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A Vote for the President? The Role of Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 European Parliament Elections
Abstract
The European Parliament promised voters that the 2014 elections would be different. According to its interpretation of the Lisbon Treaty, a vote in these European elections would also be a vote for the President of the Europe's executive, the Commission. To reinforce this link between the European elections and the Commission President, the major political groups each nominated a lead candidate, Spitzenkandidat, for the post. This article examines how this innovation affected the 2014 elections. It concludes that the presidential candidates did not play a major role in the election campaigns, except in a handful of countries, and thus had a limited impact on voter participation and vote choices. However, the European Parliament was very successful in imposing its interpretation of the new modified procedure for electing the Commission President, not shared by all national governments, and this will have important implications for the inter-institutional dynamics in the Union and the future of European democracy.
... Our results reveal that the extent to which voters are able and willing to do so is highly dependent on the ways in which executive autonomy is combined with regional authority and whether regions exercise only self-rule or both self-rule and shared rule. An often-raised solution to remedy the 'democratic deficit' of the European Union is to strengthen the link between a vote cast in European Parliament elections and the choice of the President of the European Commission (Christiansen 2016;Hix 2002;Hobolt 2014). Our results strongly suggest that this kind of reform will significantly reduce SOE-effects. ...
... ' However, very few studies have explored whether SOE-effects reduce when voters do have an opportunity to impact the choice of the executive. 2 This lack of attention is surprising considering that not being able to impact the choice of an executive is often considered to be a key element of the 'democratic deficit' in the European Union (Christiansen 2016;Hix 2002Hix , 2008Hobolt 2014). 3 In the next section, we argue that executive autonomy increases the (perceived) stakes in an SOE by increasing both the opportunity and importance of selecting an executive. ...
... Hence, a 0.5 point increase in executive autonomy translates into a 0.6 percentage point larger vote share for new parties. Many proposals to address the 'democratic deficit' of the European Union involve the strengthening of the link between a cast vote in European Parliament elections and the formation of the European Commission (Christiansen 2016;Hix 2002;Hobolt 2014). Our research strongly suggests that such reforms would significantly reduce SOE-effects. ...
... This new process raised the expectations among EU citizens that the 'winning' lead candidate of the EP elections will become the new President of the European Commission. While this expectation was met in 2014, the mixed findings of the process' success to raise citizens' interest in EU politics and to mobilize EP election participation could not yet determine the overall relevance of the Spitzenkandidaten process and related activities (e.g., Hobolt, 2014;Schmitt et al., 2015;Treib, 2014). In fact, and due to the innovation of the Spitzenkandidaten and their participation in TV debates for the first time in 2014, scholars such as Schmitt et al. (2015) expected a potentially greater effect in the following 2019 edition. ...
... The latter included to foster political competition at the EU level and to increase the legitimacy of the Commission, but also to increase the general interest and participation in EU democracy and hence to fight the often proclaimed democratic deficit of the EU (cf. Hobolt, 2014;Maier et al., 2018;Schmitt et al., 2015). Given citizens' little knowledge about the Spitzenkandidaten before the campaign (Popa et al., 2020), the media play a crucial role for the success of the process, in particular to provide information for citizens to get aware of the candidates (Gattermann & de Vreese, 2020). ...
... In contrast, other studies paint a more pessimistic picture. Based on cross-national data from 15 EU member states, Hobolt (2014) reports (very) low levels of awareness of lead candidates among the European electorate. The study by Schmitt et al. (2015) equally reports low levels of citizens' recognition of the lead candidates, based on 2014 European Election Voter Study data across all 28 member states. ...
Televised debates represent an integral part of election campaigns and with the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process also became part of the European Parliament (EP) elections campaign. Various characteristics of EP elections such as a generally lower (perceived) relevance of and participation in the elections, and also the relatively unknown lead candidates running for Commission President assign TV debates a crucial role to inform European citizens and assist them in their voting decision. Focusing on the second edition of the ‘Eurovision debate’ during the 2019 EP elections campaign, this article examines the impact of debate exposure on both the decision to turn out and party choice. The study uses original flash survey data collected after the debate in five countries (DE, DK, ES, HU, NL). These data are part of a larger panel-survey study, which allows to examine immediate effects in the days after the debate and also for the eventual decision on Election Day. Although citizens' debate exposure varies considerably across countries, and watchers further differ in their evaluations of the candidate performances, the results show a surprisingly negative effect of debate exposure on turnout, especially among more interested citizens, and basically no effects on party choice.
... However, empirical research on the 2014 and 2019 contests suggests that the results of this innovation were, to say the least, quite modest. For instance, Hobolt (2014) showed that awareness of the Spitzenkandidaten existence and of specific lead candidates was minimal in most Member States, while also stressing that "presidential candidates did not play a major role in the election campaigns, except in a handful of countries, and thus had a limited impact on voter participation and vote choices" (p. 1528; on this matter, see also Schulze 2016). ...
... This goal is pursued via the analysis of quasi-experimental data collected in the context of the Eurovision debate broadcast on 15 May 2014, in which the five lead candidates to the presidency of the EC (Spitzenkandidaten) participated. This specific setting allows us to isolate the effects of the debate from that of the EP election campaign (since the lead candidates were quite absent from the campaign; (Hobolt 2014;Braun and Popa 2018)) and to compare its impact in viewers who did or did not hold previous information about the Spitzenkandidaken. ...
In this article, we show how exposure to debates primes specific candidate assessments as key factors of candidate appraisal. To fulfil this goal, we rely on quasi-experimental data collected in 24 European Union Member States and focus on a debate starred by largely unknown candidates (the 2014 European Spiztenkandidaten) engaged in a remarkably invisible campaign. Our results show that candidate perceptions become much more important factors of general candidate appraisal after the debate in the case of three out of the five lead candidates, namely those whose image benefitted from their participation in the debate. In several cases, personal likeability became more important in the general assessment of the Spitzenkandidaten, but there was also an increased relevance of the perceptions of leadership strength (Keller) and quality of the ideas to stimulate the European economy (Schulz and Tspiras). Moreover, in the cases of Schulz, Keller, and Tsipras, post-exposure candidate perceptions impacted more their general appraisal by participants without previous knowledge of them than by those who claimed to know them before the debate. Interestingly, leadership strength appraisal was more relevant for the former than for the latter participants. In short, by unveiling these patterns, this article not only provides evidence of the priming effects of debate exposure but also illustrates how such effects may vary according to citizens’ previous knowledge and the candidates’ general performance in the debate.
... Important changes in recent years could render part of the critique on the democratic deficit of the EU obsolete. For instance, the introduction of the Spitzenkandidat system that invites Europarties and their groups in the EP to nominate a lead candidate for the post of President of the European Commission (Hobolt 2014). This was celebrated by leading EU political figures as a means to 'Europeanise' the European elections (Sasmatzoglou 2013, 70, 74). ...
... In this context, Europarties are left with a rather negligible role to play in European elections. Although they tend to produce election manifestos, those have more of a symbolic function and are rarely used in a meaningful way by the affiliated national political actors (Hobolt 2014(Hobolt , 1531. Another sign of their marginalized character is that even when mechanisms that could potentially strengthen their position and visibility in the European arena are introduced, such as the Spitzenkandidat, Europarties benefit too little from them. ...
