Note til DPSA Vedlagte paper er et første, ufuldstændigt udkast til et

Note til DPSA
Vedlagte paper er et første, ufuldstændigt udkast til et
studie af “gruppeimplikation” af holdninger til euroen.
Ambitionen er tofoldig:
(1) at præsentere et teoretisk argument for, hvorfor
og hvordan vælgere i bestemte sammenhænge danner
holdninger til euroen på baggrund af deres holdning til
indvandrere, samt
(2) at afprøve teorien i 3 forskellige, mindre studier.
Paperet her er præsenterer et udkast til (1) samt de
to første studier under (2). Formen er altså stadig
meget udfuldstændig, og alle typer kommentarer til
både specifikke aspekter samt designet som sådan derfor
overordentligt velkomne.
- F.H.
Foreign money: Ethnocentrism and support for euro adoption
Frederik Hjorth∗
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of Copenhagen
October 22, 2013
Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Danish Political Science
Association, Vejle 24-25 October 2013.
draft – do not quote or cite
∗
The author gratefully acknowledges commenters at workshops hosted by the Center for Voting and Parties at
the University of Copenhagen. Any errors are the author’s exclusive responsibility.
1
Abstract
A substantial literature demonstrates that in the United States, some governmental policies
are subject to ‘racialization’, i.e. the implicit association of policies with racial identity. Yet
while racialization is theoretically based on universal features of human cognition, observations
of racialization-like processes outside the United States are scarce.
This paper argues that, using a broader theoretical framework known as group implication
theory allows for theorizing and discovering racialization-like phenomena in non-US contexts,
even cases where salient group identities and policy issues are very different. As an example
of group implication in a vastly different context, the paper argues that nationalistic frames
during the Danish 2000 euro referendum caused some voters to base their attitude toward
euro adoption on how they feel about foreigners.
Empirical support for the argument is provided through three studies: study 1, using
open-ended survey responses from the euro referendums in Denmark and Sweden, where
identity cues were respectively prominent and largely absent, shows that Danish voters were
significantly more likely to be explain their vote in terms of national identity.
Study 2, using regression analyses of survey data, shows that as opposed to Sweden,
ethnocentrism significantly predicts euro referendum vote choice among Danish voters.
Finally, a planned study 3 conducts a framing experiment replicating the effect in a
controlled setting.
2
1
Introduction
Arriving at opinions on political issues is a civic norm for members of democratic societies, yet
for most citizens it is one fraught with ambiguity, lack of motivation and insufficient factual
knowledge. The task is complicated by the fact that on many issues, not only is it disputable
what the right position is; it is unclear what the issue is really about. The literature on
political issue framing convincingly shows that frames broadly construed, i.e. interpretations
of how to perceive an issue, can affect public opinion in powerful ways (Schattschneider,
1960; Riker, 1986; Chong and Druckman, 2007)
Yet for rhetorical framings of issues, what Chong and Druckman (2007) label “frames in
communication”, to shape citizens’ reasoning about issues, i.e. “frames in thought”, they
need to resonate with citizens’ existing predispositions. A relatively recent strand of framing
research examines the power of frames that appeal to group identities. Since membership of
visible social groups is a fundamental category of human experience, political issue frames
with implicit group cues can connect issues to voters’ group identities, even when the issue
at hand is ostensibly unrelated to group conflict.
The most well-known case of group framing in political science is arguably the phenomenon
known as racialized welfare attitudes in the United States. A substantial literature shows that
among white American voters, support for means-tested income transfer programs (‘welfare’)
is racialized, i.e. shaped by voters’ racial attitudes (Gilens, 1996, 2000; Mendelberg, 2001).
However, demonstrations of similar phenomena outside the United States are few and far
between. In the absence of evidence outside of its original context, it remains unclear whether
racialization is a phenomenon specific to the United States’ politico-historical context. Some
scholars argue that the American black-white racial distinction is in fact unique (Marrow,
2009). Yet this notion is at odds with the idea of racialization being rooted in group identity
as a universal feature of political cognition. There is, in other words, a tension between the
universality of the theoretically posited mechanism driving racialization and the particularity
of the cases in which it has been shown. In order to resolve this tension, studies of whether
racialization can occur in non-US contexts are needed.
Aspiring to address this need, this paper provides evidence of racialization-like dynamic
in a context far removed from its original site of discovery. By showing the occurrence
of racialization in a political environment in which it is ex ante unlikely to be found, the
evidence supports the notion that racialization is a case of a universal phenomenon, not
3
necessarily confined to the United States context. Specifically, I argue that in Denmark’s 2000
referendum on euro adoption, nationalistic cues in the campaign environment caused Danish
voters to partly base their support for euro adoption on their attitude towards immigrants.
Despite playing out a vastly different context, the mechanics of the process are analogous to
those at play in welfare racialization. I illustrate my argument with two studies using as a
control case Sweden’s 2003 referendum – in which nationalistic campaign cues were largely
absent – as well as an experimental replication of the posited effect.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical argument in further
detail and describes the case of the Danish and Swedish Euro referendums. Most importantly,
I argue that understanding racialization as a special case of the phenomenon group implication
allows for theorizing and discovering racialization-like phenomena in non-US contexts.
The remainder of the paper tests the proposition that euro adoption attitudes in Denmark’s
2000 referendum were in fact group implicated. Section 3 presents a content analysis of
open-ended survey responses from the two referendums. Section 4 presents results from
regression models of vote choice. Section 5 outlines an experimental study which is yet to be
conducted. Section 6 concludes.
