17:45 - 20:00
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Jane Green
Discussant/s:
Cassilde Schwartz
Meeting Room D

Marco Martini, Stefanie Walter
Learning from Precedent: How the British Brexit Experience Counteracts Nationalism outside the UK

Raluca L. Pahontu, Jane Green
Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit

Maarja Lühiste, Jemima Repo
Divorcing the European Union? Examining the Use of Metaphors in Public Debate about Brexit

Nina Barzachka
Brexit, Critical Junctures, and Endogenous Institutional Change

Giorgio Malet, Stefanie Walter
When do voters learn from foreign experiences? Evidence from Brexit
When do voters learn from foreign experiences? Evidence from Brexit
Giorgio Malet, Stefanie Walter
University of Zurich

In the last decades a backlash against the institutions of international cooperation has challenged the liberal world order. While most scholars have analyzed the sources of such a backlash, we do not much about the responses it has generated among the public. This is an important question to understand whether instances of international disintegration generate reinforcing dynamics or pushbacks. This paper analyzes how German voters have responded to the Brexit negotiations, and in particular it asks whether and under what conditions Eurosceptic voters have moderated their support for an EU-exit in light of the struggles of the British government. First, based on a diff-in-diff design that exploits random variation in exposure to information, we provide causal evidence of the existence of cross-national learning. Second, based on the analysis of two panel surveys, we study variation in learning effects. We focus on the interaction between two sources of resistance to discordant information, strength of prior beliefs and strength of partisanship, and we show that the prevalence of one source of resistance over the other provides different incentives for party strategies. Our findings expand theories of public opinion on international affairs, contribute to our understanding of mechanisms of voter learning, and have implications for the study of party behavior in a changing environment.