Christopher Wratil

Publications

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Duell, D., Kaftan, L., Proksch, S.-O., Slapin, J. & Wratil, C.

The Rhyme and Reason of Rebel Support: Exploring European Voters’ Attitudes Towards Dissident MPs

Political Science Research and Methods, early view

Citizens often support politicians who vote against their parties in parliament. They view rebels as offering better representation, appreciate expressive acts, take rebellion as a signal of standing up for constituents, or see rebels as defending their moral convictions. Each explanation has different implications for representation, but they have not yet been tested systematically against one another. We implement survey experiments on nationally representative samples in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy to assess whether voters treat rebellion as a cue for better representation or infer positive character traits implying a valence advantage. Policy congruence does not drive voters’ preference for rebels. However, voters do associate positive traits with rebel MPs, even if they do not feel better represented by them.

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C., Wäckerle, J. & Proksch, S.-O.

Government Rhetoric and the Representation of Public Opinion in International Negotiations

American Political Science Review, 117:3, pp. 1105-1122

The role of domestic public opinion is a key topic in research on international negotiations, yet we know little about how exactly it manifests itself. We focus on government rhetoric during negotiations and develop a conceptual distinction between implicit and explicit manifestations of public opinion. Drawing on a database of video recordings of negotiations of the Council of the European Union and a quantitative text analysis of government speeches, we find that public opinion matters implicitly, with the exact pattern depending on governments' stance towards the EU. Pro-EU governments are responsive to public opinion in their support for compromises and attempts to stall negotiations, while Eurosceptic governments tend to remain silent when confronted with a public positively disposed towards the EU. Our results show that while governments implicitly represent public opinion, they do not systematically invoke their voters explicitly, suggesting the public matters but in different ways than often assumed.

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Castanho Silva, B., Neuner, F. G. & Wratil, C.

Populism and Candidate Support in the US: The Effects of “Thin” and “Host” Ideology

Journal of Experimental Political Science, 10, pp. 438-447

Much of the contemporary literature on populism focuses on its status as a “thin” ideology comprising three key components: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and anti-pluralism. Populist politicians pair this “thin” ideology with extreme positions on policy issues such as immigration or taxation (referred to as “host” or “thick” ideologies). A recent study using German samples leveraged conjoint experiments to disentangle the effects of these appeals on vote choice. The results not only showed that extreme host-ideological positions mattered more than so-called “thin” populist appeals, but also that effects of populist appeals were nearly identical among populist and non-populist voters. Our replication in the US context reaffirms both the importance of host-ideological positions and the lack of heterogeneous effects by voters’ “thin” populist attitudes. Furthermore, by uncovering some divergence from the German case (e.g. anti-elite appeals trumping people-centric appeals), we highlight the need to experimentally examine the effects of populism’s constituent components across contexts.

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Duell, D., Kaftan, L., Proksch, S.-O., Slapin, J. & Wratil, C.

Communicating the Rift: Voter Perceptions of Intra-Party Dissent in Parliaments

Journal of Politics, 85:1, pp. 76–91

MPs who vote against their party can improve their public standing. But how do MPs explain and frame their rebellious behavior to maximize their appeal? And what can party leaders do to mitigate the damage done by intra-party dissent? Using a vignette survey experiment fielded in four European democracies, we study how statements that MPs and party leaders make about rebellion impact voter evaluations of MPs and leaders. We find that MPs benefit from explaining rebellion in terms of their responsiveness to voters, whereas strategies that highlight the importance of the MP's own personal convictions are only effective with respondents who share the rebel's opinion. In turn, party leaders fare best if they welcome an MP's rebellious behaviour irrespective of how that MP explains their vote. MP explanations that focus on the substance of a vote and critical responses from party leaders garner substantially less public support.

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C. and Wäckerle, J.

