Citizen
Participation in
European Politics
Hans Agné
Cees van der Eijk
Brigid Laffan
Britta Lejon
Pippa Norris
Hermann Schmitt
Richard Sinnott
Demokratiutredningens skrift nr 32
SOU 1999:151
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Preface
In October 1999 a conference was held in Stockholm on Citizen Participation in European Politics. The background of the discussion was a low Swedish
During the two days five international and four Swedish scholars contributed by giving lectures consisting of a variety of challenging perspectives and empirical data. In order to stimulate the public debate we are now pleased to publish most of the lectures.
The conference was arranged by The Commission on Democracy in Sweden in cooperation with The Swedish Ministry of Justice and The Committe of Evaluation of the General Election of 1998.
The organisers want to express their deepest gratitude to professor Sören Holmberg for his generous support during the planning of the conference. However, neither professor Holmberg nor the organisers but the authors themselves are finally responsible for the opinions formulated in this book.
Erik Amnå
Principal Secreterary
The Commission on Democracy
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PREFACE
Notes
1 In Swedish the Commission on Democracy also has published other analyses dealing with global and European challenges to Swedish democracy, for instance Demokrati på europeisk nivå? (SOU 1998:124), EU – ett demokratiprojekt? (SOU 1998:145), Bör demokratin avnationaliseras? (SOU 1999:11) and Globaliseringen och demokratin (SOU 1999:56).
4
| Table of Contents | |
| Democray w ithin the EU in the Light of the 1999 | |
| European Parliamentary Elections | |
| Britta Lejon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 7 |
| Why Some People Vote and Others do not | |
| Cees van der Eijk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 3 |
| European Parliament Elections . Institutions, | |
| Attitudes and Participation | |
| Richard Sinnott. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 5 7 |
| Integration and Statehood in the European Union . | |
| The distribution of Pow ers Betw een the EU and the | |
| Member States | |
| Brigid Laffan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 7 5 |
| The Architecture of EU Institutions and Citizen | |
| Participation | |
| Hermann Schmitt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 8 7 |
| Blaming the Messanger? Political Communications | |
| and Turnout in EU Elections | |
| Pippa Norris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 9 9 |
| To Share Democratic Legitimacy Betw een Different | |
| Political Levels | |
| Hans Agné. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 1 7 |
5
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Democracy within the EU in the Light of the 1999 European Parliamentary Elections
Member of Cabinet Britta Lejon, Ministry of Justice
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am happy to welcome you all to the seminar on ”Citizen Participation in European Politics”. This seminar is focused on one of the most important common goals in Europe: To grant that the European Union will be and percieved to be a union of the people of Europe.
We who share that vision are terribly set back by the poor turnout in the elections to European parliament this summer.
A low participation by the citizens is the greatest obstacle in the process of securing peace and prosperity in Europe.
***
The EU has been given important tasks. They involve guaranteeing peace, ensuring a good environment, creating favourable living conditions, and much besides. We do not consider national decisions to be sufficient in addressing such problems as precarious security, environmental threats, organised international crime, flows of capital that shift jobs from one country to another with lightning speed, to name but a few. We need political decision-
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DEMOCRACY WITHIN THE EU IN THE LIGHT OF THE 1999 EUROPEAN...
making that can deal powerfully with those problems for which individual nations lack sufficient
Decisions reached within the European Union have major consequences in nearly all policy areas. EU policies have effects on the work of national parliaments as well as on that of municipalities and county councils. The EU influences the everyday life of people living within and in fact also far outside the borders of the community. Moreover, the influence of the EU in such areas is steadily increasing. The Treaty of Amsterdam has put a number of political issues on the Union agenda which are essentially of an everyday nature, for example consumer policy, social issues, equality between men and women and employment policy.
At the same time we know that decisions and
The European elections are the single occasion on which the citizens of Europe can join forces to influence the shape of the EU’s future. Nevertheless only half, 49.9 per cent, of the EU citizens entitled to vote did so in the European elections held this summer. The election turnout in Sweden was 38.8 per cent.
We cannot accept elections in which well below half of the eligible voters participate. There are a number of reasons for concern. First, we consider that a low election turnout reduces the legi-
timacy of the institution concerned.
Second, we are afraid that a low turnout in one election will rub off on other elections. That is to say, a low turnout in the European elections might also get citizens into the habit of not voting in national elections.
Third, a high election turnout has its own intrinsic democratic value. It is indicative of a broad political debate within society, in which most people familiarise themselves with current political issues and make their own judgements regarding the political development they would like to see. If few take part in elections the risk is the opposite – that democracy will be diluted and that a representative government will in a sense be reduced to government by a minority.
***
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BRITTA LEJON
To reverse the trend towards low electoral turnout we need knowledge. This is why the Swedish Government gave the Committee of Evaluation of the General Election of 1998 the additional task of analysing the results of the 1999 European elections.
It is also why the Commission on Democracy in Sweden, the Committee of Evaluation of the General Election of 1998 and the Ministry of Justice, have invited you to take part in this seminar.
***
There might be different views on the ideals of democracy. But the absolute majority of people are in full agreement on the key role of general elections in a democracy. The EU is not a nation, it is a very special organisation but it does have a directly elected parliament. However, the authority of this parliament cannot be equated with that of a national parliament.
People in our countries have realised that power in the European Union is not concentrated exclusively in the Parliament. An important reason why the European Parliament does not attract the same interest as a national parliament is undoubtedly that significant power is vested in the national governments.
But the low interest in the European Parliament reflects a low interest in democratically elected institutions generally. From the point of view of democracy a number of negative trends can be seen in society today, both in Sweden and in most of the mature democracies. There is declining confidence in political institutions. Public participation and the confidence of citizens in the ability of the established parties to solve problems and take action is being successively weakened. Public participation in society requires greater efforts and permanent commitment – both of which are decreasing.
As far as I can see, the situation is not dramatic in the present EU member states. Democracy as a system is not threatened – on the contrary. There is considerable popular support for democracy as the best form of governance.
But since public confidence and participation are
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DEMOCRACY WITHIN THE EU IN THE LIGHT OF THE 1999 EUROPEAN...
Beside the low
We know that the European Union is facing massive and in part difficult challenges. Enlargement eastwards is one of them.
***
We must identify which problems are specifically related to the EU. Efforts to make the work of the EU more transparent are an important part of this. Sweden has a long tradition of public access to information. The question of transparency applies to all EU institutions. The EU must be an organisation of its age. Modernising the institutions of the EU is crucial for public participation.
We need transparent and understandable processes. We need budgetary disciplin, accountability, equal opurtunities for men and women , access to documents among other things. But in order to boost turnout at European elections we must also reflect upon what role we would have the EU play in the future.
However, I don’t think it will be enough to implement institutional reforms at the
Many
Among other things there must be an effort to increase and deepen information to the public about
Creating our national democracies took decades. Building European cooperation on a democratic foundation must also be
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BRITTA LEJON
allowed to take time, perhaps even longer bearing in mind how new the East European democracies are.
After this introduction I look forward to hearing your views and discussing these matters with you over the next two days. In the coming discussions about the future development of the Union the Swedish governments intend to keep focus on popular support and participation. There must be a joint analysis of the reasons for the low election turnout and proposals of measures that might reverse the trend.
Thank you.
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Why Some People Vote and Others do not
Cees van der Eijk1
The question of the determinants of participation in elections has occupied political scientists and political practitioners alike, particularly since the introduction of universal suffrage. This question arises from the basic observation that not all people who have the right to vote make use of that right: while some people vote, others do not. Consequently, one is tempted to ask whether this difference originates in other distinctions between these two groups, and if so, what other characteristics are involved.
Before World War II, this question had to be addressed mainly by analysis of percentages of turnout by region, municipality, or even smaller geographical units. Renowned in this respect are the studies of the French sociographer André Siegfried (1913) and the Swedish sociologist Herbert Tingsten (1937). Notwithstanding the insights these analysts gained, this approach has severe limitations, and may even generate fallacious conclusions. The development of survey methods after World War II, and the explosion of practical possibilities for analysing large amounts of survey data with the development of cheap computer technology have allowed the pursuit of the question of why people do or do not vote at the level of the individual voter. This survey approach has greatly increased our understanding of the
1 The author is professor at Department of political science and Amsterdam school of communication research at university of Amsterdam.
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WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT
electoral participation. Yet, in spite of the tremendous number of
In this report, I will focus on the behavior of individual voters, and the reasons why they do or do not employ their right to vote. I will therefore not systematically address the effects of systemic characteristics on the
This report is divided in three parts. In the first, I review a number of theoretical approaches to the question of individual electoral participation. The relevant concern in this discussion is not how successful each of these approaches is in explaining differences between voters, but rather their conceptual and theoretical logic. In the second part of this report, first findings from a recent study of the Swedish electorate will be reported. These derive from the Swedish segment of the European Election Study 1999. The third part consists of reflective comments that link parts 1 and 2, and that contain some informed speculation about causes of the low turnout in the most recent Swedish parliamentary elections and European elections that, at the moment, cannot be subjected to empirical testing because of lack of relevant data.
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Part 1: Theoretical and conceptual approaches
The literature on electoral participation contains a number of approaches that differ in terms of the locus of the factors considered to be of causal importance for making people either participate or abstain in elections. One rarely finds these approaches in ideal form, as most theorists and empirical analysts see the benefits of using elements of them in a complementary fashion, but for the purpose of presentation I will discuss them separately in more or less
The first of these approaches looks for the explanation of differences in electoral participation to the voters involved: different people have different characteristics that help to understand why they behave differently. The second approach looks at the other actors that are of necessity involved in the conduct of elections: the political parties, the candidates and the politicians. They have to reach and mobilize voters and to the extent that they fail to do so this will explain
Who votes depends on voters’ characteristics
The logic of this approach rests on the notion that voters should possess certain qualities in order to turn out and vote. In general one can think of the following kinds of qualities that may relate to turnout:
Physical qualities: voting requires a trip to a ballot station, and therefore that a person is sufficiently healthy and mobile to make this trip, that s/he has sufficient visual and motor skills to read the ballot and handle a pencil or
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WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT
are required for casting one’s vote, so that the number of people unable to vote for these trivial reasons is minimized. Yet, for some people the activities required to vote will remain too strenuous – the (very) old, chronically ill, and disabled – although it can be expected that their number is quite small in developed democratic systems such as Sweden.
Economic and social resources such as (flexible) time and money. To the extent that voting is organized in such a way that it costs a lot of time (because of distance to travel to a polling station, because of queues waiting for their turn, etc.) this may deter people from voting, and people with more free time or a more flexible time schedule will be advantaged. This will be particularly so when people’s income is so low that they cannot afford to lose time that is necessary for acquiring their income.2 In large measure, it is believed that these factors play at most a minor role in preventing people from going to the polls in developed western democracies, were it only because of measures taken to minimize these effects (such as long polling hours, possibilities for absentee voting or postal voting, etc.)
Social connectedness. Elections are a collective enterprise, the results of which are relevant for a society or political community as a whole. Belonging to that community or society is then an important factor that promotes turnout, whereas being estranged or alienated from it may obstruct electoral participation. For this reason, social integration is a factor that impinges on turnout, and at the individual level this relates to the extent that an individual is integrated in networks of relationships that make a person into a member of the community. Although it is difficult to state which concrete characteristics should be taken as indicative for integration, the relevant literature looks at factors such as membership of and being active in
2 Although not of relevance in most western societies, the consequences of this logic run sometimes in the opposite direction: voting can be a source of income in conditions of widespread poverty in combination with a practice of
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contexts and organizations – including churches, youth groups, sports and recreational organzations, etc. – and at membership of a
Relevant cognitive and
A number of more concrete characteristics relate to cognitive and
Relevant attitudes. In the course of their lives, from childhood socialization as well as from experiences in later life, voters have acquired attitudes that may either facilitate or impede electoral participation. Such attitudes are referred to in the literature (e.g. Verba and Nie, 1972) as civic attitudes, and they
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WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT
pertain to generalized (rather than
¾Generalized feelings about the importance of politics in general. A view that the political process is largely irrelevant for whatever happens in the world and in one’s own life is an impediment to electoral participation, whereas the opposite view will promote it.
¾Generalized feelings about the openness, malleability and benevolence of the political system all increase the relevance and potentially beneficial effects of voting, whereas feelings of an opposite nature promote a perception of voting as futile or even hazardous.
Civic attitudes, such as those referred to above, cannot be observed directly in terms of overt behavior. Rather, they have to be inferred from responses to items in survey questionnaires that are expected to yield valid indicators for these attitudes.
The approach in which people’s characteristics are looked upon as factors that are important for their participation (or lack thereof) has been very influential in political science since the 1960’s. Its archetype is perhaps the seminal work by Verba, Nie and others (Verba and Nie, 1972; Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978), later followed by many others (see, e.g. Parry et al., 1992). This tradition has yielded something like a standard model in which
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question how societal and institutional circumstances affect the relative strength of the direct, and indirect impact of people’s background on their participation. An institutional framework of, e.g., compulsory voting, takes away most of the direct and the indirect impact of background, as it renders such distinctions largely irrelevant. Other contexts, such as a largely secularized and ”postmodern” society would yield very strong indirect effects of background, and so forth.
In spite of the wealth of insights yielded by this approach, it is notoriously unable to account for variation in turnout across different elections in a single system. After all, most of the factors identified in this approach as important do not change very rapidly, if at all, over time. Yet, in most countries successive elections yield different rates of turnout, sometimes dramatically so.
