Theory: the role of elites in shaping public opinion on public policies

In general terms, as John Zaller (Reference Zaller1992) observed some time ago, the issue-specific configurations of the political elites are highly consequential for the opinion formation of the general public: if elites are in agreement, the most sophisticated voters who receive the most political information tend to accept this information and follow the consensual elites. If, however, political elites are polarized, as in the case of some of the key policies pursued at the EU level during the refugee crisis, then public opinion polarizes as well, with the most sophisticated citizens polarizing the most. James Druckman et al. (Reference Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus2013) and Martin Bisgaard and Rune Slothuus (Reference Bisgaard and Slothuus2018) have confirmed that when elites polarize, citizens follow and polarize as well, both in the US and in Europe. More specifically, studies of the effects of party cues on support for the EU have demonstrated that information received from parties strongly influences citizens' opinions about the EU (Gabel and Scheve Reference Gabel and Scheve2007; Maier et al. Reference Maier, Adam and Maier2012; Steenbergen et al. Reference Steenbergen, Edwards and de Vries2007; Stoeckel and Kuhn Reference Stoeckel and Kuhn2018). Given the low availability of information about the EU and the high complexity of the debated issues at the EU level, parties are largely able to shape citizens' attitudes about the EU (Pannico Reference Pannico2020). Party cues also increase the public's competence on the EU. These effects are stronger than those of cues on domestic politics (Torcal et al. Reference Torcal, Martini and Orriols2018).

In these studies, cue-taking occurs along partisan lines. However, at the EU level, polarization also occurs along territorial lines (Marks Reference Marks, Marks and Steenbergen2004). This is to suggest that we need to focus on cues not only from parties, but in particular from national government representatives who link national politics to EU policymaking. Indeed, there are a number of studies which show that support of the EU is conditioned by support for national institutions – that is, there is a spillover effect from the domestic to the EU level with respect to institutional support (Armingeon and Ceka Reference Armingeon and Ceka2014; Harteveld et al. Reference Harteveld, van der Meer and De Vries2013; Hobolt Reference Hobolt2012). One study in particular has shown that these spillover effects rely not only on partisan cues but also on cues from national governments (Ares et al. Reference Ares, Ceka and Kriesi2017). The latter are especially relevant in critical moments, such as the eurozone crisis, when the role of the national government in the integration process becomes exceptionally salient. As a consequence of their cue-taking from national governments, we expect citizens to polarize along territorial lines.

There is a debate in the literature as to the actual extent of cue-taking on migration-related issues among citizens. On the one hand, a number of studies relying on panel data from several European countries find that individual attitudes to immigration tend to be rather stable (Kustov et al. Reference Kustov, Laaker and Reller2021; Lancaster Reference Lancaster2022; see also Dennison and Geddes Reference Dennison and Geddes2019 for a similar argument). This should make them resilient to external stimuli (Druckman et al. Reference Druckman, Fein and Leeper2012). Thus, Mathias Mader and Harald Schoen (Reference Mader and Schoen2019), studying the particularly interesting case of Germany during the refugee crisis 2015–2016, found no evidence of cue-taking among voters.Footnote ² Based on panel survey data, the authors show that the refugee crisis did indeed trigger substantial intra-individual change in partisan support, but, instead of following party cues, voters responded to the flow of events. Increasing attention on immigration triggered voters to change party support in line with their attitudes on immigration – that is, previous Christian Democratic Union (CDU) supporters abandoned the party in favour of the immigration-critical Alternative for Germany (AfD).

