Intro: The role of political communication in European Parliament elections analysis

In political science the benchmark of the research regarding European Parliament (EP) elections is to define and analyse the electoral process as the second-order (national) elections. This perception is based on the second-order election (SOE) theoretical framework and its analytical model developed by the political scientists Karlheinz Reif and Herman Schmitt in the 1980’s.  The SOE theory is still regarded as the primary academic approach and has been used for most EP-election studies since it was developed.

One of the most vital parts of the theory is the “less is at stake” dimension. According to the theory the EP-electoral process (union/regional level) is not regarded as important as a national (state level) electoral process by political actors such as voters or political parties. However, at the same time, contemporary research is providing new conclusions which are establishing an intellectual challenge for the present theoretical understanding of the EP-electoral process. Among them are the findings that the last elections for the EP are showing an increased importance of the “EU-dimension” among the political actors and voters.

One example of such development can be found in the EP-elections process in Sweden in 2014 which I have been focusing on. According to the original theoretical approach of Reif and Schmitt the political parties should mainly provide political communication based on the national level politics rather than on the EU-level politics. There are also four main characteristics which are regarded as typical for the EP-elections process:

a)       Lower level of participation among the voters

b)       Brighter prospects for small and new political parties

c)       Higher percentage of invalidated ballots

d)       Losses for parties in government.

However, the original analytical approach of the SOE theory does not include the assessment of political communication. This is one of the reasons the current theoretical and analytical approach insisting that the national elections are of the first-order importance while other elections are of the second-order importance has come under critique during the last years.

The discussion about the approach of Reif and Schmitt provided me with interest to contribute to the discussion by analyzing the EP-elections in Sweden during 2014. Therefore I decided to study political communication among the eight political parties which are represented in the Swedish parliament. The limitation of the study is based on each of the parties’ electoral manifestos for the EP-elections. 

There is a significant amount of research papers, from the period of the earlier 2000s and the early period of the 2010's, providing conclusions about the so-called ”Europeanization” process of national political parties in Sweden. The existing research also provides conclusions concerning how the national political parties are communicating with voters regarding EU-level related issues and policies before or during the national election process. The research process for this paper was therefore based on the following research question:

How will the addition of political communication aspect affect the analytical model of the SOE theory?

This is something I am going to write more about in the following texts.