What voters teach us about Europe-Wide elections: What Europe-Wide elections teach us about voters

Pergamon Electoral Studies, Vol. 15. No. 2, pp. 149-166, 1996

Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0261-3794/96 $15.00+0.00 S0261--3794(96)00009--1

What Voters Teach Us About Europe-Wide Elections: What Europe-Wide Elections

Teach Us About Voters*

CEES VAN DER EIJK

Department o f Political Science, University of Amsterdam, 1012 -DL Amsterdam, The Netherlands

MARK FRANKLIN

Department of Political Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-3474, USA

MICHAEL MARSH

Department o f Political Science, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

With four sets of European parliamentary elections now behind us, it is appropriate to review the prevailing interpretation of such elections as second-order national elections, a view first put forward by Reif and Schmitt in 1980. While the second-order model has yielded important insights into the way European elections can be understood as manifesting national political processes, more recent research has fruitfully turned the model on its head, and focused on what European elections can tell us about national elections and the nature of the voting act. Indeed, the use of individual-level survey data to study elections to the European Parliament has for the first time truly shown us the importance of institutional and political context in conditioning turnout and party choice. Findings of recent research suggest that the second-order features of European elections should be thought of as contextual variables that can affect other elections as well. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.

The fact that e lec t ions to the European Par l iament (EP) are different f rom e lec t ions

to nat ional par l iaments in European Union (EU) m e m b e r count r i es has b e e n ev iden t

f rom the t ime of the very first o f these Europe-wide elect ions, he ld in J tme 1979.

Turnou t in such e lec t ions is low, major part ies general ly do badly ( c o m p a r e d to

thei r p e r f o r m a n c e in adjacent nat ional e lec t ions) and small part ies of ten do be t t e r

than in nat ional e lect ions . Wri t ing in the immedia t e af termath of the 1979 European

elect ions, Reif and Schmit t (1980) p r o p o s e d a way of th inking about these e lec t ions

that w o u l d accoun t for the i r characteris t ics . This was to regard t h e m not pr imari ly

*The authors would like to thank Hermann Schmitt and, especially, Christopher Wlezien for helpful comments.

150 What Voters Teach Us About Europe-Wide Elections

as European but as 'second-order' n a t i o n a l elections, presenting voters with little stimulus other than their habitual national party context.

A more recent strand of research, instead of seeking to understand European elections as manifestations of national political processes, has sought to employ them as venues for studying the voting act. Europe-wide elections provide a unique laboratory for such investigations, since the countries of the EU have a wide variety of institutional arrangements--arrangements which have been supposed to affect voting behaviour. Because European elections are conducted simultaneously in such different settings, they provide an unparalleled view of the working of contextual factors. Indeed, the most important difference between studying voters in a European as opposed to a national election is the need to explicitly take contextual differences between political systems into account. This strand of research also turned the Reif and Schmitt perspective on its head by enquiring what consequences European elections have had for national political processes.

After four Europe-wide elections and much accumulated research, it is perhaps time to take stock of what we have learned. In this paper we undertake such an exercise, with the benefit of data from all European elections up to and including 1994: one election in which 10 countries took part and three in which 12 countries took part--Spain and Portugal having joined the (then) European Community (EC) only in 1985. These 46 instances of national participation in European elections have provided material for a great deal of electoral research, 1 and in this paper we will review the most important f'mdings.

The Second-Order Elect ion Model and its Limi ta t ions

The outcome of a national election in a parliamentary regime determines the allocation of seats within the legislature to different parties, and hence the relative claims of each party to control the apparatus of government. Thus, Reif and Schmitt see general elections for parliament in European countries, as in most parliamentary systems, as 'first-order' elections. Other elections, such as those for local offices, are less important, precisely because they play no role in deciding who governs the country. 2 In Reif and Schmitt's terminology, these are called 'second-order' national elections, as are elections to choose a non-executive head of state.3 But these second- order elections are characterized by the same party system and are fought by the same parties as first-order elections, something that makes the relationship between fn'st-order and second-order national elections particularly interesting. The most important distinction is that, in second-order national elections, "there is less at stake as compared to first-order elections" (Reif, 1985, 8). European elections, like local elections, are second-order national elections because executive power is not at issue. The political complexion of the European Commission is not affected by them, much less that of national governments whose members control the EU's Council of Ministers. Indeed, even if the composition of the European Commission were affected by European elections, arguably those elections would remain second-order as long as national political concerns remained pre-eminent in the minds of voters.

Reif and Schmitt's fundamental assertion is that outcomes of second-order national elections cannot be separated from those of first-order elections conducted in the same political system. Concerns that are appropriate to the first-order arena will affect behaviour in second-order national elections, even though, ostensibly, second-order elections are about something quite different. In particular, what is

CEES VAN DER EIJK, MARK FRANKLIN AND MICHAEL MARSH 151

i m p o r t a n t is "the pol i t ica l s i tuat ion o f the f i rs t -order a rena at t he m o m e n t w h e n the s e c o n d - o r d e r e l ec t ion is be ing held" (Reif, 1985, 8).

Reif and Schmit t d e v e l o p e d severa l a rgumen t s on the basis of the i r p remises . The first is that , b e c a u s e c i t izens co r r ec t ly c o n s i d e r Eu ropean e lec t ions to be less important for the a l loca t ion o f g o v e r n m e n t p o w e r , t hey wil l b e less inc l ined to tu rn ou t and voteA The s e c o n d is that , b e c a u s e t h e r e is less at stake, t hose w h o do vo te may no t vo te the same w a y as in a f i rs t -order e lec t ion . In w h a t w a y t hey migh t vo te differently, o f course , d e p e n d s on w h a t mot iva tes p e o p l e in f i rs t -order e lec t ions , bu t one cons ide ra t ion s ingled ou t by Reif and Schmit t is vo te r s ' c o n c e r n w i th choosing a gove rnmen t , o r at least w i th inf luenc ing the fo rma t ion o f one. Thus, s o m e o n e migh t vo te for a small pa r ty in a European e l ec t ion bu t hes i ta te to do so in a na t iona l e l ec t ion for fear that the vo te w o u l d be 'was ted ' . s The f i rs t -order c o n t e x t i tself may also in f luence b e h a v i o u r in the s e c o n d - o r d e r e lec t ion . For ins tance, gove rn ing par t ies may be adverse ly af fec ted in the s e c o n d - o r d e r e l ec t ion if the i r ' no rmal '

