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This paper explores the effect of national partisanship and Euroscepticism on individuals’ causal responsibility attribution in European multilevel democracies. It is particularly focused on the average differences in responsibility attribution in federal and non-federal states, as well as in countries belonging to different European Union enlargement waves. Using a pooled dataset of the 2004, 2009, and 2014 European Election Studies, results show that when poor economic outcomes are at stake, partisans of the national incumbent in federal states are more likely to assign responsibility to regional governments following a blame-attribution logic, while this logic is absent in non-federal states. Likewise, Eurosceptic individuals are more likely to assign responsibility to European authorities when they hold negative views of the economy and they belong to countries that have been European Union members for a longer period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theories of electoral institutions and representation suggest that majoritarian and proportional systems will produce distinct patterns of party–voter congruence, with the centripetal incentives of the former pulling parties to the ideological centre and reducing, by comparison with the latter, congruence with voters to the right and left. Recent scholarship, however, has found little contemporary empirical evidence for this pattern but no satisfactory explanation has been advanced to account for these non-findings. This paper develops a new theoretical account of the impact of electoral institutions on congruence that takes into account the increasingly dealigned character of voters. The central argument is that the impact of institutions is conditional on the balance between partisans and independents in the electorate. It is this conditional nature of the influence that seems to account for the absence of the anticipated relationship of institutions to congruence nowadays. This theory is tested using a unique data set of party positions in 24 European states and its consequences are drawn out for the relative representational effectiveness of electoral systems in contemporary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Party competition over European integration is structured by two main dimensions of political conflict: a socio-economic dimension (market liberalisation vs. a more regulated economy) and a socio-cultural dimension (libertarian, cosmopolitan values vs. authoritarian, nationalist values). This article investigates the relationship between these conflict dimensions and parties' positions towards EU issues across time and space, in particular focussing on two 'critical junctures' in the European unification process. For this purpose, analysis is made of the election manifestos of parties competing in European Parliament elections (Euromanifestos) from 1979 to 2014. First, it is found that the key moment of the Maastricht treaty significantly reshaped party competition over Europe. After Maastricht, positions towards European integration have become less connected to the economic dimension and much more related to the cultural dimension in Western Europe. Second, it is contended that the Euro crisis has not dramatically restructured political conflict over European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on 'issue yield' theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017–2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue ‘Assessing democratic representation in multi-level democracies’ from a conceptual perspective. It adapts Powell’s chain of responsiveness – as a model of the democratic process on the national level – to the context of multi-level systems and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. The theoretical reasoning identifies added complexity, multiple actors sharing the same label and cross-level interdependent decisions as the key challenges to multi-level democracy. Empirical illustrations focus on the first stage of the representation process. Here voters should form rational policy preferences and take informed voting decisions, and parties are expected to offer coherent policy platforms that are tailored to the specifics of the regional level. While the analysis of party manifesto data suggests that regional parties cover regional issues, and strategic incentives to focus on other levels appear limited, survey-based information illustrates the cognitive burden of multi-level democracy on voters. In combination with a synopsis of the other contributions assembled in this issue, the findings suggest that information, responsibility and accountability problems may be particular obstacles to responsiveness in multi-level systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Declining levels of turnout are a problem in European elections. Are Get Out The Vote campaigns the solution to the problem? While many studies have investigated such campaigns in the US, little is known about their effect in Europe. The article presents a field experiment in which encouragement to vote in an upcoming Danish election is delivered to more than 60,000 first-time voters using direct personal letters. Eight different letters are designed, based on the calculus of voting and prospect theory. The sample is randomly divided into treatment groups or the control group. Using validated turnout, small positive effects of receiving a letter on turnout are found, with little difference across letters. The letters mostly mobilised voters with a low propensity to vote and thus increased equality in participation. In sum, while letters have some effect, they are not likely to be a panacea for solving Europe’s turnout challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do parties respond to voters' preferences on European integration in electionsto the European Parliament (EP)? Following recent research that shows politicalparty responsiveness to Eurosceptic attitudes during EP elections is conditioned byparty characteristics, this article seeks to understand how party unity on Europeanintegration affects party responsiveness to Euroscepticism. It argues that whenEurosceptic attitudes among voters are high and the parties are divided in theirposition on European integration, parties will be more responsive to voters andtake a more Eurosceptic position. To test the theoretical expectations, the studyuses data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Euromanifestos Project, andEuropean Election Study for 1989–2009 for over 120 parties across 20 EuropeanUnion member states. The findings have important implications for understandingthe nature of democratic representation in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on