European Elections and Domestic Politics: Lessons from the Past and Scenarios for the Future

12. European elections, domestic politics, and European integration

T W E LV E European elections, domestic politics, and European integration wouter van der brug and cees van der eijk with Hermann Schmitt, Michael Marsh, Mark Franklin, Jacques Thomassen, Holli Semetko, and Stefano Bartolini European elections provide unique opportunities for studying the complex interactions between elites and citizens in the interrelated spheres of domestic and European politics, partially because these elections link domestic and European politics. While their nature as second-order national elections makes European elections an integral part of the domestic political sphere, the temptation to interpret them as popular verdicts on the state and course of European integration has repeatedly proved irresistible. Irrespective of the veracity of such an interpretation—extremely limited until now, see the findings from chapters 8 and 9—it affects the way in which politicians and political parties position themselves with respect to European integration. Some of these—governing parties and politicians— directly affect policy making in the European political arena by virtue of their membership of the Council. This is particularly important because, as we will argue in detail in this chapter, we expect that the consequences of European integration will become politically more important and more contested in the years to come. Such changes will first and foremost take place in the domestic political arenas of the member states and thus impact 226 chapter van der brug chap12 6/13/07 4:54 PM Page 226 European elections as well as first-order elections, i.e., the elections for the national parliaments of the member states. For these reasons, the results of the analyses presented in the previous chapters of this book not only document what went on during the European elections of 1999 but, possibly more importantly, they also serve as a stepping stone for making informed inferences about the way in which these complex interactions may evolve in the future. This is the agenda of the present chapter. We will first elaborate the linkage between European elections and domestic politics, focusing on the most important actors involved: common citizens, political elites, and media. Subsequently, we discuss why European integration can be expected to increase in electoral importance in the decade to come. Finally, we use the results from our analyses in previous chapters and the data of the European Election Study 1999 to estimate the electoral consequences of a number of scenarios each of which reflects a plausible change in the salience and politicization of ‘Europe’. One of the leading themes in the previous chapters of this volume was that European elections have to be regarded primarily as national political events. They are second-order national elections, the outcomes of which are to be understoodasderivingprimarilyfromdomesticfactorsratherthanfromEuropeanones . In spite of the fact that they are not commonly seen that way, European elections are thus an integral part of national politics. For expository convenience and lack of better terminology we will ourselves also distinguish between European elections and (other aspects of ) domestic politics, while keeping in mind that they both belong to one and the same system. One may wonder whether this characterization of European elections as second-order national elections is still as justified as it was in 1980 when Reif and Schmitt coined the concept. Since then, the importance of the European Union has increased tremendously in all kinds of policy areas that directly impinge on individual voters’ lives and well-being. New accessions, the introduction of the euro in most of the member states, and the drafting of an EU constitution (subjected to referenda in several countries) have undoubtedly heightened popular awareness of the EU.1 This raises the question whether these events have altered the importance and the nature of European elections in the eyes of the voters, transforming them into something more than the seemingly inconsequential kind of ‘beauty contest’ that is implied in the concept of a second-order national election. Without in any way underestimating the breadth, depth, and consequences of all such changes at the level of European governance, we argue in this chapter that European elections are, and will be for the foreseeable future, second-order national elections. Precisely because of this, we can utilize the insights from previous chapters to explore how in years yet to European elections, domestic politics, and European integration 227 van der brug chap12 6/13/07 4:54 PM Page 227 come the elections to the European Parliament can be expected to interact with...