Under which circumstances do events trigger politicization? Downs (1972) argued that events tend to produce ‘alarmed discoveries’ of ‘highly undesirable objective social conditions’ and raise public and political attention. We think that this perspective is incomplete and only applies in specific circumstances. We hypothesize that events lead to politicization only in cases where a latent conflict is already in existence prior to the event. By a latent conflict we refer to a situation in which different collective actors disagree about an issue, but where nobody has successfully tried to get the issue high on the political agenda. In such circumstances, actors can use the momentum created by events to push the issue higher on the agenda. Events will also make it more difficult for other actors to keep the issue off the agenda. We test our extended theory on the political effects of events by means of political claims analysis on the issue of migration and integration in seven European countries (1995-2009), Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK and focus on four events (9-11, Banlieue riots, EU enlargement, Cartoon crisis). We analyze political claims in newspapers in the weeks immediately following the events on a per day basis and longer term trends based on a sample of days. We control for alternative explanations for politicization such as the number of migrants and on-going policy initiatives.