s u p p o r t e r s w i t h h o l d the i r votes , as a w a y of c o m m e n t i n g on unsa t i s fac tory govern- m e n t p e r f o r m a n c e to date, k n o w i n g that such a w a rn ing wil l no t actual ly resul t in a change of gove rnmen t . These a rgumen t s enab le us to charac te r i ze h y p o t h e s i z e d d i f fe rences b e t w e e n European e lec t ions and na t ional e lec t ions as fol lows:

- - t u r n o u t wil l be l o w e r in European e lec t ions ; - - l a r g e r par t ies wil l do w o r s e and smal le r par t ies wil l do bet ter ; and - - n a t i o n a l g o v e r n m e n t par t ies wil l suffer losses.

Of course , smal ler par t ies are o f ten n e w and f r equen t ly m o r e radical than larger par t ies , leading to the subs id ia ry p r o p o s i t i o n that n e w and radical par t ies w o u l d t end to be advan taged in European e lec t ions (Reif, 1984).

Most of these p r o p o s i t i o n s r ece ived at least p r e l imina ry val ida t ion f rom studies o f individual European e lec t ions and, in the case of tu rnout , all European e lec t ions up to and inc lud ing those o f 1989 (Reif, 1984, 1985; Curt ice, 1989; Niedermayer , 1990). Table 1 summar izes the actual pa t t e rn found across European e lec t ions and ad jacen t f i rs t -order e lec t ions dur ing a p e r i o d s tar t ing shor t ly be fore the European e lec t ions of 1979 and end ing in D e c e m b e r 1994. O n average, t u rnou t is i n d e e d lower , g o v e r n m e n t par t ies do lose votes, and pa r ty sys tems do b e c o m e m o r e f r a g m e n t e d - - i n d i c a t i n g m o r e vo tes for smal ler p a r t i e s - - c o m p a r e d w i th the previous na t iona l e lec t ion . On the o t h e r hand, e x c e p t in the case o f tu rnout , average d i f fe rences are no t large; in eve ry case, inc lud ing turnout , t he s tandard dev ia t ion

TABLE 1. Average turnout, support for government parties and fragmentation between European parliamentary elections and prior national election, 1976-94

Prior EP Difference SD of national election difference election

Turnout 81.70 63.20 18.50 15.20 Government support 48.60 43.10 5.50 7.50 Rae's Fragmentation Index 0.74 0.77 0.03 0.04

Sources: National elections from Mackie and Rose (1990) (updated in the EJPR 1990-) and European election results from the coUections by Mackie and Craig (1980, 1985) and Mackie (1991). 1994 materials supplied by the EP Office in Dublin. Data on government was obtained from Woldendorp et al. (1990); subsequent issues of EJPR and, most recently, press reports.


approaches or exceeds this average difference, indicating a great deal of unexpla ined variance. Moreover, we do not know how far the different features are interconnected. In particular, how far is the decline of government suppor t due to the fact that governments tend to be made up of larger parties?

More importantly, the idea that voters might wi thhold their support from govern- ing p a r t i e s - - o r from whatever party they might have voted for if national political p o w e r had been directly at s t ake- -as a means of comment ing on their performance raises a whole host of questions that Reif and Schmitt do not address. Why comment on national poli t ics in a European election? Whose behaviour might be affected by such a comment? Under what circumstances might such a comment be most telling? One possibili ty is that some voters might use a European election to try to affect the behaviour of polit ical parties and their leaders, particularly when a national election is near. 6 If they do this, then we would expec t to see different voting pat terns in European elections held shortly before national elections than in European elections held earlier in the national electoral cycle. In the immediate aftermath of a national election there would be no reason to comment on the performance of a party and voters could "vote with the heart" in Reif and Schmitt 's terminology (see below); but as a national election came closer we would expec t the impor tance of the elect ion as a means of influencing national politics to increase and voting behaviour to change as a reflection of voters ' at tempts to exercise influence. If this happens, then two questions arise: (1) in what way does voting behaviour change in these circumstances; and (2) to what extent does this difference in behaviour influence events? Specifically, to what extent are domestic political developments affected by European elections and the behaviour of voters in those

elections? In the remainder of this paper we will take a closer look at turnout and party

choice in European elections and at the consequences of these elections for the national and European arenas, enquiring to what extent the second-order model has he lped us to understand these important matters and to what extent European election behaviour may illuminate behaviour in other spheres.

Turnout: W h o Votes?

We have already seen that fewer people vote in European elections than in national ones. Indeed, turnout is often even lower in European parl iamentary elections than in other second-order national elections (Reif, 1985, Table 1.5). The lower turnout in European elections has been explained largely by the fact that Europe has had little salience with the public and that the consequences of the elections for policy- making in the EC/EU are hard to discern. Whilst this ties in with what we know about turnout at the national l eve l - - and helps explain why turnout in the UK, for instance, is even lower in European than in local e l ec t ions - -wha t does it tell us about the large variations in turnout that exist be tween countries and from one European elect ion to the next, even within the same countries?

