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Selection and Sanctioning in European Parliamentary Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2011

Sara B. Hobolt  and
Bjørn Høyland
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Abstract

Elections are inherently about selecting good candidates for public office and sanctioning incumbents for past performance. Yet, in the low salience context of ‘second-order elections’ to the European Parliament, empirical evidence suggests that voters sanction first-order national incumbents. However, no previous study has examined whether voters also use these elections to select good candidates. This article draws on a unique dataset on the political experience of party representatives in eighty-five national elections to the European Parliament to evaluate the extent to which voters prefer candidates with more political experience. The results show that selection considerations do matter. Parties that choose experienced top candidates are rewarded by voters. This effect is greatest when European elections are held in the middle of the national electoral cycle.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 477 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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43 The curious reader might like to know that there is no significant relationship between the difference in the turnout in national and EP elections and the experience of the top candidates.

44 E.g., Hix and Marsh, ‘Punishment or Protest?’

45 We thank one of the Journal's reviewers for pointing this out.

46 We do not estimate the squared and cubed effects of Vote share as initial investigations showed effects of an implausible magnitude under this specification. The substantive results of the key variables of interest for our investigation remained the same.

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61 To simplify matters, we calculated the effect for social democratic parties, the reference category. Year and country effects are ignored.

62 We also investigated whether the difference in turnout from the previous national election mattered for the effect of experience. It did not. The correlation between difference in turnout and experience is weak.