Who Supports Financial Redistribution Within the EU? The Conditionality of Political Elites’ Transnational Solidarity

During the years of European economic hardship, new mechanisms have been implemented within the European Union to assist fellow member states in times of financial difficulties. The introduction of bailout packages marked the first time in European Union history in which member states actively asked for transnational solidarity provided by their EU partners. Such solidarity within the European Union context does not have to be altruistically motivated but could be based on self-interest and mutual responsibility. In fact, for voters, a country’s responsibility for the crisis shapes public opinion towards financial emergency relief for the respective country. According to a survey conducted by the Transsol project, one-third of respondents state that financial help should not be given to countries that handled money badly in the past (Lahusen and Grasso 2018). However, most of the decisions regarding transnational solidarity since 2008 have been made by governments and political elites and not by direct citizen involvement. Interestingly, it remains an open question under which conditions political elites support European solidarity actions between EU member states. Earlier research on parliamentarians’ attitudes towards bailout packages showed that instead of being driven by the party’s political ideology, national economic self-interest and government-opposition cleavages play an important role in the approval of financial assistance mechanisms (Closa and Maatsch 2014). However, research so far ignored individual characteristics that might impact a politicians’ view on European solidarity mechanisms as well as how their effects might be conditioned due to party or contextual features. In this paper, we look at politicians’ attitudes towards transnational solidarity. We argue that these attitudes depend first and foremost on individual preferences regarding (economic) redistribution. At the same time, we hypothesize that, comparable to findings regarding citizens, the recipient’s responsibility for the crisis affects politicians’ willingness to act in solidarity, too. Moreover, the conditions for granting bailout packages –be it the implementation of austerity measures, debt relief or exit from the common currency – are supposed to shape candidates’ preferences. Finally, a politicians willingness to help should depend also on factors like party characteristics (party ideology or government status) as well as country characteristics (first and foremost, whether the politicians’ country is a receiver country or not). We test our expectations based on data provided by the Comparative Candidate Survey (CCS) and the 2014 European Election Candidate Study (EECS) covering elections from 2013 to 2018. The dataset includes information on candidates running for office in 11 member countries of the European Union. We apply multilevel regression analysis to incorporate individual, party and country characteristics. The findings will add to our knowledge regarding political elites’ motivations for transnational solidarity as well as to how elite preferences are constrained by organizational and contextual features.