Across the EC as a whole, turnout was highest at the European elections of 1979. The average was 68 per cent, falling to 65 per cent in 1984, 63 per cent in 1989 and a mere 60 per cent in 1994. In some countries it was consistently high in these e l ec t ions - -a round 90 per cent (quite vitiating any expecta t ion of uniform low turn out in European e l ec t ions ) - - and in others very low. Moreover, the difference be tween national and European turnout varies from election to election, even for


particular countries. What accounts for this variation over time and between countries? One factor creating differences between countries is clearly the presence of compulsory voting in some of them. Blumler and Fox (1982) argued that other key factors were politicization of the culture (which affects turnout through increased campaign activity) and, especially, positive views about Europe. They noted that the lowest turnout in 1979, relative to the previous national election, was in Denmark; and took this to support their argument that a vigorous campaign had not overcome the negative impact on turnout of reservations about the EC in that country. However, when Niedermayer (1990) examined the effect on national turnout of views about the EC (averaged for each country), together with the effect of electoral systems and concurrent national elections, he concluded that much of the contribution to turnout was due to factors that have nothing to do with European elections as such.

Most of the research on turnout has focused on individuals and has arrived at similar conclusions. In particular it has been emphasized that positive views on Europe (at the individual level) do not merely predict turnout in European elections but do so also at national elections (e.g. Eijk and Oppenhuis , 1990; Eijk and Schmitt, 1991). Such attitudes tend to be part of a syndrome that is in no sense peculiarly linked to Europe but rather to interest in politics more generally. The weakness of 'European ' explanations was underl ined further by Schmitt and Mannheimer (1991), whose multivariate analysis put particular weight on a factor they called "habitual vo t ing" - - the predisposit ion to vote in whatever sort of election might be called. 7 This was linked to age, political interest and, above all, to party attachment. Other variables, such as those tapping interest in and perceived salience of the EC, had no independent effect. Schmitt and Manheimer found that attitudes to the EC in 1989 were important only in Denmark.

What do all these results mean for the second-order election model as an aid to interpreting turnout in European elections? For Schmitt and Mannheimer, the identi- fication of habitual voting ties in closely with the second-order election idea. In a low-salience election, people vote out of habit, or social norms, general political involvement or party attachment. Only in a high-salience, first-order election will other factors matter much. However, some of Schmitt and Mannheimer's best results in predicting reported turnout in 1989 were obtained for Greece and Ireland, where concurrent national elections were held. So habitual voting appeared to predominate in first-order elections too. Whilst this may be a valid conclusion, it indicates that the importance of habitual voting is not confined to second-order elections. In general it can be said that our attempts to understand turnout in European elections on the basis of our prior understanding of turnout in national elections has not yielded very much.

Turning the question around, and enquiring what European elections can teach us about the determinants of turnout, has been much more fruitful. Studies of turnout in other contexts have not resolved all the outstanding questions about why people vote. A major puzzle is why, in country after country, turnout should be declining despite increases in the number of people sharing the characteristic-- educat ion--most closely associated with high turnout (Brody, 1978; Flickinger and Studler, 1992). Clearly, what makes the biggest difference when comparing individuals wi th in a country may not be the most important factor when considering differences be tween countries or changes over time. Because turnout in European


elections can be measured simultaneously over a wide range of different conditions, such elections have provided a tool for unlocking these mysteries.

Analysis of European elections reveals that the level of turnout responds overwhelmingly to the context in which elections are held (Franklin et al., 1996). Compulsory voting has by far the greatest effect (cf. Niedermayer, 1990) and also interacts with other institutional factors such as proportionality of the electoral system and opening the polls on a Sunday rather than on a Thursday. Those last two institutional factors are only really important where voting is not compulsory. Also important are variations in the national political context in which elections are held: above all, whether the European elections occurred on the same day as national elections (which happened in three countries in 1989). Concurrent national elections raise turnout in the European elections to match levels found in national elections. Moreover, turnout rises as national elections approach (Marsh and Franklin, 1996). One final contextual effect found to be important was social in nature: societies with deep divisions between social groups that are linked to specific parties are more likely to see high turnout than societies in which the decline of cleavage politics has reduced the importance of these links (Franklin et al., 1992). This contextual e f fec t - -which was also found by Powell (1980)- -goes about half way to explaining the decline in turnout observed in European elections since 1979 (much of the rest can be attributed to the once-only enthusiasm seen at the very first European elections in each country). The decline of cleavage politics presumably makes it more difficult for politicians to get out the vote by simply appealing to the loyalties of a party's natural supporters (cf. Franklin, 1991).

These contextual differences between countries (and also between successive European elections held in the same country) largely account for differences in turnout that we observe across space and time. Indeed, contextual effects account for actual turnout in different countries at different elections to within 4 per cent on more occasions (Franklin et al., 1996), no small achievement given that turnout rates run the full gamut from 32 to 95 per cent at these elections in different countries.

Turning to the national consequences of European elections, our finding that turnout in such elections is higher, ceteris p a r i b u s , when they are held shortly before a national election might simply reflect the increasing salience of politics to the average citizen as a national election approaches (cf. Patterson and Caldeira, 1993; Mitchell and Wlezien, 1995). However, this salience might itself be boosted by the very presence of European elections at such times, if these are providing voters with the opportunity to comment on the performance of their national parties. According to Marsh and Franklin (1996) the effect of time until the next national election is powerful in countries without compulsory voting, with differences of up to 15 per cent in turnout attributable to the timing of European elections relative to national elections. 8

This finding goes a long way towards explaining why turnout in the same country can vary dramatically from one European election to the next, since only in Luxemburg have European elections always been held at the same point in the national election cycle (the two elections always occur concurrently in that country). If some part of this variability were due to differences over the course of the electoral cycle in the suitability of European elections as vehicles for comment- ing on national politics, this would quite reverse the previous view that European


elections merely reflect pre-existing domestic political orientations. But to see if this is happening we need to look at party choice.

Pa r ty Choice : W h y is it Different?

As in the case of turnout, so in the case of party choice, European elections are both phenomena in need of explanation and opportunities for conducting enquiries that could not be conducted elsewhere. As in the case of turnout, there are puzzles regarding party choice that cannot easily be illuminated from within individual national contexts. However, we will start by considering the research that treats European elections as phenomena in need of explanation.