At the same time, there is scholarly research suggesting that voters do take cues from the parties they support. For instance, Timothy Hellwig and Yesola Kweon (Reference Hellwig and Kweon2016) studied the effect of elite cues on voters' attitudes about migration, based on cross-sectional European Social Survey (ESS) data and panel data from Denmark. They point out that immigration is fundamentally a multidimensional issue, which means that public opinion about immigration ought to be susceptible to issue framing by trusted political elites. More specifically, they consider that the more educated should be especially influenced by such cues. They find that, indeed, individuals are more likely to oppose (support) immigration when their preferred party adopts restrictive (accommodating) positions on immigration and that the corresponding effects are stronger among the highly educated (see also Vrânceanu and Lachat Reference Vrânceanu and Lachat2021). While (repeated) cross-sectional studies may have a hard time arguing that they tap into a cueing process (see e.g. Hellwig and Kweon Reference Hellwig and Kweon2016: 721), the fact that panel data have corroborated cueing effects is reassuring. Along this line, Eelco Harteveld et al.'s (Reference Harteveld, Kokkonen and Dahlberg2017) analyses of panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden confirm voters' tendency to take cues from the political parties they support (particularly those parties adopting radical policy positions). Similarly, the effect of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis on the Norwegian public's opinion about immigration and refugees might also be attributed to cueing by political elites precisely because of its limited duration (Nordø and Ivarsflaten Reference Nordø and Ivarsflaten2022). Moreover, the party cueing effect among partisans has also been confirmed in experimental settings in the US (Druckman et al. Reference Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus2013) as well as Europe (Brader and Tucker Reference Brader and Tucker2012; Brader et al. Reference Brader, Tucker and Duell2013).

We do not aim to settle this debate here. We argue instead that, even if parties may have a hard time influencing immigration attitudes, policy-specific opinions are more likely to be malleable and subject to framing effects, especially if the policies in question are policies decided at the EU level. In fact, Mader and Schoen's study did not involve policymaking, but national electoral politics. Note also that Hellwig and Kweon's argument about the immigration issues' multidimensionality bears notable implications for policy preferences. Thus, Sabina Avdagic and Lee Savage (Reference Avdagic and Savage2021) showed, based on survey experiments in Germany, Sweden and the UK, that negative framing of immigration has a strong and pervasive effect on welfare support (although the effect of positive framing is shown to be considerably weaker).

With regard to a given EU policy in the context of territorial conflicts at the EU level, we can distinguish between four types of situations, depending on: (a) whether the government of the member state supports the policy or not, and (b) whether national elites are divided or not with regard to immigration policy in general. Assuming that voters take cues from their preferred party, incumbent voters will take different cues from opposition voters, if the national elites are divided. By contrast, both incumbent and opposition voters will take the same cues – either both positive or both negative – if the national elites are consensual (see Table 1). In the consensual situation, where both government and opposition support the policy, government voters may, however, still be more supportive of the EU policy than opposition voters, because the government represents the country's position in the EU. This implies that the government's position is likely to be more visible for the public. These considerations can be summarized by three hypotheses (H1a–H1c).

Hypothesis 1a: If elites are divided and the government strongly opposes EU policy, incumbent voters are more opposed to EU policy than opposition voters.

Table 1.

Four Theoretical Elite Configurations at National Level

Note that we formulate the hypotheses in relative terms, because elite cues are not the only factors determining public opinion with regard to the policy in question. Even if the national elites are divided on the policy, for other reasons the overall preferences of the voters with respect to the specific EU policy may be skewed either in the government's or the opposition's direction. There are other factors at both the national and the individual level which may influence individuals' attitudes about EU policies.

At the individual level, Boris Heizmann and Conrad Ziller (Reference Heizmann and Ziller2020), relying on Eurobarometer data collected in September 2015,Footnote ³ find that anti-immigrant attitudes are negatively related to support for better redistribution of asylum seekers in all countries. We would argue that this finding applies to any policy which facilitates the accommodation and integration of asylum seekers. In fact, anti-immigration attitudes can be expected to be positively associated with policies which render access to asylum more difficult. Interestingly, the effect of anti-immigration sentiments is smaller in top asylum-seeker receiving countries. Heizmann and Ziller (Reference Heizmann and Ziller2020) suggest that humanitarian concerns might be responsible for this result. Instead, we propose that the government's position may affect this tendency – that is, we expect government cues also to moderate the effect of immigration attitudes.

