Look at what has been going on in the DISINTEGRATION project lately.

Upcoming Workshop

The ERC Disintegration team is looking forward to the upcoming workshop on “The changing boundaries of European integration.” The workshop will take place on March 9-12, 2025 at Monte Verità, Ascona (Switzerland). The workshop will be organized by Frank Schimmelfennig (ETH Zurich) and Stefanie Walter (University of Zurich). For more information and to register for the workshop, please check out this form

Upcoming Special Issue Workshop

The ERC Disintegration team is very excited about the upcoming Special Issue Workshop on “How Domestic and International Actors Respond to Non-Cooperation”. The workshop will take place on December 12-13, 2024 at the Landgasthof Au, Lake Zurich (Switzerland). The Special Issue Workshop will be organized by Lisa Dellmuth (Stockholm University) and Stefanie Walter (University of Zurich). For more information and to register for the workshop, please check out this form

Now published

How do political parties in the European Union (EU) react to disintegration bids from a member state? Focusing on Brexit, Tom Hunter shows in a now published article that after the referendum vote, challenger parties avoid Brexit, and significantly moderate the Euroscepticism in their Brexit statements. In contrast, mainstream parties emphasize Brexit and significantly increase the pro-Europeanism in their Brexit statements.

New Interview

Giorgio Malet was recently interviewed by swissinfo.ch. In the interview, he discussed findings of the DISINTEGRATION project and shared interesting insights into the upcoming European elections, the rise of the radical right, and the bilateral relations with Switzerland.

Now published

How do populist-right parties respond when their preferred policies are implemented abroad? Focusing on Brexit, Marco Martini and @stefwalter.bsky.social show in a now published article that nationalist parties adjusted their aggressiveness towards the EU in line with the ups and downs of the Brexit process.

New Workshop

The ERC Disintegration team is very excited for the upcoming workshop on “International Cooperation and Negotiations in Challenging Contexts” in Zurich on March 17-19, 2024. We look forward to inspiring discussions and hearing new ideas about how to move forward amid a surge of crises in international politics. 

New Datasets

The DISINTEGRATION project has published two datasets on European attitudes towards the EU and Brexit as well as Swiss attitudes towards CH-EU relations and international cooperation more generally: A six-wave cross-sectional survey of European attitudes on Brexit and a five-wave panel survey on Swiss public opinion on Switzerland’s relations with Europe and the World, 2019-2022.

New Journal Article

Giorgio Malet has just published a new article in the European Journal of Political Research (coauthored with Cyrille Thiébaut). The article analyses how mainstream parties have adapted to an increasingly Eurosceptic public, unveiling a novel strategy of “silent responsiveness”.  Based on original time-series data of party discourse and voter preferences in France, Italy and the United Kingdom (1992-2016), the study shows that public opinion has exerted a constraining effect on mainstream party positions. However, salience strategies seem to have provided a useful tool to circumvent public dissent in a period of intensified cooperation at the EU level.

New Journal Article

Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter analyze how major events in British Brexit politics influenced attitudes towards the European Union in other European countries in this new paper. The paper underscores that events in foreign countries have the capacity to shape the policy attitudes of voters in other nations, emphasizing the broader impacts of events such as Brexit on a systemic level.

New Working Paper

A new working paper by Tom Hunter and Stefanie Walter examines the discussion of international organizations (IOs) in national parliaments. The findings of the paper have implications for democratic accountability in IOs and for the domestic politics of international cooperation.

Stefanie Walter’s keynote: ‘Mass Politics of Disintegration’ at Cefes Workshop, Milano 2023

Stefanie Walter held a keynote on the “Mass Politics of Disintegration” at the Cefes Workshop on “The Costs of Non-Europe and the Accomplishment of the European Integration Project: Economic, Legal, and Political Opportunities and Hindrances” in Milano on 5 October 2023.

DISINTEGRATION project had another successful advisory board meeting!

