European Elections in Focus

Abstract

Elections are one of the primary instruments of democracy and one of the biggest exercises in democracy occurs with elections to the European Parliament at which over 375 million citizens are eligible to participate. These elections offer an unprecedented opportunity to study the functioning of electoral democracy in general and the functioning of European democracy in particular. Under the auspices of the EU funded infrastructure design study “Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union” (PIREDEU), it has been possible to produce data of the type that is required to allow researchers to address fundamental questions about the representative, accountability and legitimacy functions of electoral processes. A feasibility study involving 27 countries and conducted at the time of the 2009 elections to the European Parliament, PIREDEU coordinated the collection of five empirical data sets. Data were gathered on the attitudes and behaviour of some 27,000 EU citizens, campaign strategies and issues agendas for 1,350 European Parliamentary candidates, issue priorities and positions in 200 party manifestos, campaign news coverage in 140 media outlets and contextual indicators about the political and economic systems of all 27 EU member countries.