The mechanism behind this expected effect is linked to source credibility and system justification. On the one hand, voters tend to take their cues from credible sources (Druckman Reference Druckman2001), and their governments constitute a particularly credible source, as is shown by experimental evidence which suggests that voters are responsive to information they receive from their national governments, as opposed for instance to EU-sourced information (Hobolt et al. Reference Hobolt, Tilley and Wittrock2013). This is likely to apply even more so for voters for the incumbent party. On the other hand, cues can legitimize prior beliefs, which is particularly relevant when these beliefs are socially sanctioned, such as the beliefs of the radical right (e.g. Bischof and Wagner Reference Bischof and Wagner2019). In our context, this means that cues in favour of restrictive policies from the national government should embolden citizens with anti-immigration views to express support for this type of policy explicitly, whereas cues in the opposite direction would cast doubt on the social acceptability of anti-immigration views.

System justification theory also suggests that governmental cues can legitimize prior beliefs. It argues that people are motivated (to varying degrees, depending on dispositional and situational factors) to defend and justify the status quo of existing social, economic and political systems, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest (Jost Reference Jost2019). Since the acting government stands for the status quo, we would argue that the motivation to justify the status quo also implies the readiness to take cues from the acting government. More specifically, this motivation ought to be particularly pronounced among conservative or right-wing voters, as studies all over the world reveal that system justification is almost always associated with the endorsement of conservative or right-wing ideologies (Jost Reference Jost2019: 286). Accordingly, in member states where the government opposes the redistribution of asylum seekers, or for that matter any kind of EU asylum policy, the opponents of immigration are expected to feel justified to oppose the measure without restraint, and vice versa if the government supports an EU policy. The effect should, however, be more important for opponents of immigration (who are typically also endorsing conservative or right-wing ideologies), given the asymmetric tendency to resort to system justification.

Heizmann and Ziller (Reference Heizmann and Ziller2020) also show that Euroscepticism is negatively associated with favourability towards redistribution of asylum seekers among all EU member states, though some nuances seem to be at play. We also expect Eurosceptic voters to be less favourable towards EU asylum policies, regardless of the specific content of the policy. More importantly, however, we also expect government cues to moderate the effect of Euroscepticism on policy preferences; that is, we expect this effect to be more substantial if the government opposes the policy in question. If the national elites are consensual, the individuals' attitude towards EU integration is likely to make little difference. If the national government opposes the policy, however, Eurosceptics have an additional reason to oppose EU policy. In summary, we expect two additional moderation effects:

The baseline, however, is that Europeans do not want to accommodate additional asylum seekers or that they want to do so only under limiting conditions. Thus, Kirk Bansak et al. (Reference Bansak, Hainmueller and Hangartner2017) study the acceptance of additional asylum seekers across 15 European countries in February–March 2016, at the height of the refugee crisis. They find that not one single country has a majority of the population willing to accept more asylum seekers. Once this reluctance to accept more asylum seekers is established, they test with conjoint survey experiments the conditions under which acceptance might be improved: they find that a large majority of citizens prefer an allocation mechanism that foresees a redistribution proportional to the country's capacity (defined in terms of population, GDP, past applications and unemployment), as opposed to the current Dublin Regulation, which places emphasis on the country of first entry. This relative support is maintained even when respondents are made aware that a proportional allocation mechanism would imply an increase in the share of asylum seekers assigned to their country (except in three countries: the Czech Republic, Poland and the United Kingdom, which shift to being more supportive of the status quo in relative terms). In other words, the current first-entry rule is highly unpopular across Europe.

Anne-Marie Jeannet et al. (Reference Jeannet, Heidland and Ruhs2021), who also rely on conjoint experiments to examine European citizens' preferences for refugee and asylum policies in eight European countries, suggest that citizens impose limits and conditions on their support of protective measures for asylum seekers (e.g. by setting annual limits to asylum applications; providing at most limited/low resettlement; or allowing family reunification only if the refugee can pay for their cost of living). Importantly, citizens (except in Italy) are more supportive of national decision-making on asylum applications. Finally, Alina Vrânceanu et al. (Reference Vrânceanu, Dinas, Heidland and Ruhs2023) rely on conjoint experiments to understand what preferences citizens in two European countries considered in their study (namely Germany and Greece) and in Turkey have for cross-country cooperation between European countries and Turkey on migration management and refugee protection, building on the 2016 EU–Turkey agreement – the key policy to address the refugee crisis of 2015–2016. They find that public preferences are driven by a mix of humanitarian and instrumental concerns, as well as reciprocity and burden-sharing considerations. Interestingly, citizens in the two European countries appear to be supportive of several features of the status quo (i.e. the existing 2016 EU–Turkey deal).