2
Theory
The core of my theoretical argument is that the same mechanism which connects Americans’
views on welfare with their attitudes about race, connected Danish voters’ stance on euro
adoption with their attitudes about immigration during the 2000 referendum. In other words,
the same basic psychological mechanism operated in both contexts.
Even so, unmistakable differences remain between the two cases, most notably that the
ingroup-outgroup distinctions as well as the policy issues are very different. This section
argues why, these differences notwithstanding, the impact of immigration attitudes on euro
adoption in Denmark can be understood as a phenomenon akin to racialization. Specifically,
I argue that both phenomena can be understood as instances of group implication.
2.1
Racialization and group implication theory
The empirical starting point of the racialization literature is the robust association between
measures of modern or ‘symbolic’ racism and attitudes toward welfare (Sears et al., 1979,
4
1997). The association is present even for rather old-fashioned measures of racism. For
example, in a seminal study of racialized welfare attitudes, Gilens (1996) shows that the
extent to which respondents agree with the notion “blacks are lazy” is a stronger statistical
predictor of their support for welfare than other likely explanatory variables such as economic
self-interest, ideological commitment to individualism, or views about the poor in general.
Early critics of the argument claimed that the association was confounded by political ideology (Sniderman et al., 1986, 1996) or economic self-interest (Bobo, 1983), but experimental
evidence has convincingly demonstrated the causal impact of symbolic racism on welfare
attitudes among American voters (Gilens, 1996; Banks and Valentino, 2012; DeSante, 2013).
Recent research indicates that racialization can also impact attitudes toward governmental
provision of health care (Tesler and Sears, 2010; Tesler, 2012; Banks, 2013).
Kinder and Kam (2009) demonstrate the subtlety of racialization, showing that, while
attitudes toward increased spending on “public schools” are unaffected by racial attitudes,
asking respondents about spending on “big city schools” causes support to drop substantially
among racial conservatives. The likely reason for the difference is that ‘big city’ is a racially
coded term, implicitly signaling to participants that the policy’s beneficiaries are black.
“Such racialization”, Kinder and Kam argue, “takes place through repeated pairings of race
and welfare, first in elite discourse and then in everyday conversation and thinking” (Ibid.,
199).
Yet while relevant to American politics, this specific type of racialization is unlikely
to occur in European welfare states like Denmark and Sweden, for the simple reason that
these countries do not have a racial minority with the political significance of AfricanAmericans in the United States. However, they do have an ethnic minority group subject
to prejudice and whose rights and obligations are a matter of intense political contestation,
namely non-Western immigrants, particularly from Islamic countries. And since the core
psychological driver of racialization is out-group prejudice, not specifically racial prejudice,
immigrants in European welfare states can be subject to group identity framing and thinking
in a way analogous to African-Americans. While the groups are otherwise very different,
appealing to out-group prejudice is thus likely to trigger the same psychological reactions in
majority-group voters’ minds, whether the specific out-group is ethnic minorities in Europe
or African-Americans in the United States.
A recent theoretical development, group implication theory (Winter, 2008), provides a
5
conceptually stylized account of how out-group prejudice combined with issue frames that
cue group identities can cause voters to understand policy issues in terms of their group
attitudes. It is thus ideal for explaining how ethnocentrism, although conceptually distinct
from racial resentment, can nonetheless drive a cognitive process similar to racialization.
In the most general sense, group implication is “the process through which ideas about
social groups (...) can be applied to political issues that do not involve [them] directly”
(Winter, 2008, p. 19). Specifically, it is the process during which cognitive schema about
group attributes are connected to policy issue frames through a process of implicit analogical
reasoning.
There is overwhelming support in the political science literature for the effectiveness of
explicit issue framing in swaying policy attitudes (Sniderman and Theriault, 2004; Hansen,
2007). In this context, however, the focus is on a more subtle type of framing effect: the
effect of policies framed to as to be structurally similar to existing voter schema, leading
voters to draw analogies between the two.
Furthermore, a core feature of the process of group implication is that it operates through
implicit reasoning, i.e. outside of conscious awareness. In fact, the effectiveness of group
implication as a rhetorical strategy rests precisely on its implicitness. This is because
messages explicitly employing group implication are likely to fail due to norms against
explicit reasoning based on stereotypes.
2.2
Group implication of the issue of euro adoption
By construing racialization of welfare as a special case of a general phenomenon, group
implication theory subsumes racialization as just one particular instantiation of the potential
implicit linkage of group schema to issue frames. Table 1 (middle column) summarizes the
argument with respect to the United States.
Notably, the feature driving the implicit association in the United States is that the
notion of redistribution is associated with a dominant group attitude as well as features of the
actual policy. Public debate over welfare policy revolves around notions of thrift, laziness and
deservingness, which are also central to white stereotypes about African-Americans. Group
implication occurs when the policy is framed in a way that make this structural analogy
apparent.
