European integration and the nationalist parties
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation presents a comprehensive analysis of the factors affecting nationalist parties’ support for the EU over time and across regions. Investigating how European integration and nationalist parties interconnect and looking for patterns among a large number of cases are important to understanding the nature of nationalism and the future of the EU. The approach of looking for patterns among a large number of cases contributes to overcoming limitations of existing studies that are based on a small number of cases and allows more valid generalizations about the nature of nationalist parties in the European context. This study combines a big-N method with case studies. The big-N method relies on aggregated data over a 30-year period from 1984 to 2014 in both Western and Eastern EU member countries to investigate the attitudes and behaviors of all kinds of contemporary nationalist parties toward European integration. A total of 105 nationalist parties across 26 EU member states are included. I build on Arnold, Sapir, and De Vries’s (2012) model for predicting Western European parties’ EU positions based on their electorate, parties, and party system characteristics. The differences are that (1) I focus strictly on nationalist parties, while Arnold, Sapir, and De Vries included all parties, (2) I broaden the scope to include both Western and Eastern European countries, and (3) I have added a variety of country-level variables. In particular, I emphasize party-level variables and party system characteristics, but other country-level variables are also included as controls because these might matter too. A variety of possible variables are classified into two categories: party-level (including ideology, party type (statewide versus minority nationalist), party size, and incumbency) and country-level (including party system fractionalization and polarization, as well as East versus West, state size, immigrant population, the length of EU membership, economic condi…
abstract: This dissertation presents a comprehensive analysis of the factors affecting nationalist parties’ support for the EU over time and across regions. Investigating how European integration and nationalist parties interconnect and looking for patterns among a large number of cases are important to understanding the nature of nationalism and the future of the EU. The approach of looking for patterns among a large number of cases contributes to overcoming limitations of existing studies that are based on a small number of cases and allows more valid generalizations about the nature of nationalist parties in the European context. This study combines a big-N method with case studies. The big-N method relies on aggregated data over a 30-year period from 1984 to 2014 in both Western and Eastern EU member countries to investigate the attitudes and behaviors of all kinds of contemporary nationalist parties toward European integration. A total of 105 nationalist parties across 26 EU member states are included. I build on Arnold, Sapir, and De Vries’s (2012) model for predicting Western European parties’ EU positions based on their electorate, parties, and party system characteristics. The differences are that (1) I focus strictly on nationalist parties, while Arnold, Sapir, and De Vries included all parties, (2) I broaden the scope to include both Western and Eastern European countries, and (3) I have added a variety of country-level variables. In particular, I emphasize party-level variables and party system characteristics, but other country-level variables are also included as controls because these might matter too. A variety of possible variables are classified into two categories: party-level (including ideology, party type (statewide versus minority nationalist), party size, and incumbency) and country-level (including party system fractionalization and polarization, as well as East versus West, state size, immigrant population, the length of EU membership, economic condi…
author: Woo, Sumi
language: en_US
language: English
keywords: Political science
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:44:18Z
provider: University of Alabama
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Alabama Libraries