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election saw the participation of two transnational parties: DiEM25 and Volt Europa. Both seek to democratise the European Union (EU) by engaging with European institutions and mobilising their supporters across member states, putting the EU's democratic deficit at the centre of their endeavour. They consider the European space as their primary field of appeal and mobilisation, adopting a transnational conception of 'the people' as the source of democratic legitimacy. This paper explores the potential of genuine pan-European parties in increasing public contestation and inclusiveness at the European level and in democratising EU politics by treating DiEM25 and Volt as prototypical cases. Through a comparative analysis, we highlight the novelties of the two parties in relation to existing 'Europarties' and assess how these respond to deficiencies related to the democratic deficit. We conclude by reflecting upon what DiEM25 and Volt reveal about the potentials and challenges of 'transnationalising' EU politics.
... 279). Also Sara Hobolt (2014Hobolt ( , p. 1531) seconds: 'While Euro-parties produce electoral manifestos, the extent to which the national parties use these manifestos in their own campaigning has traditionally been minimal. Instead, European election campaigns have tended to focus on domestic political matters and be dominated by national political actors.' ...
... As argued in the introduction, Europarties are referred to as 'expressing the will of citizens of the Union' in the EU Treaty (Art. 10 TEU), and they also often depict themselves accordingly; most recently particularly concerning the Spitzenkandidaten for Commission President (Hobolt 2014). However, the findings of this paper suggest that the national parties, which actually appear on the ballot paper, do not necessarily share the same positions on EU policies. ...
This paper seeks to answer the question how congruent the policy positions of the four main Europarties were compared with their respective national member parties, as well as how they influenced each other in the drafting process, using the comparative example of German parties in the EU election 2019. It finds that the programmatic congruence of Euro- and their German member parties is small, with only insignificant coherences in issue salience and policy prioritization. In fact, some parties are even revealed to have higher programmatic congruence with other German parties than with their own Europarty. Nevertheless, cases of up- and downloading of policy positions as well as general political reconciliation processes are reported for all parties.
... In terms of scrutiny functions, the Maastricht Treaty empowered the EP in respect of the appointment of the Commission President and the College of Commissioners (Pavy 2020). Since 2014, the Spitzenkandidat process brought additional visibility to EP electoral campaigns, as EU political groups put forth candidates for the position of Commission President (Hobolt 2014(Hobolt , 2019. ...
... But if the empowerment of the EP as a legislative body has been thoroughly covered in the academic literature (for a general review, see Hix and Høyland 2013), its performance as an accountability forum is yet to be explored. In relation to parliamentary control of the executive, the EP attracted attention in the late 1990s for its role in the resignation of the Santer Commission (Judge and Earnshaw 2002;Magnette 2001) as well as in the 2014 appointment of the Juncker Commission (Christiansen 2016;Hobolt 2014). However, there is a significant difference between 'grand' events such as the appointment or dismissal of the College of Commissioners and regular accountability interactions designed to oversee routine executive decisions. ...
This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament's powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU) political system, focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament's possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012 to 2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. This title is Open Access.
... In 2014, although the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten in the European Parliament elections aimed to achieve a closer connection of citizens with the European decision-making process, electoral campaigns were dominated by national themes, which reduced the impact of this mechanism on creating a common agenda and pushed such an initiative into the background. The majority of voters continued to vote in response to the national problems of the moment, not being influenced by the new European mechanisms (Hobolt, 2014). ...
This volume was conceived to discuss the role that the European Parliament (EP) has assumed within the European Union. The
year 2024 marks the beginning of the EP's tenth legislature since it was first directly elected by the citizens of the EU member states.
The book brings together several contributions aimed at providing an in-depth approach to the functioning mechanisms of the EP and how it fulfils its mandate to represent European citizens. The purpose of this work is to analyse and better understand the role of the EP in the current decision-making context, especially during a time when the democratic legitimacy of European institutions is intensely debated. The Parliament's evolution from a consultative to a legislative body displays the constant efforts to democratise the European decision-making process.
... 3 It was not also able to make leadership change to result from popular choice-rather it reinforced bargaining leadership behind the doors (Ibid). Hobolt (2014) is also of the opinion that the Spitzenkandidaten system had a limited impact on voter participation and voter choices. Evidence provided by Whitaker (2014) shows that more than 50% of MEPs were re-elected in 2014 and this was closely due to incumbency advantage. ...
Term limit changes are significantly linked to political instability in Africa. Yet, it is ignored as an issue in the trilateral cooperation between European Union (EU), China and Africa. Indeed, a central question that could face both the EU and China over term limits in Africa is the extent to which it is legitimate for them to take action against attempts to violate term limits. This paper is an attempt to consider joint EU and China influence on African politics from the perspective of term limits. Why and how have/should EU and China respond to term limits? How can a trilateral cooperation between EU, China and Africa help institutionalize the respect of term limits? With the help of qualitative and quantitative data from official communiqués, events, and reports, the paper considers term limits as major political issue EU, China and Africa must care about given that it is a major factor of State fragility and political instability. It finds that a grounded trilateral policy framework on term limits is not only possible in an EU-China-Africa cooperation, but can strengthen democratic institutions in the continent and reflect the genuine commitment of the EU and China to promote sustainable democracy and political stability in Africa. If the EU and China want sustainable development of Africa, then the issue of presidential term limits must be significantly addressed within a trilateral cooperation.
... Following the results of the 2014 elections, the election of the President of the EC was carried out through the Spitzenkandidaten election process, which marked a 'constitutional innovation' in EU politics (Laffan, 2019). That is, five of the seven Europarties that make up the largest parliamentary groups nominated a head of list to compete for the presidency of the Commission (Hobolt, 2014). The winner would be the member of the party with the most votes through the 2014 European election results -in this case, the party with the most votes was the EPP, with the party's proposed candidate, Jean-Claude Juncker, being elected. ...
The EU launched a Common Security and Defence Policy civilian mission in Armenia on 20 February 2023 to contribute to deescalation and stability in its border areas, committing to serve as a soft security deterrent through its political leverage and physical presence in the region. It is expected to strengthen Armenia’s resistance to military offensives and coercion, and help achieve a sustainable peace during negotiations with Azerbaijan. The EU itself was a passive observer of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war until the second half of 2021, drawing criticism for its lacklustre policy reaction to the conflict. In the past couple of years, however, the Union has stepped in to fill the vacuum generated by the delegitimisation of the OSCE Minsk Group, as well as the growing polarisation between its members: Russia on the one hand, and the EU and US on the other. Armenia has the highest ranking of democracy and human rights in the region, and is trying to reduce its dependency on Russia, while Azerbaijan is the most autocratic country manoeuvring between the West and Russia, yet committed to contributing to Europe’s energy security. The deployment of the EUMA contributes to the stabilisation of the region through its political leverage, restoration of the undermined trust in the international community, and the creation of favourable conditions for ensuring its energy interests and influence in the region. Thus, the EU is walking a tightrope between liberalism and realpolitik, balancing its roles as a normative actor and geopolitical player through both mediation and deterrence. This paper is the academic and updated version of a policy article published on the day of launching the EU Mission in Armenia (EUMA) (Tatikyan, 2023a). It is based not only on academic research but also practical work of the author as a member of the expert community and civil society involved in peacebuilding, public diplomacy and advocacy. Some of the analyses about the perspectives of the EU officials, the Armenian authorities and the opposition, expert community, civil society and wider public have been made on the basis of the meetings and discussions based on Chatham House rules, following and taking part in the public discourse and monitoring the media and the social media.
