scholarly journals Still second-order? European elections in the era of populism, extremism, and euroskepticism

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572098602
Author(s):  
Piret Ehin ◽  
Liisa Talving
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Second Order ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Recent Success ◽  
Potent Predictor ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Gains And Losses

The continued relevance of the second-order elections (SOE) theory is one of the most widely debated issues in the study of European Parliament (EP) elections. While the theory has been criticized from many angles, the recent success of populist, extremist, and Eurosceptic parties raises additional questions about the applicability of a model that depicts EP elections as a low-stakes affair revolving around national issues. This article tests the SOE model with party-level data from all 175 EP elections held between 1979 and 2019. While turnout in EP elections remains well below participation rates in national elections, the 2019 EP elections were marked by a significant reduction in the average turnout gap. Across all election years, party size is the most potent predictor of electoral gains and losses in EP elections. Incumbency is associated with electoral losses in most EP election years. These effects are moderated by the electoral cycle and the electoral system in some but not all years. The expectation that the SOE model performs worse in countries with fragmented party systems was not confirmed. All in all, the SOE model continues to wield significant explanatory power in both the West and the East.

scholarly journals Second-order effects or ideational rifts? Explaining outcomes of European elections in an era of populist politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-367
Author(s):  
Piret Ehin ◽  
Liisa Talving
Keyword(s):  
System Design ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Far Right ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Party Size ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Electoral Performance

AbstractThis article seeks to enhance our understanding of the European Parliament (EP) elections in an era of populist and anti-European Union (EU) politics. Specifically, it aims to evaluate both the conventional second-order elections theory as well as an alternative approach that regards EP elections as an arena for conflict between liberal-democratic Europeanism and populist, extremist and euroskeptic alternatives. It does so by deriving a series of hypotheses from both approaches and testing these with party-level data from all EU member states in the context of 2019 EP elections. Our results challenge both explanations. Party size is a robust predictor of electoral performance in EP elections, and its effect is moderated by electoral system design. While large parties lost votes across the EU, their losses were more pronounced in countries where national legislatures are elected under plurality or mixed systems. We find no evidence of incumbent losses or electoral cycle effects. Party-level populism, extremism and euroskepticism did not systematically predict electoral performance but party ideology appears to have moderated the effects of incumbency and party size. Incumbency was associated with vote gain among populist and far-right parties but not other parties, and the effect of size also varied across party ideologies. In sum, these results suggest that vote fragmentation in the 2019 EP elections is partly explained by electoral system design, while it was not driven by the desire to punish political incumbents. Populist and far-right parties in power appear to be particularly immune to punishing behavior often associated with EP elections.

A Vote Against Europe? Explaining Defection at the 1999 and 2004 European Parliament Elections

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara B. Hobolt ◽  
Jae-Jae Spoon ◽  
James Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Level Model ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
European Parliament Elections

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.

scholarly journals Zooming in on the ‘Europeanisation’ of national politics: A comparative analysis of six EU countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29
Author(s):  
Mariano Torcal ◽  
Toni Rodón
Keyword(s):  
Party Systems ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
National Politics ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Eu Countries ◽  
Eu Integration ◽  
Individual Distance ◽  
European Election ◽  
The Eu

This article empirically revisits and tests the effect of individual distance from parties on the EU integration dimension and on the left–right dimension for vote choice in both national and European elections. This analysis is based on the unique European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey panel data from seven EU countries. Our findings show that in most countries the effect of individual distance on the EU integration dimension is positive and significant for both European and national elections. Yet the effect of this dimension is not uniform across all seven countries, revealing two scenarios: one in which it is only relevant for Eurosceptic voters and the other in which it is significant for voters of most parties in the system. The first is mainly related to the presence of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the party supply, but the second, which indicates a more advanced level of Europeanisation of party systems, is not explained by most current theoretical and empirical contributions. We conclude by proposing two additional explanations for this latter scenario in which the EU integration dimension is present for most voters in both type of elections, including those voting for the main parties. Our findings and further discussion have implications for the understanding of the Europeanisation of national politics and its relationship with vote choice.

