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The 2024 European Parliamentary Elections
52-76Views:172One of the most important event of the 2024 super election year was the elections of the European Parliament – which took place from June 6 to 9 – because the European Union has reached a turning point. Classified as a second order election, it has taken on a new significance in the light of the current global political events, of the geopolitical, social, and political situation, as well as of the crisis resulting from the pandemic, wars, and migration towards Europe. All of this raises several questions: What characteristics possess the tenth EP election under these new circumstances? In case the EP election starts showing new features, one may ask whether it can be described in terms of the second order characteristics. Further: how have the changes under these circumstances affected the nature of the election, the participation, the electoral results, and the performance of major and minor parties, as well as the ruling parties? To what extent can secondariness of the EP elections still be considered evident?
The situation is further complicated by the fact that this was the first election held after Brexit, which not only influenced the number of seats in the European Parliament and their distribution among countries, but also affected the electoral process as well as the composition of the parliamentary seating arrangements. -
The European Parliamentary Election as Second-Order Election
29-51Views:190Elections are in fact specific mechanisms for aggregating political preferences of the majority of voters into one will, transforming votes into seats. This is the major role of any election, whether at local, parliamentary, or EU level. The elections of the members of the European Parliament by direct and universal suffrage started in 1979, with the proposal that the members of the EP to be elected in accordance with a uniform procedure in all EU countries. In pursuit of a uniform electoral procedure for all the member-countries meant that European elections must be based on the principle of proportional representation using either the list system or the STV system. However, it turned out, that some challenges and difficulties arose reaching agreement on common principles of all countries and on the harmonisation of national traditions. One of the consequences of the complex relationship between the national parliamentary and the EP elections is that the composition of the EP does not precisely reflect the actual balance of political forces in the European Community, because the national political systems actually decide most of what there is to be decided politically. The European elections turned out to be second-order elections as additional political events to national elections. The most important political issues thus are determined more by the domestic political cleavages, than by decisions originating in the European Community. The present paper analyses the interrelationship between the first-order national elections and the second-order European elections based more or less on the works of Reif–Schmitt (1980), Marsch (1998), Covař (2016) and others.
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The 2019 local elections in Szeged
52-66Views:137The 2019 local, municipal election outclasses the second-order elections in the given political constellation. This is especially true in the case of Szeged, where the opposition – unlike the situation at the national level – has the power for a long time. To change this situation, the governing parties, taking advantage of their dominant position – and using all means – conducted a very vigorous campaign, changing the city into a battlefield. According to the results, the governemt’s attempt was not successfull, it was rather contraproductive. The reigning mayor and city management won an unprecedented victory. The root cause of it is a special urban policy which extracted the local politics from the partyfights and overrode party interests, and which represented the interests of the city succesfully and with credibility even against cross-wind. Based on the cooperation of the entire opposition the implemented urban policy is symbolized by and embodied in the person of the mayor in office since 2002.
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Mobilization incongruence in the Hungarian local electioms
5-24Views:128In local elections, national voting patterns are often not repeated as results show significant incongruence in terms of turnout, party performance and seat shares. Political science explains these various differences with several distinct theoretical frameworks that approach this incongruence from the aspect of voter behavior. The aim of this study is not to provide an alternative for these conventional explanations but to complement them with the detailed analysis of mobilization in an attempt to clear up certain gaps in the models. My main proposition is that parties can mobilize their supporters for the local elections with differing effectiveness producing incongruence in voter turnout and seat shares. In the capital and in the larger cities there is a mobilization gap mainly affecting left-wing voters that causes lower turnout and weaker electoral performance by these parties. This gap can most probably be explained by a combination of social and institutional factors and has a profound effect on election outcomes.
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Incumbency advantage of mayors in cities with county rights in Hungary
40-51Views:151There are twenty-three cities with county rights in Hungary. These cities are playing extremely important role because of their location, population and their administrative duties. For these reasons they can fall prey to national parties and political actors even during local elections. The aim of this study is to analyze these settlements in regard to the incumbency of mayors. Incumbency means the holding of an office, and the incumbent politician is the current holder of a political office. My goal is to show – by quantitative comparison – that the so-called incumbent advantage is prevalent in these cities. I also examine whether the candidates of the winning parties at the first order general elections are faring better than their competitors.
