Core 1 Project Presentation Report
Political solidarity in Europe: headline findings and presentation-ready evidence
One-Page Message
Political solidarity in this seven-country survey is most visibly structured by ideology and by whether respondents see other citizens, institutions, and public services as trustworthy, fair, and effective. Objective regional context matters less directly in the final models; it appears more plausibly as the background that shapes perceptions of institutional performance.
Headline Findings
1. Solidarity varies across Europe
The territorial solidarity index ranges from 3.05 in Croatia to 3.69 in Sweden. Sweden is highest; Croatia is lowest.
2. Ideology is the clearest divide
Right-leaning respondents are less supportive of public redistribution for others (beta = -0.266, p < 0.001).
3. Trust and legitimacy carry the model
Social trust, institutional trust, contribution norms, and public-service evaluations are all positively associated with solidarity.
4. Material position is mixed
Perceived capacity and objective need/risk show positive evidence; objective resources and perceived risk are not robust in the full model.
5. Regional context is weak directly
Within-country service quality and relative regional income are not robust direct predictors after individual attitudes and perceptions are included.
What We Measure
The report uses the current Core 1 Hauptfeld file, data/POLITSOLID_Hauptfeld_weighted_18052026.dta. The cleaned analysis file contains 8066 interviews from 7 countries. The main outcome is the preregistered territorial solidarity index: willingness to pay for public redistribution benefiting people in the respondent’s municipality, country, and other EU countries.
The models are estimated as unweighted OLS with country fixed effects and preregistered respondent-level controls. This report is a presentation artifact: it highlights associations and substantive patterns, not causal effects.
Country Patterns
Mean territorial solidarity differs visibly across country contexts. Sweden is highest, Spain and Italy are also relatively high, and the conservative and post-communist cases are lower and more mixed. This comparison is descriptive: with seven countries, welfare-regime labels help structure the presentation, but they cannot be read as identified macro-level effects.
Main Predictors
The main individual-level model explains 34% of the variation in territorial solidarity in the model sample (7058 respondents). The largest pattern is ideological: respondents further to the right are less solidaristic. The other strong pattern is legitimacy: respondents who trust other people and institutions, perceive stronger contribution norms, and evaluate public services more positively are more supportive of redistribution for others.
| model | n | r_squared |
|---|---|---|
| Individual foundations | 7159 | 0.222 |
| Norms and legitimacy | 7868 | 0.268 |
| Full individual-level model | 7058 | 0.340 |
Regional Context
The regional models ask whether respondents in higher-quality NUTS2 regions, or relatively richer regions inside their country, report higher political solidarity after adjustment. The answer is cautious: the direct regional estimates are small and statistically uncertain in the fully adjusted specification. This does not mean regional context is irrelevant; it means the current survey has clearer leverage on the perceptions and legitimacy beliefs through which citizens evaluate the solidarity system.
| Model | N | NUTS2 | Within-country EQI estimate [95% CI] | Within-country EQI p | Country-mean EQI estimate [95% CI] | Country-mean EQI p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 7319 | 124 | -0.026 [-0.065, 0.012] | 0.183 | 0.084 [0.03, 0.139] | 0.003 |
| + demographics | 7319 | 124 | -0.022 [-0.06, 0.017] | 0.272 | 0.075 [0.025, 0.126] | 0.003 |
| + left-right ideology | 6816 | 123 | 0.005 [-0.029, 0.039] | 0.771 | 0.08 [0.028, 0.131] | 0.003 |
| + Block A non-ideology | 6510 | 123 | 0.005 [-0.029, 0.039] | 0.779 | 0.062 [0.014, 0.109] | 0.011 |
| + trust/service | 6504 | 123 | -0.01 [-0.045, 0.026] | 0.601 | -0.032 [-0.073, 0.009] | 0.131 |
| Full model | 6420 | 123 | -0.01 [-0.046, 0.025] | 0.571 | -0.031 [-0.072, 0.009] | 0.128 |
The fully adjusted regional service-quality estimate is beta = -0.01, p = 0.571. The relative regional income estimate is beta = 0.014, p = 0.257, which does not support the preregistered expectation that relatively better-off regions would be less solidaristic.