... Following the results of the 2014 elections, the election of the President of the EC was carried out through the Spitzenkandidaten election process, which marked a 'constitutional innovation' in EU politics (Laffan, 2019). That is, five of the seven Europarties that make up the largest parliamentary groups nominated a head of list to compete for the presidency of the Commission (Hobolt, 2014). The winner would be the member of the party with the most votes through the 2014 European election results -in this case, the party with the most votes was the EPP, with the party's proposed candidate, Jean-Claude Juncker, being elected. ...
Transnational European political parties, or “Europarties”, have struggled to be politically competitive in the EU: they are not represented in the European executive and also struggle to gain enough votes in European parliamentary elections for significant standing in the legislature. Certain processes have been introduced to remove the barriers faced by Europarties, including the Spitzenkandidaten process, as well as Transnational Lists for European elections which are being actively considered. These processes would strengthen the role of the Europarties as the only political parties able to represent the electorate at the EU level through promoting transnational candidates for European institutions. However, numerous constraints on their political activity continue to exist such as a high dependency on national parties for electoral activity and lack of visibility by EU citizens. As such, the aim of this paper is to analyse the creation of these party federations and examine how they have evolved over time, alongside new institutional reforms of the EU’s political system. The focus on Europarties is justified for two main reasons: they facilitate the information sharing of national parties at the supranational level, and they have become increasingly important due to Spitzenkandidaten and Transnational Lists.
... 17(7) TEU-L). In the course of the most recent EP elections (2014), several European political parties even nominated leading candidates (the German term Spitzenkandidaten became widespread) as prospective Commission presidents, though it is still unclear to what extent this development will shift the candidate selection away from the member state governments (Hobolt, 2014). ...
Despite the European Union (EU) amounting to a complex system sui generis, its institutions constitute a political and even a government system. By examining the functions among and interactions between institutions at different levels, loci of functional logic akin to other systems can be determined. From this perspective, the EU's vertical separation of powers will be examined, aiming to conceptualize an EU executive branch: first, implementation is addressed regarding the interlocking between EU and member states. Second, the instalment and removal of EU chief executives will be analysed accordingly. Finally, the findings are combined in the form of a set theoretical concept structure with necessary and sufficient attributes to provide a conceptual frame of the executive branch. Thus the article advances research by providing a parsimonious conceptualization of the EU executive through inductive concept formation. Furthermore, this approach can advance systematic comparisons to other executive 'branches' in multi-level systems.
... Finally, in line with the Lisbon treaty, an important change was introduced together with the 2014 EP elections: the introduction of European-wide lead candidates. While this did not fundamentally change the elections themselves or raise their visibility (Christiansen, 2016;Hobolt, 2014), it is likely to have increased EP turnout at least to some degree (Maier et al., 2017;Schmitt et al., 2015). Our theoretical assumption hence is that non-structural factors, including politicization of the EU and the rise of Eurosceptic parties, are likely to have induced higher turnout in EP elections. ...
The European Parliament (EP) has seen a gradual increase in its powers since the introduction of direct elections in 1979. Scholars have focused on both individual-level and aggregate factors to explain turnout rates in EP elections over time, including increased levels of EU politicization and the rise in support for Eurosceptic parties. However, one strand of analysis seems to partially have been overlooked: Some earlier research on EP election turnout claimed that absolute turnout rates across the EU should be used with care, as a number of ‘structural factors’ influences these shares and with this, affects estimates of actual voter turnout. Are such structural variables still relevant in a time where European politics are becoming increasingly salient among the wider public, pro- and anti-EU sentiments may increase citizens’ inclination to vote and trust in EU institutions may be getting increasingly important? Based on various estimates, we find that structural factors can still be characterized as determinants in EP elections, but that the power of structural factors to explain turnout at the EU level, compared to non-structural factors, has decreased. Nonetheless, EU-wide (average) EP turnout rates, as widely reported, are not likely to be good reflections of actual trends in EP turnout over time.
... After all, it is first and foremost accountable to the EU member state governments who nominate and possibly withdraw 'their' Commissioners. Institutional accountability to the wider citizenry is indirect at best and has only mildly improved through the investiture procedure, the possibility for censure motions in the EP, and the thus far hardly successful attempts to establish the Spitzenkandidaten process (Christiansen 2016;Hix 1997;Hobolt 2014;Wille 2013). ...
The public politicisation of European integration indicates a growing demand for public communication of supranational politics. This paper highlights that the messages the European Commission sends to its citizens do not meet this demand. A text analysis of almost 45,000 press releases the Commission has issued during 35 years of European integration rather indicates an extremely technocratic style of communication. Benchmarked against large samples of national executive communication, public political media, and scientific discourse, the Commission used and notably continues to use very complex language, specialized jargon, and a nominal style that obfuscates political action. This appears disadvantageous in a politicized context and more research on the reasons for this apparent communication deficit is needed.
... There are also strong incentives for party leaders and leading political gures other than the candidates themselves to appear in EU campaigns. The EU itself has also contributed in the direction of placing emphasis on leading political gures in the promotion of the 'Spitzenkandidat principle', that is, the pre-election nomination of a party's preferred candidate for Commission President (Borrell et al. 2017;Hobolt 2014). ...
This chapter focuses on visual communication in terms of personalization and visual styles, and the authors conclude there was a higher degree of visual personalization compared with 2014. The most common visual style among politicians in the 2019 EU elections can best be described as an ‘informal and smiling one’, even though there are regional differences, such as a more formal approach being more common in Eastern member states.
... Kurum-spesifik olarak bakıldığında ise, örneğin AB vatandaşları ile AB kurumları arasındaki hipotetik uzak mesafe; AB Komisyonu'nun şeffaf olmadığı iddia edilen yapısı; AP'nin etkin olmayan, bağımlı ve sınırlı rolü (Wesselsve Diedrichs, 1997: 3; bk. Özekmekçi, 2020: 170) ve AP'nin seçimleri ve bu seçimlerdeki siyasal partilerin işlev ve etkinlikleri ile ilgili sorunlar (Özekmekçi, 2020: 187;Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2018: 33;Hobolt, 2014Hobolt, : 1531Russack, 2019: 8) (Shackleton, 1998: 13;bk. Akgül Açıkmeşe, 2003: 33;Yiğit, 2009: 121;Saygın, 2020: 263). ...
... Since 1952, the EP's legislative decisioning role evolved from consultation to codecision, while its policy scope -including regarding budget -has been extended through the multiple treaties (Schackleton, 2017;Mény, 2009;de Gardebosc, Mesdag, 2019). The same type of observation can also be made regarding the increasingly important role of the EP in the investiture of the Commission (Rittberg, 2012) and, more recently, regarding the election of the president of the Commission with the Spitzenkandidaten system (Christiansen, 2016;Gattermann et al., 2016;Hobolt, 2014). ...
... By nominating Spitzenkandidaten for each party group to the parliamentary elections, and by pledging that the candidate of the group winning the highest number of votes would be elected Commission president, the EP in fact deprived the European Council of its right of nomination. In 2014, this strategic move resulted in the appointment, only grudgingly accepted by the European Council, of Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president (Hobolt 2014(Hobolt : 1537. ...
