The European Parliament relentlessly tries to inform citizens about the reasons for voting in the upcoming elections. As on the previous occasion, the EP this time around is running an information campaign to reach citizens and hopefully thereby increase turnout. Similar tasks are fulfilled by many NGOs, which in different countries organize information campaigns regarding the EP and the elections.

What is still missing, however, among other things, is a reliable set of information regarding party programmes. In an idealized version of the democratic electoral process (often referred to in political science as the ‘responsible party government model’), voters make an informed choice between the competing parties both on the basis of their programmes and on their government or opposition record. Most observers doubt that this is the case nowadays, both in relation to national and European elections.

Voters simply do not read parties’ programmes, and instead rely on other sources to make their judgment about which parties to vote for, such as the media. In the European Parliament elections, this problem is further exacerbated by the fact confirmed by many opinion polls, namely that the EU citizens are not fully aware of the nature of the EP elections, let alone their lack of knowledge about party programmes. So what can be done to get voters interested in these elections?

One way of doing this is through developing Internet-based voting aid applications, which aim both at informing the citizens about party programmes on various issues, but which also are able to show which political party is closest to a given voter. This task is an ambition of the revolutionary voting aid application created for the European Parliament elections – EU Profiler (www.euprofiler.eu), launched on 23 April. Read the rest of this entry »

Many political scientists have long been arguing that the lack of connection between the results of the elections and the subsequent composition of the European Commission has been one of the key obstacles to the emergence of a pan-European political debate, and ultimately, for increased voters’ attention. From the point of view of the Euro-parties, it has led to the effect that so far they have not shaped their campaigns around their approval or criticism of the previous Commission (as would be the case nationally with the governing and opposition parties), but instead have focused on their ideas and solutions for the EU without much reference to the previous commission’s record. Most Euro-parties were further complaining that their electoral role and a real partisan, pan-European campaign, cannot be fully developed until the introduction of a common, pan-European constituency. In other words, without changes within the EU’s institutional environment, not much change was predicted.

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Academics should not only concentrate on analyzing and explaining the elections post-factum – that is, writing books and articles some time after the elections – but also to offer reliable accounts of valid political events as they are taking place. That is why I have accepted a kind invitation from the Centre for European Studies to write a blog devoted to the 2009 elections to the European Parliament (EP). Contrary to most other blogs devoted to the European Parliament elections, my analytical perspective will usually include the historical reflections and comparisons to six previous direct EP elections, taking place since 1979, and will also offer a background and comparisons to the wider literature on the elections and political parties in general. In this sense, it will be both informative and polemic. I am convinced that there is a large number of Internet users who look for such type of analysis and by providing them with it I can contribute my small part to stimulate the debate on the EP elections in an EU-wide perspective. Furthermore, I do hope that some readers will take a little while to enrich this blog by commenting and discussing some of my thoughts, thereby writing it together with me. Read the rest of this entry »