Repeated Crisis Exposure, Euroskepticism & Political Behavior : An Econometric Analysis for European Countries

In Europe, the last decade has been shaped by euro crisis, migration crisis and corona crisis. Studies have analyzed how citizens react to crises in their voting behavior. This political economy analysis examines the research gap to what extent repeated crisis exposure within a short period of time can deepen existing Euroskepticism. It is defined as an index consisting of the individual identification as European, the view on the EU and on own country’s benefits of EU membership. Survey results of the Eurobarometer of all 28 EU member states, including the United Kingdom, in combination with macroeconomic data are analyzed using modern econometric methods. Bootstrapping and entropy balancing ensure conservative estimates. We find that a single crisis exposure increases existing Euroskepticism, but that the temporal distance between the crises matters. The impact of a crisis on the current situation marginalizes with its temporal distance. Furthermore, a hysteresis-like effect occurs: After the crisis ends, the Euroskepticism level does not go back to its pre-crisis level. Especially today, when (Western) democracy is under attack from many sides, this work extends the understanding of the influence of crises on political behavior aiming to derive recommendations how to act in the future. About the author Lukas Möller is a research assistant at the Chair of Political Economy at the university of Münster. His research focuses on Public Choice Theory and European Integration.