Introduction: Proposal of a Framework for the 2014 European Parliament Elections and Campaigns in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The postulate designed by Reif and Schmitt in 1980,1 regarding second-order elections, represents an indispensable landmark for European elections analysts.2 No other equally strong vision regarding the way in which national elections intersect with European Parliamentary elections has appeared since that date. However, many researchers argue that European elections have become ever more prominent over the past decade. Therefore, we may talk about the fact that voters have started to take these elections more seriously, and about the need for political parties to pay greater attention to them too.3 Dedicating a volume exclusively to a number of new and relatively new European Union (EU) member states will help to test the special and complementary nature of the relationship between European policies and national policies. Analysing election campaigns and the way in which the citizens of some Central and South-Eastern European EU member countries voted could, among other things, offer important information about the greater or lesser degree of integration of the EU countries that joined between 2004 and 2014 and are represented in this volume: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia (here listed in alphabetical order).