Europeanisation of Election Programmes for EP Elections Cover Image

Europeizace volebních programů pro volby do EP
Europeanisation of Election Programmes for EP Elections

Author(s): Jan Kovář
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences
Published by: Univerzita Mateja Bela
Keywords: political parties; election programmes; elections to the EP; Europeanisation; political issues

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on elections to the European Parliament (EP) and particularly their Europeanisation. The dominant approach in the literature claims that national political issues are important, if not decisive, in EP elections rather than issues related to the European integration process. This paper thus analyzes this claim on the basis of election manifestos prepared for EP elections by Czech political parties. To this aim, I conduct a content analysis of selected parties’ election manifestos and use specific method to analyse level of Europeanisation. The results show that political parties discuss issues related to the European integration process and that in contrast to theoretically-informed proposition election manifestos for EP elections display an evident Europeanisation. Finally, these results are discussed in the light of relevant literature.

  • Issue Year: 17/2014
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 32-67
  • Page Count: 36
  • Language: Czech