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Responding through transposition: public Euroskepticism and European policy implementation
Abstract
Do public attitudes concerning the European Union affect the speed with which member states transpose European directives? It is posited in this article that member state governments do respond to public attitudes regarding the EU when transposing European directives. Specifically, it is hypothesized that member state governments slow transposition of directives when aggregate public Euroskepticism is greater. This expectation is tested using extended Cox proportional hazard modeling and data derived from the EU’s legislative archives, the official journals of EU member states, and the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that member state governments do slow transposition in response to higher aggregate public Euroskepticism. These findings have important implications for the study of European policy implementation, as well as for our understanding of political responsiveness in the EU.
... Using official data on formal transposition and infringements of EU law, the overall record of Romania and Bulgaria is not more problematic than it is in other groups of EU member states. Beyond the immediate focus on the two countries, the findings of the contribution are also relevant for the literature on post-accession Europeanization and support recent results showing that Eastern Enlargement did not worsen the EU's compliance gap significantly (Börzel & Sedelmeier, 2017) and underscoring that pro-EU public support matters for the implementation of EU policies also in the new member states (Williams, 2018). Furthermore, the contribution shows the need for complementing the view on legal compliance with qualitative case-study oriented research: Deficiencies in the functioning of state apparatuses, the judiciary and the rule of law in Romania and Bulgaria are bad news also for legal compliance with EU law as these domestic institutions are exactly those that are supposed making sure that implementation works in an effective and accountable manner. ...
... States are likely to comply better if the rules they are subject to come from a body that is perceived as legitimate (Checkel, 2005). Therefore, the expectation in the compliance literature is that higher approvals of the EU will render compliance more likely (Williams, 2018). ...
... Regarding the positive role of public opinion on compliance (i.e. the negative effect on non-compliance), several studies have highlighted that high-levels of compliance with EU legislation and high levels of Euroscepticism often coexist, particularly in Northern Europe . Focusing on transposition Williams (2018) has recently argued that in Western and Southern EU member states governments are slowing transposition of EU law in response to higher levels of public Euroscepticism. In the two Balkan countries the opposite dynamics can be found: high levels of public support are related to high levels of compliance. ...
The overwhelming part of EU scholarship has singled out Romania and Bulgaria as examples of failed integration. Studies dealing with these two countries’ EU accession have highlighted that EU membership was premature and found pre-accession expectations largely confirmed when looking at failures to implement anti-corruption policies, deficiencies in the use of rule of law or backsliding in democratic practices. This contribution takes issue with these pre-accession expectations in the literature and focuses on legal compliance with EU legislation as the most direct way to assess whether EU rules are followed or not. Based on transposition data and infringement proceedings between 2007 and 2017, the contribution shows that while the number of infringements from the two countries has increased over time, the record does not show extreme developments when compared to other groups of EU member states.
... Additionally, recent research has examined how public attitudes toward the EU influence member state responses to European public policy (Williams, 2016(Williams, , 2018. This research finds that higher levels of public opposition to the EU in a member state lead state governments to both delay directive transposition (Williams, 2018) and issue more reasoned opinions through the "Early Warning System" (Williams, 2016). ...
... Additionally, recent research has examined how public attitudes toward the EU influence member state responses to European public policy (Williams, 2016(Williams, , 2018. This research finds that higher levels of public opposition to the EU in a member state lead state governments to both delay directive transposition (Williams, 2018) and issue more reasoned opinions through the "Early Warning System" (Williams, 2016). ...
... A myriad of studies has examined policy responsiveness to public opinion (e.g. Bevan and Jennings, 2014;Bølstad, 2015;Erikson et al., 2002;Glazier and Boydstun, 2012;Page and Shapiro, 1983;Soroka and Wlezien, 2004;Stimson et al., 1995;Williams, 2016Williams, , 2018Wlezien, 1995Wlezien, , 2004, finding that governments tend to respond to the public regarding policy (see e.g. Wlezien, 2004, 2010;Stimson et al., 1995;Wlezien, 1995Wlezien, , 2004. ...
This study tests the relationship between public attitudes regarding the European Union and unilateral adoption of legal acts by the European Commission (i.e. directives and regulations). Relying on theories of policy responsiveness, as well as legislative gridlock, we present two hypotheses with competing expectations regarding the effect of public attitudes toward the European Union on policy-making activity in the European Commission. The first hypothesis suggests that the Commission will unilaterally adopt more legal acts when public support for the European Union is greater, while the second hypothesis suggests that the Commission will unilaterally adopt fewer legal acts when public support for the European Union is greater. Using time series error correction models and data from Eurobarometer surveys from 1974 to 2008, and the European Union’s online legislative archive (EUR-Lex), these hypotheses are tested. The results support the second hypothesis, suggesting that the European Commission will increase unilateral legal act adoption when public attitudes are more negative toward the European Union, while decreasing unilateral legal act adoption when the public is more Europhilic. These findings indicate a possibility of responsibility trading between the institutions of the European Union and have important implications for our understandings of European policy processes, political responsiveness, and democratic governance in the European Union.
... Different studies have analyzed the extent to which the EU Commission responds to public opinion (Rauh 2016; van der Veer and Haverland 2018) and member states' propensity to signal responsiveness to their publics (Hagemann et al. 2017;Schneider 2019aSchneider , 2019b. In a similar vein, some research has argued that responsiveness could occur at different stages of the policy-making process such as agenda-setting (Alexandrova et al. 2016) and in the timing of transposition of EU directives (Williams 2018). These studies, however, generally focus on single EU actors and often fail to account for the mechanisms underlying processes of responsiveness. ...
