A puzzling effect of unemployment: A reply to Dülmer and Klein

Abstract.  Dülmer and Klein's comments on our article (see European Journal of Political Research 38: 63–94) fuels once more the discussion about the contextual effects of unemployment on the likelihood of voting for extreme right-wing parties. Unfortunately, the Dülmer and Klein do not properly evaluate their findings and misrepresent their own results. They do everything to suppress the negative effect of unemployment we previously also found, and miss an opportunity for in-depth research into the relationship between unemployment and extreme right-wing voting. They uncover an interesting effect of education varying according to the proportion of immigrants – something we previously ascertained for exclusionist attitudes, but not for voting behaviour.     

Divergent trends of euroscepticism in countries and regions of the European Union

Changes in different aspects of euroscepticism developed at different paces and in varying directions in the regions and countries of the European Union (EU) from 1994 to 2004. Using Eurobarometer data, along with data on country and region characteristics, information on the positions of the political parties and media attention paid to the EU, it is tested in detail whether opposite developments in euroscepticism were associated with opposite developments in influencing contextual characteristics. The authors found that the Netherlands became systematically more sceptical towards the EU, whereas the opposite trend was found in Spain. The introduction of the Euro partially explains these divergent trends, but the direction of this effect varies with countries' GDP. Changes in media attention on the EU further explain the changes in the public's attitude. However, this effect is contingent upon specific circumstances. Growing media attention increases political euroscepticism in countries with a negative EU budget balance, whereas it decreases such scepticism in countries with a positive balance. The effect of left‐right ideological placement is contingent upon the EU budget balance as well. Finally, the effect of education on euroscepticism is found to be smaller in countries with a higher GDP.