Second‐Order Elections versus First‐Order Thinking: How Voters Perceive the Representation Process in a Multi‐Layered System of Governance

Abstract

Second‐order election models are based on several assumptions about individual‐level motivations. These can be summarized by a transfer hypothesis: individuals presumably apply their evaluations of national‐level phenomena to the EU level when voting in EU elections. In contrast, a suis generis hypothesis stipulates that voters evaluate the EU on its own performance terms. This paper tests these competing hypotheses. We find considerable support for both models. In the election context, where national institutions — political parties — dominate the representation process, the transfer hypothesis receives considerable support. However, we also find surprisingly strong support for the first‐order hypothesis: electoral choice in EU election is influenced to a considerable extent by EU level factors. Furthermore, when voters evaluate the mechanisms of representation more broadly without a focus on elections per se, we find much more support for the first‐order than the transfer hypothesis — voters clearly separate the two levels and evaluate each level on its own terms. These results have important implications, both for how we analyse voters’ decisions in European elections, and how we view the sophistication of voters more broadly in the context of multi‐layered institutions.

Key Words:

• Second‐order elections
• elections to the European Parliament
• public behavior in the EU
• representation in the EU

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Hermann Schmitt and the participants at the 2007 EES conference in Cadenabbia for their helpful comments; Rohrschneider also would like to thank the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS), where he was a fellow during the 2008–2009 academic year, for its generous support during the final writing stages of this project.

Notes

1. We stipulate this condition because we view the decision to participate in an EU election as distinct from the choice of parties once a voter decides to cast a ballot.

2. Unfortunately, Carrubba and Timbone do not use individual‐level performance evaluations. Consequently, their analysis does not directly examine the motives of voter — which is our primary objective.

3. The correlation coefficient between governmental performance and parties’ EU performance is significant (r=0.36) though far from perfect. This suggests that the two performance dimensions are partially independent.

4. Given the lack of appropriate variables, we cannot sort out exactly why EU supporters are more likely to switch towards governmental parties than opponents of integration.