Before Their Time: How the Timing of Democratisation Affects Challenger Party Euroscepticism

When do challenger parties mobilise Euroscepticism? The literature has assumed that European integration is always a new issue, orthogonal to the main dimension of competition, and that dominant parties, founded on previous conflicts, are internally split on it. Challenger parties thus exploit its wedge issue nature. I question this, suggesting that the timing of democratisation should be considered. Where party system formation took place after the onset of the European project, parties founded at the time could take stances on European integration and form their constituencies and reputations on its basis, hindering its later mobilisation by challenger parties. However, the extent to which issues mobilised during democratisation are bundled into stable dimensions will be limited where parties are weakly institutionalised. Where parties institutionalised well, the degree to which European integration was emphasised during democratisation should moderate the effect of being a challenger party on current party positions on the EU. This is tested in a mixed methods setting. Quantitatively, I predict parties’ current EU positions as a function of their dichotomous past government participation interacted with the country-wise salience of European integration during democratisation and with average party age. Two case studies compare Portugal and Poland, both late democracies but differing in their degree of subsequent party institutionalisation. The findings conform to the theoretical expectations. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the ideological appeals of challenger parties, refining existing accounts of issue entrepreneurship and reinforcing the importance of the historical process of party system formation.