The configuration of the national political elites in EU asylum policy

Among the four policies we study in this article, two are highly contested among the member states, while two are more consensual. The two highly contested policies refer to the redistribution of asylum seekers among the member states, and the assignment of the responsibility for asylum seekers to the member state of first entry. Compared to these two policies, the enhancement of external border controls and externalization have been much more consensual among the policymakers. For the analysis of the individual attitudes towards these four policies, we propose to classify the member states into five types.Footnote ⁴ This classification is based on the two criteria which we introduced for the theoretical configurations (see Table 1): the polarization between incumbent and opposition parties (polarized vs undivided) with regard to immigration issues in general, and the policy positions of the respective governments with regard to the two contested policies – the relocation of asylum seekers in the EU and the first-entry rule – in the context of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis and its aftermath.

Table 2 presents an overview of the classifications – one each for relocation (a) and first entry (b). Relocation policy is supported by the Mediterranean frontier states, by the destination states and by the UK, which is treated as a separate category, since it has not been part of Schengen or of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and participated in relocation on a purely voluntary basis.Footnote ⁵ This policy is opposed by the Visegrád Group (V4) coalition (represented by Hungary and Poland), which aggressively attacks EU asylum policy and constitutes the category of ‘adversaries’, as well as by Austria and Latvia, which operate in a less openly hostile manner. The first-entry principle is also supported by the UK and the destination states, but the frontline states (Italy, Greece and Spain) are their direct opponents on this policy, while the V4 countries are rather indifferent in this respect. The frontline states push for EU policy reform, especially of the principle that the country of first entry should be responsible for the asylum seekers, which they want to see abolished. In their push for reform, they are partly supported by the destination states, which agree with their demand for burden sharing, but insist that the frontline states should continue to be responsible for managing the asylum requests. In addition to the four theoretical types, empirically we also need to introduce a residual category for states which do not take an explicit position on the policy in question and which we call bystander states.

Table 2.

Classification of the Member States

Notes: The numbers in brackets indicate the mean positions for the respective government's actions in the policymaking process on relocation at the EU level. +1 means full support, –1 means full opposition. Countries with less than three actions are coded as ‘no position’. For more details, see Kriesi et al. (Reference Kriesi, Bojar, Altiparmakis and Oana2024).

The polarization between incumbent and opposition parties on immigration issues, our indicator for divided elites, is based on 2017–2019 data from the Observatory for Political Conflict and Democracy (PolDem) electoral campaigns data,Footnote ⁶ 2019 data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and the most recent data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. These sources do not always agree with each other (see Table A1 in the Supplementary Material). We classify a country as polarized if at least two of the three indicators show relatively high polarization between incumbent and opposition parties with respect to immigration issues. Interestingly, the party systems of the frontline states and the V4 states are all polarized, as is the party system of the UK, which was still an EU member state at the time of the crisis.

The policy positions of the member-state governments on relocation are based on the Political Process (PPA) dataset on the refugee crisis (see Bojar et al. Reference Bojar, Kyriazi, Oana and Truchlewski2023; Kriesi et al. Reference Kriesi, Bojar, Altiparmakis and Oana2024). This dataset allows us to construct quantitative indicators for the governments' positions in the relocation policy debates, to the extent that they took explicit positions which were reported in the international press. The corresponding positions on first entry (the Dublin Regulation reform) are based on qualitative information about the actions taken by the respective governments in these debates. Policy positions may be subject to change if a new government replaces an old one. In the asylum-policy domain, however, we observe a surprising continuity with regard to the fundamentals across governments since the refugee crisis of 2015–2016. In five countries, the government composition has not changed between 2015 and summer 2021 (Hungary, Poland, Germany, Sweden and the UK). In another five countries, it has changed partially – that is, some parties were always part of the government coalitions (Austria, Latvia, the Netherlands, Ireland and Italy). In the remaining six countries, the government changed between centre left and centre right (France, Finland, Romania, Portugal, Greece and Spain). In four of these countries, the elites are undivided on immigration policy, while in two of them – Greece and Spain – the elites are, indeed, polarized in this regard. However, with respect to the most contested policies at the EU level, the centre left and the centre right in both of these countries share a common national interest, too.