Testing the Second-Order Elections Model on the 2019 European Elections in Romania

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-374
Author(s):  
Nicoleta Lașan
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Second Order ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
New Type ◽  
Treaty Of Rome ◽  
Direct Elections ◽  
European Parliament Elections

"The Treaty of Rome adopted in 1957 included provisions on the elections of the then European Parliamentary Assembly elections, but it took more than two decades for the members of the European Parliament to be directly elected. Immediately after the first direct elections of the European Parliament in 1979, the second-order elections model was conceived in order to understand the new type of supranational but less important elections. The model includes several hypotheses deriving from the idea that in the European elections there is less at stake, so instead of having genuine EU elections, in reality there are now 27 simultaneous national elections. The paper tests the second order elections to see whether its hypotheses are valid in the case of 2019 EU elections in Romania. Keywords: European Union, European Parliament, elections, Romania, 2019."

scholarly journals The 2019 European Elections: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something green

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-313
Author(s):  
Mark N. Franklin ◽  
Luana Russo
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Turnout Rate ◽  
European Context

In the aftermath of a European Parliament (EP) election, there are normally two prominent aspects that receive attention by scholars and experts: the turnout rate and whether the Second Order Election (SOE) model proposed by Reif and Schmitt (1980) still applies. That model is based on the idea that, because EP elections do not themselves provide enough stimulus as to replace the concerns normally present at national elections, the outcomes of EP elections in any participating country manifest themselves as a sort of distorted mirror of national (Parliamentary) elections in that country. The mirror is distorted because those national concerns are modified, not so much by the concerns arising from the European context in which EP elections are held as simply by the fact that EP elections are not national elections. In particular, at EP elections, national executive power is not at stake. The same party or parties will rule in each country after an EP election as ruled there before.

scholarly journals Japan – U.S. Relations under the Abe Doctrine: Shifting Policy in East Asia Regional Stability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendra Manurung
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Recent Success ◽  
The Status ◽  
Post War

Reelection of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister provides a favorable climate for both Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to Japan and an improvement of Chinese-Japanese-U.S. bilateral relations. In the 22 October 2017 ballot, Abe’s dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito, secured a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral legislature. The coalition already holds a supermajority, required for amending the constitution, in the upper house. It justified Abe for calling the national elections a year earlier than needed to secure a public mandate for addressing the growing North Korean threat and to validate popular support for deepening national economic reforms, which have had recent success in boosting Japan’s growth rate and the stock market. Still the outcome gave Abe a mandate for his policies. However, his stewardship was unclear as several other factors contributed to LDP’s overwhelming victory. At the structural level, Japan’s first past the post-electoral system tends to amplify electoral wins in comparison to proportional representation systems. Abe’s foreign and security policies highly charged with ideological revisionism contain the potential to shift Japan onto a new international trajectory in East Asia. Its degree of articulation and energy makes for a doctrine capable of displacing the Yoshida Doctrine that has been Japan’s dominant grand strategy in the post-war period. Abe will remain pragmatic and not challenge the status quo. However, Abe has already begun to introduce radical policies that appear to transform national security, US-Japan alliance ties and relations with China and East Asia. The Abe Doctrine is dynamic but high risk. Abe’s revisionism contains fundamental contradictions that may ultimately limit national effectiveness.  

Testing the Second-Order Election Model after Four European Elections

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL MARSH
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
National Election ◽  
Second Order ◽  
National Elections ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Using Data ◽  
European Parliament Elections ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
The Impact

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.