Who votes depends on mobilization efforts by parties and others
The line of reasoning of this approach focuses not on voters, but on other actors that are involved in elections. These are first and foremost the parties and candidates that vie for the support of the voters. To the extent that parties and politicians put more effort in reaching people and to ”getting out the vote”, more people will be reached, more people will be affected by the persuasive communications from parties aimed at mobilization, and consequently the number of people casting their vote will be higher. By contrast, to the extent that parties succeed in discouraging the supporters of their opponents from voting (e.g., by
Aside from parties and politicians, other actors may also be important in the mobilization process. One can think in this respect of organizations such as pressure groups or cause groups that occasionally take part in the electoral struggle by mobilizing their followers, usually in an effort to make them support a candidate or party sympathetic towards their interest or cause. An important example of such behavior in many countries is the effort by labor
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WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT
unions to get their members or followers to the polls. Less frequently nowadays in western democracies, but important in former times, were the efforts of churches to mobilize their believers in support of a favored party. Even in the absence of overt efforts by formal organizations, a mobilizing influence can emanate from social pressure, particularly when cohesive social groups exist from which individuals derive (part of) their identity. Obviously, such implicit social pressure and the more open influence of organizations will usually reinforce each other. Such
When looking at whether or not individual people turn out to cast their vote, the logic of this approach implies that those who have been reached by mobilizing agents – or who have been reached more frequently or more intensively – will vote more often than those who were not. The kind of people that are more likely to be reached by mobilizing agents are those that are comparatively easily targetted as recipients of messages and influence attempts, such as members of parties, organized interest groups or cohesive social groups.4
The logic of this approach is quite compelling when we observe that the efforts of parties and others to mobilize voters vary widely across different elections, and that turnout rates across
3For the genesis and historical roots of cleavage politics, see Lipset and Rokkan (1967), Rose and Urwin (1970) and Lijphart (1968). For the most
4Obviously, people wo are ”eager” for information can also easily be reached, but this refers not only to the efforts of mobilizing agents, but to the interaction of their efforts with qualities of voters (the first of the approaches, discussed above).
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those elections often vary concomitantly. The contrast between national parliamentary elections on the one hand and elections to the European Parliament on the other is a case in point. It has been well documented that the mobilizing efforts of parties and media are much smaller in the latter than in the former, as indicated by their spending in European elections only a fraction of the resources they are accustomed to spend in contests for the national parliament.5 Still, this approach too, has its persistently weak side. When controlling for having been reached by parties, and for having been exposed to mobilizing information and communication, one still observes large differences in turnout. Some people evidently go to the polls to cast their vote even without having been prodded to do so, while for others the most intensive barrage of mobilizing efforts remains without effect. To a large extent these differences in behavior coincide with the differences in voters’ characteristics that were identified as important by the previous approach.
Who votes depends on the
In this perspective the starting point is the recognition that every election again is a different one, with its own idiosyncracies. The special aspects of one election, that may help to bring some people to the polling station, may be absent in another election, with the effect that some of them will now stay home, while others will be motivated instead to cast their vote. From this perspective, it depends on the aspects that characterize each election in turn who will turn out and who will not.
In order to avoid confusion, it must be emphasized that this tradition comes in two different forms, one analytical, and one narrative in character. The latter comprises a large number of case studies of single elections – often in pleasant narrative and at first sight quite convincing. Sometimes written by political journalists, sometimes by academics, these accounts try to make a specific election intelligible by pointing to the particular character of the
5 See, e.g., Blumler (1983), Reif (1985), Van der Eijk and Franklin (1996).
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WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT
contest, the unique set of candidates or parties that was pitted against each other, the particular political events or possibly even scandals, the charismatic character of some of the main actors, the novelty of how the media operated, the unusual economic or social circumstances that surrounded the election, and so forth. From all these aspects, a chronicle is woven that leaves no room for any other election outcome than the one that indeed materialized. Publications such as these are of great value for getting a ”taste” of what was going on at the election in question, to refresh one’s memory in terms of a chronology or of – indeed – the idiosyncrasies of the contest at that time and place. But they are not of great analytical value. Their defect is that the accounts they provide are in no sensible way testable – hence cannot be rejected as inadequate explanations. A gifted story teller can in this way make a convincing account for any election, using only
The analytical tradition of the ”specific election context” approach is based on comparison. A specific election context can only be sensibly described by explicit comparison. An account that emphasizes, for example, that an incumbent lost an election because of being embroiled in a scandal, requires for testing that other elections are also investigated in which other incumbents were involved in scandals, as well as elections where the incumbents were not, but where their opponents were, or where nobody was. On the basis of Mill’s
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it requires the replacement of proper names by theoretically interesting concepts.
An important set of such theoretically interesting concepts are provided by the general theoretical framework of rational choice, in which behavior is explained by people’s evaluation of the costs and benefits (monetary or otherwise) associated with each of the alternative courses of action that are open to them. Applied to the question who votes and who does not, the answer will be that people will vote if the benefits of that action outweigh the costs, and that they will abstain in the opposite case. In order to avoid the tautology that all action is rational, as it otherwise would not have been undertaken, costs and benefits are usually restricted to people’s economic and political goals or interests. In a somewhat different, but compatible, terminology, voters evaluate ”what is at stake” in a particular election and, depending on their individual goals and interests, their perceptions and expectations, may arrive at different conclusions in different elections. In some situations the stakes are sufficiently high to warrant the trouble of going to the polls, in other situations they are not and abstention will be the result. The task of the analyst is to identify the contextual factors that render a specific election more (or conversely, less) consequential than another for specific voters, and thus to explain their turning out (or conversely, not) in these events.
The perspective of what is at stake is particularly suited for shedding light on differences between elections in terms of individual electoral participation (why does the same voter vote in one election, while abstaining in another one, whereas this pattern may be the reverse for another voter) and of aggregate turnout (why is the percentage of turnout higher in one election than in another?). Barring rather infrequent changes in the electoral system and in electoral procedures, we may assume the ”cost” of voting to be rather invariant across elections.6 Consequently, differences in
6 In some instances this assumption is unwarranted even in the absence of changes in electoral procedures or the electoral system. Elections may differ in terms of relevant opportunity costs, as will be the case when one is located in a vacation period and another one is not.
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individual or aggregate behavior have to be understood from differences in the ”benefit” side, i.e. in differences of what voters perceive to be at stake. These perceptions can be thought of to be affected by a number of factors.
The most important difference in what is at stake in an election relate to the political, and in particular the policy, consequences an election may conceivably generate. If, for example, no programmatic (or other relevant) differences exist between all (or even most) parties, the stakes are less, because the same policy consequences can be expected to occur irrespective of which party wins.7 But even if programmatic differences do exist between contending parties or candidates, the stakes will – ceteris paribus – be low when it can not be expected that these will be reflected in actual government policies, dependent on whom wins the election. In the case of European elections, for example, no clearly discernable relation exists between the election result on the one hand and the policies of the EU on the other hand, as the composition of the European Parliament has no consequences for the composition of relevant
7In this, and the remainder of the argument, it is the perception of the voter that is of relevance, and not the assessment of an analyst, politician or journalist. For the sake of brevity, this will not always be spelled out in detail in the text. Similarly, whatever differences voters perceive to exist between parties, must matter to them, i.e., must relate to the goals, values or policy preferences they hold.
8It is particularly this kind of difference that distinguishes
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voters will do are of immediate relevance, but the existence of such perceptions is not unlikely in view of the information voters acquire about others’ preferences, either via informal communications or by way of
Although this approach is very powerful in explaining the differences in electoral participation between (national) parliamentary or presidential elections on the one hand, and local, regional and European elections on the other, it has so far been less successful in identifying the contextual factors that can explain variations in turnout between elections of the same kind, particularly between different
9One could object to this line of reasoning, as some theorists do, on the grounds of the infinitesimal small likelihood that a single voter’s ballot will ”swing” the election result in a way that matters to that voter. The reply to this objection is either that voters’ estimates of this probability is grossly exagerated, or that voters act on the belief that others exist with identical preferences, and that collectively their votes do matter. See also Franklin, (1996).
10For a first review of the effect of closeness of the race, see Van Egmond, 1999.
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of
Returning to the question addressed in this report – why some people vote and others do not – the reasoning above leads to the identification of a series of characteristics of individuals that can be expected to affect their likelihood of voting. First of all, it is necessary that voters have political goals or desires; if they do not, no benefits are to be achieved from voting. Second, they must perceive differences between parties in the respects that matter to them.12 In line with the argument above, voters must have the feeling that (executive) power is at stake and that the election result can go different ways. Some of these latter requirements seem pretty tall orders if voters were to develop such knowledge or information entirely on their own. They can, however, make use of various sources from which they can derive information and cues about the nature of the various parties, about what is at stake, and so on. Thus, in this approach, availability of and exposure to such sources is also an important distinguishing characteristic of voters.13
What is the nature of the act of voting?
The three approaches that were discussed above differ in what they see as the nature of the voting act. In addition, yet other interpre-
11See Franklin, van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1996), Oppenhuis (1995) and Franklin (1996).
12Obviously, this also implies that they have more or less developed perceptions about parties or candidates whatsoever.
13The extent to which the social and political context provides voters with relevant information and cues in this respect is therefore of particular importance. In a comparative study, Granberg and Holmberg (1988) demonstrated that the Swedish context is much more conducive to voters’ acquiring relevant information than that of the United States. In a different study, Van der Brug (1997) showed that a context that provides sufficient relevant cues can overcome informational deficiencies of voters.
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tations are often referred to that are not straightforwardly associated with any of these approaches, but that have to be discussed nonetheless.
The
A quite different interpretation of what the voting act means for people emphasizes that it allows the expression of identity and identification. In this view, voting is not intrinsically different from other kinds of behavior that can be understood from the perspective of identity politics, and the usage of which cannot be reduced to instrumental motivations and the
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tifications as prerequisite for social integration, but that would probably constitute a fallacy of the pars pro toto kind.14
A third interpretation of the meaning of the voting act is that it expresses support for the political system as such. In its negative form, it holds that
14The tremendous decline in such identifications as reported in the literature on party identification on the one hand (see the review in Dalton and Wattenberg, 1993), and in the decline of cleavage politics on the other (e.g., Franklin, Mackie and Valen, 1992), cannot in any convincing manner be linked to social disintegration.
15See, in this respect, in particular the various contributions of the Beliefs in Government project (Kaase and Newton, 1995), where the relationship between citizens and their states is probed in rather great detail and as much as possible in historically comparative perspective. Most relevant in the context of this report are (references) Biorcio and Mannheimer (1995) and Topf (1995).
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as the kloof (the idea of an unbridgeable chasm between voters and the political professionals).16 In spite of the apparent plausibility of such interpretations, empirical support is lacking. Extensive analysis of the data from a recent study of Germany and the Netherlands led to the conclusion that
… neither the declining membership of political parties, nor the possibly declining rate of participation in elections is sufficient ground for assuming a crisis in the relationship between voters and politics, as is implied in the very terminology of Verdrossenheit and kloof. Rather, these phenomena reflect changes in the position of parties
In its positive form, however, the ”support for the political system” interpretation holds that the act of voting allows the expression of feelings of
Forces impinging on the decision to vote or not
The considerations from the preceding sections can be summarized into three different kinds of forces that – in isolation or in combination – impact on the decsion to vote or to abstain:
1.Coercion, pressure and persuasion. This may exist in the form of some legal obligation (such as compulsory voting) or the absence thereof. 17 In a different form, the expectation of
16The debates on Verdrossenheit and kloof have been summarized in Van der Eijk and Van der Brug (1998). A particularly relevant contribution to these discussions is Van Gunsteren and Andeweg (1994).
17Apart from legal conditions, little research has been conducted into the existence of other coercive pressures. ”Common wisdom” holds such
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positive or negative sanctions (including social approval or being ostracized) will constitute pressure to either cast a ballot or alternatively to stay away from the polls. Most mobilizing appeals in modern campaigns are focussed on persuasion.
2.Intrinsic satisfaction. This derives from the possibility of expressing authentic feelings, such as a sense of citizen duty, or identification with groups or parties, etc. Obviously, depending on the kind of feeling, it may be voting as well as nonvoting that yields satisfaction.
3.Instrumental motivation. In this case the differential of effort versus benefit, or the assessment of what is at stake determines whether the voter casts a ballot or not.
In explaining why some people vote and others do not, one can assess the power of each of the different approaches mentioned so far, and subsequently one can combine them into a single explanatory model. In the next part of this report, I will analyse survey data pertaining to electoral participation in Sweden at the occasion of the elections to the European Parliament of June 1999. As is often the case in empirical research, the data available from this study do not cover all factors that one can think of theoretically and that have been mentioned in the previous pages. Lack of space as well as empirical insights from other studies result in leaving out of the questionnaire those factors that are expected to be of little explanatory power. The analyses to be presented will therefore neither for each of the various approaches separately, nor for their combination, yield a full account of the question why some people vote and others do not in this specific historical situation. Moreover, when analyzing only a single election, no adequate account can be given of the impact of all those contextual factors
effects to be minor, but it is not impossible that they play a certain role in personal relationships such as those between, e.g., husband and wife.or pressure from socially cohesive groups that can be expected to exist in systems dominated by cleavage politics – a cindition that has mostly vanished in western democracies (as documented by, e.g., Franklin, Mackie and Valen, 1992).
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that exist at these elections, that would require explicit comparison with other Swedish elections, with elections in other countries, or both. Such comparative analyses have been conducted for other elections and other countries, however. In the concluding part of this paper I will summarize the findings of those studies and discuss their possible relevance for understanding electoral participation in the Swedish elections for the European Parliament in 1999.
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Part 2: Electoral participation in Sweden in June 1999
The analyses reported below were conducted on data from the Swedish part of the European Election Study 1999 (EES99).
The European Election Study 1999
The EES99 is a survey of voters that was executed in the period immediately following the elections to the European Parliament of June 1999. In each of the member states of the European Union (EU) a random sample of voters was interviewed by telephone, using a questionnaire that on average took approximately 30 minutes to administer.18 This study and the questionnaire were designed and organized by an international research group, just as were its counterparts following earlier European elections in 1989 and 1994. In addition to conducting a voter study, the EES enterprise conducts other kinds of research related to the European electoral and representation process, such as studies of elites (MP’s, MEP’s), studies of the manifestoes and election pledges of the various political parties, studies of legislative behavior by MEP’s and their party groups in the European Parliament, and studies of the way in which the mass media reported and commented about these elections and their campaign.
The 1999 EES
18 The Italian sample was not interviewed by telephone, but by teleinterviewing instead. This sample consists of the members of an existing panel study, who downloaded the questionnaire and completed it on their individual PC’s, to then upload the completed version again.
The samples were in all other cases drawn randomly. Unsuccessful attempts – due to not reaching the intended respondent or by refusal – may, of course, result in biases of the samples.
