Prof. Roberta Arbolino (p), Dr Raffaele Boffardi, Dr Andrea Conte, Dr Anabela Santos

Across European regions, electoral support for parties emphasising crime has increased in recent years. While these parties frequently frame insecurity as a central political issue, it remains unclear whether their electoral success is driven by actual crime rates or by citizens’ perceptions of insecurity, and if these dynamics extend to broader forms of political discontent, including Eurosceptic attitudes. Using a regional panel dataset for European regions covering three European Parliament electoral periods over 2009-2024, this paper examines these mechanisms in two steps.
First, we construct two region-level electoral indices. The first captures crime-oriented electoral votes, and the second Euroscepticism-oriented electoral votes. Information on parties’ position on the two dimensions (support for law-and-order and favour of European Integration) under analysis is extracted from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and data on regional votes from the European NUTS-Level election dataset developed by Schraff et al. (2022). Second, using a system of simultaneous equations, we analyse whether an increase in electoral support for parties emphasising crime-related narratives is associated with subsequent changes in Eurosceptic voting.
We find that perceived crime, rather than actual crime rates, drives electoral support for law-and-order parties. In fact, actual crime rates show no robust effect on voting behaviour. Furthermore, lagged increases in crime-related electoral support correlate positively with higher levels of Eurosceptic voting. These findings suggest that insecurity political narratives serve as a transmission channel, linking local or national concerns to broader political discontent within the European Union.

Dr. Kamila Borsekova (p), assoc. prof. Felix Butzlaff, Dr. Samuel Korony, Dr. Jozef Mintal, Michal Styk

Across Europe, contemporary political debate appears increasingly organised around cultural conflict. Electoral competition, media narratives, and party strategies frequently revolve around questions of gender, migration, identity, and “traditional values,” encouraging the view that cultural cleavages have become the principal drivers of political polarisation. This paper challenges that assumption by arguing that the visibility of cultural disputes does not necessarily imply their causal primacy. Instead, cultural conflict may represent the language through which deeper economic grievances are articulated. The study asks whether electorates are fundamentally divided by values or whether economic concerns continue to structure voting behaviour beneath the surface of culture-war politics.
Empirically, the paper examines Slovakia as a critical case of democratic transition and polarisation, where post-socialist economic restructuring intersects with contemporary political contestation. The analysis draws on individual-level data from the Slovak Voting Advice Application (Volebný kompas), comprising 103,263 respondents—approximately 13% of the electorate—who expressed positions on 39 economic, social, and geopolitical statements using five-point Likert scales. The focus is placed on economic issues capturing different forms of state intervention, including food price regulation, compensation for energy cost shocks, and targeted mortgage assistance.
Methodologically, the study combines descriptive statistical comparisons across demographic groups with decision-tree modelling (CART) to identify non-linear and hierarchical patterns in voter attitudes. This approach addresses the limitations of conventional cross-tabulation in large but unevenly distributed datasets and enables transparent identification of key demographic cleavages.
The results demonstrate that economic polarisation in Slovakia is both pronounced and internally differentiated. Economic issues display greater within-society disagreement than highly visible cultural questions. Educational attainment emerges as the most consistent structural divide, gender strongly shapes support for household-oriented interventions, and the 25–34 age cohort functions as a pivotal generational boundary separating post-transition voters from pre-1989 cohorts. These findings suggest that economic grievances remain central to electoral alignment and political discontent, even when public discourse is dominated by cultural narratives. The paper contributes to debates on the geography of discontent by showing how economic insecurity and demographic positioning continue to underpin voting behaviour in polarised democracies.

Ms Stavroula Alexiou (p), Prof George Petrakos, Dr Alexandra Sotiriou

This paper investigates how rising inequality, recurring economic and social crises, and political discontent are spatially distributed across European Union regions. It develops a conceptual framework linking objective and perceived inequalities to experiences of territorial injustice and, ultimately, to democratic resilience, emphasizing long-term regional vulnerabilities and unequal opportunities. Particular attention is paid to how discontent correlates with lagging regional economic performance, persistent inequalities, and the uneven distribution of the benefits of EU integration.
Empirically, the paper offers a contextual analysis that documents regional patterns and identifies the conditions under which economic insecurity, inequality, and perceived unfairness coincide with heightened political dissatisfaction. It relates regional indicators of economic performance, inequality, and crisis exposure to measures of political discontent and electoral outcomes, showing how support for populist and far-right parties varies across territorial profiles. Moving beyond a narrow focus on “left-behind” places, the paper also examines why dissatisfaction can emerge in relatively prosperous regions, where residents may feel alienated or disillusioned by perceived policy performance and governance failures. The paper concludes by outlining policy-relevant implications for territorial cohesion and democratic resilience, providing an evidence base for place-sensitive interventions to reduce structural vulnerabilities and strengthen social and political inclusion across the EU.

Ms Anabela Santos (p), Ugo Fratesi, Andrea Conte, Francesco Molica

This paper investigates the territorial drivers of green discontent across European regions. We conceptualize discontent as emerging from the uneven distribution of local costs and global benefits associated with environmental policies. While climate action generates collective gains, its economic and social burdens are often concentrated in specific places, shaping perceptions that either “too much” or “not enough” is being done.
Using a spatial autoregressive model, we examine how these perceptions relate to regional green policy intensity, socioeconomic conditions, and development levels, while accounting for cross-regional spillovers.
Results reveal two distinct dynamics. The perception that “not enough” has been done is negatively associated with green policy strength, measured through EU investments in green projects and public environmental expenditures. Regions with stronger environmental commitment show lower levels of this dissatisfaction. By contrast, the perception that “too much” has been done is primarily linked to policy stringency, especially where environmental measures impose visible costs on polluting activities.
Spatial patterns further differentiate the two. “Not enough” sentiment is geographically concentrated and spills across borders, whereas “too much” sentiment is more dispersed and locally rooted. The latter appears less structured by standard socio-demographic factors and more consistent with a place-based backlash emerging from regions that perceive themselves as left behind.