How party cues can affect fiscal integration preferences: a survey experiment in six European countries

While governments' efforts to deepen European integration in the past were buoyed by tacit political support, it is increasingly scrutinized in the domestic arena. Driving the globalization backlash, political challenger parties have successfully politicized international cooperation across the world, leading governments to increasingly pay attention to their constituents' preferences when negotiating at the international level. This suggests that governments and mainstream parties are at the behest of political entrepreneurs and a critical public. Yet, a broad literature on cueing effects suggests that political actors have considerable leeway to shape public preferences - also about international cooperation. Using a pre-registered information treatment experiment in five countries, we examine the effect of in- and out-party cues about fiscal integration in the European Union (EU). The experiment was fielded at a moment in which questions pertaining to fiscal integration were highly salient (July 2020). We find that political parties have ample latitude to shape citizen preferences about far-reaching international cooperation, as both in-parties and out-parties significantly affect citizen preferences about fiscal integration. This pattern is remarkably robust across countries and citizens with different levels of ideological commitment to the EU. We further find that both successful and unsuccessful in-party cues significantly affect citizens' certainty about their preference for international cooperation - suggesting the importance of elite communication beyond direct persuasion.