With respect to the relocation scheme, Hungary and Poland, as members of the V4 coalition, which also included the Czech Republic and Slovakia, aggressively opposed any such scheme.Footnote ⁷ Hungary and Slovakia went as far as to appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against the September 2015 decision of the Council of Ministers to introduce relocation quotas, an appeal that ended up being rejected by the ECJ on 3 October 2016. In addition, the Hungarian government organized a referendum over the relocation issue, a referendum which eventually failed to reach the quorum, not least because the national opposition had called for a boycott of the referendum. In other words, the national elite in Hungary was deeply divided on the issue. Poland, too, refused any kind of mandatory quota early on in spring 2015. In September 2015, the EU twisted the arms of its outgoing Civic Platform (PO) government, which ended up accepting the relocation scheme, but the incoming Law and Justice (PiS) government strongly opposed any such scheme and refused to accept any refugees. Subsequently, the PO, now in opposition, was less certain about how to respond to the issue and took ambivalent positions (Szczerbiak Reference Szczerbiak2017). Still, it opposed the government's outright anti-European stance.

In addition to Hungary and Poland, among our countries, Austria and Latvia also rejected relocation schemes. In March 2018, the new Austrian prime minister, Sebastian Kurz, hid behind the eastern European countries by claiming that there was no point in discussing the relocation quotas, since the eastern countries would not accept them anyway. He pleaded for an alternative system with harsh border controls and returns to countries of origin. As for Latvia, although it rejected the relocation schemes, it was not part of the militant V4 coalition and hardly intervened in the EU-level policymaking process at all.

On the other side of the relocation issue, there are the frontline states – Italy, Greece and Spain – which pleaded for such a scheme in order to allow them to share the burden of the inflow of asylum seekers over the Mediterranean. These frontline states openly criticized the V4 countries for their resistance to the scheme. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi went as far as to suggest that eastern European countries which refused to help frontline states in Europe's refugee crisis should have their EU funding cut. The destination states – Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and the UK – supported such schemes in principle. Thus, Germany had already thrown its weight behind a relocation system in April 2015, before the crisis started in earnest, and so did Sweden. Later on, in December 2018, Germany dropped its demands that all EU countries should accept refugees during a crisis in a bid to break the deadlock over efforts to overhaul the CEAS. It put its hopes on what came to be called ‘flexible solidarity’: the possibility for a country to make financial contributions instead of taking in refugees. France, in turn, had always taken a more ambivalent position with regard to relocation. In May 2015, Prime Minister Manuel Valls (under President François Hollande) rejected quotas. President Hollande prevaricated by rejecting quotas but agreeing with the need to distribute asylum seekers across Europe. In September 2015, France would support a push for mandatory quotasFootnote ⁸ but remained somewhat ambivalent subsequently.

The line-up of the member states is different with respect to the reform of the existing CEAS, which is based on the Dublin Regulation that stipulates the first-entry principle. As we have already mentioned, the cornerstone of the latter is that the state where the asylum seekers first entered the EU ought to be responsible for accommodating them. The V4 coalition also opposed reforming the system, in particular it refused any reforms including relocation schemes. With regard to first entry, however, it did not take an explicit position. Austria, however, defended the first-entry rule. During the refugee crisis, Austria had strongly insisted on this rule and had provoked several incidents with its neighbours over this rule, such as the Brenner incident with Italy.Footnote ⁹ By contrast, the frontline states continued to demand a reform of the system which would no longer make them responsible for incoming asylum seekers. This is a point which has been made by a series of Italian governments since 2015. But on this point, destination states oppose the frontline states: while they support the need for reform and are in favour of relocation mechanisms, they prefer to stick with the responsibility of frontline states for the incoming asylum seekers. Thus, at the EU summit on 28–29 June 2018, the new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, clashed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this issue. He was ready to understand the asylum issue as one concerning the whole of Europe, but he refused to accept that the obligation to rescue people at sea implied the obligation to treat their asylum requests in the name of all of Europe. At this summit, Merkel could not get what she wanted to defend her national asylum policy against domestic challengers. France remained ambivalent on this reform as well, whereas the other countries remained in the background in this respect.