The data of this study will be archived in the Zentral Archive (Cologne) and the Steinmetz Archive (Amsterdam), and will become available to interested analysts by the beginning of 2001. Before that time, they can only be obtained with permission of the primary investigators.
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Mannheim), Mark Franklin (Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., USA), Michael Marsh (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland), Renato Mannheimer (University of Genoa), Jacques Thomassen (University of Twente, the Netherlands), and Wouter van der Brug, Holli Semetko, Klaus Schönbach and Cees van der Eijk (all from the University of Amsterdam). Relevant contextual knowledge and assistence with translations of questionnaires was provided by a series of ad hoc country specialists and native speakers, whose contribution has been of great value. The fieldwork was conducted by an international consortium of survey institutions, coordinated by IPSOS (Hamburg).
The funding for this
The Swedish sample in this study resulted in 505 successful interviews, that provide the data to be analyzed below.
The structure of the analyses
From the interview data, measures can be derived that pertain to the different approaches for explaining voter participation and that were described in Part 1 of this report. For each of these I will first of all report the differential in turnout between its categories, as these differentials manifested themselves in the responses of the Swedish voters in our study.19 This differential is simply the dif-
19 All analyses reported here were conducted on unweighted data, that means that no corrections were made to compensate for any kind of distributional differences between the sample on the one hand and the sampled population of Swedish adults on the other hand. Whereas weighting often affects univariate distributions, it has in general a much smaller impact on bivariate results (such as differences between groups) or multivariate analyses.
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ference in percentage points between the first and the second mentioned categories of each measure. It describes differences in turnout, which are very helpful in indicating which of these characteristics of voters matter more, or less, in terms of differences in electoral participation. Yet, these differentials cannot without further ado be (causally) attributed to the measures in question, because of the possibility that the differences between the categories reported may be generated by other important characteristics, that may more plausibly be thought of as causes. Therefore, additional analyses will be presented, in which several measures are used simultaneously to explain (in statistical parlance) the difference between turning out to vote and abstaining. These multivariate analyses will first of all be presented for each of the clusters of measures that relate to the theoretical approaches discussed earlier, and subsequently for all these jointly.
Differences in turnout
The data of the EES99 contain information about a large number of characteristics of voters. As a start of the analyses to be reported, Tables 1 through 3 present differences in turning out to vote between different groups of respondents. Table 1 reports such differences in when looking at background characteristics of citizens.
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Table 1: Differences in electoral participation by background characteristics, European Elections of 1999
(Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505)
| Background | Groups compared | Turnout differential (%) |
| characteristics | ||
| Gender | (men vs. women) | 0.5 (n.s.) |
| Education | (high vs. low)) | 4.8 (n.s.) |
| Age | (30 to 60 vs. under 30) | 13.5 |
| Age | (over 60 vs. 30 to 60) | 26.4 |
| Union member | (yes vs. no) | |
| Attends church | (never vs. rest) | |
| Urbanisation | (large town vs. rural area) | 16.3 |
Table 1 shows that gender and education matter very little in terms of turnout. The difference in turnout between men and women is a mere 0.5 %, a difference that is statistically not significant, as indicated by the ”n.s.” designation in the last column.20 In other words, the difference is so small that it could have occurred by chance, without any real difference existing in the population. The difference in turnout for the two education groups is not significant either, which seems at first surprising. Two things must be kept in mind, however. First, compulsory education far into the teenage years ensures that the very large majority of the population is endowed with the cognitive and
20 Unless indicated otherwise, in all analyses a
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differences in this respect are smaller than when large portions of a population have barely any formal education at all. Second, education is measured rather crudely in this study, which also may mask differences that – in spite of the generally high level; of education – could possibly still be found with more refined measurements. 21 The other background variables reported here are, however, very powerful in discriminating between those who voted and those who abstained. People over 60 years of age vote more frequently than those between 30 and 60 (a difference of 26.4 %), while the latter show a 13.5 higher turnout rate than those under 30. Combining these two differences shows that the oldest of these age groups has an almost 40 % higher turnout rate than the youngest!
People who sometimes attend church (irrespective of the frequency thereof) are considerably more likely to vote than those who say they never to go to church, a finding that seems in line with the social integration hypothesis mentioned in Part 1. This, however, is at odds with the fact that
Finally, of this group of variables, is urbanisation. Respondents themselves indicated whether they lived in a large town, a small town or a rural area. The difference between the first and the last is significant (16.3 %), with the respondents living in small towns falling about halfway between the other two groups. Exactly why these differences between more and less urbanised respondents exist is not clear from these descriptive results; but it is clear that the differences are quite pronounced.
21 Education is measured by the age at which the respondent stopped with
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The extent to which a second group of respondent characteristics is correlated to turning out to vote is reported in Table 2. These variables all concern aspects of interest in and information and knowledge about politics. These variables form part of the syndrome of civic attitudes and orientations referred to in part 1. The variables that relate to media exposure are also of relevance in the approach that explains turnout by the efforts of mobilizing agents.
Table 2: Differences in electoral participation by political involvement and knowledge, European Elections of 1999
(Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505)
| Political interest and | Groups compared | Turnout | |
| knowledge | differential (%) | ||
| Interest in the EE campaign | (very/some vs. little/no) | 32.0 | |
| Political interest / general | (very/some vs. little/no) | 32.3 | |
| Pays attention to political news | (a lot/some vs. little/no) | 35.9 | |
| Watched tv programs about | (often/sometimes vs. never) | 30.4 | |
| EE | |||
| Read papers about EE | (often/sometimes vs. never) | 31.6 | |
| Watches news on TV / general | (always vs. =< 3 days p.w.) | 31.0 | |
| Reads newspapers / general | (always vs. =< 3 days p.w.) | 21.1 | |
| Knows which party won EE | (yes vs. no) | 28.8 | |
| Mentions issue | (yes vs. no) | 14.7 | |
| Mentions party | (yes vs. no) | 9.3 | |
| Informed about EU | (sufficient vs. insufficient) | 6.1 | (n.s.) |
Table 2 shows that people who are interested in the European elections and its campaign, who are interested in politics in general, who keep informed by watching
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are focused on the European election in particular – yield a turnout differential of approximately 30 %, which suggests that these different characteristics overlap to a considerable extent. Separate analyses (not reported here) show that this is indeed to a large extent the case: the distinction in the sample effectuated by one of the variables (say, interest in the EE campaign) coincides to a very large extent with the distinction that is made by another (such as political interest in general).
Three of the variables relate to knowledge and insight. The first is straightforward: whether or not people were able to indicate which of the Swedish parties had won the European election (only 45 % were able to correctly indicate this). The next two variables are ”proxies” for knowledge and insight. They indicate whether or not respondents were able to give any substantive answer to an open question about the most important problems in the country, respectively, which of the parties in the country would be most likely to undertake a preferred policy on that issue. The logic of these variables is that in order to provide any kind of answer, respondents need some idea (which may be entirely idiosyncratic) of what goes on in the country and of what the various parties stand for. Both variables are significantly related to turnout, but the differential is much smaller than in the case of the interest and exposure variables.
The last variable in this table concerns whether the respondents feel that they are sufficiently or insufficiently informed about the politics of the European Union. Although those who think that they are sufficiently informed (less than 20 % of the sample) turn out in higher numbers, the difference is not statistically significant.
A final series of variables, reported in Table 3, deals with political preferences, civic attitudes and political approval and satisfaction.
Political preferences, first of all, relate to the extent that respondents identify with a political party, or the extent to which they find one of the parties electorally appealing. Those who identify with a party turn out 23.7 % more often than those who do not. Moreover, the stronger one’s preference for a party – irres-
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pective which – the larger the likelihood that one turns out to vote. For each of the parties in Sweden, the respondents were asked how likely it was (on a scale from 1 to 10) that they would ever vote for that party. For each person it is thus possible to derive from his/her entire set of responses which party he/she finds the best one of all, and how strong that preference is (measured on the same scale of 1 to 10). The stronger this preference, the more likely it is that the respondent turned out to vote: if the ”best” party scores a 10, the probability of voting is more than 12 % higher than if the best party scores a 9, etc. In other words, the ”better” the best party is in the voter’s eyes, the more likely he/she is to vote. As this has little to do with the specific context of the election, or with the efforts of mobilizing agents in that election – as is equally the case for identifying with parties – this shows that the stronger the affective relation between voters and parties the larger the likelihood of voting.
Intention to vote in a national election is also strongly linked to turning out to vote in the European election. Together with the previous findings in this table this demonstrates that turnout in European elections is very much related to a voter’s affective linkage to the national party system.
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Table 3: Differences in electoral participation by political preferences, civic attitudes, political approval and satisfaction, European Elections of 1999
(Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505)
| Groups | Turnout | ||
| compared | differential (%) | ||
| Political preferences | |||
| Identifies with a political party | (yes vs. no) | 23.7 | |
| Preference for ”best” party | (10 vs. 9) | 12.3 | |
| Preference for ”best” party | (10 vs. 8) | 19.1 | |
| Preference for ”best” party | (10 vs. 7) | 23.7 | |
| Votes in national election | (yes vs. no) | 18.8 | |
| Civic attitudes | |||
| Politics too complicated | (agree vs. rest) | ||
| So many voters | (agree vs. rest) | ||
| Parties not different | (agree vs. rest) | ||
| Political approval and satisfaction | |||
| Approve of national government | (approve vs. rest) | 7.8 | (n.s.) |
| Satisfaction with democracy in Sweden | (satisfied vs. rest) | 27.1 | |
| Satisfaction with democracy in the EU | (satisfied vs. rest) | 15.5 | |
| Satisfaction with policy on EU | (satisfied vs. rest) | 14.6 | |
| integration | |||
| Opinion on EU integration | (further vs. too far) | 31.3 | |
| EU is good/bad thing | (good vs. bad) | 31.2 | |
The three items referred to as civic attitudes refer to three statements of which the respondents had to indicate whether or not he/she agrees with them. These three are, in order:
Sometimes politics is so complicated that someone like me just cannot understand what is going on.
So many people vote in elections that my vote does not matter.
Most of the parties in Sweden are so much alike that it does not make much of a difference which one is in government.
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In different ways, agreeing with each of these statements expresses a feeling that it does not make sense to take part in elections. No wonder that in all three cases those who agree with the statement vote in significantly smaller numbers than others.
Political approval and satisfaction, as long as they are of a general kind, have a strong relation to turnout. As soon as the satisfaction or approval becomes tied to political parties – as in the case of approval of the government or satisfaction with (government) policy on European integration – it is less or not significantly related to voting versus abstaining. Those not satisfied with democracy in Sweden are considerably less likely to vote than those who are satisfied. This differential is much smaller for the question about satisfaction with democracy in the EU, which demonstrates that not being satisfied with democracy in Europe is less a deterrent to voting than not being satisfied with democracy in Sweden itself. This makes sense: after all, one is represented in the European Parliament by way of the Swedish parties, and as long as one is content with those, one may as well vote.
Disapproval of the EU and of European integration is, however, very much a stimulus to stay at home in the European elections. Those who find the EU a ”bad” thing (approximately one third of the sample), or who find that integration has already gone ”too far”, have more than a 30 % lower turnout rate than citizens who regard the EU as a ”good” thing (also about one third of the sample) and those who feel that integration should be ”pushed further”. This suggests that, to a considerably extent, the European elections in Sweden are elections for a system that a large segment of the population disagrees with. Representation via the European Parliament is evidently not seen by this segment as a way to improve matters, and, in view of the
Multivariate Analyses
The analyses reported in Tables 1, 2 and 3 are suggestive, but limited in the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Two problems in particular play a role. First, there may be a considerable
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”overlap” between the various characteristics that were investigated. Second, even though the turnout differential between groups compared may be large, this difference is not necessarily caused by the characteristic on which the groups differ. In order to deal with these problems, multivariate analysis is necessary; that is, analysis in which a number of different characteristics are simultaneously taken into account in terms of their consequences for turnout. In addition to this, theoretical considerations must be utilized, on the basis of which various factors can be ordered
The investigations consisted of a series of consecutive analyses, in which voter characteristics that were shown to be ”overlapping” in their effect on turnout (in statistical parlance: factors that are multicollinear) were weeded out to such an extent that only the most important of them are retained, and the superfluous other ones eliminated. To the extent that – from a statistical point of view – multicollinear variables are equally important, I chose to retain the most generic one and to drop the more specific one.23 These analyses were done first for each of the blocks of variables distinguished in Tables 1 to 3 (1 block of variables each from Tables 1 and 2, 3 from Table 3). The variables that remained from these analyses (all of them significant within these separate analy-
22An objection against linear methods such as multiple regression is that this technique is not optimally suited for a dichotomous dependent variable, as turnout is. More appropriate methods, of the
23For a more detailed description and justification of the strategy of analysis, see Franklin, Van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1996).
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ses) were then successively combined into a final model, the result of which is a multivariate regression model that is reported in Table 4, and will be discussed below.24
Table 4 shows in what sequence the variables of the five blocks were entered and, for each block or addition, the explanatory power of the model (see the column of cumulative adjusted R2). All together, these variables explain 29 percent of the variance, and each of the blocks adds significantly to the explanation, over and above what had already been explained by variables previously entered. Although 29 percent of variance explained in
24These exploratory analyses were run with pairwise deletion of missing data; listwise deletion yields virtually identical results.
