2026
How occupation shapes awareness and preferences for European funding
The European Union’s (EU) Cohesion Policy is one of the main instruments to tackle the economic struggle of left-behind regions, however, only little is known about the awareness and the opinion of citizens towards this regional policy. This article examines how awareness of EU regional policies and spending preferences varies across occupations. We argue that differences in awareness across occupations are attributable to skill and responsibility differences and divergent work logics. Our analysis of a harmonized Eurobarometer dataset (N = 82,365) provides evidence for differences in EU funding awareness and spending preferences across occupational groups, which correspond to their own material interests. In addition, citizens indicate preferences for funding decisions to be made at the most local level.
2025
Is secular–religious party competition moving online? Digital religious profiles of candidates running for the European Parliament
New digital technologies alter various societal spheres, including the landscape of religion and politics. “Christianity influencers,” faith tweets, digital chaplaincy and online Islamic hate speech are notable examples in place. The rapidly growing body of scholarship known as digital religion studies explores the extent to which traditional religious practices are being adapted to digital environments. However, while this nascent field profits from interdisciplinary perspectives, the political dimension of this transformation is still underdeveloped. Specifically, it is unclear how political actors refer to religion during online campaigning across Europe and whether the existing patterns reflect “classical offline divides” between secular and religious parties. This paper contributes to this gap by providing first-hand empirical evidence of online references to religion by candidates running for the European Parliament in 2019 in four countries (Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). The study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses of European politicians’ X (formerly Twitter) profiles. Overall, religion plays a subordinate role in online political campaigning; however, there is substantial country variation, indicating a higher salience of religion in Swedish and Dutch campaigns in comparison to German or British online discourses. Furthermore, candidates from political parties with religious roots are more likely to refer to religion than those from more secular parties, reflecting traditional secular-religious divisions. The paper advances existing research on religion and party politics through its fresh perspective on religion outside classical arenas of political conflict and inside important alternative venues of political competition.
The Differentiated Impact of Perceived EU Regional Policy on Citizens’ Positions on European Integration
The main goal of the regional development programme of the European Union (EU) is to decrease disparities in the economic situation between the regional units of the EU member states. An important side note effect of EU regional policy is that citizens should be able to directly identify the positive aspects of European integration when realising the impact of the EU for structural programmes in their city or region. We aim to evaluate this mechanism and ask whether the individually perceived benefit of EU regional funds in the home area of a respondent has a positive impact on their position towards European integration. Furthermore, we discuss how a relational perspective on EU regional funds—that is, whether a respondent considers other regions or other EU member states to benefit more from the EU regional funds than their own region—mediates the expected positive impact of EU regional funds on an individual’s position on European integration. We answer these questions by analysing new survey data conducted in two German states, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Thuringia, which differ significantly in terms of the regional funding they receive. The analysis shows not only that there is a significant difference in the positions of respondents on European integration between the two regions but also that perceiving personal benefits of EU regional funding increases the support for European integration. Furthermore, individuals’ thinking that their own region benefits more from EU regional funding than other regions tends to increase their support for European integration.
2024
Data: Climate Policy: Emotions, Attitudes and Trade-Offs
This module surveys respondents’ attitudes and emotions towards climate change and their support for various mitigation policies (i.e., push- and pull-measures, regulations). Further, it investigates whether citizens trade off democratic principles for their climate policy goals, and how they perceive and solve the trade-off between economic goals and climate action.