Majority Representation and Public Legitimacy: Survey-Experimental Evidence from the European Union

European Journal of Political Research, 62, pp. 285–307

What can policy-makers do in day-to-day decision-making to strengthen citizens’ belief that the political system is legitimate? Much literature has highlighted that the realization of citizens’ personal preferences in policy-making is an important driver of legitimacy beliefs. We argue that citizens, in addition, also care about whether a policy represents the preferences of the majority of citizens, even if their personal preference diverges from the majority’s. Using the case of the European Union as a system that has recurringly experienced crises of public legitimacy, we conduct a vignette survey experiment in which respondents assess the legitimacy of fictitious EU decisions that vary in how they were taken and whose preferences they represent. Results from original surveys conducted in the five largest EU countries show that not only the congruence of EU decisions with personal opinion but also with different forms of majority opinion significantly strengthens legitimacy beliefs. We also show that the most likely mechanism behind this finding is the application of a “consensus heuristic”, by which respondents use majority opinion as a cue to identify legitimate decisions. In contrast, procedural features such as the consultation of interest groups or the inclusiveness of decision-making in the institutions have little effect on legitimacy beliefs. These findings suggest that policy-makers can address legitimacy deficits by strengthening majority representation, which will have both egotropic and sociotropic effects.

2023Peer-reviewed journal article

Castanho Silva, B. and Wratil, C.

Do Parties' Representation Failures Affect Populist Attitudes? Evidence from a Multinational Survey Experiment

Political Science Research and Methods, 11, pp. 347–362

The rise of populist forces in Western democracies is often linked to representation failures. However, to date we lack causally identified evidence for the effect of parties’ representation on populist attitudes. We address this lacuna through a survey experiment conducted in 12 European Union countries involving 23,257 subjects. Our experiment manipulates citizens’ perceptions of being represented by national parties in the 2019 European elections campaign, and identifies the effect of perceived representation on populist attitudes. The results reveal that poor representation increases populist attitudes in respondents that did not express such attitudes pretreatment, but has no effect among those who were already populist. We demonstrate that this effect is primarily due to parties’ representation failures triggering citizens’ anti-elite sentiment.

2022Peer-reviewed journal article

Neuner, F. G. and Wratil, C.

The Populist Marketplace: Unpacking the Role of “Thin” and “Thick” Ideology

Political Behavior, 44, pp. 551–574

A growing body of work adopts a “thin” ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties’ electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular “thick” or “host” ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and pro-redistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and anti-globalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes. Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters.

2021Peer-reviewed journal article

Franchino, F., Kayser, M. A. & Wratil, C.

Electoral Competitiveness and Responsiveness: Rational Anticipation in the EU Council

Journal of European Public Policy, 29:1, pp. 42–60

Several studies have reported a relationship between governments’ behaviour in the EU Council and public opinion. However, doubts remain about which mechanisms drive this relationship. We argue that governments align their behaviour with public opinion to forestall future electoral sanctions (rational anticipation). To test this, we deduce hitherto untested observable implications of rational anticipation which suggest that governments’ responsiveness to public opinion depends on national-level electoral competitiveness. Using DEU modules I-III and an original empirical measure of electoral competitiveness, we ascertain whether governments adjust their responsiveness as: (1) the expected time period to upcoming elections decreases, and (2) the probability of losing their position in the party system in the next election changes. Our results provide evidence that government parties rationally anticipate risks related to their position in the party system but not to early elections. These findings have implications for our understanding of representation in the Council.

2021Peer-reviewed journal article

Wolkenstein, F. and Wratil, C.

Multidimensional Representation

American Journal of Political Science, 65:4, pp. 862–876

The study of representation is a major research field in quantitative political science. Since the early 2000s, it has been accompanied by a range of important conceptual innovations by political theorists working on the topic. Yet, although many quantitative scholars are familiar with the conceptual literature, even the most complex quantitative studies eschew engaging with the “new wave” of more sophisticated concepts of representation that theorists have developed. We discuss what we take to be the main reasons for this gap between theory and empirics, and present four novel conceptions of representation that are both sensitive to theorists’ conceptual impulses and operationalizable for quantitative scholars. In doing so, we advance an alternative research agenda on representation that moves significantly beyond the status quo of the field.

2020Peer-reviewed journal article

Hobolt, S. and Wratil, C.