Ursula von der Leyen is the first woman in the office of president of the European Commission. Her nomination was marked by a series of hurdles, not least because she was not a Spitzenkandidat of any party group in the European Parliament (EP). Yet as soon as she was nominated by the European Council, she presented an extremely ambitious and focused agenda and won election in the EP, though by only a slim majority. With a theoretical perspective distinguishing between the institutional setting, the situational context, and the personal qualities of a leader, the chapter offers an assessment of von der Leyen’s leadership during roughly her first year in office. Regarding positional leadership, it questions to what extent her earlier career path and the nomination and election process to the Commission presidency have shaped her incumbency. As for behavioral leadership, the chapter analyses von der Leyen’s agenda-setting, her work in implementing this agenda, and her achievements thus far. In particular, the chapter highlights how von der Leyen, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically tackled the crisis while pushing her agenda and strengthening the position of the European Commission.
... Following the Lisbon Treaty (and article 314 TFEU), the EP now shares powers with the Council over all EU spending in the annual budget (Schackleton, 2017;Mény, 2009;de Gardebosc, Mesdag, 2019). The same type of observation can also be made regarding the increasingly important role of the EP in the investiture of the Commission (Rittberg, 2012) and, more recently, regarding the election of the president of the Commission with the Spitzenkandidaten system (Christiansen, 2016;Gattermann et al., 2016;Hobolt, 2014). ...
... To increase the appeal of EP elections, the establishment of the so-called Spitzenkandidaten system in 2014 was meant to personalize the vote by linking EP election results to the nomination of the European Commission (EC) presidency such that the nominee should come from the party family with the biggest vote share. This aimed to enhance the value of citizens' voting rights, render European politics more tangible and, eventually, mobilize more voters (Hobolt, 2014). ...
The Spitzenkandidaten were meant to personalize European Parliament elections. This paper asks whether and through which channels the lead candidates were actually able to make themselves known among voters – a necessary precondition for any electoral effect. Combining panel surveys and online tracking data, the study explores candidate learning during the German 2019 European Parliament election campaign and relates learning to different types of news exposure, with a special focus on online news. The results show that learning was limited and unevenly distributed across candidates. However exposure to candidate-specific online news and most types of offline news helped to acquire knowledge. The findings imply that Spitzenkandidaten stick to voters’ minds when they get exposed to them, but that exposure is infrequent in high-choice media environments.
... Recent research has found a relationship between the election pledges included in the EP election manifestos of transnational Europarties 1 and the subsequent policy agenda of the Commission (Kostadinova and Giurcanu 2020). However, voters are generally unaware of Europarties and their election pledges, and the object of their vote choice tends to be national parties (Hobolt 2014Hix and Marsh 2011). Voters tend to have a reasonably good idea of the broad ideological profile of national parties (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister 2011, p132), and this impacts on their voting decision in EP elections (van der Brug et al. 2009). ...
If the European Parliament (EP) is responsive to electoral outcomes, then the positions it takes during negotiations on policy issues with other EU institutions will reflect its ideological composition. However, the dominance of a grand coalition of the centrist party groups may limit the extent to which changes in the composition of the EP affect the policy positions that it adopts. The EP may also suffer from an integrationist bias, as further integration enhances its power. This paper tests whether the positions taken by the EP in legislative negotiations reflect its ideological composition, drawing on data covering the period 1999-2019. The findings indicate that the policy positions adopted by the EP more closely reflect the ideological profile of the grand coalition than the median MEP. While the EP generally adopts pro-integration positions, this is in line with its ideological composition; there is no evidence of systematic policy drift in this direction.
... The hope was that the campaigns of the pan-European lead candidates ultimately increase the democratic legitimacy of both the EP and the Commission. However, scholars doubt whether this goal can be achieved given the power of the European Council to nominate the candidate for Commission President (Christiansen, 2016;Hobolt, 2014). ...
This special issue focuses on the consequences of the heightened conflict between member states and increased politicization of European affairs for electoral politics in the European Union. In this introduction we begin by outlining three important developments that fuelled the politicization: (a) the common currency; (b) the increased pushback on the EU’s open border policies; and (c) the inability of the EU to prevent democratic backsliding in some countries. We then discuss their consequences for EU elections, particularly campaigns, public opinion on Europe and voter behaviour, which are investigated against the backdrop of the 2019 European Parliament elections in the individual articles in this special issue. This introduction provides a contextual framework for these contributions and reflects upon some of its main findings.
... Following the Lisbon Treaty (and article 314 TFEU), the EP now shares powers with the Council over all EU spending in the annual budget (Schackleton, 2017;Mény, 2009;de Gardebosc, Mesdag, 2019). The same type of observation can also be made regarding the increasingly important role of the EP in the investiture of the Commission (Rittberg, 2012) and, more recently, regarding the election of the president of the Commission with the Spitzenkandidaten system (Christiansen, 2016;Gattermann et al., 2016;Hobolt, 2014). ...
The Spitzenkandidat process can increase electoral participation by personalizing the candidates, the campaign and by bringing the functioning of the European institutions closer to the national institutions of each member state. However, it is unlikely that this process will be formalized in the treaties as it may have already peaked. Portuguese MEPs, especially those belonging to the two largest political groups in the European Parliament, are aware of the benefits of democratic legitimacy for the European Commission, but there are differences in the need to go beyond the informality of this process. The lack of consensus would prevent an understanding in the European Parliament, whose power, even if harsh, is strengthened by this informal process. Also, member states such as Portugal say they are bound by the treaties, namely the proposal of a candidate by a qualified majority of the European Council.
This article presents a systematic empirical analysis of the career patterns of all 3634 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who served in the European Parliament (EP) over the last 40 years (1979–2019). It explains how changes in the EP's structure of opportunities have shaped the development of MEPs' career patterns. First, we show that the development of a European political class is not a recent trend but that this process took place in the early days of the EP (as soon as in the 1984–1989 term), albeit with variance across political groups of the European Parliament (EPGs) and Member States. Second, we observe that the transformation of party systems and electoral volatility have been questioning the existence of the European political class. Overall, we conclude that legislative institutions are only as strong as the individuals who are called to serve them. Recent rises in the EP's turnover could ultimately undermine the EP's formal policy‐making capacity in the middle and long terms.
The Treaties of Paris and Rome envisaged the possibility of direct elections to the European parliamentary assembly from the outset. Since the early 1960s, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been active on this issue and in 1976 they got satisfaction, with the Act on the direct election of the European Parliament. Since then, the European Parliament has constantly tried to obtain its reform in order to reinforce the European dimension of this election, and to strengthen its own powers within the Union’s political system. It has met with little success, due to its own divisions and those of the Council. It nevertheless continues to request a reform of the 1976 Electoral Act, and the Spitzenkandidaten procedure is now central to its initiatives. The European Parliament would like to see it institutionalised and to create a legal obligation for the European Council to appoint the ‘leading candidate’ of the winning European party as President of the European Commission. This request is linked to many other proposals, aiming to reinforce the supranational nature of the ballot, to mobilise voters or to elect some MEPs on transnational lists. This chapter aims to take stock of this complex debate, which has been the subject of recent initiatives by the European Parliament, and has also been raised by the Conference on the Future of Europe. It will also highlight the uncertainties and ambiguities that accompany a possible institutionalisation of Spitzenkandidaten.
