Special Issue: European Parliament Elections after Eastern Enlargement

Abstract: This contribution to the scholarly knowledge about European Parliament (EP) elections essentially assembles analyses of the data of the 2004 European Election Study. Due to the very nature of large-scale cross-national comparative survey research, it was published shortly after the 2009 European Parliament election. As it would certainly be inadequate to ignore the fact that another European election took place just before publication, this introduction to the analyses that follow will start out with a first inspection of the results of this most recent European election—the election of the members of the European Parliament in June 2009. The main question concerns the persistence of the 'second-order' character of these elections: are the 2009 European Parliament election results in line with expectations about European Parliament elections as second-order national elections as laid out originally by Reif and Schmitt (1980) and restated and refined in a large number of subsequent publications?

Contents:
Attitudes to European Integration: Investigating East–West Heterogeneity - John Garry and James Tilley
Dynamics in European Political Identity - Angelika Scheuer and Hermann Schmitt
The EU Party System after Eastern Enlargement - Hermann Schmitt and Jacques Thomassen
The Support Base of Radical Right Parties in the Enlarged European Union - Wouter Van der Brug and Meindert Fennema
Turning Out or Turning Off: Do Mobilization and Attitudes Account for Turnout Differences between New and Established Member States at the 2004 EP Elections? - Bernhard Wessels and Mark N. Franklin