ABSTRACT
Whereas values have been shown to be quite stable, at least in the short run, attitudes are much more susceptible to, for instance, worsening conditions caused by increases in taxes or cuts in services, in other words to the kinds of measures governments take in times of crisis in order to combat their failing economic performance. The results confirm that the measurement model for trust in political institutions is stable over time. This holds true also for countries that have been unequally affected by the economic crisis. However, the results also show that, in countries most affected by the crisis, trust in political institutions as a central pillar of democracy has been significantly eroded. Whether these shortterm effects under the conditions of a protracted and severe economic crisis, as in Greece, might cause a long-term decrease in support for democracy, which in turn may also affect the stability of the political system as a whole, is an important question for future research. The case study of Romania at least gives hope that, even in fragile and relatively young democracies, trust in democracy as a principle is sufficiently rooted in the value systems of its citizens to survive unaffected the consequences of a harsh economic crisis. All in all, this book provides solid evidence of changes in a broad range of attitudes shared by the general public that are the result of the impact of economic scarcity. Both attitudes towards political objects and attitudes concerning private life are strongly affected by the economic context. The research supports the volatility, when impacted by crisis, of attitudes regarding resource redistribution, immigration, support for European integration, non-institutionalized political participation, and evaluations of the legitimacy of national, compared to European, political institutions. By distinguishing between two dimensions of threat perception associated with immigration, evidence was found that universalism and conservation values have a somewhat greater impact on cultural threat perceptions than on economic threat perceptions. Worsening socioeconomic conditions in terms of increasing unemployment rates, however, significantly increased economic threat perceptions, but not cultural threat perceptions. This result confirms that it is necessary to treat economic and cultural threat perception as two distinct concepts. In times of economic crisis caused originally by the banking sector, the proportion of immigrants in itself had no impact on citizens’ threat perceptions. This may be because citizens realized that immigrants cannot be blamed for a failure of banks, politicians, and/or the government, or it may be because threat perceptions caused by competition for scarce resources require a perceived economic downturn and at the same time media reports about increasing immigration. Values also affect attitudes toward European integration: as expected, citizens with high preferences for universalism values (favoring social justice and equality) more strongly supported further European integration, whereas citizens with high preferences for security values were less supportive. During the crisis, the nexus between universalism values and support for European integration became stronger in those countries performing rather well economically, with comparably high economic growth rates in relation to countries more severely affected by the crisis. The link between universalism values and support for further European integration turned
out to be unaffected by the crisis, always stronger the higher the unemployment rate of a country. Since the rise in unemployment came later, after a certain time lag, than the first appearance of the economic crisis between 2007 and 2008, an interesting question for future research is whether these results will hold when comparing the 2006 data with data from, for instance, 2012 instead of 2008, in other words, at a time when the unemployment rate in those countries most affected by the crisis shot up. If a crisis can change attitudes, then as a consequence we can expect behavior to be affected too. The literature suggests that younger citizens, women, and the more highly educated are usually more likely to engage in non-institutionalized political participation such as signing petitions, public demonstrations, and political consumerism. The economic crisis especially hit young people who suffered from the high youth unemployment rate, men who disproportionally work in severely hit sectors, such as construction, financial services, and car manufacturing, and the less well educated, who are less attractive to the labor market. Despite their greater vulnerability to the consequences of the economic crisis, support was found neither for the expectation that younger people participate most in countries severely affected by high unemployment, nor for the assumption that differences between less well educated and better educated would disappear. Therefore vulnerability does not seem to substitute for civic skills acquired through higher education. However, in accordance with the theoretical assumptions, the effect of gender on the probability of non-institutionalized political participation vanished in countries most affected by the economic crisis. Another question is whether the economic crisis provoked not only political protest behavior but also amplified the call for stronger political union in order to tighten economic integration as a necessary response to the Euro crisis. But is the political culture across member states cohesive enough to permit further political integration, that is to say, a representative democracy beyond the nation state which is perceived as legitimate by the citizens? A potential barrier to further political integration would be, according to this point of view, if differences in citizens’ evaluations of democratic legitimacy and the degree of confidence in national parliaments and the European Union were observable between the member states. Empirically it turned out that the impact of input orientations (normative justification of democratic institutions) was stronger for the confidence in the national parliaments than for the confidence in the European Union. Output orientations (economic problem-solving capacity), on the other hand, had a stronger influence on citizen’s confidence in the European Union – hence the European Union seems to be more dependent on economic success than national parliaments. If not addressed, such legitimacy differences may pose a barrier to political union as a foundation for economic and monetary integration. However, one of the main highlights of this book is the investigation into the link between basic value orientations and different attitudes under the impact of economic crisis. Although some work in this direction has been done before (see Davidov et al., 2008; Davidov and Meuleman, 2012), the present study – using GDP per capita and unemployment rates as crucial crisis indicators – follows on