Here we see an even less satisfactory picture regarding party choice than we did regarding turnout. Perhaps because there are more differences to be explained (one difference for each political party instead of just one for whether people vote or not), the disparity between European and national elections in terms of party choice seems less coherent. Nevertheless, party choice does appear to follow a different pattern in European parliamentary elections, whether the comparison is with prior, subsequent or simultaneous national elections. This difference is seldom great, and sometimes it is very slight, but there is a difference to be explained.

It would seem that, with some exceptions, differences between European and national party choice are not due to differences between the choices (parties) on offer. It is true that many parties contest European parliamentary elections as members of wider transnational groupings, and their election literature may carry other names in addition to their own (in Ireland, for example, Fine Gael campaigns as part of the Christian-Democratic group); but, as we already indicated, second- order national elections (including European elections) are fought essentially by the same parties as compete in first-order elections, and European groupings appear to have little significance for the way people vote. Transnational party activity was probably most extensive at the first elections in 1979, when EC funds were available for such activities, but voters appear to have paid little attention even then. There was little perception of the result of the election in transnational terms. Blumler and Fox (1982, 66) revealed that about 50 per cent of voters admitted they had no idea which party groupings had been most successful in Europe as a whole, and that even amongst those who claimed to have some idea there was considerable diversity of opinion.

More generally, we have seen that the results of party choice tend to benefit smaller parties disproportionately and that larger parties and those in government generally suffer. Yet what determines which small parties benefit, which larger parties lose, and how much government parties suffer? Research on second-order national elections in other contexts revealed a punishment effect (Erikson, 1988), which would be consistent with the idea that voters withdraw support from govern- ing parties in second-order national elections. However, this idea is quite at odds with another idea expressed by Reif (1984) and Schmitt (1990) that in European Elections voters "vote with the heart" by simply picking the most attractive party or candidate without regard to government formation.9

Reif himself (1984, 1985) suggested that punishment effects occur particularly in certain circumstances. Building on work by Tufte (1975) and Miller and Mackie (1973), he used some simple models to describe a popularity cycle between national elections, in which governments fall into disfavour at mid-term but then

156 W h a t Voters Teach Us A b o u t Europe-Wide Elections

recover as the next national election approaches; ~0 European elections held at various times in the cycle reflect these trends. By implication, it could still be the case that in the vicinity of national elections voters would vote with the heart, though the idea of a popularity cycle rather suggests that at such times the result would be close to what would have happened in national elections.

Reif's tests of these models were really no more than suggestive, since each was based on only a handful of cases; but, more recently, Marsh and Franklin (1996) conducted the analysis suggested by Reif with a dataset derived from all European elections to date, and they found only partial support for the cyclical model. A polynomial function involving position in the national election cycle together with the square of the same measure explained 18 per cent of the variance in government popularity dropoff in European elections, where dropoff is defmed as the difference between the percentage supporting government parties at the European election and the percentage supporting government parties at the previous national election. However, while the coefficients met conventional levels of significance, the proportion of variance explained was not impressive, particularly given the small N; since Marsh and Franklin actually tested six different models in order to fmd even one that performed this well, their findings may easily be the result of capitalizing on chance.~l

A major problem with Reif's model arises from our difficulty in saying how much support government parties would have received had the European elections been national ones. Evidently, both Marsh and Franklin's measure of dropoff and Reifs alternative measure of deviation from a linear trend (see footnote 11) involve the conflation of three different possible sources of reduced government support: (1) the temporal location of the election within the national election cycle; (2) the fact that it is a second-order national election; and (3) changes in the baseline from which any such cycle would operate. 12

To the extent that cycles of government popularity exist, and to the extent that European elections respond to the same forces as government popularity, Reif would have been correct in seeing such elections as no more than opinion polls. The important question from our perspective in this paper, however, is whether indeed people do vote in a European election as they would have done in a national election held on the same day; and if not, why not? This question can only be directly addressed in a very few instances--those where concurrent elections were held for national and European parliaments--and in at least some of these cases it is clear that European and national behaviour differs. Elsewhere, the same information can only be deduced from opinion poll data in which individuals are asked both how they voted in a European election and how they would have voted if that election had been a national one. This was done by Oppenhuis e t al. (1994; see also Oppenhuis e t al. , 1996), who found that the manner in which parties' fortunes in a European election differ from those in a national election did indeed depend crucially on the temporal location of the European election within the national election cycle, but not for the reasons suggested by Reif. Rather than reflecting a government popularity cycle, the differences had to do with the extent to which European elections could be regarded by politicians and commentators as 'markers' yielding useful information about the relative standing of political parties.

When European elections are held concurrently with, or very shortly after, national elections, they appear to be seen more or less as 'throw-away' elections.


The marker set by the concurrent or recent national election has not yet lost its plausibility and, whatever the difference between the European election outcome and the result that would have occurred in a national election, it will have no political consequences simply because no-one will pay any attention to it. Apparently, voters are aware of this, because these are the electoral situations in which sincere voting seems most frequent, 13 with voters supporting their preferred party even if that party has little chance of playing a prominent part in government. Contrasting strongly with this situation is the one in which a European election is conducted at a considerable temporal distance from the previous national election, possibly with the next national election already in sight. In this situation the marker set by the previous national election has become obsolete, and politicians are tempted to regard the results of the European election as a new indicator of their own and other parties' electoral strength. Voters apparently sense this--presumably as a result of media coverage and the way in which politicians approach them during the campaign.

In such 'marker-setting' elections, voters have an incentive to behave tactically, but in a sense of the word 'tactical' that is quite different from what we see in national elections, where large parties are advantaged by their size. In a marker- setting election the tactical situation is instead characterized by an apparent lack of consequences for the allocation of power, on the one hand, and by the atten- tiveness of politicians and media, on the other. In such elections, tactical voting appears to take the form of what is generally referred to as 'protest voting', often benefitting radical small parties in particular. Knowing that politicians are attentive to the results while no actual power is at stake, some voters apparently take the opportunity (in the phrase of the British football hooligans) to 'put in the boot' , echoing the behaviour of some American voters who apparently take the opportunity offered by mid-term elections to punish the party of the President (Erikson, 1988, Campbell, 1993).

