European Elections after Eastern Enlargement Preliminary Results from the European Election Study 2004 Michael Marsh, Slava Mikhaylov and Hermann Schmitt (eds.) CONNEX Report Series No 01 ISSN 1864-1539 Copyright © CONNEX 2007 CONNEX – Network of Excellence University of Mannheim Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) 68131 Mannheim, Germany Tel: ++49 621 181 2840 Fax: ++49 621 181 2845 http://www.connex-network.org http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de Mannheim, January 2007 Source cover picture: Photocase, www.photocase.com Layout & Typo: Thomas Schneider (MZES) II Editors Michael Marsh is a Professor of Political Science and Head of the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. He has written extensively on political parties and on electoral behaviour. He has been principal investigator on two Irish Election Studies and has been a member of the core group planning European Election Studies since 1992. Slava Mikhaylov is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science, Trinity College, University of Dublin. He holds an Economics degree from Belarus State Economic University. Current interests include political economics and political behaviour. Hermann Schmitt is a Research Fellow of the MZES at the University of Mannheim and a Privatdozent of Political Science at the the Free University in Berlin. He has been working on electoral behaviour, political representation, and European integration. He is a member of the core group planning European Election Studies since 1979, as well as a member of the planning committees of the German National Election Studies and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. III Preface In a multifaceted and complex political community like the European Union, it appears to be tremendously difficult to achieve more civil awareness, transparency and democracy. The European-wide excellence network CONNEX (Connecting Excellence on European Governance), which is composed of experts from 42 research institutions in a total of 21 countries, analyses how "efficient and democratic governance in the EU" works. CONNEX seeks to integrate independent fundamental research and to mobilise outstanding scholars from different disciplines to deepen our knowledge of European multilevel governance. The Network of Excellence has two main concerns: On the one hand it aims at taking stock of the wealth of on-going and already conducted governance research and making it accessible to a broad public. On the other hand, it seeks to build a Europe-wide research community, which stands for scientific excellence, dealing specifically with the topic „governance”. Since its start in July 2004, the network has organised many high-level conferences and academic workshops. The activities outcomes mainly take the form of publications such as edited volumes, special issues of academic journals and articles. The CONNEX Report Series launched with this volume is aimed to complete the range of our dissemination instruments. It has been designed to make first results of our research activities rapidly accessible to a public of specialists interested in the issues addressed by the Network. The content of each volume can also be downloaded from the project website (www.connex-network.org). IV We are pleased to publish this first volume that presents very interesting insights about the 2004 election at the European Parliament and hope it will contribute both to the scientific debate and to the discussion in the broad public. Beate Kohler-Koch Fabrice Larat Coordinator Network Manager Mannheim, January 2007 V Table of contents Introduction Michael Marsh and Slava Mikhaylov and Hermann Schmitt……….………….………………..…………......…… 1 Part 1 – Campaign, Turnout & Voting Chapter 1 The news coverage of the 2004 European Parliamentary Election Campaign in 25 countries De Vreese, C. H. and Banducci, S. and Semetko, H. A. and Boomgaarden, H. ……………………………….……………………… 17 Chapter 2 Turning out or turning off? How the EP elections of 2004 shed light on turnout dynamics Mark N. Franklin.………………………….....………………………… 53 Chapter 3 Vote Switching in the European Parliament Elections: Evidence from June 2004 Michael Marsh.………………………………….……………………… 71 Chapter 4 Left-Right and the European Parliament Vote in 2004 Marina Costa Lobo and André Freire and Pedro Magalhães.……………………………….……………………… 97 Chapter 5 Information Effects on Vote Choices in European Elections Gábor Tóka.…………………………………….……………………… 141 VI Part 2 – EU attitudes and Voting Decisions Chapter 6 Public Support for Integration in the Newly Enlarged EU: Exploring Differences Between Former Communist Countries and Established Member States James Tilley and John Garry .…………………………………….……………………… 181 Chapter 7 Mobilization and Attitudes Equals: Turnout - A Simple Equation? Bernhard Wessels……………………………….