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Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy
This book focuses on the triadic relationship between electoral candidates and the two other poles of the delegation and accountability triangle—political parties and voters. The chapters rely mostly on the Belgian Candidate Survey (CCS project), gathering about 2000 candidates belonging to 15 parties represented in Parliament and running for the 2014 federal and regional elections, and the authors’ conclusions serve at answering broad political science questions linked with elite recruitment, party and candidate electoral strategies, personalisation, party cohesion, and descriptive and substantive representation. Its multilevel semi-open electoral system, atypical federal structure, extreme party system fragmentation and volatility make Belgium an exceptionally rich but complex case that offers findings highly relevant to research on candidates in other democracies.
The Elgar Companion to the European Union
Constituting a major contribution to literature on the EU, this comprehensive Companion analyses the structure and value of the EU, capturing the normality of its politics alongside crises and political breakdown.
European Identity and Culture
As the EU continues its integration process, the concepts of culture and transnational European belonging remain ambivalent, whether in the realm of socio-historical representation or mass politics. Engaging with recent scholarly debates surrounding the formation of collective transnational identities, this collection draws on the latest empirical case studies to explore the meaning and composition of European identity, the mechanisms that create and shape it and the question of whom it includes. Each author pays close attention to the cultural aspects of identity formation, whether manifested in official, institutional articulations, such as symbols, coinage, ceremonies and discursive manif...
Citizens' Reactions to European Integration Compared
Pre-financial crisis, EU citizens were 'overlooking' Europe ignoring it in favour of globalisation, economic flows, and crises of political corruption. Innovative focus group methods allow an analysis of citizens' reactions, and demonstrate how euroscepticism is a red herring, instead articulating an indifference to and ambivalence about Europe.
Coping with Complexity
When parties undergo abrupt organisational changes between elections - such as when they fuse, split, join or abandon party lists - they alter profoundly the organisation and supply of electoral information to voters. The alternatives on the ballot are no longer fixed but need to be actively sought out instead. This book examines how voters cope with the complexity triggered by party instability. Breaking with previous literature, it suggests that voters are versatile and ingenious decision-makers. They adapt to informational complexity with a set of cognitively less costly heuristics uniquely suited to the challenges they face. A closer look at the impact of party instability on the vote advances and qualifies quintessential theories of vote choice, including proximity voting, direction-intensity appeals, economic voting and the use of cognitive heuristics. The rich and nuanced findings illustrate that political parties hold a key to understanding voter behaviour and representation in modern democracy.
The European Public Servant
European integration is under pressure. At the same time, the notion of a European administrative space is being explicitly voiced. But does a shared idea of the public servant exist in Europe? This volume shows how the public servant has been conceived throughout history, and asks whether such conceptions are converging towards a common European administrative identity. It combines conceptual and institutional history with political thought and empirical political science. Sager & Overeem's timely analysis constitutes an original effort to integrate history of ideas and cutting-edge survey research. It presents the subject's ideational foundations as well as its modern manifestation in European administrative space.
The Politics of Everyday Europe
How do political authorities build support for themselves and their rule? Doing so is key to accruing power, but it can be a complicated affair. This book shows how social processes can legitimate new rulers and make their exercise of power seem natural. Historically, political authorities have used carefully crafted symbols and practices to create a cultural infrastructure for rule, most notably through nationalism and state-building. The European Union (EU), as a new governance form, faces a particularly acute set of challenges in naturalising itself.
Experiencing European Integration
This book develops a comprehensive theoretical model to understand how transnational interactions relate to orientations towards European integration.
Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1956
This book uses the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), as an analytical entry point to understand and illuminate post-War Europe and the drive to create an identity that can legitimise the European project in its broadest sense. The ESC presents an idealised vision of Europe, and this has long existed in a strained relationship with reality. While the trajectory of post-war European integration is a high-profile topic, we believe that the ESC offers a unique and innovative way to think about the role of culture in the history of post-War European integration and tensions between the ideal and reality of European unity. Through the series of case studies that make up the chapters in this book, analysis brings these interlinked tensions to light, exploring the roles of culture and identity, alongside and a productive conversation with the political and economic projects of post-war European integration.
The Impact of EU Politicisation on Voting Behaviour in Europe
This open access book focuses on the importance that EU politicization has gained in European democracies and the consequences for voting behaviour in six countries of the EU: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In this book we argue that to understand how EU accountability works, it is necessary to focus instead on national elections and the national political environment. Through a detailed, multimethod analysis this book establishes rigorously the paths of European accountability at the national level, its propitious contexts in the media and parliamentary debates, and whether the paths are similar from Greece to Germany. The findings have implications for both national and European Union democracy, underlining the importance that national institutions have in enabling citizens to hold the EU accountable.
