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Productivity-based retrospective voting: Legislative productivity and voting in the 2019 European Parliament elections

Sorace, Miriam (2021) Productivity-based retrospective voting: Legislative productivity and voting in the 2019 European Parliament elections. Politics, . ISSN 0263-3957. E-ISSN 1467-9256. (doi:10.1177/0263395721991403) (KAR id:88731)

Abstract

Are European Parliament elections used to pass judgment on the legislative behaviour of parties serving in the European Parliament (EP)? Do Europeans give a bonus in EP elections to political parties whose members were

highly active during the legislative term? The paper will focus on the role

of legislative activities in the 8th European Parliament term (2014-2019) in

informing the 2019 vote choice. The analysis combines the European Election

Studies (EES) 2019 Voter Study data with original legislative behaviour data,

as well as with data on European electoral systems. The evidence points to

productivity-based retrospective voting being a feature of the 2019 elections.

Further, the analysis finds that this type of retrospective voting is stronger in

countries where electoral rules encourage candidates to promote past legislative records in electoral campaigns, and particularly so for voters that paid

attention to the EP campaign in such systems. This has significant implications for retrospective voting and for the EU elections literatures, since it is

evidence that the very demanding democratic desiderata of retrospection can

be met in multilevel and supranational contexts as well.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/0263395721991403
Uncontrolled keywords: European Parliament Elections; Retrospective Voting; Accountability.
Subjects: J Political Science
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Miriam Sorace
Date Deposited: 17 Jun 2021 11:14 UTC
Last Modified: 14 Nov 2022 23:12 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/88731 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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