Article 17, paragraph 7, TEU enables the European Council to choose a candidate for the Presidency of the Commission “taking into account the elections of the European Parliament”. The ambiguous legal provision was developed and integrated by the Spitzenkandidaten practice: apparently, an attempt to give citizens the power to choose the President of the Commission through the EP elections. The chapter analyses the Spitzenkandidaten practice in order to investigate its nature. Under a legal perspective, it can be defined as an attempt to establish a constitutional convention, among European political parties and EU institutions. This non-written rule aimed at filling a gap left open by the Treaties is consistent with an old idea circulating among legal and political architects of the European integration, and while it appeared to succeed after the 2014 elections, it failed after the 2019 elections. Then, the chapter seeks to investigate some of the reasons for the 2019 outcome, arguing that they lie in the several ambiguities that have characterized this Constitutional convention since its inception: still undefined in between a kind of “direct election” of the Commission’s President, according to a premiership model, on the one side, and a confidence vote of the parliamentary majority, in compliance with the traditional parliamentary government, on the other side. Finally, the chapter wonders if there is something else at the root of these ambiguities, namely the tendency to overlook some of the specificities of the EU composite institutional system, assimilating it entirely, instead, to the functioning of national democracies, at least in the narrative used towards EP voters.
This chapter examines how Jean-Claude Juncker interpreted the mandate delivered by the Spitzenkandidaten procedure to lead a ‘political Commission’ and to introduce ‘new ways of working’, with a tier of vice presidents coordinating the implementation of the Commission President’s programme. It looks at how Commission staff viewed the Spitzenkandidaten process as well as these two features that characterised the Juncker model, across the organisation. The chapter also argues that the Juncker model of presidential leadership has proved to be enduring. Although Juncker is so far the only Commission President to have been appointed via the Spitzenkandidaten procedure, his Presidency extended the process of presidentialisation initiated by his predecessor, José Manuel Barroso, and has created a new model of presidentialism, that persisted under his successor, Ursula von der Leyen, even though she was not a Spitzenkandidat.
The Spitzenkandidaten system was envisaged as a way of transforming the character of elections to the European Parliament (EP). To gain a better understanding of how this ambitious aim has met empirical reality, we focus on political parties dealing with the European-wide lead candidates in EP electoral campaigns. More precisely, we study the perspective of political parties by drawing on Euromanifesto data. On the one hand, we analyse country differences and test whether European-wide lead candidates have generated more visibility in their home countries while, on the other, we take a closer look at the statements made about the Spitzenkandidaten principle in the respective Euromanifestos to learn more about the reasons for its potentially positive or negative assessment. Findings from these analyses allow for more detailed insights into the issue of transnational party competition in Europe. On top of examining previous and current trends, this contribution sets out what we might expect when it comes to the Spitzenkandidaten process for the upcoming 2024 EP elections.
The chapter situates the contribution of the book in the wider context, highlighting the crucial role played by the European Commission and its President within the political system of the European Union, and emphasising the value of the systematic assessment of the evolution and implications of executive leadership appointment. The introduction motivates the interest in a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the post-Lisbon changes and chiefly the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process from the early stages of nominee selection, through the campaign, election, and post-appointment phases. This chapter considers the evolution of leadership selection in the EU and the extant literature on the Spitzenkandidaten process situating the insights of the 12 substantive contributions addressing the politicisation of the Commission presidency through multiple disciplinary lenses. In doing so, the chapter sets out how the book takes stock 10 years after the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process, providing a multifaceted assessment of the complex changes in selection of the EU’s executive leadership, going beyond overly simplistic dichotomies such as success and failure.
Se analiza la figura del “SPITZENKANDIDATEN” en la elección del presidente de la Comisión de la Unión Europea en el año 2019. Se da cuenta del incumplimiento de lo implícito bajo esa denominación: que el Presidente de la Comisión surgiera del candidato propuesto por el grupo político del Parlamento Europeo con más votos en la última elección parlamentaria. Se proponen alternativas para su implementación.
This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament's powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU) political system, focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament's possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012 to 2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. This title is Open Access.
How socially distorted is the higher turnout in the European elections 2019? European elections have been perceived as second-order elections and elite elections since 1979 and in almost all member states the turnout is significantly lower than in the respective national main elections. At the same time, Herbert Tingsten’s political science “law” describes a lower voter turnout as a more distorted turnout. Against this background, it can be assumed that the 2019 European elections will have a lesser social imbalance in voter turnout than is the case with the main elections. Although we know a lot about why citizens vote or do not vote in elections, it is the social imbalance in EU voter turnout in national and especially European elections that has received little scientific attention so far. The aim of this chapter is to present the social imbalance in European elections and to compare the effects with national main elections. The quantitative analysis is based on data from representative election statistics and includes voter turnout and various socio-economic indicators. This avoids uncertainties that would arise from survey data. By focusing on the small-scale level of urban neighbourhoods, the unit of analysis becomes more homogeneous than the usually analysed regions or complete Member States. Eventually, we notice a pan-European problem: despite higher voter turnout in national and European parliamentary elections in 2019 certain social groups are significantly underrepresented. Throughout the EU, participation is much less likely for socio-economically weaker citizens. This social imbalance in voter participation threatens the ideal of political equality and is thus directly linked to the democratic deficit of the European Union.KeywordsVoter turnoutEuropean electionsSecond-order electionsLegitimacySocio-economic imbalanceUnemploymentSmall scale city-district level
The relations between the European Parliament and the European Council have turned into a significant issue for the legitimacy and balance of powers in the Union’s institutional architecture. Building on previous theoretical models and throughout the analysis of key events, in particular the COVID-19 crisis and the negotiations around the MFF and Recovery Fund, the chapter sets out to assess the relationship between these two institutions between 2019 and the first half of 2021. Three mid-term scenarios for the power dynamics between the two institutions in the time frame 2020–2024 will be presented.KeywordsEuropean CouncilEuropean ParliamentInstitutional balanceLegitimacySpitzenkandidatenRecovery FundCOVID-19Crises
“European Studies”, as a discipline dedicated to the analysis of the EU, is structured in various schools, which offer as many interpretations of what the EU is and what governs its progress. From this complex debate three dominant visions emerge—intergovernmentalism, neo-functionalism and post-functionalism—which can be used to better understand the current developments of the EU political system. For instance, they can shed light on the complex appointment process of the von der Leyen Commission which was quite conflictual and messy. It highlighted the tensions between various visions of the EU and the deep disagreement among actors on the role of the EP in the process. Some national leaders were expecting the EP to approve what had been negotiated within the European Council with the elected President of the Commission. However, despite the failure of the Spitzenkandidaten process, or because of it, most MEPs intended to exert real control over the commissioners-designate. This tension peaked with the rejection of French commissioner-designate Sylvie Goulard. This paper assesses this sequence through the lenses of the main theories of European integration. By doing so, it aims at improving our understanding of the existing institutional dynamics within the EU political system.KeywordsEuropean electionsEuropean commissionEuropean parliamentSpitzenkandidatenNeo-functionalismPost-functionalismIntergovernmentalismFirst occurrence of key wordMost relevant occurrence of key word
This chapter aims to situate the von der Leyen Commission historically and comparatively. As well as providing a provisional performance of the administration at mid-term, it assesses what the appointment and achivements of Ursula von der Leyen as a non-Spitzenkandidat demonstrates about the institutionalisation of presidentialised and personalised leadership of the Commission.KeywordsUrsula von der LeyenCommission presidentPresidentialisationEuropean commissionCovid-19 pandemicSix prioritiesFirst occurrence of key wordMost relevant occurrence of key word
In the run-up to the 2019 European Parliament elections, European political families nominated their candidates to become president of the European Commission, as they had done previously in 2014. Although this so-called Spitzenkandidaten system was claimed to have played a significant role during the election campaign, in the end none of the candidates became Commission President. In the political battle between the European Parliament and the European Council to decide about the EU’s executive top job, the European Council was able to overrule the newly elected Parliament. As a way of Wiedergutmachung vis-à-vis the Parliament, Commission President von der Leyen promised to strengthen the EU’s parliamentary democracy. The question is, however, what this means exactly, and what role the European political families, the true supporters of the Spitzenkandidaten, will play.KeywordsEuropean Parliament
Spitzenkandidaten
European political partiesEuropean UnionEuropean ElectionsEuropean Political Families
The turbulent times the European Union witnessed over the last years together with the increased competences for the European Parliament call for closer examination of political groups as core actors in this setting. In this introductory chapter, we engage with political groups as unique alliances of national party delegations and the context they operate in. We first discuss the core features of the political groups and then proceed to present new inroads into studying their functions, work and practices. By engaging with broader questions of democracy and what political groups research can contribute, we suggest that theorising the democratic functioning within the EP allows casting a critical eye on democratic practices and the growing salience of the political groups. The chapter closes by introducing the chapters of the volume which provide new insights into the practices of political groups, the dynamics and power relations between them and, thus, decision-making and policy-making in the European Parliament.