We are pleased to announce that on September 29th, the ERC Project DISINTEGRATION convened yet another intellectually invigorating advisory board meeting. Spanning a duration of four comprehensive hours, the meeting was enriched by the expertise of our esteemed board members: Prof. Tanja Boerzel, Prof. Sara Hobolt, Prof. Dustin Tingley, and Prof. Jonas Tallberg.

During the meeting, the board members offered invaluable insights and constructive criticisms on three pivotal working papers that are currently under development as part of the DISINTEGRATION project. Their collective expertise has been critical in providing future direction for these working papers and has also illuminated potential research avenues that the project could explore in the near future.

We extend our deepest thanks to the advisory board for their time, commitment, and contributions to the progression of the DISINTEGRATION project.

We look forward to future interactions and are confident that the board’s continued involvement will further enhance the caliber of research generated by the ERC Project DISINTEGRATION.

DISINTEGRATION project excited to host María Victoria Alvarez, Associate Professor and Researcher at the National University of Rosario

María Victoria Alvarez, Associate Professor and researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, National University of Rosario (UNR, Argentina) and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair, will be visiting the DISINTEGRATION project, from 26 September – 6 October 2023. 
Her work focuses on European Union institutions; Latin American Regionalism, Comparative Regionalism, EU-LAC relations and EU-Mercosur relations.

Workshop on “Integration and Disintegration Dynamics”

The DISINTEGRATION project is organizing a workshop on “Integration and disintegration dynamics” on Tuesday 26 September 2023, 9-12 am in room H-372, at the IPZ (Department of Political Science), UZH.
 
Workshop program
 
9:00 Welcome
 
9:15 Navigating Disintegration Dynamics in Latin American Regionalism: Unveiling questions and methodological challenges
Dr. María Victoria Alvarez (Universidad Nacional de Rosario and Visiting Scholar at IPZ)
 
10:15 *** Coffee Break ***
 
10:30 
How threats and promises affect support for international cooperation
Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter
 
11:15
What Is Europe About?  The Political Consequences of Issue-Specific EU News
Tom Hunter, Giorgio Malet, Johannes Scherzinger and Stefanie Walter
 
12:00
Workshop end & lunch for registered participants
 
Everyone is welcome to attend the workshop. To do so, please register by sending an email to Tom Hunter at hunter@ipz.uzh.ch until 20 September 2023. Please indicate in your email whether you would like to come along for lunch as well.

Giorgio Malet secures the SNSF Ambizione Grant

Congratulations to Dr. Giorgio Malet, postdoc in the DISINTEGRATION project, on winning the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Ambizione grant!

“To Accommodate or Not?” – Talk by Stefanie Walter at Munich School of Politics and Public Policy, TUM

In a thought-provoking talk at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Stefanie Walter addressed the complex dilemma governments face when faced with non-cooperation by other states: To accommodate or not? She discussed the impact of the trade-off between the material benefits of cooperation and reputational considerations on citizens’ support for challenging and materially costly responses. 

Conference Paper Presentations at IB Sektionstagung 2023 and EPSA 2023

Stefanie Walter presented the paper “How threats and promises affect support for international cooperation” at IB Sektionstagung 2023 (14-16 June 2023), in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This paper by Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter delves into the argument that how policymakers discuss the consequences of cooperation and of not cooperating affects the public’s attitudes on international negotiations. Giorgio Malet also presented this paper at the European Political Science Association’s (EPSA) 13th annual conference (22-24 June 2023) in Glasgow, Scotland.

New Dataset and Access to Newspaper Corpora

The “Nationalist Party Discourse Dataset” is now publicly available for download
 
We also now offer researchers access to two large text corpora containing about 3 million newspaper articles reporting on the EU and/or Brexit (EU and Brexit Corpus) and on 68 IOs (International Organizations Corpus). For more information, visit our page

New Journal Article

New paper out in West European Politics by Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter. The paper examines how voters in countries closely cooperating with the EU can learn about the feasibility of cherrypicking strategies by looking at the experience of countries that pursued a similar path but analyzing the effects of the Brexit negotiations on public opinion in Switzerland. The paper is part of a special issue edited by Waltraud Schelkle on „The Crisis That Wasn’t? Brexit and Membership Crisis in the European Union“

New Journal Article

New paper out in the European Journal of Public Policy by Marco Martini and Stefanie Walter on how Brexit has changed the discourse of nationalist parties in other EU member states.