... In particular, different actors can be responsive to specific subgroups of the European citizenry on different issues (Meijers et al. 2019). The complexities associated with the multi-actor perspective have been ignored by existing studies that focus on one EU institution (Hagemann et al. 2017;Rauh 2018;Williams 2018). However, aggregate policy outputs are the result of continuous interactions between multiple actors with different competences. ...
The extent to which a government’s policies mirror the preferences of its citizens is often deemed a key feature of a representative democracy. While research on this topic has traditionally been done at the national level, scholars have also increasingly been examining the European Union (EU). This debate section takes stock of the research done in this area and includes contributions by authors who have different, but complementary suggestions for how to move forward. Whereas all contributions seek to elucidate the mechanisms behind responsiveness in the EU, they adopt different perspectives that focus on institutional actors, processes of absorbing and communicating policy-relevant information and implementation outcomes.
... Additionally, recent research has examined how public attitudes towards the European Union influence member state responses to European public policy (Williams 2016a;2016b). 4 It should be noted that Franklin and Wlezien (1997) were concerned only with explaining how public opinion adjusted to policy output, whereas this study is concerned with how policy-making is influenced by public opinion. ...
... A myriad of studies has examined policy responsiveness to public opinion (e.g. Miller and Stokes 1963;Page and Shapiro 1983;Stimson et al.1995, Erikson et al. 2002Burstein 2003;Wlezien 1995;2004;Eichenberg and Stoll 2003;Soroka and Wlezien 2004;Bartle et al. 2011;Bevan and Jennings 2014;Bølstad 2015;Williams 2016a;2016b), finding that governments tend to respond to the public regarding policy (see e.g. Stimson et al. 1995;Wlezien 1995;2004;Soroka and Wlezien 2004;2010). ...
This study tests the relationship between public attitudes regarding the European Union and unilateral adoption of legal acts by the European Commission (i.e. directives and regulations). Competing theories regarding the effect of public attitudes towards the EU on policy-making activity in the European Commission are presented, resulting in competing hypotheses of, 1) the Commission will unilaterally adopt more legal acts when public support for the EU is greater, and 2) the Commission will unilaterally adopt fewer legal acts when public support for the EU is greater. These hypotheses are tested using time series error correction models and data from Eurobarometer surveys from 1974-2008, and data derived from the EU's online legislative archive (EUR-Lex). The results support the second hypothesis, suggesting venue-shopping between the EU's institutions may be occurring. These findings have important implications for our understandings of European policy processes, political responsiveness, and democratic governance in the EU.
... Third, given that some previous studies demonstrated that government response speed toward public demand differs by issue areas (Su & Meng, 2016) and that issue salience can affect government response speed (Williams, 2018;Wolfe, 2012), this article using fixed effects also controls issue areas of each public complaint. According to the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission, the complaints based on the business references model (BRM) are categorized into 28 issue areas including education, national defense, scientific technology, and social welfare. ...
This article utilizing unique data on 37,655 public complaints in South Korea from April 2021 to March 2022 aims to unveil the association between sentiments in public complaints or petitions and government response speed. We estimate sentiments in each complaint with five morphological analyzers and employ negative binomial regression models. The empirical results demonstrate that public complaints with the sentiment of Fear tend to receive faster governmental responses while complaints with the sentiment of Sorrow are more likely to be addressed slowly. The influence of the sentiment of Fear and Sorrow is consistently robust in logistic event history models, while the sentiment of Anger is not statistically significant anymore. The results contribute to the literature on political psychology by demonstrating that facing public complaints dominated by different sentiments can influence the efficiency of civil servants. At the same time, this article suggests providing periodical counseling and education for civil servants who continuously face waves of negative sentiments to treat public complaints expertly.
... These events, although anecdotal, and unlikely to succeed, highlight a growing issue in the United States, namely negative public feelings towards the federal government as a whole. As research has suggested that public attitudes and preferences greatly influence both party position taking (Powell 2000;Adams et al. 2004;2006;Ezrow et al. 2011;Klüver and Spoon 2014;Williams and Spoon 2015;Spoon and Williams 2017), as well as public policy-making (Miller and Stokes, 1963;Page and Shapiro, 1983;Stimson et al., 1995;Wlezien, 1995Wlezien, , 2004Erikson et al., 2002;Soroka and Wlezien, 2004;Williams 2016a;2016b), negative public attitudes towards the federal government of the United States are not inconsequential. ...
This study examines why Americans have positive or negative affect towards the U.S. federal government?
Specifically, it draws on existing literature regarding individual attitudes towards the European Union, and
examines the effect of both individual utilitarian concerns, and exclusivity of identity on American attitudes
towards the federal government. Relying on the extant research regarding the EU, it is posited in this study
that those who individually benefit the most from a strong central government will be more likely to hold
positive attitudes towards the U.S. federal government. Further, it is hypothesized that those who possess
an exclusive identity, that is they fear the loss of their cultural identity, will be more negative towards the
US federal government. To test these expectations, we use data from the 2008 Annenberg National Election
Study. It is found that individual utilitarian considerations appear to have little effect on individual attitudes
towards the federal government. However, those who possess an exclusive identity are significantly more
likely to have a negative attitude towards the federal government. These findings have important
implications for multi-level governance in the United States, policy-making at both the federal and state
levels, and party positioning both at the time of and between American elections.
