Dr Sara Hobolt has been awarded an ESRC Research Grant of £277,980 for the project Perceptions of Power: Voter Attribution of Responsibility within the European Union
This aim of this ESRC-funded project is to examine voters` perceptions of governmental responsibility in the context of European Parliament elections. Perceptions of responsibility are as important for electoral dynamics as actual power structures. A key function of elections is that they allow citizens to cast judgement on politicians by evaluating their past performance, but who is to be blamed or credited for particular policy outcomes? This issue of where power lies is particularly pertinent in the multi-level system of governance in the European Union, where the lines of responsibility are ambiguous.
To examine both the causes and consequences of citizens` perceptions of power, this project will conduct a survey of citizens in the European Parliament elections in June 2009. This survey will form part of a post-election study of the 2009 European Parliament elections in 27 EU member states, conducted under the auspices of the European Election Studies (EES) and the PIREDEU project. This study makes it possible to examine what causes differences in perceptions of power across countries and levels of governance, and explain how voters` attributions of responsibility affect vote choices at European elections. The project integrates these survey data with data on media coverage in the 27 election campaigns. By combining the two datasets, this project provides a study of how the political and media context influences citizens` perceptions of power and how this affects political behaviour.
The project started on 1 November 2008 and ends on 31 December 2010.