This pattern is quite different from that implicitly expected by Reif, which would have been characterized by more protest voting towards the middle of' the national election cycle and less at other times; but it does find room for both types of second-order behaviour (voting with the heart and protest voting) that he suggested would occur. In throw-away elections, when there is least at stake, the theory of voting with the heart explains why some parties gain votes. These are parties that voters find attractive for some reason but would not support in a national election for fear that their votes would be wasted. Evidently, a somewhat different mecha- nism operates in marker-setting elections (where there is evidently more at stake than in throw-away elections, although less than in national elections) and the parties that benefit are different in consequence. The precise nature of the attrac- tion, and the difference between the criteria of importance in national or throw- away elections, was not specified by Reif or Schmitt, and indeed the study of which parties are chosen by European voters in different strategic contexts provides us with an opportunity to shed new light on the mainsprings of voting choice.

Attempts to explain why people vote the way they do generally ignore the fact that large parties are advantages by their very size. Only occasionally do we sec analyses that attempt to take account of variations in the tactical situation to explain why people would vote for a party other than their first preference in certain circumstances (e.g. Niemi et aL, 1992). Yet the choice between parties is clearly contaminated by the relative sizes of the parties concerned. Other things being


equal, a large party will be more attractive to voters because it is likely to have an impact on public policy, in contrast to a small party (again, all other things being equal) which is likely to have less influenceA 4 The extent of this contamination is hard to determine from within the confines of a particular political system; but a European election provides a perfect laboratory in which there are a large number of concurrent elections involving an enormous number of parties of different sizes whose support can be analysed simultaneously, making it possible to measure the impact of party size in multivariate perspective while taking account of position in the national election cycle as outlined above. At the same time the impact of electoral systems and other differences between countries can also be estimated as never before. This research established that party size was one of the most important determinants of voting cho ice - -more important than issues or group loyalties, and of roughly the same importance as ideology (Eijk et aL, 1996, Ch. 20). 15 The same investigation discovered that institutional differences between countries (the type of electoral system or the number of parties) had very little effect on the manner in which voters make their cho ice - -a finding much in contrast to the fmding of the same authors regarding turnout (see above). It appears that European voters react to the choices on offer in very similar ways, no matter what country they find themselves in, though they are very sensitive to the political situation that pertains there at the time.

Consequences of European Elections

Elections in parliamentary systems are judged normally by their consequences for government formation, but European elections are unlike general elections in that they do not give rise to a government, even indirectly. Reif (1984, 253) suggests mischievously that they are in danger of becoming 'third-order' elections "with barely, more relevance than a public opinion poll". We have already suggested that he was wrong in this. In particular, his comment understates the impact of the elections on national politics.

N a t i o n a l Conse que nc e s

Evidently, European elections do affect the personal and party composition of the EP and the policy concerns of its newly elected members. These results of the elections may even be of considerable importance for the direction of European affairs--not least because of the co-decision-making and budgetary powers of the EP. Nevertheless, such consequences do not arise from conscious choice on the part of voters, who are seldom told what are the policy preferences of parties and candidates (Irwin, 1995), except perhaps in national terms. Thus, the effects of European elections on the composition of the EP flow in reality from patterns of candidate recruitment and the fact that elections are held, rather than from the choices made by voters, which are simply not directed towards affecting the European arena.

The second-order election model implies that it is more likely that national elections will effect European elections than vice-versa, but in reality we find influences running in both directions. The fact that European elections are really directed towards the national arena gives them the opportunity to have national consequences which (unlike their European consequences) are in many cases


indeed the result of purposive decisions by voters. In other cases such consequences are just side-effects of the fact that European elections are held.

Like national elections, European parliamentary elections may have consequences for the organizations that fight them. How parties perceive their own and each others electoral performance can affect future strategy and tactics. Some parties may gain the valuable resource of visibility and credibility in European elections that will help them in future campaigns in other political arenas. It is conventional wisdom that European electoral success played a role in the rise of the Front National in France and was important to the early success of the German Greens. Reif (1984) notes that government coalitions may be strained by adverse results, and he gives illustrations. In the country chapters of Eijk et al. (1996), such consequences of the 1989 European elections are systematically evaluated. They prove to be varied and numerous, ranging from the benefits already referred to for small parties to the stimulation of electoral pacts in certain countries (Oppenhuis, 1996) and the stimulation of party splits elsewhere (Cayrol and Ysmal, 1996). In several cases the policies of governments were affected by the outcome of the 1989 European elections. In Spain an early national election was called to capitalize on government popularity displayed in the European election (Castillo, 1996); in Germany the government changed its policy towards Eastern Europe in an effort to stem an apparent Republikaner Party tide (Schmitt, 1996).

One indication that European elections have national consequences is that European election outcomes are demonstrably connected to the outcome of subsequent national elections (Marsh, 1995). Indeed, Marsh and Franklin (1996), building on their analysis of the cyclical factor (or lack if it) in European election outcomes (see above), demonstrated that, when government parties did better in the European election than would have been expected on the basis of the location of that election in the national election cycle, those same parties also did better at the ensuing national election; when they did worse than expected at the European election, they also did worse at the ensuing national election. Variance explained was twice as high as in the estimation of the cyclical effect itself, suggesting that European elections might actually be better leading indicators of subsequent national elections than they are consequences of prior onesJ 6 and validating to some extent the use of such elections as markers for the standing of parties in the national political arena. However, employing European elections as markers can have perverse consequences for the national arena if protest votes are taken seriously as indicators of what might happen in a national election.

Eijk et al. (1996, Ch. 21) conclude that, because of the fact that European elections have no direct European consequences, they are able to carry a baggage of quite unanticipated national consequences instead. These consequences add uncertainty to national politics and may lead to political developments that would not have occurred had European elections been permitted to perform their proper function of legitimating and controlling the exercise of political power in the EC/EU. We now turn to the implications of their failure to do this.