What has been the impact of the finance regime on the internal organization and activities of the European political parties and foundations? This chapter sets out both the beneficial and the unfavourable effects of the funding rules for European party democracy. On the one hand, the introduction of public funding has broadened the ideological scope of the European party system, including the involvement of even the most outspoken Eurosceptics. On the other hand, several aspects of the regulatory framework—especially since the last revisions—might induce a petrification of the European party system, with benefits provided to the established parties and thresholds created for newcomers. Similarly, while most Europarties have been able to reduce their dependence on their corresponding political group in the European Parliament and the larger Europarties have professionalized their organization, they remain to a large extent umbrella organizations of their national member parties. The funding rules do not include any incentives for a stronger involvement of citizens in the Europarty organization, which hampers their embeddedness in society. In addition, the latest regulatory changes have made it more difficult for Europarties to conduct transnational campaigns during the European elections, with negative consequences for the Europeanization of these elections.
The personalization of politics represents a growing research field in European studies. Yet, despite this, an institutional sphere of politics remained rather overlooked. This article aims to fill this gap, focusing on the only European Union (EU) institution with legitimacy derived directly from EU citizens: the European Parliament (EP). This study brings new insights about political behaviour within the EP and provides an original approach for studying (not only) EP politics. Based on quantitative content analysis we conclude that politics in the EP has become to some extent more personalized. However, despite the enhancement of (some) individuals' positions within the EP, collective actors have not lost their dominant positions. The personalization can be observed primarily in the field of parliamentary procedure. In agenda-setting and internal decision-making, personalization occurred as well. Any possibility of individual actors to affect the EP's internal organization remains very limited.
The European Union remains an ambivalent polity. This uncertainty complicates the assessment of its democratic and federal quality. Drawing on comparative federalism research can contribute not only to making sense of whether, or rather which kind of federalism the EU has developed. It can also enable addressing such a compounded, but necessary inquiry into the federal and democratic character of the EU and how to ascertain which type of democratic government for which type of federal union may be appropriate. The article first elaborates a framework to assess the dimensions of federal and democratic government, drawing on comparative federalism research to delineate basic types of federal democracy. Here the democratic dimension of government is taken as referring primarily to the horizontal division of powers (among ‘branches’) of government, the federal dimension to the vertical division of powers (among ‘levels’) of governments. The framework is applied to the government of the EU in order to gauge its own type(s) of division of power arrangements and the interlinkage between them. Finally, the discussion reflects on whether or rather how the EU could comprise a federal democracy , especially in light of recent crisis challenges and subsequent institutional developments in EU governance.
Focusing on the notion of politicisation, this chapter explores to what extent the lead candidates process for the European Commission’s Presidency (Spitzenkandidaten) rendered the emergence of a European Twittersphere plausible. The empirical analysis provided here entails quantitative and qualitative elements on the Spitzenkandidaten process during the 2014 and 2019 European parliamentary elections: To what extent did the process become a trend on Twitter? On which issues did Twitter users focus during the campaign? To what extent did the lead candidates generate political contestation across member states? Which was the geographical distribution of Twitter users and tweets related to the process? Through which language did Twitter users mostly communicate? The findings further the discussion on the impact of social media on the democracy and the politicisation of the EU, as well as the establishment of an online European public sphere.
The aim of the article is to investigate how a change in the election method of the President of the European Commission influenced of the political system of the European Union.Given the 2014 election results and the consequences of actions taken by the European Council in 2019, a question arises: what opportunities did the party families hope to be brought by The Spitzenkandiaten process? Did it strengthen cooperation among national parties belonging to the same European party during the campaign? How has the role of the European parties in the EU’s political system changed?
Legal advisers working in the institutions of the European Union exercise significant power, but very little is known about their work. Notwithstanding the handful of cases where legal matters find their way into the news, legal advice remains invisible in EU policy making. For more than ten years Päivi Leino-Sandberg was a part of the invisible community of EU legal advisers, and participated in the exercise of their power. In this book, she shares her insights about how law and lawyers work in the EU institutions, and what their role and impact is on EU decisions from within the decision-making structure. She draws on interviews with over sixty EU lawyers and policymakers: legal experts who interpret the Treaties within the Institutions, draft legislation and defend the Institutions before the EU Court. Telling the true stories behind key negotiations, this book explores the interplay and tensions between legal requirements and political ambitions.
Legal advisers working in the institutions of the European Union exercise significant power, but very little is known about their work. Notwithstanding the handful of cases where legal matters find their way into the news, legal advice remains invisible in EU policy making. For more than ten years Päivi Leino-Sandberg was a part of the invisible community of EU legal advisers, and participated in the exercise of their power. In this book, she shares her insights about how law and lawyers work in the EU institutions, and what their role and impact is on EU decisions from within the decision-making structure. She draws on interviews with over sixty EU lawyers and policymakers: legal experts who interpret the Treaties within the Institutions, draft legislation and defend the Institutions before the EU Court. Telling the true stories behind key negotiations, this book explores the interplay and tensions between legal requirements and political ambitions.
Since the introduction of “Spitzenkandidaten” for the presidency of the European Commission, elections to the European Parliament have been characterised by the dynamic between an increasingly transnational election campaign and a national electoral process. However, the implementation of a European election campaign focusing on transnational top candidates remains controversial because it is still unclear to what extent nationally formed political predispositions such as party identification can serve as heuristics for assessing a transnational election campaign. Though TV duels as miniature campaigns directly open up this antagonism, research at the European level remains limited. Drawing on data from a field study consisting of virtualised real-time-response measurement and survey data of 157 participants, we show that expressive party identification as a heuristic is considerably constrained in transnational debates’ reception, while being complemented by instrumental aspects such as candidate orientations and ideological attitudes.