Contestation and Responsiveness in EU Council Deliberations

Journal of European Public Policy, 27:3, pp. 362–381

Decision-making in the Council of the European Union appears highly consensual at the voting stage. However, we focus on Council deliberations, where we find higher levels of contestation. What drives government opposition in the Council? Using a novel approach of studying the Council through video footage of its public deliberations (DICEU – Debates in the Council of the European Union), we demonstrate that contestation between governments is, at least in part, driven by their responsiveness to domestic public opinion. Analysing deliberations on legislative packages in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council between 2010 and 2015, we show that governments are responsive to public opinion when setting out their policy positions, but primarily when the policy issues are salient domestically. Our study thus contributes to our understanding of government responsiveness in the EU.

2019Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C. and Hobolt, S.

Public Deliberations in the Council of the European Union: Introducing and Validating the DICEU Approach

European Union Politics, 20:3, pp. 511–533

The Council of the European Union is the EU’s most powerful legislative body. Yet, we still have limited information about Council politics because of the lack of suitable data. This paper validates a new approach to studying Council politics entitled DICEU – Debates in the Council of the European Union. This approach is the first to leverage the public videos of Council deliberations as a data source. We demonstrate the face, convergent, and predictive validity of DICEU data. Governments’ ideal points scaled from these videos yield meaningful and well-known conflict dimensions. Moreover, governments’ positions during Council negotiations correlate highly with expert assessments and predict subsequent votes on legislative acts. We conclude that DICEU data provides a promising new approach to studying Council politics and multilevel governance.

2019Peer-reviewed journal article

Franchino, F. and Wratil, C.

Representing the Compromise: How Institutions Serve Government Support Coalitions in European Union Policy-Making

European Journal of Political Research, 58:4, pp. 1129–1151

This article presents an original model of policy making by multiparty coalitions at the international level. Specifically, it analyses how domestic institutions serve parties in enforcing policy compromises onto national ministers negotiating legislation in the European Union (EU). In contrast to existing research on coalition politics, the model accounts for the benefits of not only legislative but also executive institutions and incorporates opposition parties as pivotal actors under minority governments. Ministers propose policy positions at the EU level that represent domestic coalition compromises when cabinet participation, executive coordination and parliamentary oversight of EU affairs make it cheap for coalition partners to challenge the minister’s position and when ideological divisiveness increases the incentive to do so. Statistical analyses of 1,694 policy positions taken by ministers from 22 member states in the Council of the EU provide strong empirical evidence for the model. The results support the claim of executive dominance in EU policy making but also highlight that, where institutions are strong, ministers represent domestic coalition compromises rather than their own positions.

2019Peer-reviewed journal article

Proksch, S.-O., Wratil, C. & Wäckerle, J.

Testing the Validity of Automatic Speech Recognition for Political Text Analysis

Political Analysis, 27:3, pp. 339–359

The analysis of political texts from parliamentary speeches, party manifestos, social media, or press releases forms the basis of major and growing fields in political science, not least since advances in “text-as-data” methods have rendered the analysis of large text corpora straightforward. However, a lot of sources of political speech are not regularly transcribed, and their on-demand transcription by humans is prohibitively expensive for research purposes. This class includes political speech in certain legislatures, during political party conferences as well as television interviews and talk shows. We showcase how scholars can use automatic speech recognition systems to analyze such speech with quantitative text analysis models of the “bag-of-words” variety. To probe results for robustness to transcription error, we present an original “word error rate simulation” (WERSIM) procedure implemented in R. We demonstrate the potential of automatic speech recognition to address open questions in political science with two substantive applications and discuss its limitations and practical challenges.

2019Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C.

Territorial Representation and the Opinion-Policy Linkage: Evidence from the European Union

American Journal of Political Science, 63:1, pp. 197–211

A key feature of federal systems is the representation of sub-national units by “territorial representatives” in policy-making at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policy-making under territorial representation should be systematically skewed towards opinion in those states where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel dataset of policy change in the European Union, covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion-policy dyads. Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU-wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state-level opinion and EU-level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear-cut opinion in a member state. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion-policy linkage under territorial representation.