E u r o p e a n Consequences

European elections do not function in accordance with normative expectations about democratic processes. Elections, and party competition at those elections, are supposed to promote political participation and awareness, and to legitimize

160 What Voters Teach Us Ab o u t Europe-Wide Elections

state activity (cf. Ginsberg and Stone, 1992). Many politicians and commentators had hoped that direct election of the EP would increase awareness of EC/EU insti- tut ions-par t icular ly the EP--and contribute to their legitimacy. Furthermore, such elections might have stimulated debate about issues on the EC's agenda, both consti- tutional and otherwise, and given some legitimacy to that agenda and the propos- als for tackling it.

The increasingly low turnout, disappointing levels of interest and lack of European content in EC/EU election campaigns have disappointed such hopes. Few would claim that European elections have done much to redress the 'democratic deficit' which has attracted so much attention, especially in the wake of domestic battles over the Maastricht Treaty. Many expectations may have been unrealistic, based more on imagined features of national elections than upon the realities of those contests. In the same way that early students of voting behaviour were appalled at how far voters deviated from an ideal of citizenship, so people may also have expected too much of European parliamentary elections. For instance, even if European issues were widely discussed during European election campaigns, and given much more priority than national issues, this would not mean that people would vote on the basis of those issues, any more than they do in national elections. Indeed, a study of referenda held in various countries to ratify the Maastricht Treaty questioned the relevance to the outcome in each country of the matters that were supposedly at issue (Franklin et al., 1994a,b). If referenda focusing on the EC/EU show limited evidence of European content, why should we expect any more of European elections?

A critical analysis of European parliamentary elections by Bogdanor focused not on the electorate but on the sorts of choices offered by national party systems. He asserted that voters are not provided with the opportunity to cast a vote that can be interpreted as a choice between different visions of the EC/EU: "Elections, if they are to be meaningful, must fundamentally allow for choice", but national party systems provide "an artificial superstructure unable to articulate the wishes of the electorate" (1989, 214; see also Andeweg, 1995). To a considerable extent the problem may lie in the lack of incentives for supranational party development and activity, as discussed in some detail in Eijk et al. (1996, Ch. 21).

This lack of choice might bc expected to result in a unrepresentative parliament. Such fears may be exaggerated. Finding a considerable correspondence between the perceived views of parties and the views of party supporters on the subject of European integration, Eijk and Franklin (1991) concluded that, whilst the elections provided no mandate for future developments, they could nevertheless be viewed as ex-post-facto endorsements of, and hence legitimation for, the insti- tutions of the (then) EC. Broadly similar findings resulted from a comparison of European policy preferences of voters and candidates in the 1994 elections (Schmitt, 1994).

Nevertheless, the failure of the European electoral process to provide a mandate for future policy directions is grave, and it is worthy of more attention than it has received. Moreover, these deficiencies have to be seen in the context of equivalent failures of first-order national elections to provide voters with any more in the way of choices on European matters than do Europe-wide elections. The logic of democratic elections presupposes that the political verdict of electorates can be construed as emanating from the political preferences of voters that are relevant to the decision-making arena concerned. This logic hardly operates in the EU, and will not


do so as long as European elections cont inue to be merely second-order national elections.

The Importance o f Political Context

Any review of the literature on European parl iamentary elections would have to conclude that Reif and Schmitt 's suggestion that these must be seen first and foremost as second-order national elections has been invaluable. Undoubtedly this approach has generated important proposi t ions about the main pat terns to be found in the resu l t s - -propos i t ions that are suppor ted by empirical evidence. Many studies, particularly those focused on one national context , have noted how things like the low turnout or the swing against the government illustrate the normal pattern expec ted in a second-order national election, with the national arena affecting the outcome of the European election. However, more recent research has focused on the national consequences of European elections, m7 In the process, this more recent research has demonstra ted the importance (for voting choice as well as for election outcomes) of contextual effects. This concluding discussion will take up the significance of this insight for voting behaviour in all elections.

The political context in which an election is held, together with the context suppl ied by the competi t ive posit ions of political parties, have been found to be of the greatest importance in determining whe ther people vote (and which parties they suppor t when they do vote), in line with theoretical expectat ions expressed by (for example) Reeve and Ware (1992). Institutional arrangements are also of considerable importance when it comes to turnout, though not when it comes to party choice. This finding, though established through the analysis of data col lected at the time of European elections, has profound implications for our understanding of national elections as well. Indeed, the 'Europeanness ' of European elections turns out to be merely a contextual variable that needs to be evaluated along with other contextual variables in at tempting to understand elections of any kind.

The findings from this research on European elections also have important implications for our understanding of the rationality of the voting act. The attention paid by voters to political context quite belies the conventional view of voters as inatten- tive and uninterested in e lec t ions- -go ing to the polls (if they do) out of habit or a sense of duty, and voting routinely on the basis of a standing decision often made many years before (cf. Rose and McAllister, 1990). The voters who took part in the European elections of 1979 to 1994 may have had little interest in Europe, but many of them were supremely political animals who cast their votes in apparent awareness of differences be tween these elections and national ones, as well as of the different contexts presented by European elections held at different points in the national election cycle.

