IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v18y2017i3p424-446.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the European Union too complicated? Citizens’ lack of information and party cue effectiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Roberto Pannico

Abstract

Previous literature suggests that citizens lack information about European Union politics and need party cues to develop attitudes toward European Union issues. This process would make party positions the cause rather than the consequence of voters’ preferences, reducing the accountability of the political elite. The article tests the premise of this top-down model investigating how issue complexity and citizens’ political knowledge affect party cue effectiveness. The results from both experimental and observational data show that party influence is higher among less knowledgeable citizens. Moreover, well-informed voters have autonomous opinions on easy issues, but they rely on party cues when facing harder ones. Given the low availability of information about European Union politics and the high complexity of the debated issues, parties appear largely able to shape voters’ attitudes.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberto Pannico, 2017. "Is the European Union too complicated? Citizens’ lack of information and party cue effectiveness," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 424-446, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:18:y:2017:i:3:p:424-446
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116517699892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116517699892
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116517699892?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles S. Taber & Milton Lodge, 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(3), pages 755-769, July.
    2. Druckman, James N. & Peterson, Erik & Slothuus, Rune, 2013. "How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 57-79, February.
    3. Carmines, Edward G. & Stimson, James A., 1980. "The Two Faces of Issue Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 78-91, March.
    4. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    5. Matthew Gabel & Kenneth Scheve, 2007. "Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 1013-1028, October.
    6. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 523-543.
    2. Nikoleta Yordanova & Mariyana Angelova & Roni Lehrer & Moritz Osnabrügge & Sander Renes, 2020. "Swaying citizen support for EU membership: Evidence from a survey experiment of German voters," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 429-450, September.
    3. David Stadelmann & Benno Torgler, 2012. "Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period," Working Papers 2012.70, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    4. Caroline Le Pennec & Vincent Pons, 2023. "How do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multicountry Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 703-767.
    5. Ahlquist, John S. & Ichino, Nahomi & Wittenberg, Jason & Ziblatt, Daniel, 2018. "How do voters perceive changes to the rules of the game? Evidence from the 2014 Hungarian elections," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 906-919.
    6. Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya & Kelly, Grace, 2017. "Welfare Chauvinism? Refugee Flows and Electoral Support for Populist-right Parties in Industrial Democracies," MPRA Paper 81816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gravelle, Timothy B. & Lachapelle, Erick, 2015. "Politics, proximity and the pipeline: Mapping public attitudes toward Keystone XL," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 99-108.
    8. Rogers, Todd & Nickerson, David W., 2013. "Can Inaccurate Beliefs about Incumbents be Changed? And Can Reframing Change Votes?," Working Paper Series rwp13-018, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Andrea Junqueira & Ali Kagalwala & Christine S. Lipsmeyer, 2023. "What's your problem? How issue ownership and partisan discourse influence personal concerns," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 104(1), pages 25-37, January.
    10. Ben M. Tappin & Adam J. Berinsky & David G. Rand, 2023. "Partisans’ receptivity to persuasive messaging is undiminished by countervailing party leader cues," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(4), pages 568-582, April.
    11. Alexander Stoecker, 2021. "Partisanship in a Young Democracy: Evidence from Ghana," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 193-21, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    12. Brad R. Taylor, 2020. "The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 70-88, March.
    13. Federico Vegetti, 2019. "The Political Nature of Ideological Polarization: The Case of Hungary," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 681(1), pages 78-96, January.
    14. Srivastav, Sugandha & Rafaty, Ryan, 2021. "Five Worlds of Political Strategy in the Climate Movement," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    15. Justus Enninga & Ryan M. Yonk, 2023. "Achieving Ecological Reflexivity: The Limits of Deliberation and the Alternative of Free-Market-Environmentalism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-14, April.
    16. Millner, Antony & Ollivier, Hélène & Simon, Leo, 2020. "Confirmation bias and signaling in Downsian elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    17. Dieter Dekeyser & Henk Roose, 2022. "Polarizing policy opinions with conflict framed information: activating negative views of political parties in a multi-party system," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1121-1138, June.
    18. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2015. "Military careers of politicians matter for national security policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 142-156.
    19. Brad Taylor, 2015. "Strategic and expressive voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 159-170, June.
    20. Matthew I. Jones & Antonio D. Sirianni & Feng Fu, 2022. "Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:18:y:2017:i:3:p:424-446. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.