European elections and political structuring. A comparative analysis

该项目分析了公民和政党的选举联系与欧洲选举中政治冲突的结构之间的关系。它旨在审查欧洲选举是否对政治冲突具有独立的结构影响，以及这种影响是否随着欧洲议会能力的增强而加剧。该项目假设欧洲选举只有动员和合法化的力量，政党的纲领，竞选活动中政治冲突的公众辩论，选民的偏好与突出的欧洲问题紧密相连。这预设了选举可以组织政治冲突，并将其引入欧盟的政治体系。该项目基于政治冲突结构的动态概念。这一概念将公民偏好与政党提供的方案之间的关系概念化为战略互动。这个概念强调政治组织的作用，特别是政党，它阐明和动员政治冲突，这些政党利用的战略，以及他们运作的选举环境。该项目包括一个广泛的定量实证研究计划，由三个独立的分析步骤组成。首先，该项目考察了欧洲议会选举中的选举联系，即政党在其欧洲选举宣言中的纲领提议、欧洲选举活动中对欧洲问题的公众争议以及民意调查中所阐述的选民偏好之间的关系。其次，分析欧洲选举中政治冲突的结构以及公民和政党的选举联系与政治冲突结构之间的关系。第三，将调查导致政治冲突结构强度的关键因素（如：党内冲突、公众舆论和新的欧洲怀疑主义挑战者的力量）。该项目将使用四组经验数据：(a)基于日报定量内容分析的核心句子收集的关于欧洲选举活动的新数据；(b)以前关于全国选举运动和一体化辩论项目的现有数据；(c)欧洲宣言项目关于欧洲选举宣言的数据；(d)有关选民偏好和民意的调查数据。这项研究将基于对五个欧盟成员国的比较分析：德国、法国、英国、奥地利和瑞典；它将涵盖1994年至2014年期间，包括五次欧洲议会选举（1994年，1999年，2004年，2009年和2014年）。

The project analyzes the relationship between the electoral connection of citizens and parties and the structuring of political conflict in European elections. It aims at examining whether European elections have an independent structuring effect on political conflict and whether this effect has intensified in line with the increasing competencies of the European Parliament. The project assumes that European elections only have a mobilizing and legitimizing power the programmatic offers of political parties, the public debate over political conflicts in election campaigns, and voter preferences are tightly connected and linked to salient European issues. This presupposes that elections can structure political conflicts and channel them into the political system of the EU.The project is based on a dynamic concept of political conflict structuring. This concept conceptualizes the relationship between citizens preferences and the programmatic offers by political parties as strategic interaction. The concept emphasizes the role of political organizations, political parties in particular, which articulate and mobilize political conflicts, the strategies these parties utilize, and the electoral contexts, in which they operate.The project includes an extensive quantitative empirical research program consisting of three separate steps of analysis. First, the project examines the electoral connection in elections to the European Parliament, i.e. the relationship between the programmatic offers of political parties in their manifestos for European elections, the public controversies over European issues in European election campaigns, and the voter preferences as articulated in public opinion polls. Second, the structuring of political conflict in European elections and the relationship between the electoral connection of citizens and parties and the structuring of political conflict will be analyzed. Third, key factors responsible for the intensity of political conflict structuring (such as: intra-party conflict, public opinion and the strength of new eurosceptic challengers) will be investigated. The project will use four sets of empirical data: (a) new data on European election campaigns collected by a core sentence based quantitative content analysis of daily newspapers; (b) existing data from previous projects on national election campaigns and integration debates; (c) data from the Euromanifesto project on European election manifestos; (d) survey data on voter preferences and public opinion. The study will be based on a comparative analysis of five EU member states: Germany, France, UK, Austria, and Sweden; and it will cover a period from 1994 to 2014 including five elections to the European Parliament (1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014).