By replacing the idea of European elections as second-order national elections with the idea that European elections present a whole range of different political contexts, Reif and Schmitt 's theory has been elaborated, as is p rope r with advanc- ing knowledge. A primary challenge for future research is to do the same in other areas, replacing mere typologies of contexts wi th meaningful theoretical terms (Przeworski and Teune, 1970). In cross-national research this means replacing p rope r country names with characteristics such as the proport ional i ty of the electoral system, the strength of cleavage structures, etc. But the more or less stable characteristics of countries consti tute only some of the contextual factors that have


b e e n ident i f ied as consequen t ia l . At least as impor t an t are fea tures o f the pol i t ical c o n t e x t that may vary ove r t ime, even w i th in a single count ry , as w e have seen in regard to t he p r e s e n c e o r a b s e n c e o f c o n c u r r e n t na t ional e lec t ions and the loca t ion o f s e c o n d - o r d e r na t ional e l ec t ions in the f i rs t -order e l ec t ion cycle. TM

This l ine o f r eason ing can and shou ld be e x t e n d e d to the very no t i on o f first- o r d e r and s e c o n d - o r d e r e lec t ions . Invaluable as this d i s t inc t ion has been , its limita- t ions w e r e a l ready h i n t e d at by Reif w h e n he t o y e d w i th the idea o f ' th i rd-order ' e l ec t ions (see above) . Some s e c o n d - o r d e r e lec t ions are ev iden t ly m o r e s econd-o rde r in cha rac t e r t han others , w h i c h leads to the idea that some f i rs t -order e lec t ions may also be m o r e s e c o n d - o r d e r in cha rac t e r t han others . But this is just begg ing the ques t ion o f w h a t charac te r i s t i cs to e m p l o y in dissolving this d i c h o t o m o u s typo logy into non- typo log ica l c o m p o n e n t s . Obviously , o u t c o m e var iables such as level of tu rnout , sw ing against t he gove rnmen t , deg ree o f ' s incere ' vot ing, etc. , shou ld no t be e m p l o y e d for this p u r p o s e , for fear o f r educ ing meaningfu l and tes table empirical p r o p o s i t i o n s ( such as w h e t h e r s e c o n d - o r d e r e lec t ions s h o w l o w e r t u rnou t than

f i rs t -order ones ) in to m e r e tautologies . More p r o m i s i n g seems to be a c o n c e p t u a l e l abora t ion o f R e i f s sugges t ion that

the fundamen ta l d i s t inc t ion is ' h o w m u c h is at s take ' . This i tself may still tu rn out to b e a mul t i - face ted p h e n o m e n o n , bu t at least it focuses on the fact that the s e c o n d - o r d e r cha rac t e r o f an e l ec t ion is first o f all to be found in the eyes of the voters . Pursuing this l ine o f r e sea rch Marsh (1995) has d e m o n s t r a t e d that swings against the g o v e r n m e n t in European pa r l i amen ta ry e lec t ions are less p r o n o u n c e d w h e r e t he n o r m of a l t e rna t ion o f g o v e r n m e n t is absent.~9

As soon as the f i r s t -o rde r / second-orde r d i s t inc t ion is e l abo ra t ed in this way, w e wil l no longe r have to state by def in i t ion tha t speci f ic t ypes o f e lec t ions are of the one o r t he o t h e r kind, bu t ins tead wil l be able to assess empi r ica l ly to w h a t e x t e n t d i f ferent e l ec t ions are f i rs t -order o r s econd -o rde r in charac ter . W e may then fred that n o t all o c c u r r e n c e s o f w h a t w e n o w call s e c ond -o rde r e lec t ions equal ly war ran t such a charac ter iza t ion: some mid- te rm e lec t ions , some by-elect ions, some regional e l ec t ions m a y tu rn ou t to be d i f ferent f rom the rest, having m o r e o f a f i rs t-order flavour. Similarly, s o m e f i rs t -order e lec t ions m a y have a s econd-o rde r flavour. Such d i s t inc t ions wil l s imul taneous ly he lp us to (1) fu r the r tes t the p r o p o s i t i o n s associ- a ted w i t h w h a t w e n o w k n o w as s e c o n d - o r d e r e l ec t ion theory; (2) unde r s t a nd and exp la in t he d i f fe rences in vo t ing b e h a v i o u r and e lec t ion o u t c o m e s that w e observe ove r t ime b e t w e e n e lec t ions o f a cer ta in k ind ( inc lud ing f i rs t -order e lect ions) ; (3) deve lop ou r ins ights r egard ing re levan t con t e x tua l factors; and, as a c o n s e q u e n c e o f all o f this, (4) inc rease t he s c o p e and genera l izabi l i ty o f theore t i ca l and empir i - cal p r o p o s i t i o n s abou t vo t ing and e lec t ions .

The r i chness o f c o n t e x t u a l var ia t ion in European e lec t ions has fo rced its obse rve r s to set ou t on a pa th that exp l i c i t ly takes c o n t e x t in to accoun t w h e n exp la in ing e lec t ions and vot ing. The cha l l enge n o w facing e lec tora l s tudies is to c o n t i n u e a long this pa th .

N o t e s

1. Most published research has focused on aggregate election results, although a small study of voters that focused on the influence of the media was conducted after the elections of 1979 (Blumler and Fox, 1982). In 1989 and 1994, however, major studies were under- taken of the elections to the EP, many of the r i d i n g s of which have yet to be published. These studies were designed and organized by Pilar del Castillo (Madrid) Roland Cayrol


(Paris), Cees van de r Eijk (Amsterdam), Mark Franklin (in 1989 at the University of Strathclyde, n o w at Houston) , Renato M a n n h e i m e r (Genova) , Colet te Ysmal (Paris), and H e r m a n n Schmit t (Mannhe im) , w h o co-ordinated the efforts of the group. Additionally, Manfred Kuech le r ( N e w York) par t ic ipa ted in the first of these research efforts, whi le Michael Marsh (Dublin) and Erik O p p e n h u i s (Amsterdam) jo ined the team whi le analysis of the 1989 findings was in progress. The studies cons is ted of i n d e p e n d e n t cross- sect ional surveys fielded in each m e m b e r coun t ry of the EC before and immedia te ly after the EP elections. The quest ionnaires , admin is te red in the language of each country, fo rmed par t of the European O m ni bus Surveys, w h i c h also con ta ined the regular Euroba romete r (EB) surveys of the Commiss ion of the EC. Each wave involved in terv iews w i th some 12,500 r e s ponden t s divided into i n d e p e n d e n t nat ional samples of some 1,000 r e sponden t s each. This n u m b e r was lower for Luxembourg (about 300) and h igher for the UK, w h e r e an addit ional sample of 300 was d rawn f rom Nor the rn Ireland. In 1994 ano the r addit ional sample was d rawn f rom the fo rmer East Germany. In this article w e focus on data f rom the (post-elect ion) wave of each study, w h i c h in 1989 was largely funded by a grant to Mark Franklin f rom the British Economic and Social Research Counci l and in 1994 was largely funded by grants to H e r m a n n Schmit t and Cees van der Eijk f rom the G e r m a n and Dutch National Science Foundat ions. The data f rom the 1989 study w e r e depos i t ed in 1992 at the Ste inmetz Archive, Universi ty of Amsterdam, and are available for secondary analysis via the ICPSR at the Universi ty of Michigan, the ESRC Survey Archive at the Universi ty of Essex, and o the r data archives. The data f rom the 1994 study will be similarly depos i t ed in 1997.

