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ABSTRACT
Do far-left political parties influence the level of Euroskepticism among mainstream political parties within that same party system? This study seeks to address this question by building on previous work that has examined the effect of both far-left and far-right Euroskeptic parties on mainstream party positions regarding the EU. We theorize that when far-left parties place an emphasis on state control over the economy, mainstream parties in the same party system are less supportive of the EU. To test our theoretical expectations, we use data from the Comparative Manifestos Project in 25 EU member states from 1958 through 2015. The analysis indicates support for the hypothesis that when far-left parties place greater emphasis on a need for state control of the economy, mainstream parties in that party system are more Euroskeptic. Our findings have important implications for understanding the nature of political party dynamics both generally, and more specifically in the European Union.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Christopher Williams is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His research focuses on democratic representation, public opinion, political parties, and political behavior, and has been published in journals such as the European Political Science Review, West European Politics, European Union Politics, and the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties. For additional information on his research, see http://christopherwilliamsphd.weebly.com/.
John Ishiyama is University Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas, and has been at UNT since 2008. He has published extensively, producing eight books and over 130 journal articles on a variety of topics including post-communist politics and and extremist political parties.
Notes
1 The typology of a far-left party, whether “radical left” or “extreme left,” should not change the effect that a far-left party has on mainstream party Euroskepticism, as all far-left parties included in this study contest elections.
2 Theoretically, it is not a precondition that a peripheral party has previous electoral success for a mainstream party to view that peripheral party as an electoral threat. Rather, peripheral parties that have had relatively little recent electoral success can cause concern for mainstream parties if they are focused on an issue that mainstream parties fear will resonate with the public.
3 Associative issue ownership is distinct from competency issue ownership (Walgrave, Lefevere, and Tresch Citation2012). This distinction is important as mainstream parties have been shown to be unresponsive to niche parties in issue areas for which those parties are seen as the competency issue owners. However, mainstream parties are more responsive to niche parties than are associative issue owners (Abou-Chadi Citation2016).
4 Far-left parties are generally more internationalist; however, some far-left parties do include nationalist positions in their ideology. Regarding this study, this is most evident in the case of the Communist Party of Greece (see March Citation2008). Importantly, when tests excluding Greece are conducted, the results do not change substantially.
5 During the 1990s and early 2000s, political competition in the EU began to focus more on identity/cultural issues, with left-right issues declining in salience (Kriesi et al. Citation2006). Under these circumstances, one may expect far-left parties emphasizing state control of the economy to have less of an effect on mainstream party positions. However, left–right competition remains important in Europe (Marks and Steenbergen Citation2002) and recent developments in Europe, such as the Eurozone Crisis, and high unemployment across Europe have increased the salience of economic issues, which should lead to more responsiveness to far-left parties.
6 The risks to mainstream parties in responding to associative issue owners are lower than the risks from responding to competency issue owners, however, they do exist.
7 Additionally, evidence from Eurobarometer surveys indicates that the public does tend to see the EU as being particularly pro-business and globalization. In the Eurobarometer 85.2 and 86.2 (these surveys were conducted in the Spring and Autumn of 2016) respondents were asked if they agree or disagree with statements regarding the EU. Specifically, they were asked if they agreed that the EU makes doing business easier. Importantly, in both of these surveys, about two-thirds of respondents agreed that the EU makes doing business easier, with 66.3% of respondents agreeing in Spring 2016 and 69.8% of respondents agreeing in Autumn of 2016. Further, in these surveys, respondents were asked if the EU means the ability to travel, study, and work abroad. In both the Spring and Autumn of 2016, more than half of respondents stated that the EU does, in fact, mean the ability to travel, study, and work abroad, with 51.1% stating this in Spring of 2016, and 53.1% of respondents mentioning this in Autumn of 2016.
8 Following Meijers (Citation201Citation7), it is possible that only left of center mainstream parties are influenced by greater emphasis on state control of the economy among far-left parties. As such, we conducted eight robustness tests to examine this possibility. These preliminary tests suggest that far-left party emphasis on state control of the economy does not affect left of center parties only, but mainstream parties across the board.
9 This variable is more accurately the degree of Euroskepticism among mainstream parties in party systems. Belgium consists of two party systems, thus, parties are divided into each party system based on where in Belgium they contest elections. The United Kingdom consists of a party system in Great Britain, and a party system in Northern Ireland. Northern Irish parties are not included due to a lack of data regarding the positions of these parties. Malta is dropped from the dataset due to a lack of longitudinal data. Cyprus is dropped from the dataset as one of its mainstream political parties (AKEL) is also a communist party. Romania is dropped from the analysis as the CMP does not provide data on the manifestos of mainstream parties for more than a single election.
10 As robustness checks, we ran models excluding green parties as mainstream parties, and including green parties as mainstream parties at all times. The results of these tests were similar to the main results reported in this study. See and in the Appendix.
11 Lowe et al. (Citation2011, 131) show a log odds ratio scaling method “better reflects spatial politics assumptions about the possible range of ideal points” than using the difference in positive and negative quasi-sentences.
12 For descriptive statistics for all variables, see in the Appendix.
13 This decision rule does not change the measure of the emphasis on state control of the economy among communist and post-communist parties in a party system. These former communist parties that have become mainstream parties tend to not mention direct government control of the economy in their manifestos, meaning that including them as communist or post-communist parties will not change the overall emphasis on state control of the economy among communist and post-communist parties in a party system. However, if these parties are considered communist or post-communist parties, they cannot be considered mainstream parties. For a list of communist and post-communist parties, see in the Appendix.
14 The CMP does not code negative mentions of direct government control of the economy.
15 While Finland had not accessed to the EU in 1991, the main independent variable of this study is lagged by one national election. Thus, this variable is measured in 1991 as the next national election occurred after Finland’s 1995 accession.
16 Collinearity does not present a problem as the Pearson’s R correlation between emphasis placed on government control of the economy and Euroskepticism among communist and post-communist parties is 0.164 for the non-weighted operationalizations, and 0.264 for the weighted operationalizations.
17 For a list of far-right parties by country, see in the Appendix.
18 The models reported in this study are random effects. We also ran fixed effects models. The results of the fixed effects models are similar to the results of the random effects models.
19 Models 1 and 2 were chosen as Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) suggests that these models have the best fit.