http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/Eurovision.shtml

‘How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility 
between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest’  has been accepted for 
publication by the journal Physica A and is available online at: 
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505071

How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility 
between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest
Daniel Fenna, Omer Sulemana, Janet Efstathioub and Neil F. Johnsona,1

a) Physics Department, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PU, U.K. and
b) Department of Engineering Science, Oxford University, Parks Road, Oxford 
OX1 3PJ, U.K.
(Dated: May 10, 2005)

We investigate the complex relationships between countries in the Eurovision 
Song Contest, by
recasting past voting data in terms of a dynamical network. Despite the 
British tendency to feel
distant from Europe, our analysis shows that the U.K. is remarkably 
compatible, or ‘in tune’, with
other European countries. Equally surprising is our finding that some other 
core countries, most
notably France, are significantly ‘out of tune’ with the rest of Europe. In 
addition, our analysis
enables us to confirm a widely-held belief that there are unofficial cliques 
of countries – however these
cliques are not always the expected ones, nor can their existence be 
explained solely on the grounds
of geographical proximity. The complexity in this system emerges via the 
group ‘self-assessment’
process, and in the absence of any central controller. One might therefore 
speculate that such
complexity is representative of many real-world situations in which groups 
of ‘agents’ establish their
own inter-relationships and hence ultimately decide their own fate. Possible 
examples include groups
of individuals, societies, political groups or even governments.
....

On 21 May 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its 50th anniversary 
[4]. This 2005 contest will
probably attract the largest global television and radio audience of the 
year – the combined television and ra-
dio audience figures in recent years have approached one billion. Although 
the specific rules of the contest have
changed over the years, the basic format is the same: Each participating 
country performs a song, and this
song is then awarded points by other countries. Irrespec-tive of whether it 
contributes anything to the advance-
ment of music per se, the Eurovision Song Contest does provide a remarkable 
and unique example of an annual
exchange of ‘goods’ and opinions between countries. Go- ing further, it is 
arguably the only international forum in
which a given country can express its opinion about an-other, free of any 
economic or governmental bias. Indeed
if we assume for the moment that a given song either sounds ‘nice’ or not 
[5], then it should receive the same
order-of-magnitude of vote from all countries. Hence any large differences 
in voting may be reflecting some deeper
sociological differences between countries. Assuming that all countries have 
equal chances of producing intrinsi-
cally ‘nice’ songs over the timescale of a decade [5], then any systematic 
bias which arises in the voting patterns of
country A toward countries B, C and/or D may be telling us something about 
how compatible A is with B,C and/or
D. In this sense, the voting in the Eurovision might be re-garded as the 
sociological equivalent of The Economist’s
Big Mac Index which compares the measured value (i.e. cost) of a particular 
product within different countries
[6]. It has even been suggested that the concept of the Eurovision Song 
Contest as a whole should be used as a
role-model for determining the overall composition of the European Union 
[7].

In this paper, we use the framework of complex dy-namical networks [8, 9, 
10, 11, 12, 13, 14] in order to
analyze voting behaviour in the Eurovision Song Con-test over space (i.e. 
between countries) and time (i.e.
between years). Although some previous studies of the Eurovision Song 
Contest do exist [15, 16, 17, 18], our
study is unique for the following reasons: (a) We ana-lyze the voting data 
from the point of view of a complex
evolving network. This enables us to uncover non-trivial, non-linear 
patterns from a large amount of ‘noisy’ data.
(b) We look across multiple timescales, focusing on the patterns which 
emerge between years. (c) We look across
all countries regardless of whether they won or not. (d) We consider data 
over the recent period 1992-2003 inclu-
sive, during which the number of countries participating is fairly constant. 
(e) Our analysis focuses on the points
given and received by all countries, rather than the final outcome of the 
contest.