So which policies can be framed as analogous to ethnic in-group/out-group distinctions in
6
United States
Denmark
Group attitude
Racial resentment
Ethnocentrism
In-group
Out-group
White Americans
African-Americans
Native Danes
Immigrants
In-group stereotype
Out-group stereotype
Hard-working
Lazy
Familiar, reliable
Foreign, threatening
Potentially implicated policy
Welfare
Adoption of the euro
Analogous policy feature
Redistribution
Intrusion
Table 1: Structure of group and policy schema in United States and Denmark
European welfare states? As mentioned, I apply the term ethnocentrism to the psychological
disposition of distinguishing sharply between native citizens and immigrants. As defined by
Kinder and Kam (2009):
“[e]thnocentrism is a mental habit. It is a predisposition to divide the human
world into in-groups and out-groups. (...) Symbols and practices become objects of attachment and pride when they belong to the in-group and objects of
condescension (...) when they belong to out-groups.” (p. 8, emphasis added)
At the heart of ethnocentrism, then, is a desire to protect symbols and practices that are
objects of in-group attachment from intrusion by the out-group. Hence, if a policy can be
framed in terms of out-group intrusion and threat to objects of in-group attachment, it is
likely to be susceptible to group implication.
Because the issue of euro adoption can be understood as a matter of the intrusion of
something foreign (i.e., the euro) threatening an object of in-group attachment (i.e., the
Danish krone), euro adoption has the potential to be implicitly linked to ethnocentric group
schema. The logic goes as follows:
Politicians who oppose joining the euro can campaign against it by strategically framing
the euro as a foreign intrusion. This framing makes the issue schematically analogous to a
group relation many voters find very pertinent: that of native Danes and immigrants, which
similarly involves an elite-driven, foreign intrusion into a familiar experience.
As a consequence, voters, trying to make sense of the complex issue of whether Denmark
should join the eurozone, adopt the framing and respond by partly basing their vote choice
on ethnocentric sentiments. The issue of adopting the euro as currency has been group
7
implicated in that voters, responding to strategic frames, understand the issue in terms of
their existing level of ethnocentrism. Table 1 (right column) summarizes the argument and
its constituent parts.
2.3
Case: the Danish and Swedish euro referendums
There is, in other words, a causal claim at the heart of my argument: namely that owing
to analogous policy features between immigration and euro adoption, Danish voters can
develop an attitude toward the latter based on their existing attitude toward the former. In
fact, I argue that the available data supports the notion that group implication took place
during Denmark’s 2000 euro referendum. Sections 3 and 4 will present evidence providing
such support.
However, in order to plausibly observe the outcome of group implicating frames, I need a
control case where such frames are not present. Studies 1 and 2 use the 2003 Swedish euro
referendum as a control case. In other words, my research design is effectively a most similar
systems comparative case study (Przeworski and Teune, 1970).
Employing comparative case study designs using Denmark and Sweden is not a novel idea
(see, e.g., Swenson (1991), Iversen (1996), Daugbjerg (1998), Green-Pedersen and Odmalm
(2008)). Here, I exploit a specific difference between the two: the fact that nationalistic
themes were prevalent in the 2000 Danish campaign, and much less so in the Sweden’s 2003
campaign.
This difference is borne out by contemporary accounts of the two campaigns. For example,
in his retelling of the Danish referendum campaign, Bille (2001) mentions that while economic
considerations dominated the debate, “appeals from the ‘no’ side to the general conservative
and nationalistic sentiments of the voters gained ground during the campaign” (p. 287).
Campaign materials from the Danish referendum provide additional, direct evidence of
messaging linking the euro with the issue of immigration. Figure 1 shows three pages from a
campaign booklet by the Danish People’s Party. With taglines such as “Should we Danes
make the decisions in Denmark?”, the campaign messages frame the euro issue in a way
strongly evocative of the immigration issue.
In comparison, contemporary accounts of the Swedish campaign mention no campaign
appeals to Swedish voters’ sense of national identity. Widfeldt (2004), in his retelling of the
referendum, explains that
8
(a) “Keep the krone - vote(b) “Should us Danes make(c) “For the krone and the
Danish!”
the decisions in Denmark?”fatherland”
Figure 1: Danish People’s Party flyer during the 2000 euro referendum.
“[t]he campaign centred on two main themes: economy and influence. On the
former theme, the ‘Yes’ side claimed that the euro would have positive effects
for business and employment. (...) The ‘No’ side argued that there is no clear
relationship between economic performance and membership in the eurozone (...).
On the influence/democracy theme, the ‘Yes’ side used the slogan ‘Should we be
part or stay outside?’ (...). The ‘No’ side criticised the European Central Bank
(ECB) for a lack of openness and democratic accountability (...)” (Widfeldt, 2004,
p. 1146)
In other words, economic and political considerations dominated the Swedish campaign.
The reason for the difference in campaign environments is quite straightforward: In 2003,
Sweden had no established equivalent to the Danish People’s Party, which largely drove the
nationalistic messaging in the Danish campaign. Explaining this difference in turn is far
beyond the scope of this study, but other studies attribute the difference to differing strategic
incentives for issue-competing center-right parties (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup, 2008).
The difference in campaign environments in the two otherwise similar countries makes
for a plausible test of the theoretical argument described in section 2.2. If attitudes toward
the euro can be group implicated, evidence of such a dynamic should be stronger in the
Danish referendum compared to Sweden. In other words, we should expect Danish voters to
base their vote choice partly on ethnocentrism, and Swedish voters to do so to a much lesser
extent. Studies 1-2 test this hypothesis using different methods and data. Study 3 attempts
to replicate the effect in an experimental setting. Table 2 presents the hypotheses tested in
9
Table 2: Overview of hypotheses
H1
Compared to Swedish voters, Danish voters’ stated reasons for their vote
choice more often reflect identity concerns
H2
Controlling for potential confounders, ethnocentrism is associated with
euro referendum vote choice in Denmark, but not in Sweden
H3
Compared to control group subjects, ethnocentrism is significantly more
strongly associated with support for Danish eurozone membership among
subjects exposed to ethnic identity cues about euro adoption
each of the three studies.