……………………… 205 Chapter 8 Political Representation and Euroscepticism: Evidence from Poland States Radoslaw Markowski and Joshua A. Tucker.……………………………….……………………… 231 Chapter 9 From Consensus to Competition? Ideological Alternatives on the EU Dimension Mikko Mattila and Tapio Raunio.………………………………….…………………..…… 277 Chapter 10 The support base of radical right parties in the enlarged European Union States Wouter van der Brug and Meindert Fennema.………………………….………………….........… 297 Part 3 – National Case Studies Chapter 11 What can ecological inference tell us about the Second-Order-Election- Thesis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Lukáš Linek and Pat Lyons.…………………………………….………………........…… 327 VII Chapter 12 Slovak vote in the EP election in broader context of the EU perception Olga Gyrfasowa.........................................................………………….. 371 Chapter 13 Who treated the 2004 European Election in Greece as a second-order election? Eftichia Teperoglou and Stavros Skrinis .…………………………………….……………...…… 393 Part 4 – Issues of EU Democracy Chapter 14 Scope of government preferences Lieven De Winter and Marc Swyngedouw and Bart Goeminne .………..……………………….……………….……… 425 Chapter 15 European Citizenship and Identity Jacques Thomassen …………………………….……………………… 461 Chapter 16 Europe as our new nation: trust and legitimacy in the EU Janez Štebe .…………………………………….……….……………… 489 Chapter 17 Dynamics in European Political Identity Angelika Scheuer and Hermann Schmitt.…………………………………….………………… 507 Chapter 18 The Democracy Deficit and the Enlarged European Union Robert Rohrschneider and Matt Loveless .…………………………………….…….……………… 527 Chapter 19 Saying and Doing (Something Else?): Does EP Roll Call Voting Reflect Euromanifesto Content? Andreas M. Wüst and Thorsten Faas .………………........…………….……………………… 559 VIII Introduction Michael Marsha, Slava Mikhaylovb and Hermann Schmittc University of Dublin, Trinity College ( a,b) and MZES, Mannheim ( c) The papers here were presented at an academic workshop held in Lisbon May 11-13, 2006 on the subject of the European Parliament elections of 2004. The workshop was convened by Michael Marsh (Trinity College Dublin) and Hermann Schmitt (MZES, University of Mannheim) and organised locally by Marina Costa Lobo, André Freire and Pedro Magalhães through the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon under the auspices of CONNEX, a Network of Excellence for research into EU governance funded under the 6th Framework Programme.1 The participants are all part of a group that carried out a study of the European Elections of 2004 by running surveys of electors in the member states, using a standard questionnaire.2 The 2004 project is the latest in a long line of European Election studies stretching back to 1979.3 These have been focussed primarily on electoral participation and voting behaviour in European Parliament elections, in part as a means of studying elections in general, but more than that, they have also been concerned with the evolution of a political community and a public sphere in the EU, examining citizens' perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime and their evaluations of EU political performance. In essence, the aim was to explore whether we are seeing a legitimate European system of political representation in the making, at least in the channel of 2 Michael Marsh, Slava Mikhaylov and Hermann Schmitt political representation that is provided by competitive elections. The project was started in 1979 by a trans-national group of electoral researchers and Europeanists some of which are still on board. Between 1979 and 2004, 6 election studies were prepared and 5 of them were realised. A new era began in 2004 when national study directors - rather than the international research group - funded and conducted the 2004 study in 24 of the 25 EU member- countries. The Lisbon meeting was designed to facilitate the discussion of further advances in the exploration of the implications of EES 2004 for accountability and representation in the European Union. Contributions were invited on the general theme of accountability and representation and the 2004 elections, but in the expectation that most would make some use of the 2004 data. The papers consequently cover a wide range of topics within those themes, from basic issues of turnout and vote choice in 2004, through the relationship between attitudes to the EU and voting decisions and case studies of EU elections in particular countries to more general issues of EU democracy: community, citizenship and identity and the relationship between the electoral process and the behaviour of MEPs. There are significant and original re-examinations of some ‘old chestnuts’, such as the second order thesis