civic duty has focused on national elections, believed to be the most salient. Evidence on turnout gaps between election levels suggests that it is relevant to inquire whether people feel that they have the same duty to vote in national, subnational, and supranational elections. The article investigates this phenomenon, comparing citizens’ attitudes towards national, European, and regional elections in ten regions from four countries. About one-quarter of European citizens demonstrate a lesser degree of duty towards European rather than in national elections. Differences in duty levels for national and regional elections are infrequent and concentrated in regions with nationalist movements. Both rational and identity considerations explain why some individuals feel less obliged to vote in a particular election than in another, but the latter matter more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a core principle of contemporary democracy, political representation has been the subject of numerous studies. In particular, responsiveness has been thoroughly examined and research suggests that policies tend to reflect citizens’ preferences. However, it has also been argued that, in some instances, responsiveness systematically reflects the preferences of the rich better than those of the poor, hence violating a second democratic principle, that of political equality. While much research has focused on the United States, this study tests whether differential responsiveness also occurs in European democracies and enquires about the structural factors that may cause such inequality. The article examines to what extent the preference gap between the rich and the poor as well as the level of electoral participation can account for variation in differential responsiveness. To do this, a dataset including information on 25 European countries from 2002 to 2010 is constructed and analysed using time-series cross-sectional methods. The findings suggest that European democracies experience differential responsiveness and that the preference gap and level of turnout partly account for this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, two unexplored trends in European electoral politics are highlighted. Using newly collected data the article tracks the politicisation of corruption in electoral campaigns from 1981 to 2011, an electoral strategy that has been increasing over time in most European countries. It then empirically tests two aspects of this campaign strategy. First, what are the factors that are systematically associated with a party’s decision to politicise corruption? Second, what are the electoral effects in terms of relative vote share for parties that politicise corruption? Using an original data-set that employs multi-level data (parties nested in countries) the results demonstrate first that politicisation of corruption occurs systematically more often among established parties from the main opposition, new parties and parties on the political right, and occurs as a function of country-level corruption, district magnitude and public party financing. Second, it is found that the main opposition and new parties that use such a campaign strategy make significant electoral gains relative to the previous election compared to parties that do not politicise corruption. Yet gains are offset in low-corruption countries. The findings demonstrate salient implications for research on party systems, corruption studies and democratic legitimacy, among other areas of investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How political representatives interact with constituents is contingent on the conditions under which they compete for re-election. It has been the assumption that intra-party competition shapes legislators’ incentive to cultivate a personal reputation and thereby the incentive to engage in any constituency-oriented action that reputation may be built on. Using data from the PARTIREP cross-national survey among regional and national legislators in 12 European democracies, the assumption is proven to be inaccurate: focusing on more than one action at a time, it becomes clear that district magnitude increases the time representatives spend on some constituency-oriented actions and decreases the time they spend on others (even when the electoral incentive to nurture a personal reputation is strong). The article demonstrates that representatives’ choice to engage in four constituency-oriented actions is related to the nature of these home styles and their electoral utility in a given context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates different dynamics in government formation in 16 Western and 10 Central-Eastern European democracies during the post-war period. The study provides the first systematic comparison of determinants of participation in government in the East and the West. Applying mixed effects logit regression models while taking into account missing values in the dataset, the results demonstrate substantial differences between the two regions and show that most of the existing findings about participation in government are driven by Western democracies. Policy-based factors are relevant in Western countries, but no indications were found for these factors in Central-East European democracies where membership of government is mainly the result of electoral gains and losses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article makes a contribution to the understanding of party organisation by examining one of the most successful West European communist parties, the Communist Party of Cyprus (AKEL). Defying the downward trend of its counterparts and the external shock of Soviet collapse, the AKEL has managed to sustain the support of nearly a third of the electorate. Using original archival evidence and interview data, the article attributes the electoral endurance of the AKEL to organisational continuity. Since its founding, the party has built a robust mass party structure, with an extensive network of auxiliary organisations and strong centralising mechanisms. During the crisis of the late 1980s, the party kept the basic features of this organisational model intact refusing to dismantle its Leninist organisational infrastructure. Organisational continuity has helped the AKEL sustain its electoral strength by signalling its ideological consistency. Organisational continuity might also account for the relative persistence of other communist parties in Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines why the political integration and representation of ethnic minority groups may develop along different paths. Taking Amsterdam as a case study, it compares two of the city’s most predominant immigrant groups: Turks, who have taken