scholarly journals Understanding leader evaluations in European Parliament elections

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110461
Author(s):  
Katjana Gattermann ◽  
Claes H. de Vreese
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Union Leader ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
High Knowledge ◽  
Antecedents And Consequences ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Individual ◽  
European Parliament Elections

Leader evaluations are a crucial aspect in representative democracy. We analyse the patterns, antecedents and consequences of European Union leader evaluations against the backdrop of the 2019 European Parliament elections in ten countries. The article shows, firstly, that leader evaluations are unidimensional, both among voters with low and high knowledge as well as partisans and non-partisans. Secondly, among the antecedents of leader evaluations, European Union trust and performance evaluations are positively associated with leader evaluations, while European identity hardly plays a role compared to other factors. Lastly, the positive effect of leader evaluations on vote choice is conditional upon the individual leader and their party affiliation. Our results have important implications for expectations towards and evaluations of European Union leadership in the long term.

scholarly journals Do Citizens Reward Place-Based Policy? Evidence from the European Union

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Senninger
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Election Results ◽  
European Parliament Elections

Governments redistribute ever larger shares of their budgets to enhance the economic performance of specific areas within their jurisdiction. However, there is little evidence about one of the most fundamental questions arising from such place-based policies: Do citizens reward politicians for funding that benefits their local environment? To answer this question, I turn to the European Union and leverage quasi-experimental data from an initiative that distributed vouchers to European municipalities to establish free and high-quality WiFI connectivity before the European Parliament election in 2019. Moreover, I analyze geolocated data about beneficiaries of two major European Union funds, European Parliament election results along with register data from polling stations, and a city-wide survey experiment in Denmark. The results show that European place-based policy has little to no impact on turnout and Eurosceptic voting in European Parliament elections. The findings are discussed in the light of the recently introduced European Union recovery fund to combat economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Time is of the essence: Explaining the duration of European Union lawmaking under the co-decision procedure

2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110364
Author(s):  
Adam Kirpsza
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Decision Procedure ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Issue Linkage ◽  
Rational Choice Institutionalism ◽  
Legislative Procedure ◽  
Ordinary Legislative Procedure ◽  
European Parliament Elections

The article explores factors affecting the duration of the co-decision procedure (currently the ordinary legislative procedure), the main procedure for adopting legislation in the European Union. Drawing from rational choice institutionalism, it expects the speed of co-decision to be determined by three attributes: the impatience of legislators, issue linkage and the characteristics of Council and European Parliament negotiators ( relais actors). The hypotheses are tested using survival analysis on a dataset of 599 controversial legislative acts submitted and enacted under co-decision between 1999 and 2009. The results show that co-decision proposals are decided faster when they are urgent, negotiated prior to the European Parliament elections and concluded through single proposal logrolls. By contrast, multi-proposal packages and the ideological distance between relais actors prolong decision-making. Overall, the article contributes to the literature by showing that the impatience of legislators, package deals and the properties of negotiators are relevant drivers of co-decision duration.

scholarly journals Do European elections enhance satisfaction with European Union democracy?

2020 ◽  
pp. 146511652097028
Author(s):  
Carolina Plescia ◽  
Jean-François Daoust ◽  
André Blais
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
National Identity ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Satisfaction With Democracy ◽  
Union Democracy ◽  
Important Message ◽  
European Parliament Elections

We provide the first individual-level test of whether holding supranational elections in the European Union fosters satisfaction with European Union democracy. First, we examine whether participation at the European Parliament election fosters satisfaction with democracy and whether, among those who participated, a winner–loser gap materializes at the EU level. Second, we examine under which conditions participating and winning in the election affect satisfaction with European Union democracy, focusing on the moderating role of exclusive national identity. Our approach relies on panel data collected during the 2019 European Parliament elections in eight countries. We demonstrate that while participating and winning increase satisfaction, such positive boost does not materialize among those with exclusive national identity. These findings hold an important message: elections are no cure to deep-seated alienation.

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."

Die neunten Direktwahlen zum Europäischen Parlament: Rahmenbedingungen, Parteien und Bürger in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 715-735
Author(s):  
Daniela Braun ◽  
Markus Tausendpfund
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
The Other ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Elections ◽  
The One ◽  
European Parliament Elections

Despite a higher turnout, the ninth elections to the European Parliament can still be considered as second-order elections . In Germany, the governing parties - in particular the CDU and SPD - experienced a significant loss compared to the 2017 Bundestag elections and the 2014 European elections, whereas the Greens are the winners . The article provides information on the conditions framing the European Parliament elections and focuses on political parties and citizens . The empirical findings show, on the one hand, that the European integration issue is more salient in the manifestos than generally assumed and, on the other hand, that citizens’ knowledge of the European Union continues to be low . Against this background, turnout, electoral choices and reasons for these are discussed . Moreover, the composition of the newly elected European Parliament and possible implications are described . [ZParl, vol . 50 (2019), no . 4, pp . 715 - 735]

scholarly journals Communicating Political Positions on European Issues: A Comparison of Parties and Newspapers in Seven Countries

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992095200
Author(s):  
Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann ◽  
Beatrice Eugster
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
National Quality ◽  
European Parliament Elections

This article starts from the observation that most voters know relatively little about positions and plans of political parties, especially when European Union politics is concerned. One reason for this could be that the main sources for political information, party communication and mass media coverage, provide voters only little concrete information about positions and plans of political parties. We ask how concretely, respectively vaguely, political parties and mass media communicate political positions prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all European Union–related press releases from 46 national political parties and of all European Union–related articles of 14 national quality newspapers from 7 European countries 12 weeks before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our analysis shows that press releases as well as media coverage contain more concrete political positions on European Union issues than vague political statements. Other than expected, newspaper coverage provided the public with less concrete information than political actors did. Nevertheless, countries vary with regard to the extent to which party communication or newspaper coverage contain vague statements. We cannot find empirical support that the communication of concrete political positions depends on a party’s “extremity” of issue position or on the type of issue.

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