Target-Specific Solidarity
The preregistration also calls for separating solidarity toward conventionally deserving groups from solidarity toward migrants. Right-wing ideology predicts a larger deserving-minus-migrant gap (beta = 0.276, p < 0.001), while institutional trust (beta = -0.2, p < 0.001) and social trust (beta = -0.094, p < 0.001) are associated with a narrower gap. The same trust-related dispositions that increase territorial solidarity therefore also appear to be linked to less exclusionary target differentiation.
Country Heterogeneity
The main associations are not entirely identical across countries. Re-estimating the full model separately by country shows that ideology is consistently negative, while perceived capacity and service evaluations vary more in strength.
Methodological Note
The analysis is cross-sectional and should be read as associational. The main models are unweighted OLS with country fixed effects and controls for age, gender, education, equivalized income, migration background, and country. The regional H6 models use unweighted OLS with NUTS2-clustered standard errors and split EQI service quality into within-country and country-mean components. Income is imputed for 902 respondents (11.2%); the full individual-level model retains 7058 of 8066 respondents after listwise deletion. H4 and H5b are partial tests because the final survey file does not contain every preregistered norm and institutional-trust item. Weighted and fuller multilevel specifications should be treated as robustness checks rather than claims made by this presentation report.
| hypothesis | hypothesis_text | how_tested | verdict | evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | More left-leaning individuals show higher political solidarity than more right-leaning individuals. | Unweighted full model using standardized left-right self-placement, where higher values mean more right-wing. | Confirmed | beta = -0.266, 95% CI [-0.286, -0.246], p = <0.001 |
| H2a | Individuals with higher objective socioeconomic resources show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using income and subjective social status. | Mixed | beta = 0.005, 95% CI [-0.025, 0.034], p = 0.764 |
| H2b | Individuals who perceive higher personal capacity to contribute show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using financial resilience and household economic evaluations. | Confirmed | beta = 0.036, 95% CI [0.012, 0.059], p = 0.003 |
| H3a | Individuals with higher exposure to social risks show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using public-payment receipt and labor-market inactivity. | Confirmed | beta = 0.029, 95% CI [0.008, 0.051], p = 0.008 |
| H3b | Individuals who perceive higher personal risk and future need show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using perceived risk plus the preregistered risk x capacity interaction. | Mixed | beta = 0.008, 95% CI [-0.013, 0.029], p = 0.455; interaction beta = -0.004, p = 0.681 |
| H4 | Individuals who believe that others contribute fairly show higher political solidarity. | Partial unweighted test using taxnorm and fraudnorm; rednrmdsc is unavailable in the final data. | Confirmed | beta = 0.073, 95% CI [0.052, 0.094], p = <0.001 |
| H5a | Individuals with higher generalized social trust show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using social trust, perceived fairness, and perceived helpfulness. | Confirmed | beta = 0.158, 95% CI [0.135, 0.181], p = <0.001 |
| H5b | Individuals with higher institutional trust show higher political solidarity. | Partial unweighted test using available institutional trust items; politicians and parties are unavailable. | Confirmed | beta = 0.158, 95% CI [0.129, 0.187], p = <0.001 |
| H5c | Individuals with more positive public-service evaluations show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted full model using public-service satisfaction, quality, and procedural evaluations. | Confirmed | beta = 0.135, 95% CI [0.107, 0.163], p = <0.001 |
| H6a | Residents of regions with higher public-service quality show higher political solidarity. | Unweighted H6 within/between model using 2021 full-NUTS2 EQI qualityp; verdict is based on the within-country coefficient. | Not confirmed | beta = -0.01, 95% CI [-0.046, 0.025], p = 0.571 |
| H6b | Residents of relatively better-off regions show lower territorial solidarity. | Unweighted full + context model using within-country centered regional GDP. | Not confirmed | beta = 0.014, 95% CI [-0.01, 0.038], p = 0.257 |