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Playing Russia Offside? An Analysis of Tourism and Exports: Sportswashing and the Case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup
Prins, Sander Tjerk Hermanus ; Lago, Ignacio (vedoucí práce) ; Czarnik, Szymon (oponent)
Sportswashing, the attempt to increase the reputation of a state through hosting sports events, has received wide attention in societal debates. For example, Russia has been accused of attempting to improve its image among the global public by hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup. However, where a lot of claims and assumptions are made on sportswashing, empirical evidence seems to be missing in the academic realm. This general knowledge gap is paired with the absence of direct survey data that measures people's views on Russia after it hosted the greatest football event of the world in 2018. Thus, the aim of this research is to estimate the impact of the 2018 FIFA World Cup on the global public opinion on Russia. To capture whether the World Cup increased the reputation of Russia worldwide, fluctuations in tourists to Russia and export from Russia between 2017 and 2019 act as the proxies for global public opinion. It is expected that states with a larger number of football players, and where football is more salient and plays a larger role in popular culture, will experience a greater 'World Cup effect'. Despite evidence revealing a sense of sportswashing in states where gradually distance to Moscow decreases and where simultaneously football is more salient, this study concludes little evidence of sportswashing...
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State Financialisation and Economic Growth
Welmers, Sjoerd Sebastiaan ; Young, Mitchell (vedoucí práce) ; Lago, Ignacio (oponent)
This thesis aims to identity the effect of state-financialisation on economic growth in the member states of the European Union (EU). In doing, so this thesis tackles one of the most empirically contested areas of research in contemporary international and comparative political economy - the process of state financialisation (Amable et al., 2019). To develop an analytically clear and concise framework, the concept of financialisation of the state and its effect on economic growth includes two dimensions: (i) the reliance on the market as a governance mechanism, and (ii) the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics and the shareholder value model. This definition is well equipped to analyse the relationship between states and markets, because it allows to make a distinction between financial accumulation and financial logics used by governments (Schwan et al., 2021). To analyse the relationship between economic growth and state financialisation on 26 EU countries between 1995 and 2021 this thesis identifies four indicators of state financialisation which affect economic growth (marketable debt, the share of public dept, funded pensions, use of swaps, financial assets, FDI); and three control variables (the inflation rate, the degree of trade openness and the education level of the...
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The crisis of political parties in France: The presidentialization process and its' effects on representative democracy
Bartel, Deborah Mikiko Solveigh ; Tacik, Przemyslaw (vedoucí práce) ; Lago, Ignacio (oponent)
In most European countries, party democracy - political parties as pillars of representative democracy - are commonly accepted. Political parties exist to animate political life and political debate. They mediate between the people and the government. They represent the people and their varying opinions and, in this way, assure their participation in politics and policymaking. Despite their importance, formerly well-established parties have been claimed to be in an "existential crisis" (Morin, Perron 2020, p. 7) in many countries for several decades. New, highly presidentialized political movements, often with populist and even radical tendencies, tend to take the lead. Over time, scholars of different nationalities have established a list of factors for this crisis of party democracy, such as corruption scandals, intransparency, non- compliance of election pledges, arrogance, the lack of willingness of politicians to take certain needs and claims of the people more seriously, a crisis of representation, as evoked by the French scholar Rosanvallon, a lack of direct participation of the citizens, or, more broadly, a democratic deficit (Balme, Marie & Rozenberg 2003; Van der Meer, 2017; Grossman/Sauger, 2017; Cole et al. 2018; Mayer 2019; Selinger 2020). In this thesis, I hypothesize that an additional...
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The Opinions of the Masses and the Mass: The Effect of Religious Elite Cues on Attitudes
Tax, Natasha ; Lago, Ignacio (vedoucí práce) ; Zubek, Marcin (oponent)
This paper explores how religious elites affect public opinion through focusing on the role of the pope, by asking the question if the publication of a papal encyclical can influence attitudes about religion. Using the Unexpected Event during Survey Design, this paper connects data from the European Social Survey 7 to investigate if respondents' answers about their attitudes towards religion changed, due to the publication of a papal encyclical. Situating itself in the theory of elite cues, the object of this research is to show that religion is an important influence in the shaping of attitudes and that the pope, as an example of a religious elite, is a relevant actor in shaping opinions across Europe. This research finds that the publication of the encyclical does not make a significant difference in attitudes among individuals, however there is an increase in level of religiosity, primarily for countries with strong pre-existing attachments towards religion.
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Contextual Determinants of the Age Gap in Voter Turnout across Europe
Kamatayeva, Ayauzhan ; Lago, Ignacio (vedoucí práce) ; Shaev, Brian (oponent)
A common interpretation of the age gap in electoral turnout is that younger cohorts are apathetic and part of a generation that is absent from political life. Still, youth political participation differs across European countries, and cross- national variation in the age gap has been rarely examined in the literature. This paper, therefore, argues that unequal voting in Europe is due not to a lack of interest in the public good but rather to a combination of contextual and individual factors. This study examines young and older individuals' engagement with electoral politics in 26 European countries using the European Social Survey data between 2008 and 2018. Specifically, this study addresses the questions of (1) what context-related factors determine the age gap in voting between old and young citizens and (2) why the age gap in voting is smaller in some countries than in others. The results show that the age gap varies considerably across countries. The OLS and FE regressions results suggest that government expenditure, the share of migrants, and the age of democracy influence the level of age gap in voting. The findings on macroeconomic and immigration factors raise methodological concerns.
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