This study examines the relationship between the complexity of EU directives and their successful implementation at the national level. Moving beyond the state-of-the-art, we propose a comprehensive framework considering structural, linguistic, and relational dimensions of policy complexity. We argue that policy complexity entails higher transaction costs, hindering effective implementation. Using a novel dataset covering roughly 1000 directives from 1994 to 2022, we find strong evidence of policy complexity negatively impacting implementation performance. Moreover, we find that states with higher administrative capacity are better able to process high complexity efficiently and that Eurosceptic member states attract fewer infringement proceedings in highly complex policy environments than Europhile member states. This could alternatively point to strategic enforcement behavior of the Commission or to bureaucracies that are less Eurosceptic than their political masters might wish for. Our study thereby contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges of successful implementation of EU directives.
With a specially prepared dataset, we investigate whether and why EU countries implement EU policy recommendations. We focus on recommendations outside the fiscal rules and find that implementation rates are modest and worsened at a time (pre-pandemic) when the economic environment had improved and market pressure on sovereigns had subsided. We empirically test three hypotheses determining implementation: (i) legal strength of the EU process; (ii) pressure from financial markets; and (iii) macroeconomic environment. The econometric estimates indicate that a higher sovereign default probability and economic fundamentals increase the likelihood of reform.Stronger EU surveillance does not seem to drive reforms.
Recent research has documented the European Commission's attention to the preferences of the European public and the other EU institutions when formulating policy proposals. This project demonstrates that such efforts originated with the first Barroso Commission, which addressed public concerns through purposeful coordination with the European Parliament when drafting policy priorities in the Commission’s administrative units. We test for public input during the inter-institutional coordination as early as 2004–2008, using Europarties’ pledges issued during the 2004 EP elections and subsequent Commission policy priorities. Our analyses show that the policy priorities of the Commission overlap with the Europarties’ pledges when 1) the public is critical of European integration, 2) policies are salient to the public, and 3) priority initiatives fall in areas dominated by civil society and NGO groups. We interpret our results as a responsive relationship based on the inter-institutional coordination between the two actors at the agenda-setting stage.
This study examines why Americans have positive or negative affect towards the US federal government. Specifically, it draws on existing theoretical and empirical research regarding individual attitudes towards the European Union, examining the effect of ethnocentrism on American attitudes towards the federal government. Relying on this existing research regarding the EU, it is hypothesized that those who are more ethnocentric will be more negative towards the US federal government. To test this expectation, we use longitudinal data from the American National Election Study from 1992 to 2012. We find those who are more ethnocentric are significantly more likely to possess negative attitudes towards the federal government. These findings have important implications for policymaking at both the federal and state levels, as well as party positioning both at the time of and between American elections, and the overall stability of multilevel governance in the United States. Additionally, the findings of this study indicate that theories designed to explain phenomena in the European Union are applicable to the US case.
In this contribution I propose to broaden the concept of ‘policy’ used in responsiveness research. When citizens also have preferences over ‘what governments deliver’, it is important to analyze the link between these preferences and policy outcomes. The EU policy implementation literature may help in further exploring this link. Empirical findings from this literature show that citizen preferences sometimes have an impact on the policy-as-implemented. Furthermore, the policy-as-implemented differs from the policy-as-adopted, as often used in responsiveness studies, which nuances current findings. The discussion of both literatures highlights the importance of more clearly specifying the kind of policies that are researched as well as the relevant group of citizens. At the same time, the responsiveness literature offers an additional and interesting reason for why differences in EU policy implementation are rather the rule than the exception by emphasizing the importance of ‘local’ citizen preferences.
The European Union (EU) is an unlikely case for responsive policy-making. Yet, in recent years scholars have found that the EU’s overall decision-making output is correlated with the average preferences of the European citizens toward European integration. Despite recognizing the value of this systemic approach, we argue in this contribution that studies of EU responsiveness should explicitly acknowledge the multi-dimensionality of responsiveness in the EU by addressing the multiplicity of actors, institutions and publics involved. This actor-oriented perspective directs the focus of responsiveness research to the input stage of EU policy-making. This contribution calls for research that a) theoretically situates the responsiveness of actors in specific institutional venues in a broader perspective of multi-dimensional EU responsiveness and that b) empirically links different forms of input responsiveness to one another and to policy outputs.
Cambridge Core - European Government, Politics and Policy - The Responsive Union - by Christina J. Schneider
This article assesses the causes of the timing of transposition of 2179 EU directives, using an original dataset of 3183 laws adopted by the Italian authorities. Amendments to Commission directives are transposed sooner. Additionally, EU laws with longer time for adaptation present a lower risk of delay beyond the deadline. More intense supranational monitoring speeds up transposition and lowers the risk of delay. Interestingly, as the volume of EU laws to be incorporated increases, transposition accelerates and, since 1984, delay is less likely to occur. As expected, administrative and legal reforms undertaken at the national level have lowered the risk of delay and increased the likelihood of transposition. Finally, those legal instruments that offer the opportunity to potential veto players to voice their concerns and delay transposition do not appear to corroborate entirely our predictions. As expected, legislative and local authority measures increase the risk of delay, while ministerial acts both lower this risk and expedite transposition. But, contrary to our predictions, legislative and cabinet acts accelerate transposition and cabinet measures increase rather than reduce the likelihood of delay
The relationship between public opinion and public policy provides a potential criterion for assessing the democratic quality of the European Union. The few existing time series analyses in this area assume that there exists a European-wide public mood towards integration. Analyzing West-European series of public opinion from 1974 to 2011, this article finds considerable support for this assumption. However, the analysis also points towards a ‘periphery-trend’, driven by the UK, Ireland and Denmark, in contrast to a ‘core-trend’, driven by the founders of the European Economic Community (EEC). The analysis further shows that both opinion trends are cointegrated with public policy in this area: European integration appears to be significantly influenced, or constrained, by public opinion both in the core and periphery.