2019Other

Kaltwasser, C. R., Vehrkamp, R. & Wratil, C.

Europe's Choice. Populist Attitudes and Voting Intentions in the 2019 European Election

Bertelsmann Foundation: Gütersloh

2018Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C.

Modes of Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence from Council Negotiation Positions

European Union Politics, 19:1, p. 52–74

Are national governments responsive to citizens' opinions when negotiating policies in the Council of the European Union? Conceiving of the Council's policy-making space as encompassing left-right and pro-anti integration issues, I argue that governments apply different 'modes of responsiveness' on these issues. As left-right issues are more reliably and intensely salient in domestic elections than pro-anti integration issues, governments' responsiveness to left-right public opinion should be more systematic than to pro-anti integration opinion. Statistical analyses of 3700 policy positions of governments in the Council demonstrate that governments highly structure their responsiveness on left-right issues according to electoral cycles and systems ('systematic mode'). However, they only sporadically respond to public opinion on pro-anti integration issues, when parties and events trigger the public salience of integration ('sporadic mode').

2018Peer-reviewed journal article

Wratil, C. and Pastorella, G.

Dodging the Bullet: How Crises Trigger Technocrat-Led Governments

European Journal of Political Research, 57:2, p. 450–72

Governments led by nonpartisan, ‘technocratic’ prime ministers are a rare phenomenon in parliamentary democracies, but have become more frequent since the late 1980s. This article focuses on the factors that lead to the formation of such cabinets. It posits that parliamentary parties with the chance to win the prime ministerial post will only relinquish it during political and economic crises that drastically increase the electoral costs of ruling and limit policy returns from governing. Statistical analyses of 469 government formations in 29 European democracies between 1977 and 2013 suggest that political scandals and economic recessions are major drivers of the occurrence of technocratic prime ministers. Meanwhile, neither presidential powers nor party system fragmentation and polarisation have any independent effect. The findings suggest that parties strategically choose technocrat-led governments to shift blame and re-establish their credibility and that of their policies in the face of crises that de-legitimise their rule.

2017Peer-reviewed journal article

Hagemann, S., Hobolt, S. B. & Wratil, C.

Government Responsiveness in the European Union: Evidence From Council Voting

Comparative Political Studies, 50:6, p. 850–76

Are governments responsive to public preferences when legislating in international organizations? This article demonstrates that governments respond to domestic public opinion even when acting at the international level. Specifically, we examine conflict in the European Union's primary legislative body, the Council of the European Union (EU). We argue that domestic electoral incentives compel governments to react to public opinion. Analyzing a unique data set on all legislative decisions adopted in the Council since 1999, we show that governments are more likely to oppose legislative proposals that extend the level and scope of EU authority when their domestic electorates are skeptical about the EU. We also find that governments are more responsive when the issue of European integration is salient in domestic party politics. Our findings demonstrate that governments can use the international stage to signal their responsiveness to public concerns and that such signals resonate in the domestic political debate.

2017Other

Vehrkamp, R. and Wratil, C.

A Populist Moment? Populist Attitudes of Voters and Non-Voters before the German Federal Election 2017

Bertelsmann Foundation: Gütersloh

2015Peer-reviewed journal article

Hobolt, S. B. and Wratil, C.

Public Opinion and the Crisis: The Dynamics of Support for the Euro

Journal of European Public Policy, 22:2, p. 238–56

Further integration in the European Union (EU) increasingly depends on public legitimacy. The global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area crisis have amplified both the salience and the redistributive consequences of decisions taken in Brussels, raising the question of how this has influenced public support for European integration. In this contribution, we examine how public opinion has responded to the crisis, focusing on support for monetary integration. Interestingly, our results show that support for the euro has remained high within the euro area; however, attitudes are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. While the crisis has been seen to deepen divisions within Europe, our findings suggest that it has also encouraged citizens in the euro area to form opinions on the euro on the basis of a cost–benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying primarily on national attachments.

2013Other