Pandemic and Nationalism: Evidence from the European Parliament

• In Event: COVID Politics

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to study the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on voting behavior in the European Parliament. In particular, we focus on ideology versus national interests as the main drivers of voting behavior, party group cohesion, and coalition formation in the European Parliament. We examine whether a major sanitary crisis such as Covid-19 leads to more national interest-based voting behavior. The member states in the European Union has been differentially affected by Covid-19. They also adopted different approached such as a “hard” and a “soft” lockdown policy. To analyze voting behavior, before and after Covid-19, we examine the roll call voting behavior of Member of the European Parliament before and after March 2020. The main identification strategies we use is a difference-in-differences model comparing voting behavior before and after March 2020. The preliminary results suggest that ideology remains as important driver of voting behavior as it was before Covid-19. In other words, we reject the hypothesis that sanitary crisis leads to increased nationalism among Members of the European parliament. These results suggest that democratic politics in the European Parliament is robust to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the lockdown measures.

Author

• Abdul G. Noury, New York University Abu Dhabi