Do parties respond to voters’ preferences on European integration in elections to the European Parliament? In this article, we argue that political parties do respond to voters’ Euroskeptic attitudes, but that party type conditions responsiveness. In particular, we posit that larger parties are more responsive and that governing parties are less responsive to aggregate Euroskepticism. To test our theoretical expectations, we use data from the Euromanifestos Project and European Election Study from 1989 to 2009 for 252 parties across 26 European Union Member States. Our findings have important implications for understanding democratic representation in the European Union and the second-order nature of elections to the European Parliament.
The key function of representative democracy is to provide a mechanism through which public opinion and public policy are regularly connected. On one hand, there should be policy representation; public preferences for policy should be reflected in policy itself. And on the other hand, there should be public responsiveness; public preferences should be informed and should react to public policy. Policy representation is important in everyday politics. Failure of adequate policy representation may result on disaffection of the public for the government. This article discusses the evidence of representation of public preferences in the Canadian federal policy. It discusses the substance of the preferences and determines whether these preferences adjust to the policy itself. The article also discusses thermostatic public responsiveness, whereby public preferences for policy change reflect changes in policy.
Although politicization has become a key concept in European integration studies, it is still contested whether, when and to what extent European issues have become politicized in domestic political arenas. This article contributes to this discussion both in conceptual and empirical terms. It uses a new multidimensional index of politicization to systematically trace the development of politicization in national election campaigns in five West European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland) from the 1970s to 2010. The findings provide clear evidence that Europe has indeed been politicized in the past decades. Moreover, two different paths towards such a politicization are identified. One of these paths is dominated by populist radical parties from the right, while the other path is shaped by the conflict between mainstream parties in government and opposition. On both paths, conflicts over membership play an important role and cultural-identitarian framing strategies are used.
The political ‘centre’ is often discussed in debates about public policy and analyses of party strategies and election outcomes. Yet, to date, there has been little effort to estimate the political centre outside the United States. This article outlines a method of estimating the political centre using public opinion data collected for the period between 1950 and 2005. It is demonstrated that it is possible to measure the centre in Britain, that it moves over time, that it shifts in response to government activity and, furthermore, that it has an observable association with general election outcomes.
Governments in democratic systems are expected to respond to the issue preferences of citizens. Yet we have a limited understanding of the factors that cause levels of responsiveness to vary across time and between countries. In this article, the authors suggest that political contestation is the primary mechanism driving policy responsiveness and that this, in turn, is mediated by political institutions and government popularity. To test this proposition, the authors analyze the responsiveness of executive policy promises (speeches) and policy actions (public expenditure) in Britain, Denmark, and the United States in the period from 1970 to 2005. These time-series analyses show that higher levels of political contestation are associated with more responsive executives.
Abstract One little-noted,requirement,for,the,proper,functioning,of democratic,institutions is public,responsiveness,to policy.,A responsive,public,would,adjust,its,preference for,"more",or "less",policy,in reaction,to what,policymakers,do. In this,paper,we set,out,a theoretical,model,of how,the,salience,of the,issue,domain,conditions,the feedback between policy outputs and public preferences, and we then show how this model,can,be applied,in the,European,case.,In assessing,the,model,we employ,data from,all,Eurobarometer,surveys,conducted,in the,24-year period,between,1971 and 1994 together,with,policy,data,from,the,Official,Recordof,the,EC/EU. Our findings suggest that public preferences regarding European unification do reflect policy, though,only,as the,salience,of the,domain,has,increased,over,time. 3 One little-noted,requirement,for,the,proper,functioning,of democratic,institutions
A central problem for improving the implementation effectiveness of European legislation lies in the impact of national administrative traditions. The dependence on national administrations for implementing European policies implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies are crucially influenced by administrative traditions prevalent in a certain policy field, which may differ substantially from country to country. Focusing on the implementation of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany, it is the objective of this article to investigate the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation in closer detail. The main argument is that the extent to which administrative traditions affect implementation effectiveness is less dependent on the ‘real’ costs of adaptation than on the level of embeddedness of existing structures.
Does the European Union have a compliance problem? This article argues that we have simply no evidence that the EU suffers from a serious compliance deficit which is claimed by the European Commission and academics alike. First, there are no data that measure the actual level of non-compliance in the EU member states. Second, the statistics published by the European Commission, which allow us to compare non-compliance between the different member states, are often not properly interpreted. If we control for changes in the Commission's enforcement strategy, on the one hand, and the rising items of legislation to be complied with as well as member states that have to comply, on the other hand, the level of non-compliance in the EU has not significantly increased over time. Moreover, non-compliance varies significantly and is focused on four particular member states that account for up to two-thirds of all violations of Community law.
Work exploring the relationship between public opinion and public policy over time has largely been restricted to the United States. A wider application of this line of research can provide insights into how representation varies across political systems, however. This article takes a first step in this direction using a new body of data on public opinion and government spending in Britain. The results of analyses reveal that the British public appears to notice and respond (thermostatically) to changes in public spending in particular domains, perhaps even more so than in the United States. They also reveal that British policymakers represent these preferences in spending, though the magnitude and structure of this response is less pronounced and more general. The findings are suggestive about the structuring role of institutions.
Previous research explains the evolution of parties' ideological positions in terms of decision rules that stress the uncertainty of the political environment. The authors extend this research by examining whether parties adjust their ideologies in response to two possible influences: shifts in public opinion, and past election results. Their empirical analyses, which are based on the Comparative Manifesto Project's codings of parties' post-war programmes in eight West European nations, suggest that parties respond to shifts in public opinion, but that these effects are only significant in situations where public opinion is clearly shifting away from the party's policy positions. By contrast, no evidence is found here that parties adjust their ideologies in response to past election results. These findings have important implications for parties' election strategies and for models of political representation.