A key component of democratic accountability is that citizens understand 'who is to blame'. Nonetheless, little is known about how citizens attribute responsibility in the European Union or how those perceptions of responsibility matter. This book presents the first comprehensive account of how citizens assign blame to the EU, how politicians and the media attempt to shift blame and finally, how it matters for electoral democracy. Based on rich and unique data sources, Blaming Europe? sheds light on all three aspects of responsibility in the EU. First, it shows that while institutional differences between countries shape citizen judgements of EU responsibility, those judgements are also highly determined by pre-existing attitudes towards the EU. Second, it demonstrates that neither politicians nor the media assign much blame to the EU. Third, it establishes that regardless of whether voters are capable of accurately assigning responsibility, they are not able to hold their EU representatives to account via the ballot box in European elections due to the lack of an identifiable 'European government' to reward or punish. As a consequence, when citizens hold the EU responsible for poor performance, but are unable to sanction an EU incumbent, they lose trust in the EU as a whole instead. In conclusion, it argues that this 'accountability deficit' has significant implications for the future of the European Union.
Governing parties generally win fewer votes at European Parliament elections than
at national electionsmost common explanation for this is that European elections
are ‘second order national elections’ acting as mid-term
referendums on government performance. This article proposes an alternative,
though complementary, explanation: voters defect because governing parties are
generally far more pro-European than the typical voter. Additionally, the more
the campaign context primes Eurosceptic sentiments, the more likely voters are
to turn against governing parties. A multi-level model is used to test these
propositions and analyse the effects of individual and contextual factors at the
1999 and 2004 European Parliament elections. Both European and domestic concerns
matter to voters; moreover, campaign context plays an important role in shaping
vote choices.
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and characterisation of the rejection of the Europ ean Constitutional Treaty by a majority of voters in Fr ance's referendum held on 29 May 2005. Whilst pointing to the salience of political discontent with the incum bent right-wing government and some elements of the longstanding crisis in French national party politi cs, the analysis places the emphasis on the central role played by social issues in the referendum, the transpositi on at the European level of the mechanism of the ev aluation by voters of traditional parties' performances and res ponsiveness to the country's social malaise and the unilateral termination by a majority of left-wing voters of th e social welfare and economic growth confidence pact that they had made with their national political elites on the occasion of the Maastricht referendum in 199 2;
With the European Parliament comprising politicians from many different countries, cultures, languages, national parties and institutional backgrounds, one might expect politics in the Parliament to be highly-fragmented and unpredictable. By studying more than 12,000 recorded votes between 1979 and 2004 this 2007 book establishes that the opposite is in fact true: Transnational parties in the European Parliament are highly cohesive and the classic 'left-right' dimension dominates voting behaviour. Furthermore, the cohesion of parties in the European Parliament has increased as the powers of the Parliament have increased. The authors suggest that the main reason for these developments is that like-minded MEPs have incentives to form stable transnational party organizations and to use these organizations to compete over European Union policies. They suggest that this is a positive development for the future of democratic accountability in the European Union. © Simon Hix, Abdul G. Noury and Gerard Roland 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
This study is a cross-national comparative content analysis of the coverage of European Union politics in British, Danish, Dutch, French, and German television news. The study identifies key characteristics of the coverage and investigates influences shaping the coverage. In the majority of countries studied, EU politics was marginally represented in national television news. EU officials, too, were absent in the news. However, if the EU was covered, EU politics was more prominently presented than other political news. Three influences were found to positively contribute to the amount and prominence of EU news: it was more prominent in public broadcasting news programs, in countries with higher levels of public satisfaction with democracy, and during periods around EU summits. The visibility of EU officials in television news was highest in public news programs. The findings suggest that, with EU coverage being of limited visibility and without protagonists, the Europeanization of television news coverage is more an illusion than reality.
This article analyses the news coverage of the 2004 European parliamentary elections in all 25 member states of the European Union (EU). It provides a unique pan-European overview of the campaign coverage based on an analysis of three national newspapers and two television newscasts in the two weeks leading up to the elections. On average, the elections were more visible in the 10 new member states than in the 15 old EU member states. The political personalities and institutional actors featured in news stories about the elections were generally national political actors and not EU actors. When evaluative, the news in the old EU-15 was generally negative towards the EU, whereas in the new countries a mixed pattern was found. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of the literature on the EU’s legitimacy and communication deficit.
List of tables List of figures Preface Part I. The News Media and Civic Malaise: 1. The news media and democracy 2. Evaluating media performance 3. Understanding political communications Part II. Trends in Political Communication: 4. The decline of newspapers? 5. The rise (and fall?) of the television age 6. The emerging internet era 7. The evolution of campaign communications 8. The rise of the post-modern campaign? Part III. The Impact on Democracy: 9. Negative news, negative public? 10. Knows little? Information and choice 11. Cares less? Cynical media, cynical public? 12. Stays home? Political mobilization 13. American exceptionalism? 14. A virtuous circle? Technical appendix Notes Select bibliography Author index Subject index.
Why has turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections remained so low, despite attempts to expand the Parliament’s powers? One possible answer is that because little is at stake in these second-order elections only those with an established habit of voting, acquired in previous national elections, can be counted on to vote. Others argue that low turnout is an indication of apathy or even scepticism towards Europe. This article conducts a critical test of the “little at stake” hypothesis by focusing on a testable implication: that turnout at these elections will be particularly low on the part of voters not yet socialized into habitual voting. This proposition is examined using both time-series cross-section analyses and a regression discontinuity design. Our findings show that EP elections depress turnout as they inculcate habits of non-voting, with long-term implications for political participation in EU member states.
Giandomenico Majone and Andrew Moravcsik have argued that the EU does not suffer a 'democratic deficit'. We disagree about one key element: whether a democratic polity requires contestation for political leadership and over policy. This aspect is an essential element of even the 'thinnest' theories of democracy, yet is conspicuously absent in the EU. Copyright 2006 The Author(s).
Arguments about Europe’s democratic deficit are really arguments about the nature and ultimate goals of the integration process. Those who assume that economic integration must lead to political integration tend to apply to European institutions standards of legitimacy derived from the theory and practice of parliamentary democracies. We argue that such standards are largely irrelevant at present. As long as the majority of voters and their elected representatives oppose the idea of a European federation, while supporting far-reaching economic integration, we cannot expect parliamentary democracy to flourish in the Union. Economic integration without political integration is possible only if politics and economics are kept as separate as possible. The depoliticisation of European policy-making is the price we pay in order to preserve national sovereignty largely intact. These being the preferences of the voters, we conclude that Europe’s ‘democratic deficit’ is democratically justified.
The expression ‘democratic deficit,’ however, is also used to refer to the legitimacy problems of non-majoritarian institutions, and this second meaning is much more relevant to a system of limited competences such as the EC. Now the key issues for democratic theory are about the tasks which may be legitimately delegated to institutions insulated from the political process, and how to design such institutions so as to make independence and accountability complementary and mutually supporting, rather than antithetical. If one accepts the ‘regulatory model’ of the EC, then, as long as the tasks delegated to the European level are precisely and narrowly defined, non-majoritarian standards of legitimacy should be sufficient to justify the delegation of the necessary powers.
Voters behave differently in European Parliament (EP) elections compared to national elections because less is at stake in these ‘second‐order’ elections. While this explains the primary characteristic of EP elections, it has often led to a conflation of distinct motivations for changing behaviour – namely sincere and protest voting. By distinguishing these motivations, this article addresses the question of when and why voters alter their behaviour in EP elections. In addition, it argues that the degree of politicisation of the EU in the domestic debate shapes the extent to which voters rely on EU, rather than national, considerations. These propositions are tested in a multilevel analysis in 27 countries in the 2009 EP elections. The findings have important implications for understanding why voters change their behaviour between different types of elections.
