Research projects

Politicizing European Integration
European integration and the EU have become increasingly contested political issues in many countries. Yet what is the precise structure of orientations towards European integration? And what do politicians actually mean if they are talking about the highly multi-faceted issue of ‘Europe’? To whom are citizens listening if Europe is debated, and which voices go unheard? How important is the issue during election campaigns? Answering these pertinent questions allows to tackle also more fundamental theoretical puzzles. As a dynamic issue with contested meaning that can neither be reduced to identity nor its economic dimension, European integration is ideally suited to study agenda setting, framing and their impact on opinion formation and party competition – both in the long run and more focused during election campaigns and direct-democratic votes. The project has been partly financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no. 133415).

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2016) “The Politicization of European Integration in Domestic Election Campaigns“. West European Politics, advance online publication.

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2016). Politicizing European Integration – Struggling with the Awakening Giant. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Helbling, Marc, Dominic Hoeglinger und Bruno Wüest (2010) “How Political Parties Frame Euro­pean Integration”. European Journal of Political Research 49 (4), 2010, pp. 495–521.

Explaining Changing Patterns of European Integration Attitudes
This project explores how the various well-known factors shaping European integration attitudes play out among different social constituencies as well as how the relative impact of these factors develops over time. In a first stage, I analyze data from a comprehensive panel survey (Swiss Household Panel) to track attitudinal change at the individual level in Switzerland over several years. In a next step, the analysis will be extended to other countries, and the impact of the framing and the salience of Europe in the media on individual attitudes will be assessed.

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2014). “Explaining Changing Patterns of European Integration Attitudes”, Paper presented at: SPSA Annual Meeting, University of Bern.

Issue Competition in Domestic Elections
How strongly are parties able to shape the agenda in favor of their preferred issues during election campaigns? While saliency theory expects that a party deals mostly with those issues for which it is perceived as most competent, theories of agenda setting, by contrast, argue that a party has to engage with all issues on the political agenda in order to be heard even if that means talking frequently about issues that are unfavorable. This project aims at exploring the complex interplay of party strategies, party competition and the public agenda in times of elections.

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2014). “Comparing the logics of issue-emphasis and salience of challenger issues”, Paper presented at: ECPR General Conference, University of Glasgow, Panel “Party Competition in the Mass Media”.

Western European Politics in the New Age of Globalization
How does globalization transform political conflict in Western Europe? Going beyond the narrow field of national elections, this international research project studies supranational politics (European elections), politics outside the institutionalized realm (protest), and the framing of public debates on immigration, European integration and economic liberalization. Based on media-content analysis and survey data the project provides an empirically rich and systematic picture of the fundamental political developments that Western European societies are facing at the beginning of the 21st century, including the successful mobilization of ‘globalization losers’ by populist radical right parties. Jointly financed by the German Research Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no. 111756).

Hanspeter Kriesi, Edgar Grande, Martin Dolezal, Marc Helbling, Dominic Hoeglinger, Swen Hutter und Bruno Wüest (2012). Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comparing Abortion Debates in the US, Germany and Switzerland
This study investigates how institutional and socio-cultural environments profoundly shape public debates in the mass media by tracking this highly controversial social issue in the three countries from the 1970s to the 2000s. The findings show that direct democracy has indeed the ability to greatly improve the visibility of otherwise marginalized civil society actors – both in the short-term and in the long run. However, the actors that benefit most of the heightened attention during direct-democratic campaigns are the political parties. Moreover, the study explores the role of the church, the judiciary and the women’s movement in the framing of abortion, which touches upon a broad range of topics including social issues, public health concerns, gender and morality politics.

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2008). „Verschafft die direkte Demokratie den Benachteiligten mehr Ge­hör? Der Einfluss institutioneller Rahmen­bedingungen auf die mediale Präsenz politischer Akteure“ [Does Direct Democracy Help Outsiders Make Their Voice Heard? How Insti­tu­tional Settings Influence the Media Standing of Political Actors]. Swiss Political Science Review 14 (2), pp. 207–43.

Hoeglinger, Dominic (2007). „Drei Welten der politischen Kommunikation? Ein Vergleich der Strukturen politischer Öffentlichkeit in der Schweiz, Deutschland und den USA” [Three Worlds of Political Communication? Comparing the Abortion Debate in Switzerland, Germany, and the USA], National Competence Center of Research (NCCR) Challenges to Democracy Paper No. 3.