Turnout in Multi-Level Systems

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Different Levels

Voters face different incentives to turn out to vote in one electoral arena versus another. Although turnout is lowest in European elections, it is found that the turnout is only slightly lower in regional than in national elections. Standard accounts suggest that the importance of an election, in terms of the policy-making power of the body to be elected, drives variation in turnout across elections at different levels. This chapter argues that this is only part of the story, and that voter attachment to a particular level also matters. Not all voters feel connected to each electoral arena in the same way. Although for some, their identity and the issues they most care about are linked to politics at the national level, for others, the regional or European level may offer the political community and political issues that most resonate with them.

scholarly journals Neopatrimonialism and Party Clientelism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teimuraz Kareli
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
The Government ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
The Right ◽  
Party Dominance ◽  
Ruling Party

The article deals with the features of formation of the party systems in the post-Soviet space. To understand the specific processes, the attention is focused on the inverse logic of the post-Soviet states, the basic features of which can be expressed by the concept of neopatrimonialism. In this context the functioning features of political parties, their principal tasks and the logic of creating the "power party" are described. The article examines the key criteria for the concept of the dominant party, such as its ability to consistently and steadily win the elections, the significant duration of its stay in power, as well as its personnel Control over the government. In the sociopolitical discourse the "power party" enjoys a privileged ideological position and has more opportunities compared to its competitors to appeal to voters. Along with that the party dominance reveals itself not only in its external manifestation (the stay in power), but also in the substantial one – the ability to exercise an effective political choice. The article analyzes the factors of sustainability of the "power party" systems: the historical merits of the "power party"; the ruling party’s ability to effectively take advantage of the electoral system; its strong relationships with the most affluent social groups and major corporations, as well as with the predominant ethnic or linguistic social groups; a privileged access of the ruling party to media resources. These factors are also effective in the polycentric political systems without any dominant party. However, under the dominant party systems they manifest themselves in a complex way, providing the ruling camp with a multi-layered protection due to a synergy effect. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of clientelism, widely used by the ruling party as a strategy of political mobilization. However, if discrimination arose by clientelism reaches the level that denies clients the right to choose, this is certainly not consistent with the rules of democracy.

On extreme value theory in the presence of technical trend: pre and post Covid-19 analysis of cryptocurrency markets

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saji Thazhungal Govindan Nair
Keyword(s):  
Market Efficiency ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Price Volatility ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Extreme Value ◽  
Technical Trading ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gains And Losses ◽  
Potential Maximum

Purpose Research on price extremes and overreactions as potential violations of market efficiency has a long tradition in investment literature. Arguably, very few studies to date have addressed this issue in cryptocurrencies trading. The purpose of this paper is to consider the extreme value modelling for forecasting COVID-19 effects on cryptocoin markets. Additionally, this paper examines the importance of technical trading indicators in predicting the extreme price behaviour of cryptocurrencies. Design/methodology/approach This paper decomposes the daily-time series returns of four cryptocurrency returns into potential maximum gains (PMGs) and potential maximum losses (PMLs) at first and then tests their lead–lag relations under an econometric framework. This paper also investigates the non-random properties of cryptocoins by computing the incremental explanatory power of PML–PMG modelling with technical trading indicators controlled. Besides, this paper executes an event study to identify significant changes caused by COVID-19-related events, which is capable of analysing the cryptocoin market overreactions. Findings The findings of this paper produce the evidence of both market overreactions and trend persistence in the potential gains and losses from coins trading. Extreme price behaviour explains volatility and price trends in crypto markets before and after the outbreak of a pandemic that substantiate the non-random walk behaviour of crypto returns. The presence of technical trading indicators as control variables in the extreme value regressions significantly improves the predictive power of models. COVID-19 crisis affects the market efficiency of cryptocurrencies that improves the usefulness of extreme value predictions with technical analysis. Research limitations/implications This paper strongly supports for the robustness of technical trading strategies in cryptocurrency markets. However, the “beast is moving quick” and uncertainty as to the new normalcy about the post-COVID-19 world puts constraint on making best predictions. Practical implications The paper contributes substantially to our understanding of the pricing efficiency of cryptocurrency markets after the COVID-19 outbreak. The findings of continuing return predictability and price volatility during COVID-19 show that profitable investment opportunities for cryptocoin traders are prevailing in pandemic times. Originality/value The paper is unique to understand extreme return reversals behaviour of cryptocurrency markets regarding events related to COVID-19 breakout.

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