3
Study 1: Content analysis
The purpose of study 1 is to test a basic proposition: whether Danish voters explicitly based
their vote choice on identity concerns to a greater extent than Swedish voters did.
As described in section 2.3, contemporary accounts described nationalistic themes in
the Danish campaign, but not in Sweden. If the different campaign environments shaped
voters’ thinking about the referendum, it is plausible that voters would similarly differ in
their stated reasons for how they voted. The hypothesis in study 1 reflects this idea:
H1: Compared to Swedish voters, Danish voters’ stated reasons for their vote
choice more often reflect identity concerns.
The study is based on two data sources: Denmark’s 2000 referendum survey, “EUROafstemningen, 2000” (Worre and Nielsen, 2003), and Sweden’s 2003 referendum survey,
“Folkomröstningsundersøkning 2003” (Holmberg et al., 2003). I exploit the fact that both
surveys asked voters a simple, open-ended question: why did you vote the way you did?.
The open-ended survey data allows for direct testing of the study’s hypothesis on
representative voter samples. The remaining methodological challenge is essentially one of
measurement: How to assess whether a voters’ stated reason reflects an ‘identity concern’?
One obvious strategy is to code the responses according to the type of concern they
reflect. While I could hand-code the responses myself, my own knowledge of the study’s
hypothesis could bias my coding in the direction of confirming my hypothesis. In order to
avoid confirmation bias, I rely on student coders to code the responses. The student coders
were naïve to the study’s hypothesis and thus unlikely to be subject to confirmation bias.
Due to budget constraints, I was not able to pay the coders for the work. This had two
10
consequences: first of all, I spread the coding job across four coders so as to limit the burden
on each coder. Each coder was assigned a quarter of the full coding set (N=1,210) plus
100 randomly drawn responses common to all coders which were used to assess inter-coder
reliability.
Second, and more importantly, I limited the coding to reasons for voting against the euro.
I chose this restriction because, since the nationalistic campaign elements argued against the
euro, identity concerns are more likely to be found among no-votes, rendering country-level
differences more easily observable. However, in order to fully test the hypothesis, the coding
needs to be redone on the full sample.
The coders were asked to place each survey response into one of three categories: Identity,
which contains responses emphasizing national identity or the national currency’s symbolic or
sentimental value. Economy, which contains economic concerns, such as potential domestic
price increases or other economic costs associated with eurozone membership. Finally, the
Polity category contains political concerns such as the EU’s democratic deficit or euro
adoption’s consequences for national sovereignty. A small residual category of unclassifiable
responses was collapsed into this latter category. The coding exhibited high inter-coder
reliability (Cohen’s κ=.8).
Table 3 presents the coding results for each country. As the table shows, political concerns
were by far the most common in both countries, accounting for an estimated about 80 percent
in both cases. However, the proportions belonging to the two other categories differ quite
sharply. Identity concerns make up an estimated 17 percent in Denmark and just 6 percent
in Sweden.
1
2
3
Category
Identity
Economy
Polity
Prop. (DK)
0.17
0.03
0.80
Prop. (SE)
0.06
0.17
0.77
Dif. (DK-SE)
0.11
-0.14
0.03
1.00
1.00
0.00
Total
Table 3: Proportions of main topic categories for Denmark and Sweden.
Figure 2 presents the results in table 3 graphically. For each of the three categories, the
plot shows the estimated difference in response proportions between Denmark and Sweden
bounded by a 95 percent confidence interval. Furthermore, the figure plots a random sample
of actual responses for each category.
Besides providing evidence of the coding’s face validity, the sampled responses show that
11
some voters appeared to base their vote choice purely on concerns about national identity.
For example, the response “er 80 år gammel og vil dø som dansker, stor nationalfølelse”
[“am 80 years old and want to die as a Dane, strong sense of nationalhood”] expresses
a clearly nationalistic sentiment. Responses like this are not uncommon among identity
responses. Given that the euro referendum concerns the ostensibly economic issue of joining
the eurozone, 17 percent is arguably a substantial share of voters giving identity-based
reasons for their vote.
demokratin i eu/emu (insyn)
jeg er blevet snydt af danske politikere så tit så deres løfter holder ikke
Polity
nationell självständighet
ingen union
jeg ville bevare kronen
er 80 år gammel og vil dø som dansker. stor nationalfølelse
kultur (t ex kulturell gemenskap)
vil forblive dansk
Identity
Economy
●
●
ekonomi
medlemsavgift till eu/kostnaderna för att medverka i emu
euroens stadige fald
priser (varu− och livsmedelspriser
●
−0.1
0.0
0.1
Difference in topic proportions (Denmark−Sweden)
Figure 2: Differences between Danish and Swedish voters in reasons stated for voting against the euro across
three main categories. Danish voters provide more identity-based responses, whereas Swedish voters provide more
economy-based responses. Lines represent 95 pct. confidence intervals.
