Contagious Euroscepticism. The Impact of Eurosceptic Challenger Parties on Mainstream Party Attitudes toward European Integration
- This project argues that Eurosceptic challenger parties can affect mainstream parties’ attitudes toward European integration in Western Europe. Defined as anti-European parties without governing experience, Eurosceptic challengers have become a pervasive electoral phenomenon. On the backdrop of both spatial theory and issue saliency theory of party competition, this project argues that Eurosceptic challenger parties can influence mainstream parties’ positions on as well as emphasis of the European integration issue.
After comparative overview of party-based Euroscepticism, a historical and descriptive quantitative analysis of mainstream EU positions and EU issue salience demonstrates that mainstream party attitudes vary significantly over time – an important precondition for Eurosceptic challengers’ programmatic influence.(...)