a group-based incorporation strategy – visible in this group’s dense organisational infrastructure – and Moroccans, who have followed a more individualist assimilation strategy. The distinct trajectories have produced a relatively high proportion of Turkish-origin elected officials, while individuals of Moroccan origin feature more prominently in executive office, exercising power over day-to-day decisions. The article proposes that whereas features of the electoral system determine which opportunities exist for immigrants to participate in the political process, it is the structure of an immigrant group that affects the ability of members to seize such opportunities. Furthermore, it shows how political parties and party elites act as gatekeepers and facilitators of immigrants’ political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Issue congruence between voters and parties can be achieved if voters and parties follow the party mandate model. A central requirement of this model is that parties fulfil their electoral mandate. This article studies collective party mandate fulfilment by comparing parties’ election manifestos with the parliamentary speeches of their politicians in two countries: a typical consensus democracy, the Netherlands, and a typical majoritarian democracy, the United Kingdom. The central question is whether a difference in collective mandate fulfilment exists between these two types of democracy. Contrary to previous findings, this study finds that such a difference does not exist, at least not with regard to the two countries analysed. This can be explained by the way in which the party mandate is conceptualised. The article also analyses the development of party mandate fulfilment over time and finds no evidence for the idea that collective mandate fulfilment is declining. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is often said that European Parliament elections fail as an instrument to express the will of the European people. However, while the elections are not contested at the European level and are often dominated by national issues, this does not necessarily imply that they fail to connect policy views of voters and representatives. This article examines policy congruence between voters and candidates, utilising the candidate and voter surveys of the European Election Study 2009. First, it demonstrates that policy preferences of candidates and voters are constrained by three separate policy dimensions. Second, it shows that the quality of representation is high in terms of left/right, the main dimension of conflict in European politics, but lower on the cultural and European integration dimensions. Finally, it establishes that in some cases the aggregation of national parties in political groups in the European Parliament poses problems for effective political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on party organisational change emphasises environmental factors as well as internal circumstances. The literature on Europeanisation and political parties privileges the EU as a key environmental factor in terms of change. This article combines insights from the party organisation and Europeanisation literatures in order to more precisely conceptualise the EU as a stimulus and therefore causal factor in party organisational change. Two types of party change are analysed, new party positions (MEPs and specialised EU party staff) and party leaderships' responses to internal dissent over the EU. Linking a specific form of EU stimulus to a particular party goal helps to explain certain types of change, while inter-governmental bargaining may produce uncertainty for domestic political actors thereby inducing defensive reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Government alternation is a fundamental component of any efficient democracy and it could be seen both as an empirical proof (in democracy there is government alternation) or as an ideal pattern of competition (in democracy there should be government alternation). However, to what extent do democracies work according to such an ideal pattern? A Government Turnover Index (GTI) is provided to answer this question with respect to 524 governments in 22 European contemporary democracies since World War II. As suggested by the data and by the GTI, there is not necessarily a link between democratic competition and government alternation, although some democracies are more likely to experience it. It is therefore necessary to direct the analysis towards some systemic factors which may favour or hinder government alternation (such as the party system structure and the institutional framework). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Generally the assumption is that legislators act to maximise their chances of re-election, with their optimal behaviour determined by the party-centred or candidate-centred nature of the electoral system in use. Existing evidence of the impact of members' actual behaviour on subsequent electoral performance is inconclusive. This research explores whether or not legislators who choose to focus on cultivating personal votes reap rewards from the electorate under the Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system. Exploring electoral reward under STV is particularly significant because some legislators face intra-party competition for votes while others do not - a key determining incentive for cultivating personal votes. This study uses a survey of Irish legislators in 2002 and 2007 to measure constituency orientation and effort. The data suggest an electoral reward for personal vote cultivation, although the relationship between intra-system incentive and reward is apparently not always as expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New structural potentials related to the processes of globalisation and European integration have produced far-reaching changes in the structure of opposition in the French party system. Whereas the newly designed institutions of the Fifth Republic progressively brought about a 'bipolar multipartism' in the first two decades of their existence, the rising prominence of new cultural conflicts and of the issue of European integration have led to an increasing disunity of the parties within the left and right, to the emergence of the Front National as a powerful new actor, as well as to a general process of party system fragmentation. On the basis of four electoral campaigns between 1978 and 2002, this article analyses the transformation of the ideological dimensions underlying party competition and the positions of parties within this space, and assesses the implications for the electoral success of parties and for the general make-up of the party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]