Political Parties’ Emphasis on Sovereignty in Crisis Times for Europe

The recent periods of multiple crises, Euroscepticism, and anti-globalisation attitudes go hand in hand with calls for more national sovereignty. This paper seeks to study empirically how widespread the wish to ‘take back control’ is reflected through political parties all over Europe. Drawing on data provided by the Manifesto Project, the aim of our paper is to study how much emphasis political parties place on sovereignty-related—what we term ‘sovereignist’—issues across EU member states in the shadow of the last decade’s multiple crises and their underlying determinants. Although the descriptive overview shows that the emphasis on sovereignist issues is generally rather low, Europe-wide challenges such as the European debt crisis and arrivals of refugees seem to be related to its increasing salience. Moreover, political concerns relating to the European political landscape among the continent’s populace are the most significant drivers of parties’ emphasis on the sovereignty issue.