This study analyses congruence across various issues in 16 European democracies. Making use of public opinion and expert survey data, our analyses show that congruence between the policy preferences of citizens and the stances of governments is much more complex than what is revealed by studies focusing on ideology solely. Size and directions of incongruence are larger and more systematic on specific issues than on the left–right scale. On redistribution, citizens are more to the left than their governments, while popular support for European integration is systematically lower among citizens than among their representatives. Moreover, the relatively poor are particularly underrepresented on redistribution, while the preferences of the relatively lower educated are not well reflected in government preferences in relation to European integration. We interpret these results as being partly linked to a representation gap with privileged social groups enjoying higher levels of congruence with their government.

A growing number of studies focus on the two-way channels connecting public opinion and interest groups, highlighting how public support affects interest groups’ mobilization, strategies, and influence, while also showing how interest groups manage to shape public opinion. We contribute to this debate, assuming that interest groups are fundamentally survival-maximizing organizations. First, we investigate whether public opinion bears on advocacy groups’ assessment of their own survival prospects. Second, we assess whether public opinion-driven mortality anxiety affects advocacy groups’ choices regarding different lobbying strategies. Empirically, we rely on data from the Comparative Interest Group Survey, including over 2500 interest group respondents across six European Union (EU) countries as well as groups working at the EU level. Our analysis shows that (1) public opinion crucially influences how advocacy groups estimate their chances of survival, particularly for citizen groups and (2) public opinion-related survival concerns stimulate greater relative use of outside lobbying by citizen groups.

Studies of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy have established a connection between satisfaction and how well those citizens’ preferred parties perform in elections. Yet, the question remains whether ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ respond to the same system- and party-level factors when evaluating their political satisfaction. We build on extant literature to consider citizen satisfaction with democracy from the perspective of character valence. Using the Mannheim Eurobarometer trend file and content analysis-based data on parties’ character valence, we find that both winners’ and losers’ satisfaction with the political system is affected by parties’ character valence, but in differing (and somewhat surprising) ways. We find that winners respond to improvements in the character valence of opposition parties, whereas losers demonstrate greater concern with the valence of governing parties.

Amidst the European sovereign debt crisis and soaring unemployment levels across the European Union, ambitions for European unemployment policies are high on the political agenda. However, it remains unclear what European taxpayers think about these plans and who is most supportive of European unemployment policies. To contribute to this debate, we conducted a survey experiment concerning solidarity towards European and domestic unemployed individuals in the Netherlands and Spain. Our results suggest that (1) Europeans are less inclined to show solidarity towards unemployed Europeans than towards unemployed co-nationals, (2) individuals with higher education, European attachment, and pro-immigration attitudes show more solidarity towards unemployed people from other European countries, but (3) even they discriminate against foreigners, and (4) finally, economic left-right orientations do not structure solidarity with unemployed people from abroad.

Despite the sweeping societal and economic transformation brought about by digitization, it has remained a relatively marginal topic in elections, with parties having few incentives to signal commitment to digitization. Why then would parties start to do so? We address this question by examining party manifestos from German subnational elections in the period between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis contributes to the research on issue competition by looking at why parties engage with the topic of the digitization even though it has neither become politicized nor salient, at present. We find, first, that parties emphasize digitization more in regions belonging to the mid-tier in terms of their degree of digital modernization. Second, parties with more resources and greater ideological compatibility signal more commitment to digitization. Finally, electoral success of the Pirate Party as a credible challenger has been followed by greater emphasis on digitization, especially among the ideologically closest competitors.

Governments are often punished for negative events such as economic downturns and financial shocks. However, governments can address such shocks with salient policy responses that might mitigate public punishment. We use three high-quality nationally representative surveys collected around a key event in the history of the Dutch economy, namely the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, to examine how voters responded to a salient government bailout. The results illustrate that governments can get substantial credit for pursuing a bailout in the midst of a financial crisis. Future research should take salient policy responses into account to fully understand the public response to the outbreak of financial and economic crises.