2. Few European count r ies have federal systems w i th subs tant ive powers reserved to sub- nat ional bodies; even in count r ies (notably Germany) tha t do have federal systems, the absence of separa ted p o w e r s means that the p re -eminence of the centra l g o v e r n m e n t is m u c h clearer than in the US, for example .

3. Presidential e lect ions are ha rde r to place. Reif says of France that pres ident ia l e lect ions are always first-order elections, as are assembly e lect ions e x c e p t pe rhaps w h e n they fol low closely on a pres ident ia l election. The US case seems to il lustrate a different pa t te rn , w i th the midterm elect ion general ly be ing a second-order election.

4. Moreover, f ewer resources will be e x p e n d e d on t h e m by part ies and the media. How far these factors are also respons ib le for lower t u rnou t is u n k n o w n .

5. Even in a coun t ry w h o s e electoral system is highly propor t ional , a vote for a small party may still be was ted in this sense because that party has such a small c h a n c e of influ- enc ing events.

6. In the run-up to a nat ional elect ion, the publ ic will be more focused on nat ional polit ics than at o the r t imes and part ies have s t ronger incent ives to adapt the i r policy s tances in the l ight of express ions of vo te r concern .

7. It is def ined operat ional ly as be ing able and willing to say h o w you wou ld vote at a general e lec t ion ' t o m o r r o w ' or h o w you did vote at the last one. Schmit t and M a n n h e i m e r say this is at least sufficient to def ine habi tual voters , bu t this is so only if habi tual voters by defini t ion mus t k n o w w h o they are going to vote for. In fact, the measure seems to con ta in some e lements of party a t t achment . The authors admit tha t no t all caught by the i r def ini t ion are t rue habi tual voters, bu t the e r ror in some count r ies seems huge. In the UK, for instance, ove r 70 p e r cen t are def ined as habi tual voters by Schmit t and Mannheimer , bu t t u rnou t in the European e lec t ion was only 36 pe r cent.

8. Marsh and Franklin do not repor t the results f rom a proper ly specif ied model of the de te rminan t s of turnout , so the effects of t ime unti l the nex t e lec t ion should not be taken as definitive. Elsewhere (Eijk et aL, 1996, Ch. 19) the ques t ion of t u rnou t was consid- e red in m u c h grea ter detail and it was found that, even in a fully specif ied model , the proximi ty of a nat ional e lec t ion re ta ined a significant (and substant ial) effect.

9. This is a different mean ing of ' tactical vot ing ' t han w e employ w h e n trying to explain the t e n d e n c y of British suppor te r s of m i n o r par t ies to vote for a par ty tha t might be able to win even t h o u g h it is no t the i r first choice; but it involves the same c o n c e r n to avoid a was ted vote.

10. In mos t European count r ies the e lec t ion date is d iscre t ionary wi th in margins fLxed by law. However , t he re is general ly widesp read awareness of the increas ing l ikel ihood of an e lec t ion be ing called in c i rcumstances of g o v e r n m e n t crisis or as the end of the pe rmi t t ed pe r iod approaches .


11. Reif p roposed that one try to explain not the measure of dropoff used here but the deviation in percentage votes for the government from a linear t rend be tween the adjacent national elections. Such a formulation does not yield statistically significant findings wi th the larger dataset based on all European elections to 1994. A cubed function (also p roposed by Reif) did not yield significant results wi th ei ther formulation of the depen- dent variable. Moreover, removing elections that occurred simultaneously with national elections (as suggested by Reif) s topped the squared term from reaching significance. In Marsh and Franklin's study such elections were coded as occurring at the end of the electoral cycle.

12. Such changes do not have to fol low the linear t rend that Reif assumes. Much information on the basis of opinion polls suggests that such changes are not linear at all (see, for example, MacKuen et aL, 1989).

13. We judge these votes to be sincere because the strategic advantages that large parties enjoy in national elections are seen empirically to be at a minimum.

14. "All o ther things being equal" is of course a condit ion that never holds. This does not detract from the argument, however , but merely raises the empirical question: h o w strong are these considerations?

15. Obviously, the effect of party size cannot be found in an analysis of voting choice, as this would involve a tautology; but this research employed a series of not mutually-exclu- sive party p re fe rences - - scores indicating the degree to which each respondent was attracted to each of the parties in the respondents ' country. When analysing these various party preferences simultaneously, by means of a stacked dataset, party size can be used in a non-tautological way as one of the independent variables.

16. Restricting the data to cases where the next national election occurred less than 2 years later increased the variance explained from 0.36 to 0.42 ( though with an N of only 20). However , this analysis is not based on a proper ly specified model and should be regarded as no more than suggestive.

17. Not only European elections but also o ther second-order national elections may well have consequences for the first-order arena. Upton (1991) studied the consequences of British by-elections for later national elections in the UK, and few would dispute that the midterm US Congressional elections of 1994 had consequences for the first-order arena.

18. That this is not peculiar to parliamentary systems is demonstrated in a recent article by Shugart (1995) on legislative elections in presidential systems.

19. More generally, Powell and Whit ten (1993) have shown h o w voters are less likely to use elections to 'punish' governments where party systems do not support clear distinctions be tween government and opposition.

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Documents

What voters teach us about Europe-Wide elections: What Europe-Wide elections teach us about voters