Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour - A return to normalcy?

Elections are the key component in the process of democratic representation. They allow citizens to influence and control policymakers and to hold them accountable for their past decisions and performance. Elections also give citizens the opportunity to express a mandate for the future government. After more than ten years of austerity politics, populism, and legitimacy crises, it seems as if the European party systems had finally reached some kind of resolution. Yet, this apparent return to normalcy remains fragile. Right-wing and left-wing populist parties, fuelled by discontent about economic austerity measures, concerns about growing immigration, further European integration, and anti-vaccine movements have been challenging mainstream political parties. ​​What seems clear is that nowadays symbolic issues and questions of identity occupy a larger and central position compared to ten or fifteen years ago. Such changes pose challenges for democratic politics. First, societal conflicts around cultural issues can create group identities and polarisation that are as intense as that of partisanship. The affective polarisation that can result from this process, in turn, makes it hard to find political compromises. Second, even though populist parties remain in the opposition in most countries, their electoral strength means that governance and representation by mainstream parties becomes more difficult. These developments also point to a growing discontent towards political elites which characterizes many established democracies. The economic crisis of the last decade, corruption scandals in many countries, attacks by populist leaders against the “classe politique”, growing economic inequality: all these trends have contributed to eroding citizens’ confidence in political elites and, in many cases, in representative institutions. In addition, these transformations in the partisan landscape and in citizens’ political attitudes point to important underlying changes in the characteristics and preferences of the electorate. Processes of individualization of vote choices weaken long-standing group loyalties. At the same time, economic globalization is changing the economic landscape and the distribution of resources, which also shapes s political alignments. Against the background of these important changes and challenges to our understanding of what guides public opinion and voting behaviour, this Section invites work on citizens’ attitudes, voting choices, political participation and electoral competition. We are particularly interested in comparative analyses, taking advantage of the variation across countries, regions, or levels (European, national, regional, etc.). The Section is open to a variety of topics and methodological approaches within the general field of comparative research on public opinion and voting behaviour. We suggest below a tentative list of the panels that we will form within this Section. These panel themes however are not fixed. We want to maintain some flexibility to be able to accommodate work on emerging topics. Our intention is therefore to build panels based on the Paper proposals that we receive. We are confident, however, that many of the themes mentioned in the list of panels below will indeed be covered by the papers that the members of the Standing Group will be submitting for this Section. Given the large number of submissions that are generally received for the sections that are endorsed by our Standing Group, we are confident that we will be able to attract sufficient interest to organize eight Panels. Tentative list of panels European Elections Turnout and participation Ideological and affective polarisation Populism and Nativism as determinants of the vote Transformation of cleavages and voting Elections and the pandemic Electoral integrity Institutions and political representation New methods and data for the study of voting behaviour Interest for this section and likely participants As Panels have a strong focus on substantive research questions, methodological (and data) diversity within each Panel is especially welcomed and encouraged. This Section should attract participants working in the field of election studies, public opinion, and comparative politics. Focusing on the comparative analysis of political behaviour and political representation, this Section is likely to interest a broad range of scholars, working on both established and new democracies. We will seek to balance the participants in terms of gender, regions, and seniority level.