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Abstract
This paper models the correlates of parties’ positions on the issue of European integration, asking why some parties are in favour of European integration, while others are less favourable or even opposed to it. The paper builds on existing work which has identified three sets of explanatory factors predicting parties’ positions on integration: the electorate, parties and party system characteristics. By employing multilevel modelling using data on over 220 parties in 14 Western EU member states for the years 1984 to 2006, the effects of party- and context-level predictors of parties’ positions on EU integration are assessed. The findings demonstrate that parties’ positions are primarily influenced by EU preferences of the general electorate, parties’ left–right ideological extremes and incumbency status. The results also show that the impact of party characteristics is moderated by the electoral context in which parties operate. Moreover, the interaction between both levels offers further insights as to the nature of these associations. Specifically, party size is a robust predictor of integration position only when accounting for the levels of party system's fractionalisation and polarisation. Additionally, parties oriented towards the centre of the ideological spectrum are even more likely to favour European integration within highly polarised systems.
Notes
1. Assuming parties offer coherent choices, citizens have clearly defined preferences on policy dimensions and they base their voting choices on these policy preferences (Mair Citation2008; Miller et al. Citation1999; Thomassen and Schmitt Citation1997, Citation1999).
2. An extensive literature on party cueing, especially within the field of EU studies, has evolved, demonstrating the importance of elites in shaping public opinion, and vice versa (Gabel and Scheve Citation2007; Steenbergen and Jones Citation2002; Steenbergen and Marks Citation2007). These studies focus on the debate regarding the nature of cueing effects, i.e. top-down or bottom-up. In other words, the research focuses on the question: who is cueing whom? Although we acknowledge the centrality of this question, we assume that the relationship between public opinion and the positions of political parties is bottom-up. On studying the research on public opinion and mass behaviour in the context of the left–right and EU dimensions, this assumption seems reasonable, as strong support can be found for public cueing on integration issues (Adams et al. Citation2006; Steenbergen et al. Citation2007).
3. The CHES data was created for all EU member states excluding Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta, for the years 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2006. Data was collected for all parties that secured a minimum of 2 per cent of the valid votes and/or one seat in the lower house of the national legislature. For the full study documentation, see Hooghe et al. (Citation2010).
4. This measure of fractionalisation is a linear transformation of another popular measure of this construct, the Effective Number of Parties (ENP). Specifically, ENP = 1/(1 – Fractionalisation).
5. It is worth noting that although ideological extremity seems to be linearly correlated with parties’ positions on EU integration, there may well be different mechanisms defining both the extreme right's and extreme left's anti-EU dispositions. While the extreme right opposes European integration in defence of national community and sovereignty, the extreme left rejects the European project on the basis of its neoliberal character, which may undermine existing welfare state provisions (de Vries and Edwards 2009).