The Second-order Election Model in an Enlarged Europe

Jason R. Koepke and Nils Ringe
Additional contact information
Jason R. Koepke: University of Pittsburgh, USA
Nils Ringe: University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

European Union Politics, 2006, vol. 7, issue 3, 321-346

Abstract: On 1 May 2004, the European Union (EU) welcomed its new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. This paper considers to what extent one of the most widely tested and supported theories of voting behavior in Western Europe, the second-order election model, applies in the enlarged EU. We test the model using election data from the new member states and find that voters do not cast protest votes against their incumbent national governments in second-order elec tions, that is, elections where voters believe little to be at stake. This finding contradicts one of the model's basic propositions and runs counter to the empirical reality in the old member states, with potentially significant implications for inter and intra-institutional politics in the EU.

Keywords: elections; enlargement; European Parliament; institutional relations; voting behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116506066259 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:7:y:2006:i:3:p:321-346

DOI: 10.1177/1465116506066259

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().