Comparative politics of solidarity in Europe I

Abstract

Especially in times of crisis and austerity, political elites provide reasons why some individuals and social groups are more deserving of support than others (Van Oorschot, 2006). This might explain a resurgence of social group politics and the interest in group solidarity on the one hand, e.g. racial solidarity, migrant solidarity, and class solidarity; but on the other hand, solidarity towards outgroups such as transnational solidarity in the EU, both as dependent variable (Katsanidou et al., 2022) or independent variable (Pellegata & Visconti, 2022). This panel includes empirical studies investigating ingroup and outgroup solidarities within and between societies, but especially also the comparison hereof. Recently researchers have realized that political actors may use similar solidarity frames to endorse support for different social groups. In this sense overarching solidarity frames are akin to thin ideologies, going beyond specific social groups and/or specific issues (Stjerno, 2005). Solidarity frames explain under what conditions solidarity is supposed to arise and why. While such discursive devices were only rarely studied in the past (Kneuer et al. 2022) lately scholars started studying them in party manifestoes (Thijssen & Verheyen, 2022) and newspapers (Wallaschek, 2020). Secondly, this panel takes stock of these findings and presentations compare solidarity framing across time and/or space. Multiple studies have also studied public solidarity attitudes and actions, especially in the context of recent crises such as the Euro crisi, migration, Brexit, and COVID-19 pandemic (Lahusen & Grasso, 2018; Bremer et al. 2021). However, we do not know whether they are generalizable and congruent with the aforementioned supply-side studies. Is there adequate political representation of the preferences regarding solidarity? Moreover, we also don’t know whether crisis effects are specific and to what extent they are mediated by welfare state provisions. Hence, the panel also includes solidarity studies focusing on public solidarity preferences.

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