European Parliament Elections 2014

Abstract

CISE -Centro Italiano Studi ElettoraliDirected by Roberto D'Alimonte, the CISE -Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali (Italian Centre for Electoral Studies) is an inter-university research center established jointly by the LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome and the University of Florence. Its activity focuses on the study of elections and their institutional framework. The CISE carries out a range of research activities with different points of view on the electoral process: from the analysis of individual voting behavior (investigated through an independent, regular series of CATI surveys) to analyses of election results based on aggregate data (also including the study of vote shifts and of electoral geography), to research on electoral systems and their related legislation. The CISE research activity is also carried out through partnerships with other Italian and international scholars, as well as with national and international research centers and research programmes. The activities of the CISE, systematically documented on the website at http://cise.luiss.it/, are supported by Eni. The European Parliament Elections of 2014Edited by Lorenzo De Sio Vincenzo Emanuele Nicola Maggini Lorenzo De Sio, Vincenzo Emanuele and Nicola MagginiThis book is dedicated to the European Parliament (EP) elections of 22-25 May 2014. Elections that were expected to be the first truly European elections, rather than a collection of second-order elections, focused on national issues as had happened in all previous elections Hix and Marsh, 2011).There were good reasons for such expectations. After 2008, the financial and sovereign debt crisis has impacted Europe, with important, and sometimes dramatic, consequences in economic, social, and political terms. Indeed, the crisis did not have an immediate impact, in terms of economic policies that would affect the everyday life of ordinary people. As a result, the 2009 EP elections-held almost nine months after the Lehman Brothers default-did not show particularly clear effects of the crisis (De Sio and Legnante, 2010). But in subsequent years, the reaction to the crisis has seen the emergence of the European Union, its institutions, and other international institutions as key players in terms of economic policy of the Euro member states. Several of the states that were most impacted by the sovereign debt crisis had to negotiate bailout deals with the "Troika" committee (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) that strongly limited, if not temporarily cancelled, their economic policy sovereignty. Also, most other eurozone countries had to take economic measures with a strong impact on the everyday life of ordinary people.It is in this context that according to many observers, the European Parliament elections of 2014 would become much more relevant than in the past-a first, key test to assess the response of European citizens to the austerity policies decided in Brussels. With the expected consequence of citizens becoming aware that what is decided...