This paper illuminates a critical stage of the implementation of European law: the transposition of European Union (EU) directives. Directives must be transposed into national policies in order to give effect to European law, yet most national authorities experience considerable transposition difficulties. For this reason, the study of transposition has become a focal point within the broader research agenda on non-compliance in the European Union. Highlighting several popular explanatory variables but noting the sometimes contradictory results that follow from empirical testing, this paper outlines an approach that views transposition as a process taking place largely within ministerial agencies rather than across government systems. By using variables related to these domestic processes in our empirical analysis, the paper shows how such an approach can help to explain the way in which member states transpose EU directives.
Do politicians listen to the public? How often and when? Or are the views of the public manipulated or used strategically by political and economic elites? Navigating Public Opinion brings together leading scholars of American politics to assess and debate these questions. It describes how the relationship between opinion and policy has changed over time; how key political actors use public opinion to formulate domestic and foreign policy; and how new measurement techniques might improve our understanding of public opinion in contemporary polling and survey research. The distinguished contributors shed new light on several long-standing controversies over policy responsiveness to public opinion. Featuring a new analysis by Robert Erikson, Michael MacKuen, and James Stimson that builds from their pathbreaking work on how public mood moves policy in a macro-model of policymaking, the volume also includes several critiques of this model by Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro, another critique by G. William Domhoff, and a rejoinder by Erikson and his coauthors. Other highlights include discussions of how political elites, including state-level policymakers, presidents, and makers of foreign policy, use (or shape) public opinion; and analyses of new methods for measuring public opinion such as survey-based experiments, probabilistic polling methods, non-survey-based measures of public opinion, and the potential and limitations of Internet polls and surveys. Introductory and concluding essays provide useful background context and offer an authoritative summary of what is known about how public opinion influences public policy. A must-have for all students of American politics, public opinion, and polling, this state-of-the-art collection addresses issues that lie at the heart of democratic governance today.
How does public opinion affect presidential policymaking? We address this issue by testing a diverse set of hypotheses with data concerning a set of individual policies across time. In particular, the data revolve around presidential budgetary proposals on a set of major policy issues for which there are recurring surveys on citizens' preferences over spending. The analysis suggests that presidents are more responsive to mass opinion on issues that are familiar to citizens in their everyday lives. Also, for reelection-seeking presidents, responsiveness is shown to depend upon two key political factors. First, presidents are more responsive to public opinion when the next election is imminent. Second, the effect of presidential popularity is nonmonotonic; presidents with average approval ratings are most likely to adopt policy positions congruent with public opinion, whereas presidents with approval ratings that are significantly above or below average have the greatest propensity to take unpopular positions.
This article examines whether the support for Eurosceptic challenger parties influences mainstream party position change on European integration in Western Europe. The key finding is that Eurosceptic challenger support is capable of influencing mainstream position shifts on European integration provided that, on average, EU issues are regarded as important by the Eurosceptic challengers. Moreover, the centre-left is more affected by Eurosceptic contagion since it is influenced by both radical right and radical left Eurosceptic success, whereas the centre-right is only susceptible to radical right success. The empirical analyses are based on panel regression analysis employing expert survey data provided by Chapel Hill Expert Survey. The findings presented in this article have important implications for the study of party positioning on European integration as well as for the study of party competition in general.
Here is an accessible, up-to-date guide to event history analysis for researchers and advanced students in the social sciences. The foundational principles of event history analysis are discussed and ample examples are estimated and interpreted using standard statistical packages, such as STATA and S-Plus. Recent and critical innovations in diagnostics are discussed, including testing the proportional hazards assumption, identifying outliers, and assessing model fit. The treatment of complicated events includes coverage of unobserved heterogeneity, repeated events, and competing risks models. The authors point out common problems in the analysis of time-to-event data in the social sciences and make recommendations regarding the implementation of duration modeling methods.
This study examines those factors that influence the issuance of reasoned opinions within the European Union’s ‘Early Warning System’. It is posited that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism results in the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This expect- ation is tested using data derived from the European Parliament, the Commission’s platform for European Union Interparliamentary Exchange, and longitudinal data from the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism is associated with the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This study has important implications for our understandings of policy processes, political respon- siveness, and democratic governance in the European Union and its member states.
How is euroscepticism related to left–right ideology in Western European public opinion? We argue that inconsistent findings on this relationship result from the changing nature of European integration over time. Initially, EU market integration mainly sparked left-wing opposition; after Maastricht the intensification of political integration additionally produced nationalist euroscepticism among the political right. Hence, we hypothesize that the relationship between citizens’ left–right ideology and euroscepticism evolved from linear to U-shaped. We test this hypothesis by means of multilevel logistic regression on 74 waves of the Eurobarometer (1973–2010) in 12 EU member states. The results demonstrate an increase of right-wing euroscepticism across countries, whereas the developments on the left are mixed. In the concluding section, we discuss the theoretical and political implications of these findings.
The responsiveness of government policies to citizens' preferences is a central concern of various normative and empirical theories of democracy. Examining public opinion and policy data for the United States from 1935 to 1979, we find considerable congruence between changes in preferences and in policies, especially for large, stable opinion changes on salient issues. We present evidence that public opinion is often a proximate cause of policy, affecting policy more than policy influences opinion. One should be cautious, however, about concluding that democratic responsiveness pervades American Politics.
