Second Order Elections theory

The composition of the directly elected European Parliament does not precisely reflect the “real” balance of political forces in the European Community. As long as the national political systems decide most of what there is to be decided politically, and everything really important, European elections are additional national second-order elections.

Reif and Schmitt developed the second-order elections (SOE) theoretical framework partly on the basis of the studies of midterm elections in the USA and also partly on the regional elections in Germany which later was adopted for conditions within the analysis of elections for the European Community during the period when the EP elections became democratic.

Among the main reasoning behind the definition was the argument about the “less at stake dimension” of the electoral process. According to Reif and Schmitt the EP-elections were influenced by the consequence of the electoral process not being equal or similar to state-level politics. This is regarding aspects such as the formation of government and opposition as well as the manner of how the national political parties perceived the importance of the electoral process. Furthermore the scholars noted other contemporary aspects, such as the lower level of institutional power of the formerly European Community, when compared to national parties as well as the issues with the political awareness among citizens regarding the fact that the European electoral process was a new electoral concept including newly formed European party-federations.

The analytical model within the original SOE approach is comprehending voting turn-out, amount of individual voting bailouts, performance of political parties with more focus on small and new parties, and how the government party is affected by the electoral process. This model is based on the original study of Reif and Schmitt. The outcome and the characteristics of the electoral process in 1979 the analytical model within the SOE theory was based on the four concluding and finding aspects of the study: lower level of participation, brighter prospects for small and new political parties, higher percentage of invalidated ballots and the government party losses.

The lower level of participation is relevant to the assumption that the ”less is at stake” dimension influences the voting behaviour of the voters where fewer number of voters may consider the EP-elections as sufficiently important to vote. This can also be noticed in the political development where voting turn-out and participation of the voting population is lower during EP-elections than in the national ones.

The brighter prospects for small and new political parties mark the differences related to the voting behaviour during first-order and second-order electoral processes. This means that larger parties, during the first-order elections, get votes from voters whose actual preference lies with a small or new party during the EP-elections and vice versa. In many cases small and new parties have better electoral performance during the EP-elections than during national ones.

The higher percentage of invalidated ballot indicates that the role of political candidates is more important during the campaign in order to mobilize electoral support. This is based on the number of candidates for the EP which is in every member state lower than the number of candidates during the elections for national parliaments. Due to that, the individual importance of the political candidates is by the political parties considered as higher compared to their importance in the national elections. 

The last aspect related to the government party losses, is based on conclusions that the popularity of a national government and the political parties which constitute it increases shortly after the election, only to decline again after the EP-elections. It means that in accordance with the analytical model the government parties tend to be considered as “electoral losers” since they perform less well comparing to results during national elections. One explanation is also that many voters use the EP-elections in order to “punish” the government party by voting for the main competitors at the state level.

With the “less is at stake” dimension Reif and Schmitt based their arguments on that the EP-elections depend on the national electoral dimension, meaning national politics. They explained, as in accordance with the analytical framework, that the campaigning process for EP-elections, therefore, had a smaller significance for political parties than the national election process. The fact is at the same time that the electoral procedure regulations for the EP-elections were at the time of the Reif and Schmitt study and still are determined by state legislators, and also that most have originally retained the main features of the system used during state elections. In such terms, there is a connection between the EP-elections process and the respective national configuration and features which make the EP-elections “nationalized” despite their supranational character.

One characteristic which makes the EP-elections of second-order importance according to the theory is the more important role of individual candidates in order to have successful mobilization since the parties are usually mobilizing less financial and human resources comparing to national elections. For obtaining a successful elections the issue of mobilization of candidates regarded as famous and popular is vital since voters tend to regard the political issues as less important than during the first order elections. This means that voters’ behaviour is influenced by the national political communication at various degrees as Reif and Schmitt present

Many voters cast their votes in these elections not only as a result of conditions obtaining within the specific context of the second-order arena, but also on the basis of factors in the main political arena of the nation. The strategy and tactics of political parties in second-order election campaigns are often influenced by political calculations concerning the main arena.

The role of media is also connected to the national level political arena. The election process will become more interesting for the voters if the media is focusing on first-order political issues which are the national policy issues. This aspect is directly related to the political campaign procedure. If the political parties and their activity in the SOE political arena succeed in the mobilization process, especially regarding the individuals holding top as middle-level public and party positions, their chances of mobilizing voters directly and via the mass media would be better. The opposite development is, after a party concludes that its chances of winning a relatively large share of votes in a low turnout situation are good, that the party will not put so much effort into the political campaign in order not to provoke the competitor to “generalize” the campaign in the sense of introducing national policy issues.

For a political party, it can namely be more favourable to deal with political communication which is based on gathering already loyal supporters rather than going into more active and increased competition for voters. This can be the case when political actors would avoid EU-level political communication on purpose. Among the reasons can also be the lack of EU-level relevant political communication or the assessment that voters would not understand the message. Performing the national-level political communication can, therefore, be regarded as a more confident and safe method for the political actors. 

In my next post, I am going to write about the critique of SOE theory. The whole text can be downloaded here.