25See, e.g., van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1990), who in an somewhat similar analysis for the Netherlands and the European election of 1989, get to an R2 of 25 percent. In an
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Table 4: Multivariate regression of electoral participation in the European Elections of 1999
(Data: Swedish segment of EES99, n=505)
| beta | significance | Cumul. adj. R2 | |
| Block 1 | .09 | ||
| Age | .17 | ||
| Urbanization | .06 | n.s. (p=.16) | |
| Attends church | .02 | n.s. (p=.60) | |
| Block 2 | .17 | ||
| EU is good thing | .09 | ||
| Satisfied with democracy in Sweden | .12 | ||
| Block 3 | .22 | ||
| Identifies with a political party | .07 | n.s. (p=.08) | |
| Preference for ”best” party | .12 | ||
| Block 4 | .27 | ||
| Interest in EE campaign | .13 | ||
| Pays attention to political news | .11 | ||
| Reads papers about EE | .09 | ||
| Block 5 | .29 | ||
| Politics too complicated | |||
| So many voters |
The column with beta coefficients indicates the relative explanatory strength of the different variables. The higher this coefficient, the more important the variable in question in explaining why some people vote and others do not. In some instances, the multivariate perspective of this table results in variables losing their significance compared to what was seen in Tables
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more to seeing it as a ”bad” thing), and by differences in political interest and involvement (in rural areas party identification is lower, people pay comparatively less attention to politics, and agree more often with the statement that politics is too complicated to understand). Likewise, the effect of church attendence is taken over by satisfaction with democracy in Sweden, by interest in the campaign for the European elections and by finding the EU a ”good” thing.26
Table 4 leads to the following observations. First, a clear effect exists of opinions about the EU (”good thing” vs. ” bad thing”), even when the other explanatory factors mentioned in this table are taken into account. Such an effect was not found in any of the other members of the European Union – at least as far as the 1989 and 1994 European elections were concerned.27 The effect may be not surprising in the light of the controversies in Sweden over membership of the EU and related matters (such as the common currency), but it raises the question whether in 1999 this is a specific Swedish phenomenon, or a pattern that has emerged elsewhere as well. This report is not the place to investigate this question, and analyses about this will be reported elsewhere.
Not only evaluative opinions about the EU have an effect on electoral participation, but also evaluations of Swedish democracy itself. Almost 25 % of the sample indicates that they are not very, or not at all satisfied with democracy in Sweden, and this opinion
26Interestingly, a strong correlation exists between being satisfied with democracy in Sweden and seeing the EU as a ”good” thing. This suggests that a divide exists in the Swedish population, with on the one extreme a segment that does not approve of the EU and is dissatisfied with democracy in Sweden (most strongly reprresented in the countryside) and on the other extreme a segment that is satisfied with democracy in Sweden as well as with its membership of the EU (most strongly represented in the urban areas). As far as evaluations concerning the EU is concerned, this is not a new insight. That it is linked to (dis)satisfaction with democracy in Sweden is less trivial, as well as politically more disturbing. This report, however, is not the place to elaborate these findings further.
27On this point see Franklin, van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1996) and Van der Eijk, Franklin and Mackie (1996, p. 275).
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is not only related to staying at home in the European elections of 1999, but also to feeling that Swedish membership of the EU is a ”bad” thing.
Being integrated into the social and political system is also clearly related to voting versus abstaining, quite in accordance with theoretical expectations described in part 1 of this report. Social integration is to some extent captured by church attendance, and being politically integrated by party identification, but the latter is captured even better by the question of whether the system contains at least one party that a respondent feels really positively about (the variable referred to in Table 4 as ”Preference for ’best’ party”).
Interest in the European election campaign, reading about this election in newspapers, and paying attention in general to political news, are also strong determinants of turnout. Surprisingly, in the light of findings for other EU members in previous European elections, the specific items about interest in the EE campaign are more powerful than general indicators of political interest. This suggests that, in contrast to other countries in 1989 and 1994, the European election in Sweden in 1999 contained an element that cannot be entirely reduced to the voter’s links to the domestic political system. Again it will have to be seen in further research whether this is also to be found in other countries in 1999, and, again, such analyses will have to be reported elsewhere.
Finally, in accordance with the theoretical expectations expressed in Part 1, feelings of political (in)efficacy do explain some of the differences between voting and
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Part 3: Reflective comments and informed speculation
The empirical analyses contained in this brief report are limited. This is for a number of different reasons:
Information about the mobilising efforts (or lack thereof) by political parties, media and other politically relevant actors, organizations and institutions is at this moment not available. Therefore, it is impossible to assess the kinds of forces that were referred to in part 1 as mobilising agents. This is not to say that these considerations are irrelevant when trying to explain the low turnout in the 1999 European elections in Sweden, on the contrary. In Sweden, as in the other member states of the Union, parties, political leaders, relevant interest groups and media displayed a distinct lack of interest and activity, particularly when compared to their behavior at the time of elections for the Riksdag. This is, obviously, not the entire explanation for the low turnout in the European elections, but it should nevertheless not be ignored as a relevant factor.
The drop in turnout between the first (1995) and the second (1999) European elections in Sweden may possibly be related to a difference in the level of activities of these political and social institutions. All member states of the European Union experienced a distinctly higher turnout in their first than in their second and later European elections. This
A fuller explanation for the low level of turnout in the European election in Sweden in 1999 requires comparative analyses, where the comparisons involve both other elections in Sweden (such as previous European elections, various Riksdag elections, etc.), and European elections in other countries (in 1999, as well as at previous European elections. Obviously, this is not the place for such extensive comparisons, especially since much of the information that would be required is not, or not yet,
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available. The approach, referred to in Part 1, that seeks to relate levels of turnout (as well as individual differences in electoral participation) to ”what is at stake” in various elections, is one that can only be employed in such a comparative approach
– just like the approach that focusses on mobilizing agents, discussed in the previous paragraph. Because of these limitations, the results of the empirical analyses reported here pertain only to individual differences in behavior within the single context of June 1999 in Sweden. Every aspect of that context is thus a constant in this study and, even though these aspects may have contributed to the low
As indicated several times in Part 2, more elaborate analyses can be performed on the available Swedish data. Such analyses will explicate in greater detail the
Apart from pointing out the limitations of the analyses in this report, a bit of informed speculation seems in order to shed tentative light on the declining level of turnout in Swedish elections, for the Riksdag as well as for the European Parliament. The remarks below are to some extent based on earlier research28 and to some extent on logical extrapolation from the interpretations of that earlier research.
Instrumental motivations are of great importance in explaining turnout in contemporary western electorates. From this follows the logic that turnout will be lower when the less is at stake in an
28 The most important previous research that I use here is Van der Eijk and Franklin (1996), Oppenhuis (1995), Franklin, Van der Eijk and Oppenhuis (1995), Schmitt and Thomassen (1999), Franklin (1996), and some of the sources referred to in these texts.
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election. That there is little at stake in European elections is not because of the alleged limitations of the powers and prerogatives of the European Parliament. After all, the role of the EP has grown substantially in recent years, most recently since the ratification of the Treaty of Amsterdam. The European Parliament has currently a far from negligeable role in the legislative process of the EU. This is evidenced by the fact that those who have a specific interest in certain EU legislation – such as branches of industry, social movements, and subnational government agencies – are willing to invest considerable resources trying to influence the results of EU legislation via lobbying at the EP. Yet, despite this increased role of the EP in the making of EU legislation, the power of the EP does not extend to the composition of the European Commission, let alone to that of the Council. Stated differently, European elections decide the composition of the European Parliament, which in itself is important for the outcome of individual pieces of legislation, but which is not in any way of relevance for the composition of the executive and
One could wonder why, given the logic described above, turnout in European elections was generally higher in previous European elections than in 1999.29 Apart from the drop in turnout after the boost that occurs only at the first time of European elections, turnout has continued to decline in most
29 The arguments hereafter originate from intensive discussions on these topics between Mark Franklin, Michael Marsh and myself, conducted at various occasions.
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with occasional increases, that often were attributable to occasional concurrency of the European elections with other elections in one of the
A final remark that has to be made here concerns turnout in elections for the national parliaments of the member states of the EU. Although Topf described as late as 1995 the variations in turnout in these and other western countries as ”trendless fluctuation”, more recent observations of turnout in national elections in EU countries point in the direction of a gradual decline. If this is indeed the case, one could, of course, point here too to the still further declining remnants of cleavage politics and generational replacement. In addition to this, however, one could think of a more structural reason that, if this speculation is correct, will have additional depressing effects on turnout in national parliamentary elections. If citizens learn as a consequence of being exposed to reality, they not only learn that the results of elections for the EP are unrelated to any kind of policy direction for the EU, but they also learn that their own governments (and the parliamentary majorities upon which these rest) become increasingly less influential for a growing number of policy areas, as EU legislation and regulation become more important and limit the scope of national po-
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declining turnout in EP elections will equally give rise to declining turnout in national elections.
Such a development would not be detrimental from a normative democratic point of view if the diminished importance of the (party) composition of national parliaments would be compensated by an increased importance of the party composition of the European Parliament. As argued above, however, this is not at all the case because of the current institutional structure of the EU. Seen from this perspective, the citizens of the EU are gradually disempowered electorally, and the declining turnout in national and European elections can only be regarded as a rational reaction of the voters to this development. In another context I argued with my
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Brug, W. van der (1997) Where’s the Party? Voters’ Perceptions of Party Positions. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam
Dalton. R.J. and M.P. Wattenberg, (1993) The Not so Simple Act of Voting. In A.W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline II. Washington: American Political Science Association
Egmond, M. van (1999) Rain Falls on All of Us (but Some Manage to get more Wet than Others). Accounting for Context Through the Individual in Electoral Participation. Paper, presented at EPOP, Northampton, September 1999
Eijk, C. van der, and W. van der Brug (1998) Different at the Surface, Similar in Depth – Attitudes towards Politics in Germany and the Netherlands, Amsterdam: DIA
Eijk, C. van der, and M.N. Franklin, eds. (1996) Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor (Mich.): The University of Michigan Press
Eijk, C. van der, and E.V. Oppenhuis (1990) Turnout and Secondorder Effects in the European Elections of June 1989 – Evidence from the Netherlands. Acta Politica, vol. 25, nr.1:67– 94
Eijk, C. van der, M.N. Franklin and T. Mackie (1996) The Dog that Did Not Bark: The 1994 Elections in the Light of 1989. In C. van der Eijk and M.N. Franklin, eds., Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor (Mich.): The University of Michigan Press; pp.
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Franklin, M.N. (1996) Electoral Participation. In L. LeDuc, R.G. Niemi and P. Norris, eds. Comparing Democracies. Elections and Voting in Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks (Cal.): Sage; pp.
Franklin, M.N., C. van der Eijk and M. Marsh (1996) Conclusions: The Electoral Connection and the Democratic Deficit. In C. van der Eijk and M.N. Franklin, eds., Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor (Mich.): The University of Michigan Press; pp.
Franklin, M.N., C. van der Eijk and E.V. Oppenhuis (1995) The Motivational Basis of Electoral participation: European Elections provide a Critical Test. Paper, presented at ECPR Joint Sessions, Bordeaux
Franklin, M.N., C. van der Eijk and E.V. Oppenhuis (1996) The Institutional Context: Turnout. In: C. van der Eijk and M.N. Franklin, eds., Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor (Mich.): The University of Michigan Press; pp.
Franklin, M.N., T. Mackie and H. Valen, eds. (1992) Electoral Change. Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Granberg, D. and S. Holmberg (1988) The Political System Matters: Social Psychology and Voting Behavior in Sweden and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Gunsteren, H. van, and R.A. Andeweg (1994) Het grote Ongenoegen: over de Kloof tussen Burgers en Politiek. Haarlem: Aramith
Kaase, M. and K. Newton, eds. (1995) Beliefs in Government. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press
Lijphart, A. (1968) The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. Berkeley: University of California Press
Lipset, S. M., and S. Rokkan (1967) Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments. In S. M. Lipset and S. Rokkan,
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eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments:
Marsh, M., and M.N. Franklin (1996) The Foundations: Unanswered Questions from the Study of European Elections,
Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor (Mich.): The University of Michigan Press; pp.
Mill, J.S. (1974/75) A System of Logic. Vols. vii and viii in Collected Works of J.S. Mill. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (originally published in 1843)
Oppenhuis, E.V. (1995) Voting Behavior in Europe. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis
Parry, G., G. Moyser and N. Day (1992) Political Participation and Democracy in Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press
Przeworski, A., and H. Teune (1970) The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley
Reif, K., ed. (1985) Ten European Elections: Campaigns and Results of the 1979/81 First Direct Elections to the European Parliament. Aldershot: Gower
Reif, K., and H. Schmitt (1980) Nine
Rose, R., and D. Urwin (1970) Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems since 1945. Political Studies, vol.
Schmitt, H., and J. Thomassen, eds. (1999) Political Representation and legitimacy in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Siegfried, A. (1913) Tableau Politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la Troisième République. Paris: Colin
Tingsten, H. (1937) Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics. London: King and Son
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Topf, R. (1995) Electoral Participation. In
Verba, S. and N. Nie (1972) Participation in America. Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper and Row
Verba, S., N. Nie and J.O. Kim (1978) Participation and Political Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
55
.
European Parliament
Elections
Institutions, Attitudes and Participation
Richard Sinnott1
Introduction
This paper begins with a description of the problem of low participation in European Parliament elections and, in the course of these observations, it makes some preliminary suggestions as to the causes of variation in turnout. In order to place the problem of low turnout in context, the paper then looks briefly at attitudes to European integration and at the relationship between the citizens and the Union. The issue of the discrepancies in prevailing interpretations of the sources of low turnout in European Parliament elections is then considered. A concluding section tackles the question of what should be done about the problem of abstention, considering the matter under two headings: the facilitation of participation and the mobilisation of participation.
The variations in turnout in European Parliament elections
Over the period since 1979 and as a direct result of successive revisions of the EU treaties, the powers of the European Parliament
1 The author is professor of Politics at Department and Centre for Comparative Research on Public Opinion and Political Behaviour at University college Dublin.
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have increased significantly. In contrast to the increasing power and importance of the Parliament, turnout in European Parliament elections has declined – from an average turnout of 65.9 per cent in 1979 to 52.4 per cent in 1999. In fact the picture is worse than these figures indicate. Three countries in the European Union (Belgium, Greece, and Luxembourg) have compulsory voting and Italy had compulsory or at least
Apart from the boost arising from compulsory voting and the concurrence of other elections, turnout in European Parliament elections is affected by the day of voting (Sunday versus weekday), with weekday voting contributing to low turnout in European Parliament elections in Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and Ireland. Beyond these few obvious factors , however, there is widespread disagreement as to what causes low turnout in European Parliament elections. This issue will be analysed in some detail below. But first it is necessary to consider the matter of overall attitudes to European integration among the citizens of the Union.
