What drives elite opinions on European integration? Examining the territorial dimension. Lauener, L. & Bernhard, L. In The Politicisation of Cross-border Mobilisations in Europe, of New Horizons in European Politics series, pages 96–118. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
What drives elite opinions on European integration? Examining the territorial dimension [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   1 download  
Scholarly work on Euroscepticism suggests that elite preferences originate from ideology. In this chapter, we additionally focus on the role played by the territorial dimension to explain elite scepticism towards two salient issues: the free movement of persons (FMP) and EU membership. More specifically, we study the explanatory power of the share of cross-border commuters at the municipal level, language region affiliation, and the combined effect of these two factors. The analysis of elite opinions draws on data from the Candidate Survey of the 2019 Swiss Election Study (Selects). We find that Italian-speaking candidates are more Eurosceptic than German-speaking candidates. In addition, the positive effect that the Italian-speaking language region exerts on scepticism towards the FMP is greater the larger the share of cross-border commuters in a candidate's municipality. Finally, candidates from nationalist-populist radical right parties prove to be the fiercest Eurosceptics regarding both the FMP and EU membership.
@incollection{lauener_what_2023,
	series = {New {Horizons} in {European} {Politics} series},
	title = {What drives elite opinions on {European} integration? {Examining} the territorial dimension},
	isbn = {978 1 80220 804 7},
	url = {https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802208054.00014},
	abstract = {Scholarly work on Euroscepticism suggests that elite preferences originate from ideology. In this chapter, we additionally focus on the role played by the territorial dimension to explain elite scepticism towards two salient issues: the free movement of persons (FMP) and EU membership. More specifically, we study the explanatory power of the share of cross-border commuters at the municipal level, language region affiliation, and the combined effect of these two factors. The analysis of elite opinions draws on data from the Candidate Survey of the 2019 Swiss Election Study (Selects). We find that Italian-speaking candidates are more Eurosceptic than German-speaking candidates. In addition, the positive effect that the Italian-speaking language region exerts on scepticism towards the FMP is greater the larger the share of cross-border commuters in a candidate's municipality. Finally, candidates from nationalist-populist radical right parties prove to be the fiercest Eurosceptics regarding both the FMP and EU membership.},
	language = {English},
	booktitle = {The {Politicisation} of {Cross}-border {Mobilisations} in {Europe}},
	publisher = {Edward Elgar Publishing},
	author = {Lauener, Lukas and Bernhard, Laurent},
	year = {2023},
	pages = {96--118},
}

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