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Nomination: Second‐order elections revisited by Pippa Norris, p.109 Reflections: European elections as member state second‐order elections revisited by Karlheinz Reif, p.115

Abstract 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. They are determined more by the domestic political cleavages than by alternatives originating in the EC, but in a different way than if nine first‐order national elections took place simultaneously. This is the case because European elections occur at different stages of the national political systems' respective 'electoral cycles'. Such a relationship between a second‐order arena and the chief arena of a political system is not at all unusual. What is new here, is that one second‐order political arena is related to nine different first‐order arenas. A first analysis of European election results satisfactorily justifies the assumption mat European Parliament direct elections should be treated as nine simultaneous national second‐order elections.

THE AUTHOR ANALYZES AN ESSAY, "NINE SECOND-ORDER NATIONAL ELECTIONS: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN ELECTION RESULTS" BY KARLHEINZ REIF AND HERMANN SCHMITT, PUBLISHED IN 1980. REIF AND SCHMITT ARGUED THAT THE COMPOSITION OF THE DIRECTLY-ELECTED EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT DID NOT PRECISELY REFLECT THE REAL BALANCE OF POLITICAL FORCES IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY BECAUSE THE ELECTIONS WERE ESSENTIALLY NATIONAL SECOND-ORDER ELECTIONS.

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.

AbstractSecond‐order election (SOE) theory has been used to explain voting behaviour in European elections. Voters believe that less is at stake in some elections and some voters hence tend to cast a protest vote. However, most studies on the topic have focused on the demand side of SOEs – i.e. on the voters – and have ignored or only partially tackled the supply side – i.e. the strategic behaviour of parties – and excluded small and marginal parties (SMPs). However, SMPs may have greater incentive to seriously compete in SOEs. The 2019 European Parliament elections in Germany were particularly interesting to SMPs as there was no voting threshold, thereby increasing the chances of SMPs. To capture whether SMPs view European elections as first‐order elections and therefore expend more resources than parliamentary parties on these elections, I analysed campaign expenditures and manifestos. Results indicate that SMPs act within a rational actor framework, though not unequivocally.