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Table 1. Turnout in five European Parliament elections,
| Country | European | Mean | ||||
| elections | turnout | |||||
| 1979 | 1984 | 1989 | 1994 | 1999 | ||
| Belgium | 91.4 | 92.2 | 90.7 | 90.7 | 90.0 | 91.0 |
| Luxembourg | 88.9* | 88.8* | 87.4* | 88.5* | 85.8* | 87.9 |
| Italy | 84.9 | 83.4 | 81.0 | 74.8 | 70.8 | 79.0 |
| Greece | n.a. | 77.2 | 79.9* | 71.7 | 70.2 | 74.8 |
| Spain | n.a. | n.a. | 54.6 | 59.1 | 64.4* | 59.4 |
| Germany | 65.7 | 56.8 | 62.3 | 60.0 | 45.2 | 58.0 |
| Ireland | 63.6* | 47.6 | 68.3* | 44.0 | 51.0* | 54.9 |
| France | 60.7 | 56.7 | 48.7 | 52.7 | 47.0 | 53.2 |
| Denmark | 47.8 | 52.3 | 46.2 | 52.9 | 50.4 | 49.9 |
| Austria | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | 49.0 | 49.0 |
| Netherlands | 57.8 | 50.6 | 47.2 | 35.6 | 29.9 | 44.2 |
| Portugal | n.a. | n.a. | 51.2 | 35.5 | 40.4 | 42.4 |
| Sweden | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | 38.3 | 38.3 |
| U.K. | 32.3 | 32.6 | 36.2 | 36.4 | 24.0 | 32.3 |
| Finland | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | 30.1 | 30.1 |
| Mean – all | 65.9 | 63.8 | 62.8 | 58.5 | 52.4 | 56.3 |
| member states | ||||||
| Mean – states | 52.9 | 49.4 | 49.5 | 47.0 | 39.4 | 47.6 |
| without compulsory | ||||||
voting or concurrent
*Concurrent
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Attitudes to European integration
The measurement of support for European integration is highly sensitive to variations in question wording. The four standard Eurobarometer indicators of attitudes to integration are customarily labelled ”unification”, ”membership”, ”benefits”, and ”dissolution”. The levels of support for integration elicited by these questions depend both on the stimulus presented in the question and on the response categories, in particular on whether the response categories offer an explicit middle position.
The unification indicator measures support for a very general aspiration (”efforts to unify Western Europe”) and does so on a four point scale (”very much for”, ”to some extent for”, ”to some extent against”, ”very much against”) that does not provide an explicit middle or neutral point. The rather vague stimulus and the absence of a middle position combine to produce high levels of support for integration, touching almost 80 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s (see Figure 1). The membership indicator provides a more concrete stimulus (country X’s membership of the European Union) and a three point scale that includes an explicit middle position (”a good thing”, ”neither good nor bad”, ”a bad thing”). As such, it probably provides a more realistic gauge of support for integration that typically runs some 10 to 20 percentage points behind the unification indicator. The third Eurobarometer indicator asks whether the respondent’s country has benefited from membership of the Union but, like the unification indicator, it does not provide a middle position (the response categories are ”benefited” and ”did not benefit”). Because it involves an element of perception as well as evaluation, it is not surprising that the benefits indicator registers a positive response that is slightly lower than that registered by the membership indicator. Indeed, the gap between the two might be greater were it not for the presence of a neutral category in the membership indicator and the absence of such a category in the benefits indicator. Finally, there is the dissolution indicator. This question poses the hypothetical situation of the scrapping of the Community or Union, with strong negative and positive options and a middle position (”very sorry”,
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”indifferent”, ”very relieved2”). The indicator has been criticised because it is hypothetical; nonetheless it provides a useful measure of enthusiasm or lack of enthusiasm for European integration, showing, in
Figure 1. Attitudes to the European Union four Eurobarometer indicators (unification, membership, benefits and dissolution)
2 The ”very” was added to ”relieved” in 1993.
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None of these questions is an ideal indicator of attitudes to integration; nor could it be said that they together form an adequate battery of items. One must therefore exercise a certain degree of caution in interpreting the evidence. In particular, attempts to categorise the indicators in terms of
In terms of changes over time, there was first of all a significant falling off in support for integration between the late 1970s and the early 1980s (see Figure 1). This may have been related to the prevailing Eurosclerosis that many commentators on European integration have identified. This was followed, however, by a substantial and sustained rise in support between 1982 and 1991. It is worth noting that this rise predated the arrival of Jacques Delors as President of the Commission and certainly predated the major initiative of the first Delors presidency, namely the launch of the Single Market ”1992” programme. On the other hand, there can be little doubt but that the rise and rise in support for integration was sustained by the activism of the Delors Commission, by the passage of the Single European Act and by the publicity and promotional efforts that surrounded Project 1992.
In fact, however, the actual arrival of the calendar year 1992 confirmed a general downward trend in support for integration (see Figure 1). The period since 1989 is so packed with political and economic developments that it is impossible to attribute this decline to any one factor3. Indications that the decline was under-
3 There is a substantial and technically highly sophisticated literature on the (mainly economic) determinants of support for integration.
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way in a number of member states even prior to 1991 (Niedermayer 1995: 67) suggest that it was not simply a response to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty but may also have reflected a negative reaction to the growing intrusiveness of the Single Market programme on both the politics and economics of individual states. Another factor was the waning of the euphoria that surrounded the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growth in the realisation that event brought challenges and uncertainties regarding the future shape and role of the Community and was not simply the dawning of a new era of peace and prosperity for all. Whatever its causes, the decline in support for integration that began in the second half of 1991 has shown little or no sign of being reversed
While overall support for the Union over time has varied by some 20 percentage points, the range in support across countries has been as much as 50 percentage points; in 1997, for example, support, as measured by the membership indicator, went from 31 per cent in Sweden to 83 per cent in Ireland. Although any grouping of countries based on definite
Eichenberg (1998) provides an excellent review and extension of this research. From the point of view of the present discussion, the most relevant findings are that ”the influence of objective economic circumstances on support for integration was less in the period following Maastricht than it had been before” (Eichenberg, 1998:12) and that the effects vary depending on the indicator of the dependent variable that is used.
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When one probes beyond the very general sentiments captured by the four basic indicators, to, for example, attitudes to whether or not certain policy areas should be decided at the European or at the national level, one finds even greater discrepancies between member states and a somewhat different ordering. Thus in regard to the issue of the Europeanization of defence policy, some countries show a very high degree of support for Europeanization and others a very low degree. Ranged on the side of the Europeanization of defence are the Netherlands (76 per cent) in first place and, at a somewhat lower level, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy and Germany. On the other hand, Sweden and Finland are, on this evidence, overwhelmingly opposed to the Europeanization of decisionmaking in the defence area, Finland being 8 per cent for and 90 per cent against. On this negative side also, though not as strongly, one finds Ireland, Greece, Denmark, Portugal and the United Kingdom. However, before drawing any large inferences about the future prospects for a common European defence policy from these data, one should note that the rate of don’t know responses to this item is remarkably, one might say suspiciously, low (an average of 4 per cent).
The suspicion mentioned in the previous paragraph leads to the hypothesis that some significant proportion of the responses on preferences regarding the Europeanization of defence and other policies actually reflect
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even those who were willing to express an opinion, despite, to echo Converse (1964), a generous invitation to disavow any opinion when none was felt, may not have had a very explicit or well
This expectation is further confirmed by Eurobarometer data from 1995 on perceptions of the allocation of decision making power between national governments and ”the European Union level” over a wide range of issues. Inter alia, the data show that 38 per cent of the European public believe that foreign policy is decided at EU level and precisely the same proportion believe that defence matters are decided at EU level (Eurobarometer, 1995: B65). On any reading of the common foreign and security policy as of 1995, these perceptions were wildly inaccurate. The proportion seeing foreign policy as being ”at least to some extent decided at the European Union level” should be much higher and the proportion seeing the same for defence should be much lower. Lest it be assumed that people are getting it wrong in relation to the common foreign and security policy simply because this is an inherently complex and remote area, one should also note that the proportion perceiving agricultural policy as being ”at least to some extent decided at the European Union level” is only 40 per cent.
The overall impression from this review of the evidence of various aspects of support for European integration can be summarised as follows: there is fairly widespread support for the rather vague notion of ”efforts to unify Western Europe”; as a result of a downturn since the second half of 1991, support for membership of the Union is running at only about 50 per cent and is matched by an almost equal level of indifference as to whether or not the Union continues to exist; finally, despite initial appearances to the
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contrary, attitudes to the policy scope of the Union are neither
These weaknesses in attitudes to integration are confirmed by the evidence relating to knowledge of the institutions of the Union. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of this aspect but the essentials can be briefly summarised. Knowledge of European affairs is low; prevailing attitudes to the Union are characterised by either indifference or lack of knowledge or a combination of both; and this lack of knowledge is particularly important because any dip below quite a high level of knowledge has a devastating effect on the structure and coherence of attitudes to integration4. These features of the orientations of citizens to the European Union confirm the argument outlined earlier in this chapter that well structured, supportive attitudes commensurate with the current stage of integration have not in fact developed. The key question in the current context is: Do these attitudes have any effect on levels of participation in European Parliament elections?
Sources of participation and abstention
The usual explanation given for low turnout in European Parliament elections is that the Parliament has not got enough power. This explanation tends to be cast in terms of the
4 For a more detailed discussion see Sinnott, 1998.
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son to national elections, European Parliament elections do not affect the distribution of power and that there is, therefore, less at stake in such elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1981, Franklin and van der Eijk 1996). From this starting point the argument is that turnout will be lower and that those who do turn out to vote will be motivated to do so by national considerations and not by European ones. The problem is that this plausible model receives little or no support when tested against the evidence of voter perceptions, attitudes and behaviour.
Evidence on perceptions of power and perceptions of what is at stake in elections indicates that electorates by and large do not make the sophisticated calculations about differences between the power of national parliaments and of the European Parliament or about differences in what is at stake between the two kinds of elections that the
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Table 2. Type of electoral participation/absention by perception of the power of the European Parliament, 1994
Table 3. Type of electoral participation/absention by perception of difference the power of European and national parliaments, 1994
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Turning to the attitudes that do matter, the affective image of the Parliament influences turnout. Moreover, it seems that not having any image of the Parliament is as damaging in terms of the likelihood of voting as having a negative image. The perceived reliability of the Parliament in making sure that the decisions taken by the European Union are in the interests of ordinary people affects turnout. European party and candidate differentials also have an impact (Table 4).
Table 4. Type of electoral participation/abstention by European party differential, 1994
(%)
The concepts of party and candidate differentials refer to how much it matters to the individual citizens whether particular parties or candidates win seats in the European Parliament elections. The campaign also matters, at least in terms of turnout. But it matters only if the citizen’s exposure to the campaign is active, that is if he or she reads about it or discusses it with family
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or friends or colleagues at work. The evidence is that purely passive exposure, that is exposure to the campaign that is limited to being on the receiving end of advertising, or television or radio coverage, or leaflets, or canvassing does nothing to increase the level of turnout. Thus the campaign is influential but by no means decisive.
In the light of the above, perhaps the most surprising contention of previous research is that attitudes to European integration have no significant effect on turnout in European Parliament elections. This
Obviously, the key dependent variable is voluntary
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difference to people’s participation. Contrary to what is often argued, European elections are not simply proxy national elections or appendages to domestic politics. This means that appeals cast in terms of domestic political issues are not necessarily conducive either to mobilising voters or to winning votes. This brings us the wider issue of how to respond to the challenge of increasing turnout and improving the quality of participation in European Parliament elections.
Approaches to a solution
There is no instant solution to the problem of turnout in European Parliament elections but there are piecemeal, gradualist steps that can be taken (a) to facilitate participation and (b) to mobilise it. In terms of facilitating participation, three factors need to be considered. First, the timing of the election: Is it really sensible to pick a weekend in
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Turning to the challenge of mobilising the voters, one should note that compulsory voting is a form of voter mobilisation; the problem is that it is coercive mobilisation and, as such, it is inconceivable for European Parliament elections. Holding concurrent elections is also a form of mobilisation; the problem is that it mobilises voters on a
Power can be concentrated or it can be dispersed. Examples are the traditional British model on the one hand and the American model on the other. But political systems are further differentiated according to whether the style of
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Figure 2. Types of democratic governance
| Concentration/dispersal of power | ||
| Concentrated | Dispersed | |
| Adversarial | ||
| Type I | Type II | |
| Britain | The United States | |
| Style of decision- | ||
| making | ||
| Consensual | Type III | Type IV |
| The Netherlands | Switzerland | |
The point is that democratic governance in the European Union falls into Type IV and is virtually certain to continue do so for the foreseeable future. This must be taken into account in considering measures to mobilise voter participation. Mass mobilisation is not going to be brought about by some grand transformation in the role of the Parliament that would enable European Parliament elections to produce a mandate to govern Europe. Given that a
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References
Blondel, Jean, Richard Sinnott and Palle Svensson (1998) People and Parliament in the European Union; Participation, Democracy and Legitimacy, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Converse Philip E. (1964) ‘The nature of belief systems among mass publics’ in Ideology and Discontent, ed. D.A. Apter. New York, Free Press
Eichenberg, Richard, C., (1998) ”Measurement matter: Cumulation in the study of public opinion and European integration”, Paper presented at American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, September
Eurobarometer, (1995) Report on Standard Eurobarometer 43, European Commission Directorate General X, Autumn
Franklin, Mark and Caes van der Eijk (eds.) (1996) Choosing Europe? The European Union and National Politics in the Face of Union, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Lindberg, L. N. and Scheingold, S. A. (eds.) (1970) Europe's
Niedermayer, Oskar, (1995) ”Trends and Contrasts” in Oskar Niedermayer and Richard Sinnott (eds.), Public Opinion and Internationalized Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Reif,
Sinnott, Richard (1998) ”Knowledge and the position of attitudes to a European Common Foreign and Security Policy on the
74
Integration and Statehood
in the European Union
The Distribution of Powers Between the EU and the Member States
Brigid Laffan1
Introduction
There is considerable scholarly debate about the challenges facing the contemporary nation state and about the changing nature of statehood in Europe, and this debate is focused in particular by two processes – the ending of the Cold War and the evolution of European integration. The continuing centrality of nation states to political order is asserted trenchantly by many authors, who point to the depth and breadth of the institutions they have spawned. Others point to the arrival of more porous borders and to perforated sovereignty, to the possibility of ”prismatic” patters of political authority scattering allegiances and dispersing them not only at the national level but also at the subnational and supranational level, and to multiple loyalties. Controversy about the role of the nation state is bound up with debates about the relationship between European integration and statehood. (Laffan, 0’Donnell, Smith 2000, Moravcisk 1998, Sweet Stone et al. 1998.)
