhard Zangl), accepted for publication by the Journal of European Public Policy at October 10, 2019
For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties' 'lead candidates'. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU's lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called 'Eurovision Debate', a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
