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 2022-05-01 to 2026-05-01.)

Article	Citations
The Dutch Parliamentary elections of March 2021	106
How local is decentral politics? Variations in the supply of municipal policies	72
Social democracy transformed? Party change and union ties	61
Switzerland’s intricate differentiated integration with the European Union: bringing governance (back) in	56
Differentiated implementation and European integration: the development of EU food quality labelling	45
Ideational agenda-setting leadership: President von der Leyen and the EU response to the invasion of Ukraine	40
Awakening the sleeping giant: rising Euroscepticism and turnout in European Parliament elections	39
Platform affordances and political participation: how social media reshape political engagement	38
Group-based public opinion polarisation in multi-party systems	36
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	33
Fear and the COVID-19 rally round the flag: a panel study on political trust	32
The Spanish 2023 general elections: unexpected snap elections to survive in power	31
Leaving democracy? Pandemic threat, emotional accounts and regime support in comparative perspective	29
The formalisation of minority governments	29
Partisan politics and economic intervention: evidence from an aggregating approach	27
Inclusive or exclusive? Candidate selection methods do not affect descriptive representation	25
Radical right advance and party system change: the 2024 Portuguese snap elections	25
Judicial diversity and immigration appeals: evidence from the United Kingdom	24
Where you sit is where you stand: education-based descriptive representation and perceptions of democratic quality	24
Ethnic harassment and political engagement of immigrants in Europe	23
The making of an ‘unhappy marriage’? The 2023 Finnish general election	22
Policy over votes: why extreme governments respond to their supporters	22
Immigration and the conditionality of unemployment benefits in OECD countries	22
Government alternation and satisfaction with democracy	21

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

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