The objective of this paper is to analyse the distribution of powers between the EU and the member states, but in a manner which reflects on the ties and tensions that are moulding the kind of political and economic order that is emerging in the Union.
1 The author is Jean Monet Professor of European politics at Department of politics at university college Dublin.
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Three ”tensions” in integration have a considerable impact on the relationship between statehood and integration and between the member states and the collectivity. These are:
•the tension between a union of states and a market
•the tension between the EU as a polity and a
•the tension between EU level
These tensions throw up contradictions that have a particular bearing on the subject matter of this conference, namely, the democratic fabric of integration and the participation of citizens in EU politics.
A Union of States and a Market
Promoting and facilitating economic exchange was central to the integration effort from the outset. Patterns of commercial exchange and the perceived economic needs of member states were critical in the development of the common market and the internal market. (Moravcsik 1998, Milward et al. 1993, Laffan et al. 2000). The Union’s economic order operated at the micro rather than the macro level, injecting considerable competitive pressures into the domestic economies and thereby fundamentally altering patterns of production, distribution and exchange. The internal market programme, launched in the
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”home country control”, ”mutual recognition”, ”a level playing field” built a new approach to EU regulation. ”The quantitative accumulation of new European laws and market opening measures produced a truly qualitative shift in the dynamic of economic integration and in European economic governance. The transformational nature of the internal market programme led to changes that have a direct bearing on the concerns of this conference. The most significant are:
•a step change in the regulatory reach and capacity of the EU, which is reflected in the concept of the EU as a ”regulatory state”. This meant more EC laws and the development of new European agencies. EC regulation became more visible and contested within the member states and impacted more directly on individual citizens.
•the internal market reduced the boundary control capacity of national governments in a variety of ways.
•the success of the programme generated pressures for further economic integration< notably, the single currency project.
•the extensive mobilisation of national actors in the Brussels since the
The significance of market/economic integration in the process of European integration shapes in a fundamental manner the kind of political and economic order that is emerging in Europe. This is illustrated by analysis of the second tension, highlighted above, notably between the EU as a
Problem Solving Arena and Polity
Much of the day to day politics and public policy making of the European Union is characterised by the search for solutions to the problems generated by the attempt to make policies that must stretch across such a wide variety of member states. The actors
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engaged in EU policy making are purposeful. The Union’s policy regimes have ”been created and sustained by political actors, acting purposively to achieve specific goals or to resolve specific problems”. (Wallace, 2000, p. 7.) They must be convinced of the benefits of collective action and the appropriateness of the Union as the arena in which to tackle these problems. They are engaged in a variety of projects, not necessarily the project of European integration per se. The multileveled system of
The deepening of market integration, the intensification of treaty change and big projects such as EMU and enlargement brought polity issues – rather than just the ”politics of policy” – to the fore. Up to the early 1990s, the authority and legitimacy of the EU could rest on the ”shadow of the past” and the instrumental benefits it brought to the member states and their peoples. This appears to be insufficient as the EU goes beyond market regulation in the narrow sense. European integration has become politicised and is a divisive issue in the domestic politics of many states.
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Lines of resistance to integration appear to be on the increase albeit with considerable
Tensions in Multileveled Policy Making
All multileveled systems of public policy making are characterised by tension and contention about the appropriate level of policy making and implementation. The Union, as a multileveled polity, is no stranger to such conflicts. I was asked specifically in this section to address the distribution of powers between the national and the European. However, it is not just a question of the amount of EU competence in any one area but the overall pattern of economic governance that results from the manner in which the EU engages in public policy making. The pattern since the 1950s is one whereby more and more areas of public police have come within the ambit of collective governance. The major constitutional settlements, the treaties, have been critical in the formal extension of
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EU competence. The treaties reflect a dual process. On the one hand, new treaties formalise policy
As noted above, the Union has formidable power in the regulatory field because of the
Redistribution remains a largely national responsibility in Europe. That said, the Union has had to develop a
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capacity to facilitate the process of market integration and to provide side payments in return for treaty change. Prior to 1988, the common agricultural policy was the main
The Treaty on European Union in 1992 expanded the ambitions of the Union in a number of directions, notably the common currency, the common foreign and security policy and
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the area of justice and home affairs, which may strengthen the modest framework for collective action that now exists.
The Balance between the National and the European
The EU system is a system that works on the basis of a high level of decentralisation and delegation. It is not a system with a strong centre replete with large fiscal or bureaucratic resources. It works on the basis of the enmeshing the national and the European in an uneasy tension between integration and autonomy. With the establishment of the single currency, the EU has put in place the last building brick of economic integration. Enlargement to the east and south will eventually establish the geographical reach of the system and one or two more intergovernmental conferences will settle the main institutional questions. The system may well be entering a period of consolidation following the dynamic of change since the
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to the extent necessary and that Community measures should leave as much scope for national decision as possible. Moreover, ”care should be taken to respect well established national arrangements and the organisation and working of Member States” legal systems. (Protocol, article 7.) The debate about subsidiarity and its subsequent inclusion in the treaties reflects the fact that the Union is now maturing as a public policy arena and that care must be taken to ensure that the Union’s reach does not extend beyond its grasp.
The Balance between Large and Small States
The constitutional order of the Union is based on the formal equality of the 15 member states. That said, the member states differ in size, economic wealth and capacity. To date, the EU has managed to balance the needs of its large and small states are a relatively smooth manner. Size does not feature as a variable in the day to day
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there has been a growth of informal contact groups in the second pillar.
Conclusions
The Union has achieved deep economic integration without a centralised political authority. It has developed a capacity to govern this increasingly integrated economic space without many of the attributes we associate with governance. Collective EU governance had to be crafted in a novel and experimental manner because of the continuing salience of the member states as containers of national societies and polities. In general, the EU does not represent a process of
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approach to the political fabric of integration. So far they have resisted tampering with the ”roles of the game” of national politics.
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References
Laffan, B., O’Donnell R. and Smith, M. (2000, Europe’s Experimental Union: Rethinking integration. London: Routledge
Milward, A. S., Lynch, F.M.B., Romero, F., Ranieri, R. and Sorensen V. (1993) The Frontier of National Sovereignty. London: Routledge
Moravesik, A. (1998) The Choice for Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Sandholtz, W. and Stone Sweet A. (1998) European lntegration and Supranational Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wallace, H. (2000) ”The Policy Pendulum”, in Wallace, W. and Wallace, H., eds. PolicyMaking in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press
86
The Architecture of EU
Institutions and Citizen
Participation
Hermann Schmitt1
Introduction
Modern democracy is representative democracy. This holds for the prototype of mass democracy, that is the political process in the national political arena. It holds all the more for a political entity which is as large and complex as the European Union. Some 300 million citizens are called to participate in all sorts of local and regional politics, in national politics and in EU politics. The different tiers of this
Direct citizen participation in government is generally limited. At most places and most of the times, political decisions are taken by representatives of the people rather than by the people themselves. Citizen participation in politics is not restricted to, but concentrated upon the process of electing representatives. Political parties are in many ways indispensable in this process.
Even if we leave aside possible irregularities, evaluations of the democratic quality of the electoral process may vary from one election to the next. Those evaluations can be based upon two
1 The author is professor in political science at Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung at Mannheim university.
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THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
criteria. One is turnout. Do the people who are not in a position to take part in the real thing (i.e., policy making) at least participate in elections of their representatives, and what does it mean if many do not? The second criterion is political agreement (or, more technically, issue congruence) between electors and elected. Representative democracy works well if voters participate in elections, and if representatives decide as voters would if they had a chance to. A related question is how issue congruence is brought about. Are the parties responsive followers of voters preferences or are they powerful molders of the world views of their voters. We will briefly address each of these questions in turn.
Turnout
Turnout is high in national parliament elections, with only a very modest downward trend over the last half century. It is considerably lower in European Parliament elections, with a dramatic decline in the last election (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Electoral Participation in Western Europe and in the
EC/EU
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There are two aspects of turnout differences between national and European Parliament elections: level and trend. Level differences are mainly due to differential mobilisation and involvement. It is more at stake in national elections than in European elections, the campaigning of political parties is more intense, the politicisation of the mass public is generally higher, and the public is more involved as a result (Reif & Schmitt 1980).
It is generally believed that level differences do not relate systematically to attitudes about the EU.
It is not just level differences which become apparent in the above figure. There are also trend differences: participation rates in European Parliament elections decline faster than participation rates in national first order elections. Why this is so is not well understood; changing context effect patterns like concurrent national
While low turnout is best characterised as a ringing alarm clock for the democratic quality of elections, deficient representation is immediately and substantially more important. Low turnout is not per se problematic – those staying home may be well in agreement with the functioning of the political system and may therefore see no need to participate. In the long run, however, deficient
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participation seems likely to undermine effective representation. This is the question we now address: Whether and to what degree this already is apparent in the European Union.
Effectiveness of Political Representation
The European Union combines two distinct modes of government which are based on two different routes of
The democratic quality of the EU political process cannot be adequately evaluated if we restrict our attention to just one of the two competing models of government in the European Union, the federal or the confederal. The same goes for the two electoral arenas involved, the European and the national. European Parliament elections are just one, and not the most important, electoral event upon which an analysis of the democratic quality of the EU political process has to be based.
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Figure 2. The intergovernmental model of European political representation
European Council/
Council of Ministers
National Government 1 … National Government 15
National Parliament 1 … National Parliament 15
National Parties … National Parties
National Electorate 1 … National Electorate 15
Figure 3. The federal model of European political representation
European Government
European Parliament
European Political Parties
European Electorate
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THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
Previous research has established that the effectiveness of political representation in the EU does not differ much either way (Schmitt & Thomassen 1999, chap. 9). Representation functions equally well or badly via the European (federal) as it does via the national
Figure 4. Effectiveness of representation regarding grand policy directions:
right
10
9
8
| positions | 7 | |||||||||
| mean | 6 | |||||||||
| 5 | ||||||||||
| voters’ | ||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||
| 3 | ||||||||||
| 2 | r=.86 | |||||||||
| 1 | . | |||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
| left | MEPs’ mean positions | right | ||||||||
Source: European Representation Study
The political agreement between voters and party elites is equally profound regarding the principle of European unification though party elites are generally somewhat more
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voters are. Elites and voters of most parties meet in the Europositive angle. Only a few find one another in the
Figure 5. Effectiveness of political representation regarding specific EU policies: The currency question
Source: European Representation Study 1994– 7.
Political representation is less effective in view of more specific EU policies (and probably in view of specific policies in general) while it seems to work well regarding the grand policy directions – like
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THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
left or right, and proor
This can only be adequately assessed with a diachronic study design. Analysing voters’ and party elites’ average political preferences with regard to European unfication in 1979 and 1994, we find some initial evidence that it is the party elites who behave responsively in view of changing voter preferences (Figure 6). Somewhat in contrast to the findings of Essaiasons and Holmbergs Swedish study (1996) this seems to suggest that political representation in Europe might not be such an
Figure 6. Representation from above? A simple causal model linking elites and voters views about European unification in 1994 and 1979
Source: European Election Studies 1979 and 1994.
Notes: N of cases (parties) = 18. The parties for which elite and mass data are available for both 1979 and 1994 are: CVP (B), SP (B), PVV (B), SD (DK), V (DK), FbmEF (DK), CDU (D), SPD (D), PS (F), UDF (F), MSI/AN (I), DC/PPI (I), CDA (NL), PVDA (NL), VVD (NL), Conservative Party (GB), Labour Party (GB), and Liberal Party/Liberal Democrats (GB). The model has been estimated with EQS; goodness of fit measures and test statistics are not reported as there was no intention to maximise the fit between model and data.
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Summary and Conclusions
1. Compared to national politics, participation of EU citizens in EU politics is poor and declining. This should not be taken as an indication of political disagreement between party elites and party voters on EU policies because abstention can have, and are repeatedly found to have, other sources than policy disagreement. Factors conducive to high turnout levels are:
-high politicisation of the campaign, i.e. high saliency of issues. This is hard to achieve in a European Parliament election as EU issues are typical low salience issues in most places, and there is hardly any disagreement between the major parties about them.
-successful personalisation of issue/goal conflict. This again is hard to achieve as, for the time being, there is no transnational personalisation of political alternatives at the EU level. One procedural measure that could change this so some degree would be the direct election of the President of the European Commission in concurrence with the EP election.
-the closeness of the electoral race, i. e. the likelihood of governmental change. This does presently not apply to European Parliament elections, as they do not now result in government formation. However, the investiture of a new Commission by a newly elected European Parliament could be one step in this direction.
-numerous and strong party attachments/party loyalties. Quite generally, party attachments tend to decline. In this perspective, declining turnout rates in European and national elections are a result of the same
-technical measures like compulsory voting, Sunday voting and ”easiness” of the electoral system more generally, and the distance to 1st order election day. These factors tend to explain variance in turnout between countries.
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2. Political representation is found to be
-national elections are as poor a mechanism for generating
-elections generally seem to translate voter preferences about the grand directions of public policy, rather than those about specific policies, into elite attitudes and behaviours.
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References
Blondel, Jean, Richard Sinnott and Palle Svensson (1998) People and Parliament in the European Union. Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Esaiasson, Peter and Sören Holmberg (1996) Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden. Aldershot: Dartmouth
Reif, Karlheinz and Hermann Schmitt (1980) ”Nine national
Schmitt, Hermann and Jacques Thomassen, eds. (1999) Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999
Schmitt, Hermann and Renato Mannheimer (1991) ”About Voting and
European Journal of Political Research
Van der Eijk, Cees, Franklin, Mark N., et al. (1996) Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press
97
.
Blaming the Messenger?
