Identity and Electoral Participation: For a European Approach to European Elections

Abstract

Most comments on European elections make them out to be meaningless, or in any case deprived of any real meaning. One complains about the number of abstentions, considered an indicator of a deep lack of concern about European politics, which are continually on the increase despite an enlargement in European MPs’ powers during the last two legislatures. As regards both participation and votes cast in favor of a particular party, the dependence of European electoral behavior on national behavior is stressed, and the term “second-order election”² is used to express this subordination. One is certainly forced to notice that the European voter does not inevitably vote in the same way as a voter does in national elections. European elections sometimes favor the opposition more than the ruling government. But voting is then interpreted as a “release,” enabling the expression of dissatisfaction or the admission of new political actors onto the national scene. Between attraction for the vacuum and confusion as to what is at stake, the European voter appears as sort of faceless or with a funny nose, but certainly not as a … European voter.

Our database was compiled by Pierre Baudewyns and Mercédes Mateo-Diaz, whom we thank for that. We are grateful also to Annie Laurent and Bernard Dolez for the discussions we had on the subject of relations inside a “small N” population during a night session of the Congress of the AFSP in Rennes. We thank also Anne-Marie Aish for her advice.