Publication details
The Rise of Public Euroscepticsm in the Czech Republic. A Dynamic Model
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | During the last decade, economic and migration crises have struck Europe. These events have been utilized by many actors in national political arenas for their particular goals. The aim of this paper is to capture the dynamic of both specific and diffuse support for the EU in the Czech Republic. This country could be one of the best examples to illustrate the power of elite cueing, i.e. the role of political actors in the shaping of attitudes of citizens. Despite the fact that the impact of the global economic crisis was relatively weak in the country and the Czech Republic was not affected by the migration at all, the salience of both euroscepticism and anti-immigration attitudes has been on the rise. Based on annual data from the “Our society” survey carried out by the agency CVVM, we analyze how the support for the EU is affected by preferences for different parties with different stances towards the EU since 2006 (year before start of economic crisis). The main hypothesis is that voters of parties which have changed the position toward the EU change their position accordingly. The opinion of political parties towards the EU is analyzed by using automatic text analysis of party manifesto and with usage of expert survey data. The opinion of voters is aggregated to the level of parties and the change of aggregated measures is computed and used in analysis. Results indicate, that change of party positions is not important for changes of opinion of voters, whereas change in life satisfaction and in some descriptive characteristics of electorates are important. |
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