Direct elections, representative democracy and European integration

Territorial representation

“…A common electoral system which allowed a high degree of PR (see also Huber & Powell 1994), and a European party system encouraging a high differentiation of candidates on offer would almost certainly produce a more representative parliament. Arguably too, a different party system might provide more encouragement for the parties to make European policy more central to their campaigns (Bogdonor 1989;Andeweg 1995;van der Eijk, Franklin et al 1996: Ch. 21).…”

“…Some also hoped that the elections could be fought by a common European party system, but the transnational associations and European parliament groups have never played more than a minor role. Most observers agree that European elections are fought by national parties on a terrain and within rules established by national political processes before a public so underwhelmed by the events that little more than half bother to vote (Reif & Schmitt 1980;Reif 1984Reif , 1985Bogdonor 1989;Marsh & Franklin 1996;van der Eijk & Franklin 1996;Blondel et al this issue). Direct elections were an acknowledgement of the necessity of 'democratic politics' (Lodge & Herman 1978) but the reality disappointed many who feel the quality of the European representative process is fundamentally flawed.…”

Untitled

“…From Zaller's (1990Zaller's ( , 1991Zaller's ( , 1992 work, we could infer that with mostly positive elite cues, the attentive masses will also take a positive attitude regarding the EC. Finally, Wessels' (1995) Elites have been mostly consensual and positive on their countries' participation in European integration (Inglehart 1970;Bogdanor 1986, 1989Franklin, Marsh & McLaren 1994van der Eijk & Franklin 1996;Gabel 1998), and since the more attentive portion of the public tends to follow these elite cues, they are likely to be more supportive of European integration. Indeed, cognitive mobilisation has been shown to be related to an individual's degree of support for the EU (Janssen 1991;Gabel 1998;Gabel & Palmer 1995).…”

“…On the one hand, if the reason that the right tends to reject external migration is because of fear of changes in society, then the right might also oppose internal migration, as EU migrants threaten to change the composition of the nation just as much as external immigrants. On the other hand, since national elites have been mostly consensual with regard to the EU (see van der Eijk & Franklin 1996;Franklin, Marsh, McLaren 1994;Bogdanor 1989Bogdanor , 1986), citizens may not be divided by left-right self-placement on the issue. In other words, with regard to external migration, elites in many countries have tended to divide across parties (with parties of the left supporting freer immigration and immigrants' rights and parties of the right favouring stricter immigration and immigrant policies), providing divisive cues to their followers; with regard to internal migration (and the EU), elites have mostly been supportive, and there are few divisions among them over the EU (and thus internal migration).…”

Get your Act Together

“…This appears to be the verdict that, with few exceptions, two decades of research on the elections to the European Parliament (EP) have delivered. Such elections, in spite of the growing influence exercised by the EP on European legislative procedures (Bogdanor, 1989;Kreppel, 2002), remain 'second-order' elections because they are inconsequential to the distribution of political offices at the national level (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). Voters largely perceive them as irrelevant.…”