4
Study 2: Regression models of vote choice
The findings from study 1 suggest that Danish voters’ stated reasons for their vote reflected
identity concerns to a significantly greater extent than in Sweden. While supportive of
the theory proposed here, the study nevertheless falls short of showing that Danish voters
actually relied on ethnocentrism when casting their vote. For one, many of the ‘identity’coded responses are so vague that they could reflect either genuine ethnocentrism or more
principled concerns; secondly, voters’ own explanations may not reflect the actual reasons for
their vote.
Study 2 cuts at the question from another angle, using regression models of closed-form
12
survey responses. The hypothesis tested here is:
H2: Controlling for potential confounders, ethnocentrism is associated with euro
referendum vote choice in Denmark, but not in Sweden.
The strategy is to use a measures of voter ethnocentrism and test whether it predicts vote
choice controlling for observable, potential confounders.
It is important to note that, statistically speaking, interpreting a regression coefficient as
a causal estimate requires making a number of strong, unverifiable assumptions, most notably
about the absence of unobserved confounders (Rubin, 1972; Holland, 1986; Freedman, 1991).
Since I cannot be sure that the relationship observed here is unconfounded, I refrain from
interpreting the observed association causally. Hence, when I use the term ‘effect’ below, it is
only in a narrowly correlational sense. Nevertheless, if ethnocentrism did partly motivate the
vote choice of some Danish voters, I should be able to observe a robust association between
the two. This is the aim of this study; study 3, using an experimental design, revisits the
issue of causal inference.
In order to test the hypothesis, I use data from the Danish Election Project’s 2001
survey, “Valgundersøgelsen 2001” (Andersen et al., 2003), as well as the aforementioned
“Folkomröstningsundersøkning 2003” (Holmberg et al., 2003). The two data sets share one
crucial feature: both of them ask respondents what they voted in the recent euro referendum
(i.e., the dependent variable) and ask respondents a number of attitude questions, including
plausible measures of ethnocentrism. In the Danish sample, ethnocentrism is measured
as agreement with the statement: Islam is a threat against Danish culture (Likert-scale
agreement). In the Swedish sample, ethnocentrism is measured as disagreement with the
statement: [Sweden should] aim for a multicultural society with great tolerance against people
from other countries, with other religions and ways of life (11-point scale agreement).
The responses to both questions exhibit high dispersion, and so are unlikely to be seriously
constrained due to social desirability bias. While identical measures would naturally have
been preferable, both measures arguably tap into respondents’ ethnocentrism as defined
in section 2.2 above, i.e. they reflect a predispositional distinction between in-groups and
out-groups. Most importantly, they are largely devoid of policy content relevant to the euro,
so they should only affect euro vote choice if group implication is taking place.
Having measures of ethnocentrism that tap into intergroup attitudes and not ideological
policy preferences is crucial, since, as is further discussed below, the observed association
13
could be confounded by political ideology. In order to account for this possibility, I include
measures of economic and values ideology, which can account for ideological heterogeneity
among respondents with varying levels of ethnocentrism. The idea is that once ideology is
controlled for, the remaining variation in the ethnocentrism measure reflects only intergroup
attitudes, purged of policy preferences. The notion that the measures are able to distinguish
between ethnocentrism and anti-immigration policy preferences is supported by the fact that
the ethnocentrism measures and values ideology (which predominantly concerns immigration
policy) are only moderately correlated (in both samples r = .5). The items used to measure
economic and values ideology are described in tables 10 and 11 in the appendix.
Although distinguishing between intergroup attitudes and policy preferences is thus
theoretically possible, the ethnocentrism measure for the Swedish case is unfortunately less
clearly devoid of policy content than is desirable. This makes it particularly difficult to
disentangle intergroup attitudes among Swedish voters. Furthermore, the ethnocentrism
measure was only asked in the pre-referendum survey, which reduces the effective N of the
study. Both of these factors somewhat weaken the test for the Swedish case.
In addition to the ideology measures, the regression models include a number of other
control variables, including standard demographics, party bloc preference, as well as knowledge
of the European Union. Tables 4 and 5 present summary statistics for the variables included
in study 2.
Since the outcome of interest – whether the respondent voted for adopting the euro –
is binary, I model vote choice using logistic regression. Tables 6 and 7 presents the results
from a number of model specifications. The key takeaway from the models is that, regardless
of specification, ethnocentrism remains a significant predictor of vote choice among Danish
voters. Among Swedish voters, by contrast, ethnocentrism drops out of significance once
respondents’ political ideology is accounted for.
One important downside to logit models is that coefficient are notoriously unintuitive. In
order to illustrate the strength of the observed relationships, figure 3 illustrates the predicted
effect effect of ethnocentrism in model 3 in each of the regression tables presented below.
As indicated by the thicker line, the association between ethnocentrism and vote choice
is significant only among Danish voters when controlling for demographics and ideology.
And the association is not only statistically, but substantially significant: among Danish
voters, after controlling for demographics and ideology, moving across the observed range of
14
Euro adoption, Denmark
Euro adoption, Sweden
Tax cuts vs. services, Denmark
Predicted prob. of support
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
0.00
0.25
0.50
0.75
1.00 0.00
0.25
0.50
0.75
1.00 0.00
0.25
0.50
0.75
Ethnocentrism
Figure 3: Ethnocentrism and predicted probability of voting ‘yes’ to the euro in Denmark and Sweden (panels
1-2) as well as a placebo issue i Denmark (panel 3). The plots show predicted values based on models 3 in tables
6 and 7, i.e. with controls for demographics and economic and values ideology. The association is significant only
for Danish voters (hence the solid line).
