New forms of work intermediation – the gig economy – and the growing use of advanced digital technologies – the new knowledge economy – are changing the nature of work. The digitalization of work, however, is shaped by how countries respond to it. But how countries respond to digitalization, we argue, depends on how digitalization is perceived in the first place. Using text-as-data methods on a novel corpus of translated newspaper and policy documents from eight European countries as well as qualitative evidence from interviews and secondary sources, we show that there are clear country effects in how digitalization is framed and fought over. Drawing on discursive–institutionalist and coalitional approaches, we argue that institutional differences explain these discursive differences by structuring interpretative struggles in favor of the social coalitions that support them. Actors, however, can also challenge these institutions by using the discursive agency to change these underlying support coalitions.

Female representation in political decision-making positions is now a salient issue in public discussions throughout Europe. Understanding public attitudes towards a more balanced gender distribution in politics remains limited, however. Using a 2017 Eurobarometer, we focus on cross-national differences in public support for increased female participation in politics to address this limitation. Building on the policy feedbacks literature, we stress the role of gender quotas. We argue that quotas – as legislative devices usually adopted through elite-driven initiatives – stimulate support for stronger female representation. Ensuing debates on quotas raise individual awareness about the underrepresentation of women – informational effect – and, once adopted, give a clear signal that persistent gender imbalance is a social problem to be redressed – normative effect. Our empirical analysis supports this argument. Citizens in countries with gender quotas display stronger support for increased female participation in politics.

The expulsion of party members for the expression of dissent is a common practice in democratic states around the world, which can have momentous consequences for individual parties and the political system at large. In this article, we address the question of whether limitations on party members’ free speech can be defended on normative grounds. Drawing on a conception of parties that sees them as broader membership organisations that allow citizens to exercise political agency in a unique fashion, as well as on insights from the broader normative-theoretical literature on organisations, we build a strong presumptive case that interference with party members’ political freedoms is normatively problematic. Exploring numerous weighty arguments in favour of limiting freedom of speech within parties, we find that none of them provides a knock-down argument against our case. The argument we advance has important implications for contemporary theoretical debates about parties and partisanship, and for the regulation of parties’ internal affairs more generally.

As a consequence of the European Economic Crisis, the European Union (EU) has implanted mechanisms to assist fellow member states facing economic difficulties. Despite an increasing academic interest in public preferences for such intra-EU solidarity measures, research has so far largely ignored individual characteristics that could possibly influence politicians’ views. In this paper, we look at politicians’ preferences for transnational solidarity and argue that these preferences depend on attitudes regarding socioeconomic issues as well as attitudes related to the EU. Moreover, we hypothesize that the relationship is moderated by responsibility attribution and the economic situation in a country. Using survey data of about 4000 politicians running for office in nine EU countries, we find that transnational solidarity is more common for socioeconomically left-wing and pro-EU politicians. Yet, attitudinal differences only cease to matter when the beneficiary state is perceived responsible for the crisis and economic problems at home are low.

Political parties are likely to hold differing views about employment protection legislation (EPL). While pro-welfare parties could support EPL, pro-market parties might focus on labour market deregulation. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether partisan politics, especially the government participation of Social democrats and Christian democrats, matter for EPL in 21 established OECD countries from 1985 to 2019. We show that during the golden age of the welfare state, the level of EPL was much higher where Social and Christian democrats dominated the government than elsewhere. After the golden age and under conditions of high unemployment, these unconditional effects mostly disappeared. Instead, the level of unemployment conditions partisan differences. Christian democrats liberalize EPL for regular employment significantly less than other parties under high levels of unemployment. In contrast, Social democrats defend high levels of EPL for regular and temporary employment when unemployment is low. Against expectations, they even liberalize employment protection for labour market insiders more than other parties at very high levels of unemployment.

Scholars and practitioners continue to debate transatlantic burden sharing, which has implications for broader questions of collective action and international organizations. Little research, however, has analyzed domestic and institutional drivers of burden-sharing behavior; even less has disaggregated defense spending to measure burden sharing more precisely. This paper enhances understanding of the relationship between national political economies and burden shifting, operationalizing burden shifting as the extent to which a country limits or decreases defense expenditures, while at the same time favoring personnel over equipment modernization and readiness in the composition of defense budgets. Why do countries choose to allocate defense resources to personnel, rather than equipment modernization? I find that governments slightly decrease top-line defense spending in response to unemployment while shifting much more substantial amounts within defense budgets from equipment expenditures into personnel. This research highlights the intimate connection between Europe’s economic fortunes, transatlantic security, and burden sharing in North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union – of particular interest as a pandemic buffets the transatlantic economy. It also points policy analysts toward factors more amenable to political decisions than the structural variables generally associated with burden sharing, bridging significant gaps between defense economics, security studies, and comparative political economy.