Some of our conclusions serve to confirm several commonly-held beliefs about 
particular cliques of coun-
tries. However we also uncover some very surprising and unexpected results. 
In contrast to some commonly-held
beliefs – in particular within the U.K. itself – the U.K. has been 
consistently ‘in tune’ with the rest of Europe since
the early 1990s. Just as surprising is the fact that France, for example, 
has been rather ‘out of tune’ with the rest of
Europe over the same period [19, 20]. [N.B. We will take the term Europe to 
include all the countries participat-
ing in the Eurovision Song Contest. These include, for example, Israel which 
has actually won the contest three
times. Other countries in the Middle East are apparently also keen to join 
the contest sometime soon. Repeating
our study in a decade’s time could therefore provide some even greater 
surprises.] Our analysis is built around the
framework of complex networks [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] and focuses only on the 
Eurovision Song Contest. However
we note that the analysis tools that we have used, and those that we have 
introduced in the course of this work,
have more general applicability. This is because the Eu- rovision Song 
Contest, in its most elementary form, is
just an example of a set of entities repeatedly exchang-ing some goods. In 
another context, these goods could
equally well be ideas, opinions, money, supplies, food or nutrients. In this 
sense, our analysis should also be ap-
plicable to time-evolving network systems in sociology,biology, economics, 
business and even financial markets  [21].
For example, theWorld Trade web in Ref. [12] takes a similar form to the 
networks which we create for the Eurovision Song Contest,
but with countries exchanging goods rather than points.
...

News
17 May 2005
Europe makes its mind up – compatibility of countries in the Eurovision Song 
Contest


The Eurovision Song Contest demonstrates that the United Kingdom is 
remarkably compatible with the rest of Europe, despite what its citizens 
might think. This is the finding of a team of researchers from the 
University of Oxford who have conducted a complex network analysis of 
Eurovision voting data to investigate the relationships between countries in 
the contest.
The Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend, 
and love or hate it, the quantity of countries competing and the huge number 
of television viewers across the globe suggest it is one of the world’s few 
truly international events. The team of Oxford researchers chose the contest 
as a phenomenon that could be measured in order to examine how compatible 
the various European countries are. Using a framework of complex networks 
the researchers analysed voting behaviour in the contest over a period from 
1992 to 2003. The results from this analysis were compared against results 
from a simulated ‘random contest’, in which all the songs are assumed to be 
of equal quality and each country assigns its points randomly among the 
remaining countries. The results prove that voting patterns do exist in the 
Eurovision Song Contest, and that while many of these patterns confirm 
viewers’ suspicions, others are rather more surprising.

Many Eurovision viewers believe there are a several ‘cliques’ in the contest 
in which a number of countries all vote in a similar way. The results show 
this to be true, with Greece and Cyprus showing the strongest correlation by 
assigning very similar numbers of points to each of the other countries. The 
team also identified a cluster of Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, 
Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, which have a high level of 
correlation in voting behaviour. Other clusters included Bosnia and Turkey, 
Croatia and Malta, the UK and Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, and 
France and Portugal.

Further analysis of voting patterns between countries allowed the 
researchers to identify several countries that appear to be more ‘in tune’ 
with the rest of Europe, that is, countries that are compatible with a 
greater number of countries than others. Compatibility between countries was 
measured by analysing how often a given country exchanged points with 
another country. If this number exceeded that expected for a ‘random contest’, 
the countries were judged to be compatible. The country that was found to be 
compatible with the greatest number of other countries was the UK, whilst at 
the opposite end of the spectrum France, and to a lesser degree, Spain, were 
found to be the least compatible with the rest of Europe.

Professor Neil Johnson conducted the research with colleagues in Oxford’s 
Department of Physics. ‘Despite the British tendency to feel distant from 
Europe, our analysis shows that the UK is actually remarkably compatible, or 
‘in tune’, with other European countries,’ he said. ‘Equally surprising is 
our finding that some other core countries, most notably France, are 
significantly ‘out of tune’ with the rest of Europe.’

‘Although this study is limited to the data emerging from the Eurovision 
Song Contest, we believe the complexity we have observed amongst competing 
countries could be representative of many real-world situations in which 
groups of individuals, societies, political groups or even governments 
establish their own inter-relationships and hence ultimately decide their 
own fate.’
For more information contact the Press Office on 01865 280528 or email 
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Notes to Editors:

‘How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility 
between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest’ by Daniel Fenn, Omer 
Suleman, Janet Efstathiou and Neil F Johnson has been accepted for 
publication by the journal Physica A and is available online at: 
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505071