Abstract
Drawing on the findings of the previous chapters, we assess whether it continues to be helpful for European Parliament (EP) elections to be termed “second order” and/or “second rate”. The 2014 EP elections were indeed still second rate and also predominantly second order. Being “about Europe”, which undoubtedly was also the case, does not make them less deserving of either title, and the character of these elections that made them so extraordinary would have been very different had they not remained predominantly second order. The final chapter assesses if the character displayed by the 2014 EP elections is likely to be reflected in later national elections and the circumstances in which those results could lead to substantial policy and/or membership changes in the European Union (EU).
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Notes
- 1.
More surprisingly, no country falls beyond the 95 percent confidence interval around the average score given to all countries taken together for any of the four attributions of responsibility. These scores are evidently very stable across countries and attitudes. This stability suggests that the scores shown in Table 12.1 do not come from any actual knowledge about the powers and responsibilities of the different levels of government. This supposition is born out by comparing the scores shown in Table 12.1 across the answer categories of seven knowledge questions asked in the same survey. Of the 28 comparisons only one showed a statistically significant difference at the 0.05 level of probability, somewhat less than the 1 in 20 that would be expected on the basis of random chance.
- 2.
The importance of party size as a reason for party choice is often neglected in political science research because the standard research design used in the discipline studies votes for each party separately, thus being unable to take party characteristics into account. In elections to the EP such a focus is infeasible, leading to research designs that do take explicit account of party characteristics and these methods have occasionally been used for studying national elections as well (for example, Franklin and Renko 2013). In both research contexts party size proves at least as important as any other variable in determining party preferences. Often it is seen to be by far the most important.
- 3.
Recent research has shown referendums to also have spillover of just the kind described in Chap. 11, affecting the future national success of parties due to their referendum campaigns, as was so clear with the success of Scottish National Party candidates at the ensuing national election, despite the failure of those parties to carry the actual referendum vote (Fieldhouse and Prosser 2016).
- 4.
It would also call for these eurosceptic forces to acquire a degree of coherence and coordination that is quite hard to imagine, given the disparate nature of these forces documented in the pages of this volume.
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Franklin, M.N., Nielsen, J.H. (2017). Conclusions: The 2014 EP Elections as a Lens on Euroscepticism. In: Hassing Nielsen, J., Franklin, M. (eds) The Eurosceptic 2014 European Parliament Elections. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58696-4_12
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