Tuesday 12 November 2024 15.00 – 16.30
Hybrid, online via Zoom or in person, in Seminar room Mansarda, Villa Schifanoia (EUI).
The EU’s unprecedented crises since 2008 have all foregrounded political conflicts over the scope and shape of the EU polity and its policymaking prerogatives. These crises created a “constraining dissensus” from domestic politicization and contestation of the EU (Hooghe and Marks 2009), driving elite and public opinion views on the EU apart. But we still know too little about the extent and nature of party-voter (in)congruence on European politics. Our Special Issue focuses on examining voter-party linkages in the 2024 European elections. First, the contributions speak to the general nature of such linkages addressing important themes in the political behavior literature, such as cueing and campaign effects. Second, they speak to the extent of a constraining dissensus within the EU, and touch on time-honoured debates, such as the nature of EU elections as first or second order and public perceptions of the EU’s democratic deficit. Understanding such linkages is crucial for assessing how developed bonds of loyalty and voice channels in the EU are, and also more generally the EU’s resilience as an evolving polity.