In terms of additional country-level factors, we would expect that the support for EU policies depends on whether the country benefits from such policies, or whether it suffers from additional costs imposed by them. In line with this expectation, Heizmann and Ziller's (Reference Heizmann and Ziller2020) results suggest that, on average, people who live in a country with high pressure from the problem – that is, with a higher share of asylum seekers – support a better EU-wide redistribution of asylum seekers, whereas those who live in countries with low immigrant stocks (as measured in 2010) and less generous integration policies are less likely to support such a mechanism. Even if we do not make problem pressure a criterion for our typology, the resulting categorization in Table 2 closely mirrors categories previously proposed in the literature which reflect, among others, problem pressure – categories such as frontline, destination and bystander states (Kriesi et al. Reference Kriesi, Altiparmakis, Bojar and Oana2021). This is not surprising since problem pressure correlates with the positions of governments on the contested policies which we focus on.

Design of the study

For the individual-level data we rely on an original online survey put into the field in 16 EU member states (see Table 2) in June 2021. For each country, quota samples of at least 2,000 respondents have been interviewed. This survey included the following question about asylum policy:

This introductory question was followed up by six statements about EU asylum policy, four of which we use for this study:

• • Each EU country should be required to accommodate a share of refugees (relocation)

• • Refugees should be accommodated by the country through which they first entered Europe and in which they were first registered (first entry)

• • The EU should invest in reinforcing external borders by building a strong border and coastguard (external borders)

• • The EU should collectively pursue deals with third countries (such as Turkey and Libya) via financial and other incentives to crack down on trafficking networks and reduce the flow of asylum seekers across the Mediterranean (externalization).

To explain public support for these four policy statements, we use our typology of member states (see Table 2) and three key indicators at the individual level. The first individual-level indicator distinguishes between incumbent and opposition voters based on the respondents' vote choice in the last national elections (previous to June 2021). Non-voters are included among the opposition voters. The second indicator refers to immigration attitudes. For this indicator, we use eight statements about immigrants, which we have taken from the ESS. The first four statements deal with the consequences of immigration for the economy (good or bad), for cultural life (undermined or enriched), for problems of crime (made worse or made better) and for the country at large (make it a worse or a better place to live). The other four statements refer to different groups of people who should be allowed or not to come and live in one's country: people of the same/different race or ethnic groups, and from poorer countries inside/outside Europe. The eight statements form a strong factor (EV = 4.3). For the analysis, we have dichotomized this factor at the mean, distinguishing simply between pro- and anti-immigration positions. The third indicator refers to trust in the EU, measured on an 11-point scale. We also dichotomized this indicator at the mean for the analysis, distinguishing again simply between high and low trust positions. All three indicators are interacted with the country typology to measure the moderation effects of elite cues.

In addition, we control for problem pressure (low, medium, high), self-placement on the left–right dimension (recoded into three categories – left, right, neither), as well as for the party family which one voted for (recoded into eight categories – radical left, greens, social democrats, liberals, conservatives/Christian democrats, radical right, others and non-voters). These controls allow us to obtain the impact of the government's position independently of the government's partisan composition – that is, we control for coalition cabinets. We also control for political interest (ranging from 1 (not at all interested) to 4 (very interested)), level of education (low, medium, high), age and gender. Table A2 in the Supplementary Material presents the summary descriptives of all the variables included in the analysis.

To test our hypotheses, we estimated ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions with standard errors clustered by country, separately for each policy. Specifically, to test H1a–H1c, we include interaction terms between the dummy indicator measuring support for incumbency and the indicator variables for the EU member-state type (frontline, destination states and so on), in addition to the constitutive terms. By evaluating the policy preferences of incumbent and opposition supporters, we are able to see whether these map onto the configurations of elites' positions in the corresponding EU member-state types. To test H2a–H2b, we include in our models the variable measuring respondents' immigration attitudes (trust in EU) and its interaction with the indicator variables for the EU member-state type.