This article answers why intra-executive conflict varies across semi-presidential democracies. The literature verifies that intra-executive competition tends to be higher when the president holds less power to dismiss the cabinet, coexists with a minority government, or the president’s party is not represented in the cabinet. This paper, therefore, integrates these factors to construct an index of prime ministerial autonomy, proposing that its relationship with the probability of intra-executive conflict is represented by an inverted U-shaped curve. That is, when the prime minister is subordinated to an elected president, or conversely, enjoys greater room to manoeuvre in the executive affairs of the government, the likelihood of conflict is low. In contrast, significant confrontation emerges when the president claims constitutional legitimacy to rein in the cabinet, and controls the executive to a certain degree. This study verifies hypotheses using data on seventeen semi-presidential democracies in Europe between 1990 and 2015.

In this article, we examine the variation in the institutional powers granted to president to terminate cabinets (by dismissing prime ministers), and appointing ministers to show how variations affect both cabinet durability (and the mode of cabinet termination) and ministerial durability (i.e., the overall time a minister remains in cabinet). Using the most extensive survival data set on ministers in 14 Central and Eastern European countries available to date alongside data on government survival, our Cox regression models demonstrate that the institutional rules granting extensive powers to the presidents are powerful determinants of ministerial durability. We show that the effect of presidential powers reduces cabinet durability but increases ministerial durability. These results demonstrate that the specific powers given to chief executives are essential for issues surrounding implications for ministerial and cabinet durability, institutional choice, policy stability, and governmental accountability.

What are the political effects of fiscal consolidations? Theoretical considerations suggest that consolidations should reduce the public’s support for their governments, but empirical studies have found surprisingly small effects on government support. However, most of these studies analyze electoral outcomes, which are separated from the consolidation by a multi-link causal chain. We argue that more direct measures of government support, such as executive approval, show much stronger negative effects of consolidation, since they are less affected by the strategic timing of consolidations or the political alternatives on offer. We analyze a time series cross-sectional dataset of executive approval in 14 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1978 to 2014, using the narrative approach to measure fiscal consolidations. We find that spending cuts decrease government approval, especially during economic downturns, but tax increases’ impact on approval remains minimal. Finally, left- and right-wing governments are equally likely to lose approval after implementing austerity.

Do economic crises mobilize or depress civic engagement? This paper examines this question by analysing cross-national trends in voluntary association membership in the context of the global financial crisis. A mobilization hypothesis suggests that an economic crisis would increase membership in voluntary associations, as these associations provide citizens a channel for interest articulation and aggregation facilitating their response to the crisis. A retreat hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that an economic crisis would depress voluntary association membership, as people have fewer resources to be involved in these associations at a time of crisis. To test these hypotheses, this paper examines data on voluntary association memberships from the World Values Survey in 14 democratic countries, fielded before and after the global financial crisis hit in 2008. The results support the retreat hypothesis. Following the crisis, there was a decline in voluntary association memberships overall and countries harder hit by the crisis were more likely to experience declines. There was no evidence of mobilization among those more vulnerable to the crisis. Rather, the profile of those engaged in voluntary associations was similar before and after the crisis, skewed towards those better off in society, including those with higher education levels, higher incomes, and in paid employment.

Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effect on turnout and voting patterns in elections to the Imperial Council. Exploiting unique data on the turnout of citizens based on their occupational categories, it further examines whether the adoption of CV attenuated class bias in turnout. Despite a large boost to turnout, CV neither increased support for parties representing the working classes, nor attenuated the class bias in turnout.

This article analyzes individuals’ preferences for a consensus or a majoritarian type of democracy. We theorize that variation in these preferences is a function of both institutional learning (long term) and individuals’ position as a political minority or majority (short term). First, as a result of institutional learning, we expect that individuals living in democracies characterized by coalition governments will favor consensus democracy. Conversely, those living in countries characterized by single-party executives will favor majoritarian democracy. Second, we expect that individuals’ position as an electoral minority or majority will affect these beliefs. Those who vote for small parties will favor a consensus democracy, while those who vote for large parties will support a majoritarian system. However, whether institutional learning or individuals’ position as a political minority or majority prevail in influencing these preferences about the ideal model of democracy will be a function of the democratic trajectory of each country. We test these arguments drawing on data from the European Social Survey.

Over the last decade, the EU’s fundamental values have been under threat at the national level, in particular among several Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU since 2004. During this time, the European People’s Party (EPP) has been criticized for its unwillingness to vote for measures that would sanction the Hungarian Fidesz government, one of its members, in breach of key democratic principles since 2010. In this paper, we seek to understand how cohesive the EPP group has been on fundamental values-related votes, how the position of EPP MEPs on these issues has evolved over time, and what explains intra-EPP disagreement on whether to accommodate fundamental values violators within the EU. To address these questions, we analyse the votes of EPP MEPs across 24 resolutions on the protection of EU fundamental values between 2011 and 2019. Our findings reveal below-average EPP cohesion on these votes, and a sharp increase in the tendency of EPP MEPs to support these resolutions over time. A number of factors explain the disagreements we find. While the EPP’s desire to maintain Fidesz within its ranks is central, this explanation does not offer a comprehensive account of the group’s accommodative behaviour. In particular, we find that ideological factors as well as the strategic interests of national governments at the EU level are central to understanding the positions of EPP MEPs, as well as the evolution of these positions over time. These results further our understanding of the nature of the obstacles to EU sanctions in fundamental values abuse cases, and the role of partisanship in fuelling EU inaction especially.