Why have the national governments of EU member states successively endowed the European Parliament with supervisory, budgetary, and legislative powers over the past fifty years? Building Europe's Parliament sheds new light on this pivotal issue, and provides a major contribution to the study of the European Parliament.
Rittberger develops a theory of delegation to representative institutions in international politics which combines elements of democratic theory and different strands of institutionalist theory. To test the plausibility of his theory, Rittberger draws on extensive archival material and offers theory-guided, in-depth case studies of three landmark decisions in the history of the European Parliament: the creation of the Common Assembly of the ECSC in 1951 and the concomitant acquisition of supervisory powers vis-à-vis the quasi-executive High Authority; the delegation of budgetary powers following the signing of the Treaty of Luxembourg in 1970; and the delegation of legislative powers resulting from the adoption of the Single European Act signed in 1986. This is followed by the charting of more recent key developments, culminating in the adoption of the Constitutional Treaty in 2004. The book provides a welcome addition to the literature on institutional design by reflecting on the conditions under which governments opt for the creation and empowerment of parliamentary institutions in international politics. It also makes a valuable contribution to the application of democratic theory to the study of the European Union by demonstrating that political elites shared the view that the new supranational polity which emerged from the debris of World War II suffered from 'democratic deficit' since its inception, thus disproving the claim that the lamented 'democratic deficit' is a recent phenomenon. Winner of the European Union Studies Association Prize for Best Dissertation 2002-2004.
Increasing politicization in EU member states about European issues can be expected to strengthen the impact of attitudes towards Europe on vote choice in European Parliament (EP) elections. At the same time this impact is likely to vary between voters and contexts as a function of political information. This study explores the role of political information in explaining individual and contextual heterogeneity in the degree of EU issue voting. Using a two-step hierarchical estimation procedure to explore both individual and contextual variation, we show that while EU issue voting in the 2009 EP elections is only slightly more pronounced among the politically sophisticated, it is clearly more extensive in contexts that provide higher levels of political information on European matters.
1. Political Democracy in a Capitalist Economy 2. Negative and Positive Integration 3. Regulatory Competition and Re-Regulation 4. National Solutions without Boundary Control 5. The European Contribution Conclusion: Multi-level Problem-Solving in Europe References Index
Reif and Schmitt argued that elections to the European Parliament should be understood as second-order national elections, and advanced several predictions about the results of such elections. Those concerning the impact of government status, party size, party character and the national election cycle on electoral performance are examined here using data on four sets of European Parliament elections. In addition, the consequences of European Parliament elections for the next national election are explored. The analysis demonstrates the validity of most of Reif and Schmitt's original propositions, and further refines their analysis of the relationship between European and subsequent national elections. However, all propositions hold much more effectively in countries where alternation in government is the norm, suggesting that the distinction between first-order and second-order elections may not be so clear cut as Reif and Schmitt imagined.
The composition of the directly elected European Parliament does not precisely reflect the “real” balance of political forces in the European Community. As long as the national political systems decide most of what there is to be decided politically, and everything really important, European elections are additional national second-order elections. They are determined more by the domestic political cleavages than by alternatives originating in the EC, but in a different way than if nine first-order national elections took place simultaneously. This is the case because European elections occur at different stages of the national political systems' respective “electoral cycles”. Such a relationship between a second-order arena and the chief arena of a political system is not at all unusual. What is new here, is that one second-order political arena is related to nine different first-order arenas. A first analysis of European election results satisfactorily justifies the assumption that European Parliament direct elections should be treated as nine simultaneous national second-order elections.
We investigate the dimensionality of politics in the European Parliament by applying a scaling method to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using these methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the European Union's only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which captures government-opposition conflicts as well as national and European party positions on European integration.
After six sets of European Parliament elections, do voters primarily use these elections to punish their national governments or to express their views on European issues? We answer this question by looking at all European elections (1979–2004) in all 25 EU states. We find that almost 40% of the volatility in party vote-shares in European elections compared to national elections is explained by the transfer of votes from large and governing parties to small and opposition parties. Nevertheless, anti-EU parties and green parties on average do better in European elections than in national elections. But these “European effects” are minor, and the position a party takes on Europe is largely irrelevant to its performance. Hence, despite the growing powers of the European Parliament, neither positions on matters regarding European integration, nor on matters regarding “normal” left-right policy, have much of an effect on electoral outcomes.
After seven waves of European Parliament elections and European Union enlargement to 27 states, the time is ripe to analyse the temporal robustness of the second-order model. We pool all the elections in a single evaluation and also look at election-by-election variations. We analyse changes in party performance over time in all EU states as well as in the ‘original 10’, to see whether any cross-time changes are driven by the changing composition of the EU. We also look for pan-European trends in each election, as a way identifying ‘European effects’ distinct from second-order effects. There are few consistent winners and losers, although socialist parties performed worse in the last three elections than their size and government status would predict.
The European Union seems incapable of undertaking economic reforms and defining its place in the world. Public apathy towards the EU is also increasing, as citizens feel isolated from the institutions in Brussels and see no way to influence European level decisions.
Taking a diagnosis and cure approach to the EU's difficulties, Simon Hix tackles these problems with distinct clarity and open-mindedness. What the EU needs, Hix contends, is more open political competition. This would promote policy innovation, foster coalitions across the institutions, provide incentives for the media to cover developments in Brussels, and enable citizens to identify who governs in the EU and to take sides in policy debates. The EU is ready for this new challenge. The institutional reforms since the 1980s have transformed the EU into a more competitive polity, and political battles and coalitions are developing inside and between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission.
This emerging politics should be more central to the Brussels policy process, with clearer coalitions and identifiable winners and losers, at least in the short term. The risks are low because the EU has multiple checks-and-balances. Yet, the potential benefits are high, as more open politics could enable the EU to overcome policy gridlock, rebuild public support, and reduce the democratic deficit. This indispensable book will be of great interest to students of the European politics, scholars, policy makers and anyone concerned with the future of the European Union.
The credibility crisis of Community regulation is symbolized by the recurrent food scares, and even more by official reactions such as the refusals of the German and French governments to abide by the decision of the Commission to lift the ban on exports of British beef. However, the crisis is not new, nor is it limited to food safety. Problems of regulatory credibility in the EC/EU arise at different levels. Some are rooted in the deep structure of the founding treaties, while other problems result from path-dependent aspects of the integration process, from institutional inertia, or from the pursuit of short-term advantages. This paper is primarily concerned with the second group of problems, but a short discussion of the more fundamental issues seems useful as a reminder of the limits of what can be achieved by piecemeal institutional engineering. The paper addresses two specific threats to credibility: the mismatch between the Community's highly complex and differentiated regulatory tasks and the available administrative instruments; and the problem of credible commitment caused by the increasing level of politicization and parliamentarization of the Commission. The solution to both sets of problems, it is argued, may be found in a more far-reaching delegation of powers to independent European agencies embedded in transnational networks of national regulators and international organizations. Recent theoretical advances in the area of institutional design and procedural controls suggest that such networks could be made to satisfy all reasonable requirements of subsidiarity, accountability and efficiency.
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Commission crusade: Cameron outmanoeuvred in battle over Juncker
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