these earlier investigations to shed light on the way economic conditions affect the relationship between rather stable basic human value orientations and attitude formation over time. Empirical evidence shows that the influence of selftranscendence values on the attitudes regarding redistribution is increasingly substituted by the impact of conservation values, a result that is rather unexpected according to Inglehart’s materialism-postmaterialism theory. The nexus between values and attitudes regarding immigration, as another key political issue in times of crisis, turned out to be quite stable. Whereas the relationship between values and attitudes towards redistribution seems – like an outburst effect – to be immediately related to the crisis that afterwards returns to the initially observed general trend, the nexus between values and attitudes toward immigration seems to be durable. Further research should focus on the link between values and other attitudes and provide better evidence needed in order to develop a stronger theoretical explanation. For a broader overview of the consequences of the economic crisis it is useful to complete the picture of the cross-country perspective by individual case studies of the most severely hit countries. Greece and Portugal, as two of the hardest hit countries of the Eurozone, and Romania, as a post-communist member of the European Union with a national currency, were selected for this purpose. On the issue of how to solve its deep financial crisis, Greece was split along a divide between proponents of the bailout agreement proposed by the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund) and the opponents of austerity, who regarded the bailout agreement as a loss of sovereignty and a capitulation to external actors. The political parties’ positioning on this new crisis-related issue followed strategic considerations which did not coincide with the existing left-right division. For this reason the traditional left-right dimension was unable to assimilate the new economic bailout dimension. Party competition in the 2012 elections in Greece therefore took place along two cross-cutting dimensions, the traditional left-right dimension associated with cultural issues such as nationalism and immigration and the new economic bailout dimension, which after the general elections in 2015 allowed a government coalition of leftist SYRIZA and right populist ANEL parties that was based on anti-bailout politics. Empirical evidence shows that both dimensions exist in the Greek electorate too. No similar crisis-related split of the left-right dimension was observed in Portugal. Instead, as a consequence of the request for a bailout agreement with the Troika in April 2011, the polarization of the politicians on the existing economic left-right dimension became stronger. Since empirically the electorate did not follow their representatives, the crisis exacerbated the division between the voters and their representatives. Whether or not the economic crisis also affected support for democracy is investigated in regard to Romania, a democracy that is younger and less consolidated than Greece and Portugal and which also received financial assistance from the EU (through its Balance of Payment program), the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Whereas the economic turmoil during the post-communist transition could be explained away by politicians as an inherent part of the
process of change, the economic crisis of the last years could not so easily be explained. Nonetheless, the empirical results for Romania showed that while short-term confidence in the presidency, political parties, and political institutions (specific support for democracy) decreased significantly during the crisis, middle-range support as indicated by the satisfaction with the functioning of democracy and long-term, diffuse support for democracy as a principle remained unaffected. Furthermore, negative economic evaluations caused by the economic crisis turned out to reduce specific and middle-range support for democracy but failed to have a significant impact on diffuse support for democracy. These results illustrate that even fragile democracies can survive severe economic crises without their citizens abandoning the idea of democracy. Although values turned out to be quite stable even in times of crisis, a final look at age cohorts provides deeper insight into long-term change with respect to citizen’s attitudes toward European integration and their trust in the European Union, two topics that are central to the future of Europe. Are younger cohorts – so goes the central question – more pessimistic about Europe than the older cohorts? The empirical results of this volume shows clear evidence that this question can be answered “no”: unaffected by the crisis, younger people are much more supportive of European integration and have significantly greater confidence in the European Union than older people. This empirical result is cause for optimism regarding the future of Europe. Although the economic crisis hit many European countries quite severely, it also provided the opportunity to show solidarity and to implement required structural reforms in order to increase the economic competiveness and strengthen cohesiveness in Europe. However, to what extent this finding will be replicated in future studies will depend on the opportunities provided to those groups particularly affected by the recession in their respective countries. As a result of the recession, many see themselves facing interruptions to their career and life opportunities. To what extent this may cause growing social inequalities in the population, challenging social cohesion and giving rise to new, or reactivating latent, conflicts at national, European, and even world level, will depend on how successful the economic recovery will be in integrating all citizens. In the meantime the worst of the economic crisis seems to be over. Ireland managed to officially exit the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) financial assistance program on December 8, 2013 (see EFSF 2015a), and Portugal followed on May 18, 2014 (see EFSF 2015b and IMF 2015). In January 2014 Spain successfully left the Financial Assistance program for the recapitalization of financial institutions (see European Commission 2015). Although the situation in Greece remains unstable, it is hoped that the reforms to prevent similar crises in the future introduced by the European Union and its member countries will eventually also serve to strengthen the idea of a common Europe.
