Who Wants to Accelerate Digitalization? Evidence from the Next Generation EU Program

Abstract

Post-industrial governments around the world are increasingly prioritizing policies to accelerate digitalization, but despite the growing literature on technological change and the knowledge economy, we know little about public preferences regarding digitalization policies. We use the case of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) program, an initiative totaling nearly 800,000 million euros with at least 20 per cent earmarked to expedite digitalization in Europe, as a substantively and theoretically important case to test theories about the political fault lines such policies generate. We conceptualize digitalization policies as a type of ‘knowledge economy’ policy and develop expectations about policy preferences derived from material self-interest and ideology. We test our hypotheses with new survey data from five EU countries (Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, and Italy) and detailed measures of support for actual digitalization policies, expected economic impact, and perceptions of the main beneficiaries. Our findings suggest that digitalization policies are most strongly supported by voters of mainstream parties and least favored by supporters of radical and populist parties. Preferences are structured more clearly along ideological socio-tropic lines than along socio-structural economic self-interests. Overall, our results imply that if digitalization policies become politicized, mainstream and challenger parties will likely address this issue differently.

Reto Bürgisser

Assistant Professor

My research interests include political economy, comparative politics, and political behavior.