Abstract
The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections took place in a very particular environment. Economic crisis, bailout packages, and austerity measures were central on the agenda in many Southern countries while open borders and intra-EU migration gained high salience elsewhere in the Union. A strong decline of political trust in European and national institutions was alarming. At the same time, the nomination and campaigning of “<em>Spitzenkandidaten</em>”, lead candidates of EP political groups for European Commission (EC) presidency, was meant to establish a new linkage between European Parliament elections and the (s)election of the president of the Commission. All of this might have changed the very nature of EP elections as second-order national elections. In this paper, we try to shed light on this by analysing aggregate election results, both at the country-level and at the party-level and compare them with the results of the preceding first-order national election in each EU member country. Our results suggest that the ongoing politicisation of EU politics had little impact on the second-order nature of European Parliament elections.
Highlights
Since the very first direct election of the members of the European Parliament (EP) in 1979, the question has been on the table various times: are European Parliament elections still second-order national elections? Is it still mainly national political dynamics that are affecting the voting behaviour of European citizens when they cast their votes in European Parliament elections, or do we find significant traces of EU policy voting? This paper seeks to answer this question for the European Parliament elections of late May 2014
The findings suggest that non-voting in European Parliament elections is normally not caused by Euroscepticism and not a sign of a legitimacy crisis of the European Union (Franklin, 2001; Schmitt, 2005; Schmitt & Mannheimer, 1991; van der Eijk & Schmitt, 2009) but see Blondel, Sinnott, and Svensson (1998) for the opposite view
This paper asks the same question for the May 2014 elections, which were held after six years of economic crisis and various political changes in Europe
Summary
Since the very first direct election of the members of the European Parliament (EP) in 1979, the question has been on the table various times: are European Parliament elections still second-order national elections? Is it still mainly national political dynamics that are affecting the voting behaviour of European citizens when they cast their votes in European Parliament elections, or do we find significant traces of EU policy voting? This paper seeks to answer this question for the European Parliament elections of late May 2014. Perhaps not least importantly, the policy reach of the Union has increased continuously, and steeply, from the 1950s onwards (Wallace & Wallace, 2007) This can be demonstrated by the number of EUinitiated legislative acts that arrive in national parliaments for ratification. On the side of the economic and public debt crisis, and the monetary policies of the Eurozone that were agreed to counter it, it seems that austerity policies imposed by the EU on debtor countries have had electoral consequences, diminishing electoral support for government parties (Magalhães, 2014) and favouring Eurosceptical parties (Kriesi, 2014) For obvious reasons, this has been more profound in Southern Europe (Bosco & Verney, 2012; Freire, Teperoglou, & Moury, 2014; Verney & Bosco, 2013) than elsewhere, but there are Western European (Alternative für Deutschland) and Northern European (True Finns) examples pointing in that direction. The last section offers an intermediate conclusion and discusses questions for future research
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
