Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse why Malta continues to show the highest level of turnout for European Parliament (EP) elections in a country where voting is not obligatory. By analysing the Maltese EP elections from 2004 to 2019, the paper seeks to understand why the Maltese engage with a second order election to the degree that they do. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, first assessing the context of the 2019 elections, the historical trends and then the factors that help explain why the Maltese continue to engage with EP elections. Findings The paper finds that the Maltese political system, highly polarised and dominated by two parties, primarily galvanises people to engage with elections, that it is more about party leadership than actual engagement with Europe and that second order elections in Malta are often run as first order elections. Originality/value This paper is the only systematic evaluation of the 2019 EP elections in Malta, discusses categorically that EP elections are rarely about Europe while also showing clearly that political parties can make second-order elections appear as first-order elections should the stakes be high enough.
Highlights
The fourth European Parliament (EP) elections in Malta, held on May 25, 2019, confirmed the country’s post-independence trend for politics to be a two-horse race
In conclusion, we can say that the Maltese EP elections confirm many of the observations predicted by the secondorder elections (SOE) model but that there are important limitations, primarily centred on the fact that the STV system coupled with the strong, adversarial nature of Maltese politics and dominance of the two main parties means that there are few incentives to vote for nonmainstream parties and that, in this respect, the dynamic expected in terms of support for ruling and non-ruling parties will be skewed, especially when opposition parties make it difficult for the electorate to vote for them
The 2019 elections saw a notable win for the PL, winning four of the six seats available, and while some smaller parties did perform better under the SOE, the stability of the two-party system in Malta remains and appears to extend from first-order elections (FOE) to SOE elections, reinforcing the perception of the parties’ unassailable dominance of postindependence Maltese politics and society That said, while the Far-Right did not obtain a relative high amount of votes, their toxic rhetoric tends to be “adopted” by the Opposition party of the day who see “populist” rhetoric as a way to tap into certain concerns, indicating a potential for fringe politics to infiltrate the mainstream
Summary
The fourth European Parliament (EP) elections in Malta, held on May 25, 2019, confirmed the country’s post-independence trend for politics to be a two-horse race. The country’s two main parties, the Social Democrats, Labour Party (Partit Laburista; PL) and Christian Democrats, the Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista; PN), won over 92% of the votes cast and divided the six seats available amongst themselves (4 to the PL, 2 to the PN). This result was in-line with the country’s status as a stable two-party system, with the two main parties alternating in power since 1950 and all third parties eliminated from parliament in 1966 [1]. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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