Many academics and commentators argue that Europe is suffering from a democratic deficit. An interesting proposal that has been put forward to address this problem is to elect some members of the European parliament in a pan-European district. In this article, we evaluate this proposal using an online experiment, in which thousands of Europeans voted on a pan-European ballot we created. We find that the voting behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European district is created, our findings provide an argument in favour of using a closed-list ballot and establishing a maximum number of candidates from each country on the lists.
AndréADepauwSDeschouwerK (2014) Legislators’ local roots: Disentangling the effect of district magnitude. Party Politics20(6): 904–917.
2.
AndréADepauwSMartinS (2015) Electoral systems and legislators’ constituency effort: The mediating effect of electoral vulnerability. Comparative Political Studies48(4): 464–496.
3.
ArzheimerKEvansJ (2012) Geolocation and voting: Candidate–voter distance effects on party choice in the 2010 UK General Election in England. Political Geography31(5): 301–310.
4.
BlaisAGidengilEDobrzynskaA (2003) Does the local candidate matter? Candidate effects in the Canadian election of 2000. Canadian Journal of Political Science36(3): 657–664.
5.
BlumenauJEggersACHangartnerD (forthcoming) Open/closed list and party choice: Experimental evidence from the UK. British Journal of Political Science.
6.
BornhorstFIchinoAKirchkampO (2010) Similarities and differences when building trust: The role of cultures. Experimental Economics13(3): 260–283.
7.
CampbellAConversePEMillerWE (1960) The American Voter, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
8.
CampbellRCowleyP (2014) What voters want: Reactions to candidate characteristics in a survey experiment. Political Studies62(4): 745–765.
9.
CanacheDMondakJJCabreraE (2000) Voters and the personal vote: A counterfactual simulation. Political Research Quarterly53(3): 663–676.
10.
CareyJShugartMS (1995) Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies14(4): 417–439.
11.
ColomerJM (2011) Personal Representation: The Neglected Dimension of Electoral Systems, Colchester: ECPR Press.
12.
CrispBFDesposatoSW (2004) Constituency building in multimember districts: Collusion or conflict?The Journal of Politics66(1): 136–156.
13.
CutlerF (2002) The simplest shortcut of all: Voter-candidate socio-demographic similarity and electoral choice. The Journal of Politics64(2): 466–490.
14.
DelheyJNewtonK (2005) Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: Global pattern or Nordic exceptionalism?European Sociological Review21: 311–327.
15.
De WildeP (2011) No polity for old politics? A framework for analyzing politicization of European integration. Journal of European Integration33(5): 559–575.
16.
DolanK (2014) Gender stereotypes, candidate evaluations, and voting for women candidates: What really matters?Political Research Quarterly67(1): 96–107.
17.
DownsA (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper.
18.
DumitrescuDGidengilEStolleD (2015) Candidate confidence and electoral appeal: An experimental study of the effect of nonverbal confidence on voter evaluations. Political Science Research and Methods3(1): 43–52.
FiskinJSLuskinRCSiuA (2014) Europolis and the European public sphere: Empirical explorations of a counterfactual ideal. European Union Politics15(3): 328–351.
21.
GarandJC (1988) Localism and regionalism in Presidential elections: Is there a home state or regional advantage?The Western Political Quarterly41(1): 85–103.
22.
Grimmett GR, Laslier JF, Pukelsheim F, et al. (2011) The allocation between the EU member States of the seats in the European parliament. Note of the European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Policy Department C: Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs, PE 432.760. Available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=IPOL-AFCO_NT(2011)432760 (accessed 10 July 2015).
23.
HabermasJ (2012) The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, Cambridge: Polity Press.
24.
HixS (2008) What’s Wrong with the Europe Union and How to Fix It?, Cambridge: Polity Press.
25.
HixSMarshM (2007) Punishment or protest? Understanding European parliament elections. The Journal of Politics69(2): 495–510.
26.
HoboltSBWittrockJ (2011) The second-order election model revisited: An experimental test of vote choices in European parliament elections. Electoral Studies30(1): 29–40.
27.
HoogheLMarxG (2009) A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science39(1): 1–23.
28.
KarpJBanducciSABowlerS (2003) To know it is to love it? Satisfaction with democracy in the European Union. Comparative Political Studies36(3): 271–292.
29.
KarvonenL (2012) The Personalisation of Politics. A Study of Parliamentary Democracies, Colchester: ECPR Press.
30.
KlingemannH-DWeldonS (2012) A crisis of integration? The development of transnational dyadic trust in the European Union, 1954–2004. European Journal of Political Research52(4): 457–482.
31.
Kohler-KochBRittbergerB (2007) Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
32.
KuhnT (2015) Experiencing European Integration: Transnational Lives and European Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
33.
LaslierJFBlaisABolD (2015) The EuroVotePlus experiment. European Union Politics16(4): 601–615.
34.
LazarsfeldPEBerelsonBGaudetH (1948) The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, New York: Columbia University Press.
35.
Lawson C, Lenz GS, Baker A, et al. (2010) Looking like a winner: Canadidate appearance and electoral sucess in new democracies. World Politics 62(4): 561–593.
36.
Lewis-BeckMSRiceTW (1983) Localism in presidential elections: The home state advantage. American Journal of Political Science27(3): 548–556.
37.
LoewenPJKoopRSettleJ (2014) A natural experiment in proposal power and electoral success. American Journal of Political Science58(1): 189–196.
38.
MajoneG (1998) Europe’s ‘democratic deficit’: The question of standards. European Law Journal4(1): 5–28.
39.
MarshM (1998) Testing the second-order election model after four European elections. British Journal of Political Science28(4): 591–607.
40.
MarshM (2007) Candidates or parties? Objects of electoral choice in Ireland. Party Politics13(4): 500–527.
41.
MoravcsikA (2002) In defence of the ‘democratic deficit’: Reassessing the legitimacy of the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies40(4): 603–634.
42.
NieNHVerbaSPetrocikJR (1999) The Changing American Voter, Bridgewater: Replica.
43.
Oelbermann KF and Pukelsheim F (2015) European elections 2014: From voters to representatives, in twenty-eight ways. Mimeo. Available upon request to the authors.
44.
ReifKSchmittH (1980) Nine second-order national elections: A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results. European Journal of Political Research8(1): 3–44.
45.
RieraP (2011) Does personal representation exist in closed-list PR systems? In: ColomerJM (ed.) Personal Representation: The Neglected Dimension of Electoral Systems, Colchester: ECPR Press.
46.
RohrschneiderR (2002) The democracy deficit and mass support for an EU-wide government. American Journal of Political Science46(2): 463–475.
47.
RoyJAlcantaraC (2014) The candidate effect: Does the local candidate matter?Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties25(2): 195–214.
48.
ShugartMSValdiniMESuominenK (2005) Looking for locals: Voter information demands and personal vote-earning attributes of legislators under proportional representation. American Journal of Political Science49(2): 437–449.
49.
SpieringsNJacobsK (2014) Getting personal? The impact of social media on preferential voting. Political Behavior36(1): 215–234.
50.
StokesDE (1963) Spatial models of party competition. American Political Science Review57(2): 368–377.
51.
TavitsM (2010) Effect of local ties on electoral success and parliamentary behaviour: The case of Estonia. Party Politics16(2): 215–235.
52.
VivyanNWagnerM (2012) Do voters reward rebellion? The electoral accountability of MPs in Britain. European Journal of Political Research51(2): 235–264.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
