Migration-Related Party Rhetoric and Public Support for Government Surveillance in Europe

Technical Summary: Migration-Related Party Rhetoric and Public Support for Government Surveillance in Europe

Problem and Research Question
Existing literature on public support for government surveillance primarily attributes attitudes to perceived security threats, institutional trust, and specific policy designs. However, less is known about whether party communication on adjacent political issues—specifically migration—shapes attitudes toward coercive state authority. This article investigates whether migration-related party rhetoric is associated with public support for government surveillance in Europe, even when surveillance itself is not the explicit subject of political debate. The study addresses a theoretical ambiguity: does migration rhetoric activate security concerns that increase support for surveillance (a threat-based/securitization account), or does it activate skepticism toward state expansion and bureaucratic authority, thereby decreasing support (an institutional-skepticism account)? Furthermore, the study examines whether these associations depend on the partisan source of the rhetoric, distinguishing between messages from a respondent's preferred party versus competing parties.

Methodology
The analysis utilizes a party-exposure design linking individual-level survey data with party-level manifesto data.

• Data Sources: The study combines the 2016 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Role of Government module (ZA6900) with the Manifesto Project Dataset (MPDS).
• Dependent Variable: A latent surveillance-support factor score constructed from five ISSP items: support for public video surveillance, e-mail/Internet monitoring, domestic information collection, foreign information collection, and terrorism-related phone tapping.
• Independent Variables: Four dimensions of migration-related rhetoric derived from national election manifestos: exclusionary identity rhetoric, inclusionary identity rhetoric, anti-migrant rhetoric, and pro-migrant rhetoric.
• Linkage: Respondents are linked to rhetoric based on their reported vote in the most recent national election. The analysis distinguishes between in-party rhetoric (from the respondent's preferred party) and out-party rhetoric (the seat-weighted rhetoric of competing parties in the same national party system).
• Statistical Approach: Weighted multilevel linear models with country-level random intercepts are estimated to account for the nesting of respondents within countries. The models control for demographic variables (sex, education), political sophistication (perceived political understanding), and institutional evaluations (trust in civil servants, perceived corruption). All rhetoric variables are standardized.
• Limitations: The study relies on a single cross-section; therefore, estimates are interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.

Key Results
The empirical findings challenge the straightforward threat-based expectation (Hypothesis 1) and support the institutional-skepticism expectation (Hypothesis 2) regarding restrictive rhetoric, while confirming the importance of partisan sources (Hypothesis 3).

1. Direction of Association: Contrary to the expectation that exclusionary or anti-migrant rhetoric increases support for surveillance by heightening threat perceptions, the results show a negative association. Respondents linked to parties emphasizing higher levels of exclusionary identity rhetoric and anti-migrant rhetoric report significantly lower levels of support for government surveillance. Conversely, respondents linked to parties using pro-migrant rhetoric report higher support for surveillance.
2. Source Effects: The associations are strongest and most consistent for rhetoric originating from respondents' preferred parties (in-party). Rhetoric from competing parties (out-party) exhibits weaker, less consistent, and often statistically insignificant associations. When in-party and out-party rhetoric are modeled simultaneously, the negative coefficients for restrictive in-party rhetoric remain robust, while out-party coefficients are unstable.
3. Ideological Controls: The negative relationship between restrictive migration rhetoric and surveillance support persists even after controlling for party-derived ideological placement (left-right spectrum). This indicates that the rhetoric captures dimensions of party communication distinct from broad ideological sorting.
4. Subgroup Analysis: The negative association between restrictive rhetoric and surveillance support is observed among respondents linked to both left and right parties, though it is not statistically significant for center-party linkages.

Key Contributions
The article makes three specific contributions to the literature:

1. Extension of Elite Cueing: It extends research on elite cueing by examining whether party rhetoric in one policy domain (migration) shapes attitudes in a distinct but related domain (surveillance and state authority), rather than just within the originating domain.
2. Surveillance Attitudes: It incorporates party communication into explanations of public support for intrusive state powers, complementing existing explanations based on threat perception and institutional trust.
3. Source Distinction: It demonstrates the critical importance of distinguishing between preferred-party and competing-party rhetoric, showing that the partisan source is central to understanding how elite communication correlates with public attitudes toward coercive authority.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that migration-related party rhetoric is associated with attitudes toward state authority beyond the specific scope of immigration policy. However, the study modestly asserts that this association does not operate through a simple threat-based mechanism. Instead, the findings suggest that in contemporary European contexts, restrictive migration rhetoric may be bundled with broader critiques of political elites, bureaucratic authority, and government expansion. Consequently, citizens linked to parties using such rhetoric may support stronger migration control while simultaneously remaining skeptical of expanding state surveillance powers.

The study concludes that understanding public support for surveillance requires attention to the broader partisan information environments through which citizens interpret questions of authority and the appropriate scope of state power. The authors explicitly note that while the pattern fits an institutional-skepticism interpretation better than a threat-based one, the cross-sectional data cannot definitively identify the psychological mechanisms driving these associations. Future research is suggested to investigate these mechanisms through experimental designs and panel studies.