Table 4: Summary statistics, Denmark
Statistic
Euro vote choice
Ethnocentrism
Right-wing party
Education
Age
Gender (female)
Income
Economic ideology
Values ideology
EU knowledge
Tax cuts preference
N
Mean
St. Dev.
Min
Max
1,839
1,986
1,930
2,023
2,026
2,026
1,857
1,872
1,923
2,026
1,935
0.47
0.49
0.53
4.90
47.41
0.48
9.60
0.44
0.68
0.28
0.47
0.50
0.39
0.50
2.00
16.95
0.50
4.18
0.30
0.22
0.26
0.50
0
0.00
0
1
17
0
1
0.00
0.00
0.00
0
1
1.00
1
8
100
1
17
1.00
1.00
1.00
1
15
1.00
Table 5: Summary statistics, Sweden
Statistic
Euro vote choice
Ethnocentrism
Right-wing party
Education
Age
Gender (female)
Income
Economic ideology
Values ideology
EU knowledge
N
Mean
St. Dev.
Min
Max
2,032
855
2,202
1,872
2,293
2,293
1,808
1,589
1,583
1,592
0.44
0.38
0.34
6.49
46.07
0.51
0.34
0.55
0.58
0.47
0.50
0.25
0.47
4.05
16.38
0.50
0.38
0.10
0.16
0.26
0
0.00
0
1
18
0
0.00
0.20
0.20
0.00
1
1.00
1
12
80
1
1.00
0.96
1.00
1.00
Table 6: Logit models of euro vote choice, Denmark
(1)
Ethnocentrism
Right-wing party (RW)
−1.12∗∗∗
(0.14)
0.88∗∗∗
(0.11)
Education
Age
Age sq.
Gender (female)
Income
(2)
(3)
−0.99∗∗∗
(0.16)
0.78∗∗∗
(0.11)
0.16∗∗∗
(0.03)
−0.05∗
(0.02)
0.001∗∗
(0.0002)
−0.51∗∗∗
(0.11)
0.07∗∗∗
(0.02)
Economic ideology
Values ideology
−0.92∗∗∗
(0.18)
0.39∗∗
(0.14)
0.15∗∗∗
(0.03)
−0.03
(0.02)
0.001∗
(0.0002)
−0.49∗∗∗
(0.11)
0.05∗∗
(0.02)
1.62∗∗∗
(0.22)
−0.21
(0.32)
EU knowledge
−0.02
(0.09)
1,752
-1,157.87
2,321.74
Constant
N
Log Likelihood
AIC
∗
p < .05;
∗∗
p < .01;
∗∗∗
−0.48
(0.49)
1,639
-1,027.02
2,070.04
p < .001
16
−1.15∗
(0.56)
1,511
-920.80
1,861.61
(4)
−0.79∗∗∗
(0.18)
0.37∗∗
(0.14)
0.12∗∗∗
(0.04)
−0.02
(0.02)
0.0004
(0.0002)
−0.39∗∗∗
(0.12)
0.05∗∗
(0.02)
1.55∗∗∗
(0.22)
−0.08
(0.32)
1.26∗∗∗
(0.24)
−1.72∗∗
(0.58)
1,511
-906.05
1,834.10
(5)
−0.63∗∗
(0.20)
0.63∗∗∗
(0.15)
0.14∗∗∗
(0.04)
−0.03
(0.03)
0.001∗
(0.0003)
−0.47∗∗∗
(0.13)
0.04∗
(0.02)
1.54∗∗∗
(0.24)
−0.001
(0.34)
1.08∗∗∗
(0.25)
−1.59∗∗
(0.62)
1,344
-794.21
1,610.42
Table 7: Logit models of euro vote choice, Sweden
(1)
Ethnocentrism
Right-wing party (RW)
(2)
−0.75∗
(0.30)
1.20∗∗∗
(0.16)
(3)
−0.61
(0.33)
0.99∗∗∗
(0.18)
0.05∗
(0.02)
0.04
(0.03)
−0.0003
(0.0003)
−0.74∗∗∗
(0.16)
0.94∗∗∗
(0.24)
−0.31
(0.39)
0.59∗∗
(0.19)
0.06∗
(0.02)
0.05
(0.03)
−0.0004
(0.0003)
−0.71∗∗∗
(0.17)
0.59∗
(0.25)
3.34∗∗∗
(0.58)
−1.19∗
(0.46)
−1.45∗
(0.67)
743
-457.26
930.53
−2.42∗∗∗
(0.73)
741
-434.71
889.43
Education
Age
Age sq.
Gender (female)
Income
Economic ideology
Values ideology
EU knowledge
−0.23
(0.14)
766
-498.14
1,002.28
Constant
N
Log Likelihood
AIC
∗
p < .05;
∗∗
p < .01;
∗∗∗
p < .001
17
(4)
−0.30
(0.39)
0.59∗∗
(0.19)
0.05∗
(0.02)
0.05
(0.03)
−0.0004
(0.0003)
−0.70∗∗∗
(0.17)
0.58∗
(0.26)
3.35∗∗∗
(0.58)
−1.18∗
(0.46)
0.14
(0.34)
−2.50∗∗∗
(0.75)
741
-434.63
891.26
Table 8: Logit models of preference for tax cuts over public services, Denmark
(1)
Ethnocentrism
Right-wing party (RW)
0.14
(0.13)
1.37∗∗∗
(0.10)
Education
Age
Age sq.
