In or Out of Love with Europe? An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of National Political Parties’ Orientation Toward the European Union

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the impact of national economic conditions and voters’ attitudes on the positioning of European national political parties with regard to the European Union (EU). We provide an empirical analysis based on data gathered through the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) covering parties from 14 European countries observed over the 1999–2010 time span. We perform a regression analysis where the dependent variable measures the position of political parties vis-à-vis EU integration and explanatory variables include a number of measures of national economic conditions, features of the national political and institutional framework and voters’ Euroscepticism. Fixed effect, ordered logit and fractional logit estimates provide the following main results. Compared with other parties, non-mainstream political parties and those acting in established economies are more prone to mirror citizens’ Eurosceptic sentiments. National economic conditions such as inflation as well as gross domestic product (GDP) growth affect mainstream party support for the EU. Smaller and ideologically extreme parties are, on average, less supportive of European integration.

Citation

De Simone, E., D’Uva, M. and Lucio Gaeta, G. (2017), "In or Out of Love with Europe? An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of National Political Parties’ Orientation Toward the European Union", Economic Imbalances and Institutional Changes to the Euro and the European Union (International Finance Review, Vol. 18), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 23-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1569-376720170000018003