Elite Convergence in and outside the EU: Party Positions and Voter Perceptions

• In Event: Citizen and Party Linkages in the EU

Abstract

From the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to the introduction of a common European currency in 2002, the European Union has extended its reach to a variety of policy domains. A recurrent argument among scholars of EU politics is that shifts of policy competences from the national to the European level favor a process of mainstream party depolarization: social democratic, conservative and liberal parties have gradually converged on similar ideological positions. Consistent with these claims, extant empirical evaluations of the convergence argument point to the constraining effects of European integration on party positions. Yet, these studies have two major limitations. First, they narrowly focus on parties in the EU, failing to consider important counterfactual cases from non-EU countries. Second, they only examine “measured” party positions derived from manifesto data, leaving unexplored whether European integration induces voters to see center-left and center-right parties as increasingly similar. Does mainstream party convergence uniquely characterize the EU, or is it a common phenomenon to most developed democracies? How do voter perceptions of elite depolarization compare across EU and non-EU countries? Combining party- and voter-level data, I employ regression and matching methods to evaluate the effects of European integration (and the lack thereof) on actual and perceived mainstream party convergence. By comparing trends in left-right convergence across EU and non-EU developed democracies, this paper provides evidence of declining ideological differences among mainstream parties in the EU and growing perceptions of elite collusion among EU citizens.

Author

• Antonio Benasaglio Berlucchi, Waseda University