Journal Articles

How Economic Integration Affects Party Issue Emphases

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The economic dimension has typically been considered the primary dimension of political party competition. However, parties often rally voters on the basis of non-economic issues. In this article, we argue that integration into global markets and into the European Union (EU) constrains parties’ abilities to credibly differentiate themselves on economic issues. Given these constraints, and voters’ awareness of them, parties activate other non-economic issues along which to compete. Using data across 49 countries between 1961 and 2010, this study shows that increased economic integration is associated with increased emphasis on non-economic issues during election campaigns. This effect persists over time and remains robust to a number of alternative explanations and modeling strategies. We also explore the proposed causal mechanisms and show that integration is indeed associated with convergence of party positions on economic issues and that all types of parties—not just new and niche parties—respond to integration by politicizing non-economic issues. Finally, we leverage the latest round of EU enlargement to causally identify the effect of integration on party strategies.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Comparative Political Studies

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications., 2015

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0010-4140

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 48, Issue 10 September 2015, P. 1227-1259

Subject(s)

Electoral Competition
Economic Integration
European integration
Issue politicization

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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