Grandstanding in the EU? Elites Crisis Communication under the Spotlight

• In Event: I Would Do Anything for EU Governance (but I Won't Do That)

Abstract

Crisis events may motivate political elites to use salient communication in responding to the crisis. This paper examines how European Union ministers employed grandstanding messages to set agendas in reaction to financial crises between 2010 and 2016. Using a transformer classifier trained on a modified dataset from US congressional hearing messages related to grandstanding behaviour, we identified the grandstanding behaviour of EU ministers over time. We employed a difference-in-differences design to estimate the responses of different countries across time in the Council of the European Union. Our preliminary findings suggest that as Euroscepticism in countries increases, European ministers are more likely to use crises as opportunities for grandstanding. This strategy intensified debates and discussions against policies directly impacting their respective countries. Such actions shaped public perceptions of political issues and gained political leverage during the crisis. The implications of these findings yield an explanation of both the impacts of crises on European elites' communication and the influence of strategic crisis communication on agenda-setting.

Authors

• Paula Montano, University College Dublin

• Yen-Chieh Liao, University of Essex

• James P Cross, University College Dublin