10:00 - 11:30
Panel Session 3
Room: Zoom
Moderator/s:
Marina Costa Lobo
In favour of experts or against the status quo? Technocratic attitudes and voting behaviour ten years after the Eurozone crisis
Lea Heyne, Marina Costa Lobo
Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa

The EU has long been criticised as a driving force of depoliticisation and systemic technocracy, but the Eurozone crisis has made this issue even more salient: The economic crisis triggered the appointment of several technocratic governments, and gave the EU as well as international institutions like the IMF and the Worldbank the power to impose conditionality on countries, limiting the room for manoeuvre of national governments. Yet, the literature on citizens’ attitudes towards technocracy is still scarce, and there is little knowledge about the effects the Eurozone crisis had on citizens’ preferences for government by experts. While we know that technocratic preferences are usually linked to positive attitudes towards the EU, the underlying mechanism between these factors remains understudied, and the extent to which this association endures even in countries that underwent technocratic government during the Eurozone crisis is unexplored. This paper uses new panel survey data collected before and after the European parliament elections in May 2019 in six countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain). We investigate how citizens’ attitudes towards technocracy differ between creditor and debtor countries, as well as the mechanism through which EU attitudes and support for technocracy are related. Further, we explore the relationship between citizens’ technocratic attitudes and their voting behaviour in the European elections.


Reference:
Fr-P3-04
Session:
Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behaviour
Presenter/s:
Lea Heyne
Topic:
EU Politics
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
Zoom
Moderator/s:
Marina Costa Lobo
Date:
Friday, 19 June
Time:
10:45 - 11:00
Session times:
10:00 - 11:30

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