OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The median citation count of West European Politics is 4. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2022-06-01 to 2026-06-01.)

Article	Citations
How local is decentral politics? Variations in the supply of municipal policies	110
Social democracy transformed? Party change and union ties	76
Switzerland’s intricate differentiated integration with the European Union: bringing governance (back) in	63
Differentiated implementation and European integration: the development of EU food quality labelling	62
Populism in the EU and the trade-off between ethical claiming and mainstreaming	46
Ideational agenda-setting leadership: President von der Leyen and the EU response to the invasion of Ukraine	43
Awakening the sleeping giant: rising Euroscepticism and turnout in European Parliament elections	40
What kind of Europe do Europeans want?	39
Platform affordances and political participation: how social media reshape political engagement	37
Group-based public opinion polarisation in multi-party systems	35
When does the parliamentary opposition take to the streets? Social protest against government COVID-19 policy	34
Compulsory voting, economic conditions and turnout: explaining the outcome of constitutional referendums	31
Leaving democracy? Pandemic threat, emotional accounts and regime support in comparative perspective	29
The Spanish 2023 general elections: unexpected snap elections to survive in power	29
Fear and the COVID-19 rally round the flag: a panel study on political trust	27
Partisan politics and economic intervention: evidence from an aggregating approach	25
Radical right advance and party system change: the 2024 Portuguese snap elections	25
The 2025 Czech parliamentary election	25
The formalisation of minority governments	24
Judicial diversity and immigration appeals: evidence from the United Kingdom	23
Inclusive or exclusive? Candidate selection methods do not affect descriptive representation	23
Radicalisation and discursive accommodation: responses to rising Euroscepticism in the European Parliament	23
The making of an ‘unhappy marriage’? The 2023 Finnish general election	22
Ethnic harassment and political engagement of immigrants in Europe	22
Government alternation and satisfaction with democracy	21

Immigration and the conditionality of unemployment benefits in OECD countries	21
Dutch parliamentary elections of October 2025	20
Policy over votes: why extreme governments respond to their supporters	20
EU–UK relations after the war in Ukraine: options to re-engage post Brexit	19
Turning assertive? EU rule of law enforcement in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine	19
Not so independent? The effect of Commissioners’ attributes on EU member states’ bargaining success	19
Equitability or proportionality? Local-level portfolio allocation in Germany	19
Precarity and political protest	18
Do voters want their parties to be office- or policy-seekers in coalition negotiations?	18
Winter is coming: Russian gas, Italy and the post-war European politics of energy security	18
Preference cohesion and bargaining satisfaction among Southern EU member states: a comparative perspective	17
What drives welfare chauvinism in Europe?	17
Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe	17
Police patrols, fire alarms, or ambulance chasers? Parliamentary oversight of European monetary policy and banking supervision	17
From crisis governance to electoral normality and the longest coalition negotiations: the 2024 Austrian parliamentary election	16
Staying alive: crisis-induced disruptions and interest group survival	16
A green divide? Climate policy support and its rural geography in Europe	16
How do elites view ideology? Analysing candidates’ associations of left and right	16
Different yet the same? Differentiated integration and flexibility in implementation in the European Union	16
Does affective polarisation increase turnout? Evidence from Germany, The Netherlands and Spain	15
Pre-electoral coalitions, familiarity, and delays in government formation	15
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Analysing the political effects of ‘fake news’ deflections in the UK	15
The political life cycle and electoral mobilisation among immigrant-origin and native citizens during the 2021 German election	15
Where to wriggle? Norwegian politicians’ presentations of autonomy within the EEA association	15
Changing affective alignments between parties and voters	14
Parties’ issue responsiveness between elections	14
An unexpected Socialist majority: the 2022 Portuguese general elections	14
Selecting party leaders	14
Structural and cyclical unemployment and redistribution support in Europe: the moderating role of welfare state size	14
Accountability in pan-European borrowing: mind the gap	13
The (unintended) consequences of ineffective corruption control on populism in Europe	13
Political change and administrative turnover in meritocratic systems	13
The enlargement of international organisations	13
Nationalism and political support: longitudinal evidence from The Netherlands	13
Frightening politics: citizens’ reactions to party statements about law and order	13
The 2025 Norwegian election	13
Allowing mobility and preventing migration? The combination of entry and stay in immigration policies	12
Dimension-specific party and public opinion responsiveness in the EU immigration acquis	12
How the radical right reshapes public opinion: the Sweden Democrats’ local mobilisation, 2002–2020	12
Institutional overlap and the survival of intergovernmental organisations	11
It’s a hoax! The mediating factors of populist climate policy opposition	11
Pieces of the puzzle? Coalition formation and tangential preferences	11
Loyal lists, distinctive districts: how dissent-shirking and leisure-shirking affect mixed-candidate selection	11
Institutional accountability: the differentiated implementation of collaborative governance in two EU states	10
Time tactics in public administration: evidence from a survey experiment	10
Policy diffusion across political ideologies: explaining Denmark’s desire to externalise asylum	10
Another sleeping giant? Environmental issue preferences in the 2019 European Parliament elections	9
Individual drivers of toxicity in radical right-wing populist legislative campaigns	9
Actors, costs and values: the implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive	9
Exploring the EU’s response to the COVID-19 and Rule of Law crises through functional spill-over	9