New News Article

Giorgio Malet and Stefanie Walter, together with Jonas Tallberg, have published an article in the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan with insights from the DISINTEGRATION survey on Swedish and Finnish public opinion on NATO membership. The article discusses public attitudes towards Turkey’s demands and security concerns related to Russia.

We are Hiring!

We are hiring a new postdoc! Please find the details here (application deadline Nov 15, 2022).

Recent Workshop

From 2-4 October, The Disintegration Project hosted a workshop on “International Cooperation in Challenging Times”. You can find the programme here.

 

New Journal Article

New paper out in Comparative Political Studies by Giorgio Malet on mechanisms of cross-border social contagion.

New Journal Article

New paper out in International Organization by Stefanie Walter and co-authors on how to deal with states that withdraw from international institutions: 

New Journal Article

The article “Brexit Dilemmas: Shaping Postwithdrawal Relations with a Leaving State” authored by Ignacio Jurado, Sandra León and Stefanie Walter has been published in International Organization.

New Blog Post

What happens if the institutional framework agreement between the EU and Switzerland fails? Stefanie Walter analyzes this question in the context of public opinion and expectations in her blog post.

Read the blog article here.

New Blog Post

In her recent blog article “Three Questions on Brexit”, Stefanie Walter discusses the implications of Brexit on the economy, the possibility of a British re-entry into the EU and the potential EU reaction to such an endeavor.

Read the blog article here.

Online Workshop – Academic Exchange

On March 15, the DISINTEGRATION team presented its research progress to the advisory board with Tanja Börzel, Sara Hobolt, Jonas Tallberg, and Dustin Tingely. In stimulating discussions, we received constructive feedback and insights to other perspectives. We look forward to having the next meeting with you!

New Paper Publication

How do voter-endorsed attempts to withdraw from international institutions reverberate abroad? This question and more is discussed in Stefanie Walter’s new article “Brexit Domino? The Political Contagion Effects of Voter-endorsed Withdrawals from International Institutions” published in the journal Comparative Political Studies.

Read the paper here.

New Paper Publication

The co-authored article “Politicizing International Cooperation: The Mass Public, Political Entrepreneurs, and Political Opportunity Structures” is published in the journal International Organization.

Read the paper here.

New Paper Publication

In recent years, the world has seen a rising backlash against globalization. Stefanie Walter’s new article thematizes this trend by reviewing its nature, causes, and consequences.

Read the paper here.

New Working Paper

New working paper by Marco Martini and Stefanie Walter on media discourse surrounding Brexit beyond the UK

New Publication

New article by Catherine de Vries, Sara Hobolt and Stefanie Walter on “Politicizing International Cooperation: The Mass Public, Political Entrepreneurs and Political Opportunity Structures” forthcoming at International Organization.

Find the paper here.

New Blog Post

New blog post about Swiss-EU relations in times of COVID-19:  „Schlechtere Chancen für die Begrenzungsinitiative wegen der Corona-Krise” 

Find the blog post here.

New Publication

New paper on the role of British voters’ expectations about the EU’s response to Brexit has been published in European Union Politics.

New Working Paper

New working paper on the contagion effects of Brexit in the EU-27 and Switzerland.

Project Kick-off

Three post-docs started to work on the DISINTEGRATION project in September 2019. We are excited to work on this project and have brainstormed on how to make the project into a success.

Now published

How do populist-right parties respond when their preferred policies are implemented abroad? Focusing on Brexit, Marco Martini and @stefwalter.bsky.social show in a now published article that nationalist parties adjusted their aggressiveness towards the EU in line with the ups and downs of the Brexit process.