Gender (female)
Income
(2)
(3)
0.28
(0.15)
1.30∗∗∗
(0.11)
0.07∗
(0.03)
−0.03
(0.02)
0.0003
(0.0002)
−0.73∗∗∗
(0.11)
0.03∗
(0.02)
Economic ideology
Values ideology
0.11
(0.18)
0.70∗∗∗
(0.13)
0.06
(0.03)
0.0002
(0.02)
0.0000
(0.0002)
−0.65∗∗∗
(0.12)
0.02
(0.02)
2.16∗∗∗
(0.22)
0.86∗∗
(0.33)
EU knowledge
−0.94∗∗∗
(0.09)
1,816
-1,151.46
2,308.92
Constant
N
Log Likelihood
AIC
∗
p < .05;
∗∗
p < .01;
∗∗∗
−0.69
(0.45)
1,684
-1,034.52
2,085.04
p < .001
18
−2.34∗∗∗
(0.53)
1,563
-902.73
1,825.46
(4)
0.12
(0.18)
0.70∗∗∗
(0.13)
0.06
(0.03)
0.001
(0.02)
0.0000
(0.0002)
−0.64∗∗∗
(0.12)
0.02
(0.02)
2.15∗∗∗
(0.22)
0.87∗∗
(0.33)
0.10
(0.24)
−2.38∗∗∗
(0.54)
1,563
-902.63
1,827.27
(5)
0.10
(0.19)
0.74∗∗∗
(0.14)
0.06
(0.04)
0.01
(0.02)
−0.0001
(0.0002)
−0.71∗∗∗
(0.13)
0.02
(0.02)
2.10∗∗∗
(0.24)
0.74∗
(0.34)
0.01
(0.25)
−2.42∗∗∗
(0.57)
1,400
-804.63
1,631.27
ethnocentrism reduces the predicted probability of voting ‘yes’ to the euro from 65 pct. to
42 pct., corresponding to a change of nearly a quarter of the range of the dependent variable.
Among Swedish voters, the corresponding change moves predicted probabilities from 57 pct.
to 50 pct., an effect that falls short of statistical significance.
As mentioned earlier, absent an experimental or quasi-experimental design, causal effects
cannot be reliably identified from cross-sectional data, and so study 2 does not claim to
identify a causal effect. Still, I do claim that the results of study 2 constitute evidence in
support of such an effect. In order to justify this claim, two potential criticisms require a
response.
First of all, the argument of pure partisan learning would claim that the observed
association merely reflects voters adopting party positions as their own. For example, Danish
voters identifying with the Danish People’s Party would likely give responses reflecting high
ethnocentrism and voting ‘no’ to the euro – not because there is any causal link between
the two, but merely reflecting the positions of their preferred party. This argument mirrors
traditional Michigan-school models of vote choice (Campbell et al., 1960; Green et al., 2002).
Yet partisan learning is unlikely to drive the observed effect. In order to test the partisan
learning argument, model 5 in table 6 reruns model 4 on a sample excluding Danish People’s
Party identifiers. As shown, ethnocentrism remains significant. This is also the case when
looking only at voters supporting other right-wing parties, all of which campaigned for voting
‘yes’ to the euro. Contrary to the partisan learning model, ethnocentrism is associated with
‘no’-votes even among voters supporting pro-euro parties.
The second critique, which we may call the argument of ideological constraint, argues
that the observed association is confounded by an ideological preference for national selfdetermination. Voters who value Danish culture and national-level decision-making on
ideological grounds – i.e., so-called ‘values conservatives’ – may be opposed to immigration
as well as eurozone membership, which could potentially explain the entire association as
reflecting purely ideological constraint, without reference to group implication. This argument
echoes so-called ‘principled politics’ critiques of theories of symbolic racism (Sniderman et al.,
1996).
In fact, the index of ‘values ideology’ is included as a variable in models 3-5 exactly
to control for this potential influence. The ideological constraint critique cannot by itself
explain why the influence of ethnocentrism is easily controlled away among Swedish voters
19
yet in identical models remains robustly significant among Danish voters.
To further address the ideological constraint critique, table 8 presents the same models as
in tables 6 and 7 applied to a ‘placebo’ issue, respondent preferences for tax cuts vs. better
public services. Since this issue has a clear ideological component, ethnocentrism should
remain significant even when controlling for ideology. Yet as the table shows, while the
ideology measures are strongly significant, ethnocentrism never attains conventional levels of
significance. The placebo test thus supports the notion that the model is able to distinguish
variation in ideology from variation in intergroup attitudes.
Still, the aim of study 3 is to address this critique more fully, turning to an experimental
design in order to more clearly tease out psychological ethnocentrism from principled,
ideological concerns.
5
Study 3: Framing experiment
The aim of study 3, which is not yet conducted, is to reproduce the effect of group frames on
support for adopting the euro in an experimentally controlled setting.
The idea is to randomly expose subjects in a student sample to one of two conditions. In
the ‘group implicated’ condition, subjects are exposed to a cue that makes ethnic identity
salient. In the control condition there is no such cue. Table 9 presents one possible design,
showing treatment group respondents an image of a Danish krone with a Danish flag
embedded. The idea is that the image cues respondents’ ethnic identity; in several studies in
social and political psychology, flag exposure has been shown to induce a feeling of group
identity (Butz et al., 2007; Kemmelmeier and Winter, 2008; Carter et al., 2011; Ehrlinger
et al., 2011). Furthermore, the treatment has some measure of ecological validity in that it
was actually used in a Danish campaign ad, cf. figure 1.