Lipset and Rokkan meet data: the electoral structuring of traditional cleavages, 1870–1967	9
Gordon Smith and Vincent Wright Memorial Prizes 2025	9
Brexit – the EU membership crisis that wasn’t?	9
Who benefits from the retrospective vote? Bringing in new parties	9
Generations and political change	8
The mobilisation potential of anti-containment protests in Germany	8
Dying, surviving death, and reincarnating: differences in government replacements and their explanation	8
Where do parties talk about what? Party issue salience across communication channels	8
Party decline revisited: eras and aspects of change	8
Intersectionality, NGOs and executives: who has which minister’s ear?	8
Stuck on the stairway of change: the EU’s enlargement and security and defence policies post 2022	8
A spectre of democracy: are populist citizens less supportive of democracy?	7
Quiet unity: salience, politicisation and togetherness in the EU’s Brexit negotiating position	7
Promising links: how parties combine policy issues with group appeals	7
Differentiated or integrated? The influence of European Administrative Networks on differentiated implementation of EU environmental policy	7
A class of their own: parliamentarians are less likely to be perceived as working class	7
The 2024 French legislative elections: maintaining elections, political crisis	7
Statement of Retraction: Analysing the political effects of ‘fake news’ deflections in the UK	7
Free votes and the analysis of recorded votes: evidence from Germany (1949–2021)	7
Do voters polarise in response to elite dissensus on immigration?	7
Perceived technological threat and vote choice: evidence from 15 European democracies	7
The legal mobilisation of EU market freedoms: strategic action or random noise?	7
Closing the gap: how descriptive and substantive representation affect women’s vote for populist radical right parties	7
Coalition agreements and governments’ policy-making productivity	7
Leaving Europe, leaving Spain: comparing secessionism from and within the European Union	7
The Italian parliamentary election of 2022: the populist radical right takes charge	7
Does executive autonomy reduce second-order election effects?	7
Same old, same old? The return of the (not so) Grand Coalition after the 2025 German Bundestag election	7
Divided by Europe: affective polarisation in the context of European elections	7
The Dutch parliamentary elections of November 2023	7
Ideology and policy design after Brexit: explaining the UK subsidy regime	7
Public political tolerance of the far right in contemporary Western Europe	6
Mummy’s girls, daddy’s boys: the gendered transmission of political engagement in families	6
Measuring issue salience for political parties using LLMs	6
Opposition parties seek more conflict with the government when losing electoral support	6
We don’t need no education? Education policies of Western European populist radical right parties	6
Assembly dissolution powers and incumbency advantages in coalition formation	6
The impact of occupational background on issue representation	6
The power of prime ministers: evidence from 21 parliamentary democracies	6
Attributing blame: how political parties in Germany leverage cooperative federalism	6
Cleavage theory meets civil society: a framework and research agenda	6
How have secularisation and educational expansion affected support for the mainstream right in Western Europe?	6
Pathways to politics: a sequence analysis of political apathy and involvement	6
To amend or not to amend: under what circumstances do Spanish legislators propose amendments to executive bills?	6
Intergovernmentalism in a supranational field: France, Germany, and EU competition policy reform	6
Policy signals in party communication: explaining positional concreteness in parties’ Facebook posts	5
Updating cleavage theory for the twenty-first century	5
The wind of no change: union effects on partisan preferences and the working-class metamorphosis	5
Rising electoral fragmentation and abstention: the French elections of 2022	5
Inclusive candidate selection and corruption: evidence from Spanish regions	5
Competing on competence: the issue profiles of mainstream parties in Western Europe	5
The crisis of long-termism: time and independence in the European Union	5
A tale of two logics: how solidarity and threat perceptions shape immigrant attitudes towards immigration in Western Europe	5
Toxic friend? The impact of the Russian invasion on democratic backsliding and PRR cooperation in Europe	5
The rise of populism and the new cleavage	5
A life course approach to political preference formation across social classes	5
EU trade agreements and external differentiation: a large language model approach	5
Homeownership and political efficacy: how housing wealth shapes whether people feel heard	5
Explaining the educational gradient in trust in politicians: a video-vignette survey experiment	5
Exiting after Brexit: public perceptions of future European Union member state departures	5
What makes people trust or distrust politicians? Insights from open-ended survey questions	4
The role of key European issues in the 2024 election campaign	4
Overlooked de- and realignment? Cohort differences in consideration sets	4
Constraining dissensus and permissive consensus: variations in support for core state powers	4
Assessing the role of the European Council and the European Commission during the migration and COVID-19 crises	4
How the populist radical right exploits crisis: comparing the role of proximity in the COVID-19 and refugee crises in Germany	4
When does accommodation fail? The electoral consequences of intra-party divisions and mainstream party strategies	4
The determinants of transnational solidarity in the EU	4
Regional coalition heuristics: government participation and party perceptions in multi-level systems	4
Not the mode of allocation but refugees’ right to work drives European citizens’ preferences on refugee policy	4
Kinder, gentler – and crisis-proof? Consensus democracy, inclusive institutions and COVID-19 pandemic performance	4
European cloud computing policy: failing in Europe to succeed nationally?	4
Curb EU enthusiasm: how politicisation shapes bureaucratic responsiveness	4
Freedom for all? Populism and the instrumental support of freedom of speech	4
Gender equality salience, backlash and radical right voting in the gender-equal context of Sweden	4
The broad-appeal strategy and policy representation	4