Political Preferences and Political Behaviour in the European Political Space

Funding: Austrian Science Funds (FWF); 289,086 Euro; March 2010 – July 2014

Status: Completed

This project presented a systematic, in-depth account of political conflict and contestation over European integration, focusing on both political preference formation and political behaviour. The integrated framework rested on three interrelated pillars:

1. Micro-level model: spatial determinants of voting behaviour, i.e. the contribution of proximity and directional policy utilities to voters’ subjective evaluation of party alternatives and to actual vote choice;
2. Linkage model: an in-depth account of the interrelations between party elites and voters in EP elections, bringing preference formation processes back into the study of voting behaviour and party strategy;
3. Macro-level model: context-dependency of electoral behaviour, party competition, and party-voter linkages.

The project builds on the spatial theory of political competition and the concept of a “European political space” (Marks and Steenbergen 2004) as the primary analytical grid for assessing political representation and electoral behaviour. With the demise of the “permissive consensus” (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970) in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty, European integration has become a highly contested matter, creating what van der Eijk and Franklin (2004) labelled a “sleeping giant” with the potential to mobilise new strata of voters and transform European party systems.