The politics of international redistribution: Explaining public support for fiscal transfers in the EU

TLDR

The Eurozone crisis and the creation of the European Stability Mechanism have made the prospect of a transfer union a highly contested element of European integration. The study seeks to explain the public backlash against fiscal transfers and to identify factors that shape voter preferences for international transfers. The authors conduct a cross‑national analysis of 2014 European Elections Study data to examine voters’ preferences on international transfers. The analysis finds that cosmopolitanism strongly predicts transfer preferences, that economic left‑right orientation matters, and that the effect of left‑leaning orientation on transfer support is contingent on social class—supporting transfers among high‑income voters but opposing them among low‑income voters.

Abstract

Abstract As a consequence of the Eurozone crisis and the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the prospect of a transfer union has become a particularly contested aspect of European integration. How should one understand the public backlash against fiscal transfers? And, what explains voter preferences for international transfers more generally? Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study (EES), this article describes the first cross‐national analysis of voters’ preferences on international transfers. The analysis reveals a strong association between voters’ non‐economic cultural orientations (i.e., their cosmopolitanism) and their position on transfers. At the same time, it is found that voters’ economic left‐right orientations are crucial for a fuller understanding of the public conflict over transfers. This counters previous research that finds economic left‐right orientations to be of little explanatory value. This study demonstrates that the association between economic left‐right orientations and preferences for international transfers is conditional on a person's social class. Among citizens in a high‐income class an economically left‐leaning position is associated with support for transfers, whereas it is associated with opposition to transfers among citizens in a low‐income class.