This study explores agenda-setting dynamics between mainstream and niche parties on two issues owned by niche parties: immigration and European integration. It proposes an analytical distinction between opposition and government parties to understand which mainstream parties will engage in dialogue on these issues. Building on prospect theory, mainstream opposition parties (MOPs) are expected to be risk-acceptant and inclined to follow the agenda of niche competitors. Conversely, mainstream government parties (MGPs) are risk-averse, will systematically ignore shifts in the agenda of niche parties and only increase their attention in response to MOPs. Time-series analyses between 1974 and 2003 on the case of Denmark confirm the hypotheses.
This article examines the causal relationship between public opinion and policy. Does opinion affect policy or is it the other way around? Three hypotheses take centre stage. The responsiveness hypothesis postulates that changes in public opinion lead to subsequent changes in policy in the same direction. The leadership hypothesis reverses the causal arrow and states that a change in policy results in a subsequent change in opinion in the same direction. Finally, the counter hypothesis argues that policy change leads to a subsequent change in opinion in the opposite direction. These propositions are tested with time-series data from the United Kingdom from 1973 to 2006. Strong evidence is presented in support of policy responsiveness to public opinion. However, only conditional results were found for the other two hypotheses. Policy pushes public opinion in the same direction for popular incumbents (leadership), but in the opposite direction for unpopular incumbents (counter movement).
If public opinion changes and then public policy responds, this is dynamic representation. Public opinion is the global policy preference of the American electorate. Policy is a diverse set of acts of elected and unelected officials. Two mechanisms of policy responsiveness are (1) elections change the government's political composition, which is then reflected in new policy and (2) policymakers calculate future (mainly electoral) implications of current public views and act accordingly (rational anticipation). We develop multiple indicators of policy activity for the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, then model policy liberalism as a joint function of the two mechanisms. For each institution separately, and also in a global analysis of “government as a whole,” we find that policy responds dynamically to public opinion change. This responsiveness varies by institution, both in level and in mechanism, as would be expected from constitutional design.
Dynamic agenda representation can be understood through the transmission of the priorities of the public onto the policy priorities of government. The pattern of representation in policy agendas is mediated through institutions due to friction (i.e., organisational and cognitive costs imposed on change) in decision making and variation in the scarcity of policy makers' attention. This article builds on extant studies of the correspondence between public priorities and the policy activities of government, undertaking time‐series analyses using data for the United States and the United Kingdom, from 1951 to 2003, relating to executive speeches, laws and budgets in combination with data on public opinion about the ‘most important problem’. The results show that the responsiveness of policy agendas to public priorities is greater when institutions are subject to less friction (i.e., executive speeches subject to few formal rules and involving a limited number of actors) and declines as friction against policy change increases (i.e., laws and budgets subject to a greater number of veto points and political interests/coalitions).
This paper contains supplemental materials for "What Moves Parties? The Role of Public Opinion and Global Economic Conditions in Western Europe" (hereafter Adams-Haupt-Stoll 2007). We initially discuss the substantive significance of the variables from the original Model 1 from Adams- Haupt-Stoll 2007 and provide the variance-covariance matrix of the coefficients for this model. We then both present and discuss additional results. With respect to the latter, most (but not all) build upon Model 1. Models 7-11 and 32-35 are alternative model specifications. Models 12-13 employ a different measure of the public opinion shift variable. (These models must be fit using reduced sets of cases relative to the original due to missing data on the alternative measure.) Models 14-16 re-code the Dutch D66 as a non-leftist (specifically, a liberal) party. Model 17 employs three year running averages of the global economy variables instead of election year values in Model 4. Finally, Models 18-31 are estimated using different sets of cases, including multiply imputed instead of list-wise deleted data sets. Country-election cycle clustered robust standard errors are reported in parentheses throughout unless otherwise noted. Two significant digits are always carried. Levels of significance are indicated in the tables as follows: significant at the � = 0.01 level, ***; significant at the � = 0.05 level, **; significant at the � = 0.10 level, *. All reported significance levels are for two-sided tests and were calculated prior to rounding. Note that a t-distribution with C 1 degrees of freedom was employed in hypothesis tests, where C is the number of clusters (country-election cycles).
Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on a new data set tracking the transposition of a sample of 119 directives, the paper finds effects of both political preferences and government capacity on the likelihood of timely transposition. Furthermore, important sectoral differences are uncovered, with trade-related legislation having a better chance and environmental legislation having a significantly worse chance of being incorporated into national legal systems on time. Beyond the conditionality of the accession process, the paper unveils a complex causal structure behind the ups and downs in transposition performance.
European Union (EU) member states have at times failed to implement EU directives, thus falling short of their treaty obligations. Implementation is crucial to this loosely quasifederal organization because compliance is the foundation of cooperation in Europe. This paper addresses the inability of states to comply and state reluctance to conform. I demonstrate that cross-national factors rather than idiosyncratic characteristics are responsible for non-compliance. I have crafted hypotheses regarding implementation that can be tested in a systematic fashion. Using count data of infringements, I use negative binomial regression to test the hypotheses. I find modest support for many of the hypotheses in the literature, but little support for others. Bureaucratic efficiency, corruption, power in the Council of Ministers, economic power, length of membership, and public approval of EU membership are the most important predictors of compliance.
Do Western European political parties adjust their ideological positions in response to shifts in public opinion and to changing global economic conditions? Based on a time-series, cross-sectional analysis of parties' ideological dynamics in eight Western European democracies from 1976-1998, the authors conclude that both factors influence parties' ideological positions but that this relationship is mediated by the type of party. Specifically, they find that parties of the center and right react to both public opinion and the global economy, whereas parties of the left display no discernible tendency to respond to public opinion and also appear less responsive to global economic conditions. The findings on leftist parties' distinctiveness support arguments about these parties' long-term policy orientations as well as about their organizational structures. The authors also find little support for neoliberal convergence arguments.
