Our project's overall research question is to what
extent the bailout context shaped the European election campaigns in the
'bailout countries'.
We seek, firstly, to empirically assess the impact of the bailouts on 2014 European Parliament (EP) election campaigns; and, secondly, the effects of these post-bailout campaigns on citizens' attitudes towards the EU and European integration.
In order to fulfill these goals, we will implement a quasi-experimental and comparative study, contrasting the 2014 EP election campaign with the previous EP campaign (2009), and bailout countries with others in which the bailout did not take place.
The cases under study are nine Eurozone
member-States: four countries where a bailout has occurred (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Greece) and five countries selected on a most-similar systems design, with
similarities along with some key characteristics, but which did not undergo bailouts
(Austria, Finland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Germany).
NOTE: All data collection procedures of this project follow and are according to the GDPR rules.
