Responsive voters – how European integration empowers Eurosceptic parties

European integration has been progressing even as support for Eurosceptic parties has been rising. Post-functionalist literature focuses on how public attitudes affect the progress of European integration (bottom-up), but the mechanism through which European integration affects domestic politics (top-down) is underexplored. Extreme parties on either the left or right are known to adopt a Polity-Eurosceptic agenda in order to realign the main domestic political cleavage and turn themselves into the new mainstream. We aim to contribute to this literature by arguing that the timing and type of EU events matter. Specifically, the vote for such Eurosceptified Pariah Parties increase with integration events that have a potential for high media profile, signal reduced state autonomy, and occur in proximity to national elections. Furthermore, we argue that even if mainstream parties may counter Eurosceptified Pariah Parties’ claims, the net effect is to ratchet-up electoral support for the latter. We support this argument by employing a mixed-method design using both a natural experiment approach (UESD for Spain’s 1993 election) and a model-based approach (all parties in 1979–2017 and a new event database). Results are robust to the usual confounders, and the exclusion of different classes of events and opportunistically-timed elections.

尽管疑欧政党（Eurosceptic parties）的支持率持续攀升，欧洲一体化（European integration）仍在稳步推进。后功能主义文献（Post-functionalist literature）聚焦于公众态度如何通过自下而上（bottom-up）路径影响欧洲一体化进程，但欧洲一体化影响国内政治的自上而下（top-down）传导机制尚未得到充分探讨。学界普遍认为，左右翼极端政党（Extreme parties on either the left or right）会采取政体型疑欧议程（Polity-Eurosceptic agenda），以重塑国内主要政治分歧，并借此崛起为新的主流政党。本文旨在为该领域研究作出贡献，提出欧盟事件的时机与类型是关键影响变量。具体而言，当一体化相关事件具备高媒体关注度、意味着国家自主权被削弱，且恰逢全国选举临近时，选民对疑欧化边缘政党（Eurosceptified Pariah Parties）的支持率会显著上升。此外，本文主张，即便主流政党可对疑欧化边缘政党的主张进行驳斥，最终的净效应仍会提升后者的选举支持率。本文采用混合方法研究设计（mixed-method design）验证上述论点：一方面借助自然实验法（natural experiment approach），以西班牙1993年大选的UESD数据集为研究样本；另一方面采用基于模型的研究方法（model-based approach），对1979–2017年的所有政党及全新构建的事件数据库（event database）展开实证分析。研究结果在控制常见混淆变量、排除不同类别事件以及剔除投机性安排的选举等情形下均保持稳健。