The capacity of a politicalsystem to respond to the preferences of its citizens is centralto democratic theory and practice. Research and theory about the impact of public opinion on policy making in the United States, however, have produced decidedly mixed views. A number of analysts find a strong and persisting impact of public opinion on public policy. Others reject the idea that the public has consistent views at all or, even if it does, that those views exercise much influence over policy making. In this article, we evaluate the state of the art in the debates over the opinion-policy link in the rapidly growing body of research on public opinion and policy making. After an extensive review and critique of the theoretical and empirical research developing “strong” and “weak” effect views of the impact of opinion on policy, we conclude that a third “contingent” view, highlighting the historical, institutional, and political contingencies, provides the best understanding of the impact of opinion on policy.
Theory: Democratic accountability requires that the public be reasonably well-informed about what policymakers actually do. Such a public would adjust its preferences for ''more'' or ''less'' policy in response to policy outputs themselves. In effect, the public would behave like a thermostat; when the actual policy ''temperature'' differs from the preferred policy temperature, the public would send a signal to adjust policy accordingly, and once sufficiently adjusted, the signal would stop. Hypotheses: In domains where policy is clearly defined and salient to the public, changes in the public's preferences for more policy activity are negatively related to changes in policy. Methods: A thermostatic model of American public preferences for spending on defense and a set of five social programs is developed and then tested using time series regression analysis. Results: Changes in public preferences for more spending reflect changes in both the preferred levels of spending and spending decisions themselves. Most importantly, changes in preferences are negatively related to spending decisions, whereby the public adjusts its preferences for more spending downward (upward) when appropriations increase (decrease). Thus, consistent with the Eastonian model, policy outputs do ''feed back'' on public inputs, at least in the defense spending domain and across a set of social spending domains.
We develop an informational theory that analyzes conditions under which a reelection-seeking executive will act in the public interest. The theory considers factors such as executive competence, challenger quality, and the likelihood that voters will learn the consequences of policy decisions before an upcoming election. We find that an executive who has information suggesting that a popular policy is contrary to voters' interests may or may not pander to voters by choosing it; under certain conditions, the executive can actually increase his probability of reelection by choosing an unpopular policy that is in the public interest. However, we also show that an executive will sometimes face electoral incentives to enact a policy that is both unpopular and contrary to voters' interests. Our theory is illustrated with examples involving President Abraham Lincoln, California Governor Earl Warren, and President Gerald Ford.
Substantial constituency influence over the lower house of Congress is commonly thought to be both a normative principle and a factual truth of American government. From their draft constitution we may assume the Founding Fathers expected it, and many political scientists feel, regretfully, that the Framers' wish has come all too true. Nevertheless, much of the evidence of constituency control rests on inference. The fact that our House of Representatives, especially by comparison with the House of Commons, has irregular party voting does not of itself indicate that Congressmen deviate from party in response to local pressure. And even more, the fact that many Congressmen feel pressure from home does not of itself establish that the local constituency is performing any of the acts that a reasonable definition of control would imply.
Control by the local constituency is at one pole of both the great normative controversies about representation that have arisen in modern times. It is generally recognized that constituency control is opposite to the conception of representation associated with Edmund Burke. Burke wanted the representative to serve the constituency's interest but not its will , and the extent to which the representative should be compelled by electoral sanctions to follow the “mandate” of his constituents has been at the heart of the ensuing controversy as it has continued for a century and a half.
The link between public opinion and policy is of special importance in representative democracies. Policymakers' responsiveness to public opinion is critical. Public responsiveness to policy itself is as well. Only a small number of studies compare either policy or public responsiveness across political systems, however. Previous research has focused on a handful of countries - mostly the US, UK and Canada - that share similar cultures and electoral systems. It remains, then, for scholars to assess the opinion-policy connection across a broad range of contexts. This paper takes a first step in this direction, drawing on data from two sources: (1) public preferences for spending from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and (2) measures of government spending from OECD spending datasets. These data permit a panel analysis of 17 countries. The article tests theories about the effects of federalism, executive-legislative imbalance, and the proportionality of electoral systems. The results provide evidence of the robustness of the 'thermostatic' model of opinion and policy but also the importance of political institutions as moderators of the connections between them.
By focusing on the speed of transposition of European directives in the Netherlands, this article evaluates the claim made by various researchers and EU politicians that there is an EU implementation deficit. It has the twofold objective of assessing the timeliness of transposition and explaining delays, using the technique of survival analysis. The main finding is that almost 60 percent of the directives are transposed late, i.e. after the deadline specified by the directive. There hence exists an implementation deficit in the Netherlands. Various legal and political variables combine to explain the time needed for transposition, the most important of which are the legal instrument used, the responsible ministry and the EU decision-making procedure.
This article analyses transposition of European Union (EU) social policy legislation in the new member states (NMS) from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In order to account for the varying rate of adoption of EU law at the national level the article develops several hypotheses about the impact of government preferences and administrative capacity on the pace of transposition in the social policy field. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset comprising data on the transposition of EU social policy directives in the new member states. The results of the quantitative empirical analysis show that government support for European integration and administrative effectiveness has positive and substantial effects on the number of directives transposed in a given period of time. However, government positions on the Left—Right and libertarianism—traditionalism dimensions do not affect the adoption of EU social policy legislation in CEE.