Political Communications and Turnout in EU
Elections
Pippa Norris1
The erosion of turnout evident in the June 1999 elections to the European Parliament has set widespread alarm bells ringing in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg as further evidence that the public is becoming disenchanted and disengaged with the European Union. The level of voting participation fell from almost
1The author is professor at John. F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
2Mark Franklin, Cees van der Eijk and Erik Oppenhuis. 1996. ”The Institutional Context: Turnout”. In Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union, edited by Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
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BLAMING THE MESSENGER?
and Italy), Sunday polling day (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), and the majoritarian
Figure 1. Turnout EU Elections
Set in a broader context, the decline in the EU turnout is even more worrying because it proves contrary to trends elsewhere. Many assume that there has been a general decline in voter participation but in fact in established democracies levels of turnout have remained fairly stable during the last two decades; 71 % of voting age population participated in elections in these states in
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the 1990s, down only 3 % from the 1970s3. As is well known, despite similar socioeconomic and political developments in postindustrial societies, there are persistent
Figure 2. Change in EU Turnout
But, within this context, can the news media or party campaigns be blamed for the downward trend in European participation? If there were a systematic negative bias in the media – if news headlines
3 IDEA. Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1998.
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BLAMING THE MESSENGER?
highlighted corruption at the Commission, bureaucratic over regulation in Brussels, and junkets for the European parliament – it would not be surprising if voters deserted the polling stations.
Table 1. Turnout in European Elections,
To examine this issue the first section of this paper outlines the theoretical framework in the literature, the next considers the evidence for the association between attention to campaign communications and turnout in European elections in 1989, 1994 and 1999. The conclusion briefly summarizes the theory of a virtuous circle to explain the major findings and speculates about the implications for participation in EU affairs.
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Figure 3. Postwear Mean Turnout Per Decade
Understanding Political Participation
Explanations of political participation focus on four sets of factors. The institutional perspective stresses the importance of the legal context including the level of political rights and civil liberties, the type of electoral system, the facilities for registration and voting, the expansion of the franchise, the frequency, level and timing of elections, and the competitiveness of electoral politics4.
4 See Ivor Crewe. ”Electoral Participation.” In Democracy at the Polls, edited by Austin Ranney and David Butler. Washington, DC: AEI Press; Arend
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In one of the most thorough comparative studies, Jackman and Miller examined voter participation in
At
Lijphart. 1997. ”Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma.”
American Political Science Review. 91:
5Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller. 1995. ”Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies During the 1980s.” Comparative Political Studies, 27: 467–
92.See also Richard Katz. 1997. Democracy and Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6Mark Franklin, Cess van der Eijk and Erik Oppenhuis. 1996. ”The Institutional Context: Turnout”. In Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union, edited by Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
7Raymond Wolfinger and Steven Rosenstone. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press.
8Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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institutions9. In a long series of studies, Verba has demonstrated how various forms of participation make different demands of skills, money or time, so that political participation can best be understood as a multidimensional phenomenon10. That is, people who regularly donate money to campaigns, or contact their representative, are not necessarily involved in other dimensions like party work, or community activism. There are different costs and benefits associated with different types of participation. The main categories distinguished by Verba and his colleagues concern voting, campaign work, communal activity, and contact specialists. In addition a few citizens are active across all dimensions, while some are involved in none.
Lastly, the organizational perspective has stressed the role of mobilizing agencies, referring to the electoral functions of party and candidate organizations, group networks like churches, voluntary associations and trade unions, social networks of families, friends and colleagues, and the role of the news media11. Putnam has argued that the decline of dense networks of local associations and community organizations has reduced social capital and contributed towards a
9Pippa Norris. Ed. Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10See Sidney Verba, and Norman Nie. 1972. Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper and Row; Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
11See, for example, Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen. 1995.
Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.
12Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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suggest that the decline of party organizations, and their replacement by entrepreneurial candidates, has been critical to this process13.
The role of political communications via parties and the news media fall into this latter category of factors. Parties act as mobilizing agencies through direct communications with voters, including traditional grassroots activities such as canvassing, leafleting and contacting voters, as well as holding party meetings and campaign rallies, and using national advertising or party political broadcasts. The news media serve this function through providing information about parties, candidates and policies that can help to crystallize voting choices, and the partisan press, in particular, has long been thought to help reinforce party support. In these activities through positive messages both parties and the news media can serve to increase party and candidate support among electors, and the propensity to turnout, or they can convey negative messages that function to depress participation.
The literature is divided about the effects of media activity. In the traditional ‘Columbia’ model,
13John Aldrich. 1995. Why Parties? Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Martin P. Wattenberg. 1996. The Decline of American Political Parties: 1952– 1994. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhree. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp.
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pation, which rarely treated the media as an important causal factor in their models15. A range of more recent studies has credited the media with boosting public participation16.
In contrast, in recent years many popular commentators commonly suggest that the public has become disengaged through negative messages. There are two separate issues here. One concerns the effects of the use of negative or ”attack” ads by politicians where candidate or party campaigns criticize their opponents’ character or record17. In the United States, Ansolabehere and Iyengar provide some of the most convincing experimental evidence that the use of ”negative” or ”attack” television campaign ads, meaning those designed to criticize the opponent, has the capacity to turn off American voters at the ballot box. ”Negative advertising drives people away from the polls in large numbers… Negative advertising breeds distrust of the electoral process and pessimism about the value of an individual’s own voice.” 18. Yet it is
15See Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes. The American Voter. New York: John Wiley. P. 92. See also Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie and
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16Brice E. Pinkleton, and Erica Weintraub Austin. 1998. ”Media and Participation: Breaking the Spiral of Disaffection.” In Engaging the Public: How Government and the Media can Invigorate American Democracy. Ed. Thomas J. Johnson, Carol E. Hays and Scott P. Hays. New York: Rowan & Littlefield; Hugh Culbertson and Guido H. Stempel III. 1986. ”How media use and reliance affect knowledge level.” Communication Research.
Public Opinion Quarterly. 44:
17See, for example, Kathleen H. Jamieson. 1992. Dirty Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Kathleen H. Jamieson. 1984. Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Advertising. New York: Oxford University Press; Karen S.
18Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar. 1995. Going Negative: How Political Advertisments Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: Free Press. P. 112.
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difficult to know how far we can generalize from these findings more broadly in part because of the different institutional context of advertising in European campaigns19. Commercial political advertising has come late to most European countries. In some, like Austria, negative advertisements are banned by law. In others like the Netherlands, although ads are allowed, few are aired because parties have limited financial resources. And in still others like Britain it is difficult to compare the effects of a five to ten minute party political broadcast, shown once per channel, with the effects of repetitive
The other concern claim relates to common practices originating in the news media, which we can examine, such as where routine headlines emphasize political scandals, government incompetence and/or partisan conflict20. For example, Patterson suggests that American voters are turned off by the media’s routine emphasis on the ”game” schema, characterized by horse race journalism (who’s ahead, who’s behind) and extensive coverage of opinion polls21. He argues that changes in journalism in the 1960s produce a shift towards
19Lynda Lee Kaid and Christina
20Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 1997. Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21Thomas E. Patterson. 1993. Out of Order. New York: Vintage.
22Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 1997. Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. P. 139.
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coverage, stimulating rather than displacing attention23. It seems equally plausible that what matters for electoral participation is what the polls report, not the extent of their coverage per se. In Britain, for example, Heath and Taylor found that the closeness of the race, as monitored by reported opinion polls, is one of the best predictors of turnout24.
Therefore we need to go further to understand the effects of political communications on public participation. Since most of the research has been conducted within the context of American campaigns, which are atypical of most established democracies, it is useful to reexamine the evidence in a broader range of
23 Xinshu Zhao and Glen L. Beske. 1998.
23Denis McQuail. 1992. Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest. London: Sage. P. 17.
24Anthony Heath and Bridget Taylor. 1999. ”Turnout and Registration.” In
Critical Elections: Voters and Parties in
25See Pippa Norris et al. 1999. On Message: Communicating the Campaign. London: Sage. Chapter 9.
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groups. In this study we focus on comparing voter turnout, one of the least demanding forms of activity but also one of the most universal. For many people, casting the ballot provides their only form of political expression. This measure is also comparable across established democracies, unlike involvement in parties or interest groups that may mean very different things in different institutional settings.
Political Communications and Electoral
Turnout
As noted earlier, the level of voting participation fell from almost
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Table 2. Political Communications and Voting Participation,
To see whether this relationship held up to multivariate analysis, regression models was run in 1989, 1994 and 1999 predicting voting turnout using the standard structural, attitudinal and nationallevel controls. This includes education, age and income (the latter as a proxy for SES), which have most commonly been found to be associated with turnout, along with political interest measured by propensity to discuss politics. The results in Table 3 confirm that, as many previous studies have found, age and income proved strong predictors of turnout, along with political interest. The younger generation is particularly prone to stay home. In contrast the gender gap in turnout has shrunk over the years to become insignificant while education (measured on a restricted scale) proved inconsistent. National factors also proved important, with
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BLAMING THE MESSENGER?
Table 3. Predictors of Voting Participation,
We find no evidence for the claim that those most exposed to news coverage during the campaign were demobilized by the experience. Yet interpretations of these findings remain open to interpretation. Does media attention to the campaign (which is sequentially prior) lead to turnout? Or does a general propensity to turnout lead to media attention (because I want to cast my vote, I seek out information about the parties and candidates)? Elsewhere, in a more extended treatment, I argue that the most plausible interpretation of this evidence is that there is a virtuous circle
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where watching the news activates existing predispositions and prior tendencies lead people to turn on the news26.
Table 4. Evaluations of TV Campaign News by Turnout, 1989
These issues cannot be resolved here with
26 See Pippa Norris. Fall 2000. A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in
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Conclusions and Implications
Why should we consistently find a positive link between electoral turnout and attention to the news media? There are three possible answers.
One interpretation is that those who are most predisposed to participate (for whatever reason) could well be more interested in keeping up with current affairs in the news, so the direction of causation could be
Another answer could be that the process of watching or reading about public affairs (for whatever reason) increases our interest in, and knowledge about, government and politics, thereby facilitating political participation. The more we watch or read, in this interpretation, the more we learn. News habits can be caused by many factors such as leisure patterns and broadcasting schedules: people may catch the news because it comes on after a popular
Both these views could logically make sense of the associations we establish. One or the other could be true. It is not possible to resolve the direction of causality from
27 Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz. Eds. 1974. The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
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the news media and party campaigns serve to activate the active. Those most interested and knowledgeable pay most attention to political news. Learning more about public affairs reduces the barriers to further civic engagement. In this interpretation, the ratchet of reinforcement thereby moves in a direction that is healthy for democratic participation.
In contrast, the news media has far less power to reinforce the disengagement of the disengaged, because, given the easy availability of the multiple alternatives now available, and minimal political interest, when presented with news about politics and current affairs this group is habitually more likely to turn over, turn off, or surf to another web page. If the disengaged do catch the news, they are likely to pay little attention. And if they do pay attention, they are more likely to mistrust media sources of information. Repeatedly tuning out political messages inoculates against their potential impact. This theory provides a plausible and coherent interpretation of why the press and broadcasters may have a negative bias in coverage of the EU and yet those who pay attention to the news media remain more engaged than those who do not watch or read. What matters here are the characteristics of how people sift, sort and use messages in the news media, rather than simply passively and uncritically absorbing the messages in an
Claims of videomalaise are methodologically flawed so that they are at best unproven, to use the Scottish verdict, or at worse false. As a result too often we are ”blaming the messenger” for more
If we can generalize more broadly from these results, they suggest that campaign communications may thereby reinforce the division between those who tune in and tune out from public affairs. Some people will have more civic skills, social networks, and interest to find out about events in Brussels or Luxembourg,
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and to cast their vote accordingly. The institutional context also does seem important for electoral turnout, and devices like compulsory voting and Sunday polling days can raise levels of participation. But the evidence here suggests that coverage of public affairs in the traditional news media should not be blamed for broader inequalities in educational skills or
28 See Pippa Norris. Fall 2000. A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in
116
To Share Democratic
Legitimacy Between
Different Political Levels
Hans Agné1
Even though democracy is about power, equally shared between citizens, democratic procedures have never controlled more than parts of the power exercised in any society. To understand democracy we thus study the relation between the unit in which democracy is thought to take place and other units where power is exercised, democratically or not. The question I would like to pose concerns the division of power between the European union and its
***
1 The author is doctor student at Department of political science at Stockholm university.
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Why are we interested in citizens participation in general elections? A social scientist answer could be that turnout in general elections is a good indicator of the popular support for the political system (or some other politically relevant quality). That answer is fair enough for explaining the interest of a social scientist. However, if the turnout in general elections is interesting only as an indicator of the popular support for the political system, and not in itself important for the popular support, than no one outside social science need to bother about it; the political debate would focus on the real problem, that is a supposed lack of popular support for the political system, and not waste any time on the mere instrument for studying the problem, which is the turnout. Thus, our first answer can not explain the concern for turnout in general elections found in the political sphere, and so we have to put the question again. Why are we interested in citizens participation in general elections?
A second answer would be that democracy is impossible if citizens don’t vote. Even though this answer probably could explain some of the common interest in citizens participation in general elections, it’s not sufficient. If you adopt a representative or elitist conception of democracy – which I believe most people do – voting citizens is not a necessary condition for democracy. What is a necessary condition for representative democracy is the possibility for all citizens to vote in free and fair elections. Of course one could suspect the
To understand the common interest in turnout in general elections I would propose a third answer, complementing the former ones, saying that participation in general elections has a common
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interest because it’s assumed to improve or underpin the legitimacy of the political system. In a weberian understanding of legitimacy (Beetham 1991:6) that would mean: a citizen participating in a general election will to a greater extent than if not participating believe in the justifiability of the political authority. If the citizens justification of the authority stems from democratic principles and a belief that actual conditions sufficiently conforms to these principles, then we can in addition qualify the legitimacy as democratic legitimacy. The higher the turnout, the deeper and more widespread becomes the conviction of the citizens that political
There is a least two reasons for the view that participation in general elections improves democratic legitimacy. First, participation in general elections can have an informative and educational effect. The procedure of choosing a political party and confirming the choice with the ballot, while following the political debate, can work as a fast course in political science and democratic theory, learning what democracy is about, the obligations and rights of democracy, its strengths and weaknesses. Given that the citizen are situated in a democratic culture and political order such information and deliberation are expected to increase the democratic legitimacy of the system, its democratic justifiability according to the citizens. Second, and to my view more important, participation in general elections improves democratic legitimacy because one can reasonably assume a
To explore the relation between turnout in the European union and its
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cratic legitimacy – we need to know what determines the voting behaviour. Why do people vote? Of course I can’t answer this question fully and seriously. During the last two days we have discussed different explanations, but taken together as one single model these explanations are fare too complex to use for a theoretical analysis about the relation between democratic legitimacy on the national and the European level. What to do then? My solution is a
A rationalistic answer to the question – why do people vote – would be that people vote because they want political influence, because they want to influence political
Before I go on to explain the relation between different democratic organisations sharing the same citizens I want to sum up the explanative assumptions made so far.