Prior to exposure to the control or stimulus frame, subjects answer a number of ‘feeling
thermometer’ questions about societal groups, including Danes and immigrants. Following
the methodology in Kinder and Kam (2009), ethnocentrism is measured as each subjects’
thermometer score for Danes minus their score for immigrants. Hypothesis 3 reflects the
conjecture that the experimental treatment moderates the effect of ethnocentrism on support
for the euro:
H3: Compared to control group subjects, ethnocentrism is significantly more
20
Table 9: Illustration of experimental ethnic identity cue
Treatment
Control
Hvad ville De stemme, hvis der var
folkeafstemning om Euroen i morgen?
Hvad ville De stemme, hvis der var
folkeafstemning om Euroen i morgen?
Likert response: Certain No–Certain Yes
Likert response: Certain No–Certain Yes
strongly associated with support for Danish eurozone membership among subjects
exposed to an ethnic identity cue about euro adoption
Laboratory experimental political science if often criticized for a lack of generalizability
and/or resemblance to real-world conditions, i.e. lacking external validity and mundane
realism (McDermott, 2002; Iyengar, 2011). This criticism is often warranted and indeed is
at times too readily brushed aside by experimentalists. In this article, however, the aim
of study 3 is somewhat narrower: namely to show, using a design that allows for reliable
causal inference, that attitudes toward the euro can be group implicated. Conversely, it is
the purpose of studies 1 and 2 to lend credence to the claim that it has in fact occurred in
real political life.
6
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was two-fold: first, to argue that given requisite theoretical
abstraction, racialization is not a phenomenon unique to the United States, but can in fact be
understood as a special case of group implication. Although the group identities and policy
issues involved can vary, the fundamental psychological logic is not confined to American
race relations.
The second purpose of the paper was to argue that group implication occurred during
the 2000 Danish euro referendum and provide evidence in support hereof. The results from
studies 1-2 support the notion that, exposed to nationalistic campaign messages, Danish
21
voters understood the euro adoption issue partly in terms of their ethnic identity. In other
words, the issue of euro adoption was group implicated.
Two potential implications for the study of public opinion deserve consideration. First, the
study suggests that the American literature on welfare racialization, so far largely confined
to domestic applications, can in fact inform research elsewhere, although it is likely crucial
that the theoretical application is appropriately contextualized.
Second, the findings suggest that even in still highly homogeneous, coherent, highly
redistributive societies, political appeals to group identities can influence voters’ thinking
about issues. The contingencies and consequences of group identity in welfare state politics
is likely a fruitful avenue for further research.
22
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25
Appendix
Table 10: Measures of attitude variables, Denmark
Variable
Items
Ethnocentrism
Jeg nævner nu nogle synspunkter fra den politiske debat,
som man kan være enig eller uenig i. Her er der et kort
med fem svarmuligheder. Jeg vil gerne bede Dem vælge et
af svarene.
Indvandring udgør en alvorlig trussel mod vores nationale
egenart
Economic ideology
Values ideology
Scale
Jeg vil nu læse nogle politiske påstande op, som De kan
opfatte som en slags diskussion mellem to personer, A og
B. Vi beder Dem sige, om De er mest enig med A eller
mest enig med B.
Man er gået for langt med sociale reformer her i landet.
Folk burde mere end nu klare sig uden sociale sikringer
og bidrag fra samfundet.
Forskellene i indtægter og levestandard er stadig for store
i vores land. Derfor burde folk med mindre indtægter få
en hurtigere forbedring af levestandarden end dem med
højere indtægt.
Forretnings- og industrifolk bør i større grad have lov til
at bestemme over deres egne forretninger.
Der bør i langt større grad end nu indføres brugerbetaling
i den offentlige sektor.
Jeg nævner nu nogle synspunkter fra den politiske debat,
som man kan være enig eller uenig i. Her er der et kort
med fem svarmuligheder. Jeg vil gerne bede Dem vælge et
af svarene.
Indsatsen for at forbedre miljøet må ikke gå så vidt, at
den skader erhvervslivet.
Voldsforbrydelser bør straffes langt hårdere end i dag.
Flygtninge og indvandrere bør have samme ret til social
bistand som danskere, også selv om de ikke er danske
statsborgere.
26
1-5
1-3
1-3
1-3
1-3
1-5
1-5
1-5
Table 11: Measures of attitude variables, Sweden
Variable
Items
Ethnocentrism
Jag kommer nu att läsa upp ett antal förslag på olika
samhällen som en del människor anser att vi bör satsa på
i framtiden i Sverige.
Satsa på ett mångkulturellt samhälle med stor tolerans
gentemot människor från andra länder med andra religioner och levnadssätt?
Economic ideology
Values ideology
Scale
0-10
Jag skall nu läsa upp en lista på saker som en del människor tycker borde genomföras i Sverige.
Minska den offentliga sektorn?
Sänka skatterna?
Minska inkomstskillnaderna i samhället?
Minska finansmarknadens inflytande?
Bedriva mer av sjukvården i privat regi?
1-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
Jag skall nu läsa upp en lista på saker som en del människor tycker borde genomföras i Sverige.
Ta emot färre flyktingar i Sverige?
Minska u-hjälpen?
Öka arbetskraftsinvandringen i Sverige?
1-5
1-5
1-5
27