This study supplements extant literature on implementation
in the European Union (EU). The quantitative analysis,
which covers the EU transport acquis, reveals five main
findings. First, the EU has a transposition deficit in this area,
with almost 70% of all national legal instruments causing
problems. Second, transposition delay is multifaceted. The
results provide strong support for the assertion that distinguishing
between the outcomes of the transposition
process (on time, short delay or long delay) is a useful
method of investigation. Third, factors specific to European
directives (level of discretion and transposition deadline)
and domestic-level factors (national transposition package
and number of veto players) have different effects on the
length of delay. Furthermore, the timing of general elections
in member states as well as policy (sub)sector-related
accidents influence the timeliness of national transposition
processes.
The current political climate in the European Union, referred to as the ‘constraining dissensus’, may place negotiations on the multiannual EU budget centre stage. Media framing of EU budget negotiations as conflict between member states may reinforce the constraining dissensus by resonating with exclusive national identity. In contrast, media emphasis on conflict within or across member states may alleviate the constraining dissensus by strengthening cross-cutting cleavages. This study tests hypotheses about patterns in politicisation of the EU budget in three budgets (Delors II, Agenda 2000, Financial Perspectives 2007–2013), three countries (the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland) and two forums (media and national parliaments). It finds predominant international conflict framing, especially in media. Thus, media coverage of EU budget negotiations likely reinforces the constraining dissensus. However, as debates intensify, the constraining dissensus may be loosened through more pluralist framing in the debates. Further comparative empirical research into the dynamics of politicisation is called for.
This study examines variation in the timing of national transposition of European Union (EU) directives. It specifically addresses the central proposition of the worlds of compliance typology. The proposition is that the direction of the effects of key explanatory variables of compliance, such as the fit between new EU directives and existing national arrangements, differs by cultural context or 'world of compliance'. Contrary to this proposition, the findings indicate that the direction of the effects is the same in different cultural contexts. The present study uses arguably the best information available on compliance, from Falkner et al.'s (2005) Complying with Europe study. This is also the information from which the worlds of compliance typology was at least partly derived. As such, this study offers a 'most likely' test of the typology. In addition to refuting the worlds of compliance typology, the findings support several expectations about variation in timely transposition from the existing literature.
This paper examines variation in the timing of compliance with European directives. It formulates and tests the hypothesis that member states' policy-based incentives to deviate from the content of directives influence delay in compliance. This hypothesis is tested along with other factors that are posited to influence compliance, including the amount of discretion directives give member states, the level of misfit between national and European-level laws, and characteristics of member states. The hypotheses are examined in a quantitative research design using arguably the best available information on compliance: national responses to six labour market directives investigated by Falkner et al. (200517.
Falkner , Gerda , Trieb , Oliver , Hartlapp , Miriam and Leiber , Simone . 2005 . Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [CrossRef]View all references) for Complying with Europe. The present study develops Falkner et al.'s analysis in two respects. First, it identifies new theoretically important variables and offers measures of these, notably member states' policy-based incentives to deviate and the amount of discretion granted by directives. Second, it tests these hypotheses using multivariate analysis, while Falkner et al. applied bivariate tests only. In contrast to Falkner et al.'s conclusions, the findings indicate that misfit between national and European laws significantly reduces the likelihood of timely compliance. While political opposition at the time of a directive's adoption is not linked directly to compliance, member states tend to oppose directives that do not fit existing national laws. Compliance is more timely for directives that grant more discretion.
Europeanization involves the transposition and implementation of
European legislation in EU member states. Whereas EU policy implementation
is explicitly recognized as the responsibility of the member
states, the new emphasis on benchmarking recognizes that different
implementation strategies can be beneficial, provided the outcome is
appropriate. New data representing the full EU transport acquis from
1957 to 2004 and the national transposition instruments derived from
data bases for Germany, Greece, the UK, Spain and the Netherlands
show that only 39 per cent of the acquis was transposed in time. Why do
member states not transpose EU directives on time? Logistic and
multinomial logistic analysis explains this in terms of the level of
complexity of EU directives; the use of national legal instruments that
include considerable de facto veto players; and the shorter the transposition
time set in the directive, the more delayed the transposition process.
Work exploring the relationship between public
opinion and public policy over time has largely been restricted to the US.
However, a wider application of this line of research can provide valuable
insights into whether and how representation varies across political
systems. This paper takes a step in this direction using a new body of
data on public opinion and government spending in Canada. Analyses reveal
that the Canadian public notices and responds (thermostatically) to
changes in public spending in particular domains, and also that Canadian
policymakers represent these public preferences in spending. The extent
and nature of public responsiveness and policy representation varies
across domains. Relationships are more pronounced in certain domains, and
they are more ‘specific’ in some domains and more
‘global’ in others. The findings generally accord with the
results of similar work in the US and the UK, although the details differ
in important ways. Indeed, the differences are strongly suggestive about
the structuring role of institutions.
The aim of this article is to explain the speed with which Member States transpose EC directives in the maritime sector. By discussing earlier work, the focus is on explanatory factors related to the contents of the directive that needs to be transposed and the context within which national transposition takes place. The authors' expectations have been tested using data across seven Member States and 32 maritime directives. Using survival analysis based on Cox regression, several political-administrative and legal factors are identified that have an impact on the speed of transposition. The political sensitivity of the directive and the total number of national implementing measures lengthens the duration of transposition, while the degree of specialisation of the directive, the use of package law and experience speed up transposition. The authors also find that the impact of some of these explanatory factors changes over time. This underscores the importance of taking time seriously and to explore time dependency in further theoretical work on explaining policy-making processes.