2In this group we find among many others an argument pursued by chairman Bengt Göranssons, saying that a low turnout in the European elections is expected as one of the most important questions of any political election, whether or not the government will stay, is never posed in the campaigns of the European elections (which is due to the constitutional limitations of the European parliament). If the elections were about something more important the argument implies that turnout would increase.
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Diagram 1. A hypothesis
What the diagram says is first: that the citizens decision to vote or not to vote depends on the citizens desire for political influence at a minimal individual effort, and second: that the
***
If citizens vote because they want political influence the turnout in general elections is supposed to increase when adding more competencies and power to the organisation (given that it’s the elected body which controls the new powers, or rather: that citizens believe so). As there is a limited number of citizens and votes, each vote becomes more important when the organisation gains power, and the motivation for voting is thereby strengthened. This idea can be illustrated in a diagram.
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Diagram 2. One democratic organisation, A
Note that we have not yet begun to compare different organisations. Both axis describe the same unit, organisation A. We try to capture only what is expected to happen in one single democratic organisation when the powers and competencies of the organisation are expanded. And what happens is that turnout is expected to increase.
If we stopped the analysis by here we would certainly conclude, that the solution to the problem of low turnout in the elections of the European parliament is to transfer more power to the Parliament, either from the
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sed in the
In what way could some other organisation, call it organisation B, differ from the first organisation A? In this
Diagram 3. One democratic organisation, B, which has more citizens OR more veto points than organisation A
Or we could think of an organisation where the variation in turnout is even smaller, as in this organisation C.
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Diagram 4. One democratic organisation, C, which has more citizens AND more veto points than organisation A
How could we explain the differences between organisation A, B and C? If we want to stay in the
According to our
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sing the number of citizens. All such very realistic consequences are excluded from this
The second explanation to the differences in turnout between organisation A, B and C is the difference in the number of veto points in each organisation. The veto point is a stage in a decisionmaking procedure where the decision can be blocked. The number of veto points can vary between different organisations. For example, in a monist democracy – where antique Athens is probably the most extreme example as the political forum could not only legislate but also judge and directly execute their decisions – there is only one veto point. All that is needed for a social act to become a decision is the collective say at one moment and one place. This example could be contrasted with experiences from international negotiations where the final outcome has to be ratified in national parliaments before the proposal becomes a decision, that is: before the decision comes into power; in this example there are as many veto point as there are national parliaments, or even more, as there might be also constitutional and international courts. Now, if there are many veto points in an organisation rather than few, there will be less decisions taken, all other things equal, or at least: the
The European union has more veto points than its memberstates, even if the number of veto points in the union vary between different policy areas. The
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nisters – to decisions on the competence of the European union, which takes ratification in the national parliaments. The turnout in the elections to the European parliament should reach a lower level because of the
From a normative democratic perspective, the veto points of the European union are problematic. By adding veto points to a democratic
Let’s now turn to the comparison between turnout in different democratic units.
3 The relation is complex between turnout in the elections to the European parliament and the internal veto points of the Council of Ministers. If the Council of Ministers reaches a decision, its number of veto points could actually increase the influence of the European parliament, as the internal veto points weakens the Council of Ministers and thereby makes it easier for the Parliament to gain support for its position in a bargain with the Council. If the Council of Ministers however doesn’t reach a decision, the number of internal veto points will decrease the interest of the European parliament, as it can’t influence the situation.
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Diagram 5. Two democratic organisations, A and B, in the political system (sharing the same citizens/voters)
This time we have organisation A on the vertical axis and organisation B on the horizontal axis. For the moment we have also included a simplification, a premise that says: every power and competence which is added to organisation B is taken from organisation A. Later on we will depart from this simplification. But for the sake of lucidity I start with a simple model. It’s not much to say about this diagram. As we have defined – in the premise – the power of organisation B as what is taken from organisation A, the graph should be inverted. The more power or competencies to or-
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ganisation B from organisation A, the lower expected turnout in organisation A.
Now take a look at a diagram which includes the turnout in two democratic units in the same political system.
Diagram 6. Two democratic organisations with the same relevant characteristics, A:1 and A:2
Given that the organisations are alike in relevant aspects – number of citizens and number of veto points – we should expect a symmetrical trade off between the turnout in the two democratic units. What you gain in one unit you will lose in the other. Of course we should be aware that the overall system capacity is probably not the same when competencies and power are taken from one unit to the other in the same political system. But for still some time we stay with the
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We now come to the rather predictable comparison, between two more or less democratic units that differs from each other in aspects relevant for the level of turnout. Take for example a comparison between the organisations A and B, which we have previously identified, or the more provocative comparison between organisation A and C.
Diagram 7. Two more or less democratic organisations, A and B. B has either more citizens than A or more veto points
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Diagram 8. Two more or less democratic organisations, A and C. C has both more citizens than A and more veto points
To make the situation even more obvious we can turn this diagram around and place organisation C on the horizontal axis instead of organisation A, while keeping the same relation between the two.
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Diagram 9. Two more or less democratic organisations, A and C. C has both more citizens than A and more veto points
In this diagram we can easily see that it’s irrational to transfer any power from A to C or B, if you want to maximise turnout in general election. Yes, transferring power and competencies from organisation A to C or B will yield a higher turnout in C or B; but by doing this you will lose more turnout in A than you win in C or B. As a small central state like for example Sweden is most re-
sembling to A, and the large European union with several veto points is most resembling to C, we have now reached a quite different conclusion than the more simple one drawn by Weiler. His point was that an increase of power and competence of the European parliament would solve some of the democratic shortcomings of the union. At this moment we rather say that increasing the power of the European parliament would worsen the democratic
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shortcomings of the union, though at the national level, as long as the competencies and powers transferred to the European parliament comes from national parliaments or bodies controlled by these.
But this conclusion is also premature. The premise – saying that every power and competence added to organisation A is taken from organisation C – is not true for all expansions of power and competencies in the European parliament. It’s thus time to problematize the premise and differ between policy areas where we believe that the premise is true and policy areas where we believe the premise to be false. I shall try to give a presumptive answer to this question.
What we are trying to identify is a situation where the power and competencies of one democratic unit can be expanded, without any negative effects on the other democratic unit. We thus look for a situation with the following structure.
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Diagram 10. Two more or less democratic organisations, A and C. C has both more citizens than A and more veto points
Where can we find this? To use the term of Robert Dahl this structure would be find in areas where the power is alienated, and not delegated, from the democratic units (Dahl 1982:6,
The first example is found in security policy. According to a popular realist thesis the European integration is taken forward by the necessity for
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rity policy of the European
The problem here is that not all countries have had such a bad efficiency in security policy. Sweden hasn’t fought a war since 1809. You can accuse Sweden for having an immoral security policy during the second world war, and also for hiding its agenda after the war. But measured by its goal – to protect its citizens from aggressors – the policy has been efficient. It might then be difficult to convince a Swede that his or her state really has lost the possibility to pursue an efficient security policy.
The second example is found in environmental policy. Pollution’s of air and water can easily be taken from one nation to another; the same holds for global heating. According to a simple Prisoners Dilemma logic – that is where no state acts individually as all states need to act for solving a common problem – this could be a serious problem for the
The third example is found in economic policy. The globalisation of capital and factors of production is often said to limit for example the
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outside, the union seems to be a feasible organisation for retaking some of the lost power to tax mobile tax bases. This should not affect the turnout in national elections, as long as the
So, the conclusion from this three examples – security, environmental and economic policy – is that there are competencies and power which could be transferred to the European union, or competencies which has already been transferred, without decreasing turnout in the national elections, as the powers are not controlled by the national parliaments anyway. But we have also observed problems in each example, implying that the shortcomings of democratic legitimacy in the European union will not be satisfactorily solved by following the political implication of this analysis.
Finally then, my very simple answer to the initial question – about when it’s better or worse to divide a system in two levels, measured against a norm of democratic legitimacy – is that a division is better when the public that policies can be effectively pursued on one level but not at all on the other. And if this criterion is not fulfilled, we should keep
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References
Beetham, David (1991) The Legitimation of Power. Houndmills: Macmillan Education LTD
Dahl, Robert A. (1982) Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press
Weiler, Joseph (1999) The Constitution of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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s å a r b e t a r
D e m o k r a t i u t r e d n i n g e n
Demokratiutredningen analyserar den svenska folkstyrelsens förutsättningar inför
Utredningen vill redan under arbetets gång bidra till att fördjupa demokratidebatten genom
•en skriftserie
•offentliga seminarier
•en webbplats för debatt och information
Skrifter
Demokratiutredningen kommer fortlöpande under arbetets gång att publicera en skriftserie med essäer, debattartiklar, seminarieinlägg och forskarantologier.
Den omfattande demokratiforskning som bedrivs vid våra universitet och högskolor ställs på detta vis till förfogande för alla som är intresserade av demokratifrågor.
Information om titlar, utgivningsdag, priser m.m. finns på utredningens webbplats.
Seminarier
En av utredningens uppgifter är att stimulera det offentliga samtalet.
Därför anordnar vi offentliga seminarier runt om i landet.
Till seminarierna bjuder vi in forskare och idédebattörer att bidra med sin kunskap och sina värderingar kring de frågor vi tycker är värdefulla att samtala kring.
Varje seminarium dokumenteras i form av en skrift.
www. demokratitorget. gov.se
är adressen till Demokratiutredningens webbplats. Här finns möjlighet att föra en fri debatt kring demokratin – demokratitorget är öppet för alla.
Ett antal krönikörer kommer att kommentera demokratiproblem och andra demokratidebatter.
Här kan Du också informera dig om och föra dialog kring utredningen. Direktiv i fulltext, arbetsplan och utredningens protokoll är dokument man kan hämta hem.
Här informerar vi också fortlöpande om aktuella skrifter och seminarier. Man kan dessutom ta del av debattinlägg vid seminarier samt beställa utredningens skrifter.
Länkar finns till andra delar av nätet där demokratifrågor dryftas på olika sätt.
Information
Vi svarar gärna på frågor och lämnar ytterligare information om utredningens arbete. Adress och telefonnummer till utredningens kansli finns på nästa sida.
Utredningens sammansättning
Ordförande
Bengt Göransson f.d. statsråd
tel:
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Stefan Attefall (kd) ledamot av riksdagen tel:
Nils Fredrik Aurelius (m) ledamot av riksdagen
tel:
Experter
Lars Bryntesson
Kulturdepartementet
Wanja
LO:s andra ordförande
Justitiedepartementet
Elisabeth Rynell författare
Marcus Storch direktör
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Formgivning: Susan Nilsson Jupiter Reklam AB
POSTADRESS: 103 33 Stockholm. BESÖKSADRESS: Regeringsgatan
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Publications of the
Commission of
Democracy in Sweden
Editor Erik Amnå
1 . Demokratins räckvidd. Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1998:55)
2 . En god affär i Motala. Journalisternas avslöjanden och läsarnas etik (SOU 1998:63)
3. Att rösta med händerna. Om stormöten, folkomröstningar och direktdemokrati i Schweiz
(SOU 1998:85)
4.Gör barn till medborgare! Om barn och demokrati under
5.Det unga medborgarskapet. Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1998:101)
6.Lekmannastyre i experternas tid. Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1998:102)
7.Demokrati på europeisk nivå? (SOU 1998:124)
8.Läsarna och demokratin. Ett brev till det läsande Sverige (SOU 1998:134)
9.Lokala Demokratiexperiment. Exempel och analyser (SOU 1998:155)
10.På Marginalen. En intervjubok från Socialtjänstutredningen (SOU 1998:161)
DEMOKRATIUTREDNINGENS SKRIFTSERIE
11.Allas frihet. Demokratin möter marknaden. Tre ronder (SOU 1998:164)
12.EU – ett demokratiprojekt? Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1998:145)
13.Invandrarskap och medborgarskap.
Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1999:8)
14.Att slakta ett får i Guds namn. Om religionsfrihet och demokrati (SOU 1999:9)
15.Etik och demokratisk statskonst
(SOU 1999:13)
16.Elektronisk demokrati (SOU 1999:12)
17.Den skyddade provinsen. En essä om demokratins värde och värdighet (SOU 1999:22)
18.Lobbning (SOU 1998:146)
19.Demokratin i den offentliga sektorns förändring. Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1999:40)
20.Bemäktiga individerna. Om domstolarna, lagen och de individuella rättigheterna i Sverige (SOU 1998:103)
21.Bör demokratin avnationaliseras?
(SOU 1999:11)
22.Globaliseringen och demokratin. Dokumentation från ett seminarium (SOU 1999:56)
23.Löser juridiken demokratins problem?
(SOU 1999:58)
24.Representativ demokrati (SOU 1999:64)
25.Demokratin och det gemensamma bästa
(SOU 1999:74)
26.Demokratiopinioner (SOU 1999:80)
DEMOKRATIUTREDNINGENS SKRIFTSERIE
27.Olydiga medborgare (SOU 1999:101)
28.Demokratins förgörare (SOU 1999:10)
29.Civilsamhället som demokratins arena. Några kritiska reflektioner (SOU 1999:112)
30.Demokrati på remiss (SOU 1999:144
31.Vad hände med Sveriges ekonomi efter 1970?
(SOU 1999:150
32.Citizen Participation in European Politics
(SOU 1999:151)