Month: April 2018

The nomination of lead candidates, or so-called Spitzenkandidaten, representing the biggest European political groups in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in 2014 fuelled hopes that electorates across Europe would finally show a stronger interest in European political debates and shake off the EU’s lingering democratic deficit. In the end, the Spitzenkandidaten hardly turned out to be the game-changers many hoped they would be. Instead, little interest in the candidates’ televised debate complemented voters’ general lack of knowledge about the candidates’ political profiles. In their article “Put in the spotlight or largely ignored? Emphasis on the Spitzenkandidaten by political parties in their online campaigns for European elections” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Daniela Braun and Tobias Schwarzbözl highlight that even national parties themselves were often unwilling to centre campaign efforts on their respective lead candidate. Using original data on national parties’ social media campaigns for the 2014 European Parliament elections, Daniela and Tobias show that only national parties affiliated with lead candidates generally placed a strong emphasis on the Spitzenkandidaten in their campaigns. The reluctance to put the spotlight on the Spitzenkandidaten indicates that not every national party faced sufficient incentives to rally behind their lead candidate in campaign communications. Casting doubt on hopes that lead candidates would help diminish the second-order status of EP elections, Daniela and Tobias’ analysis suggests that “the idea behind the introduction of Spitzenkandidaten to strengthen the relevance of these elections collides with most parties’ strategic considerations to make the candidates visible to voters.” Will the campaign for the upcoming 2019 elections be any different?

Since the EU’s Eastern enlargement over a decade ago, Central and Eastern European member states’ track record of compliance with EU law has been closely scrutinized. It was feared that once the stick of withholding membership was gone, newer members states’ commitment to uphold EU law could potentially slump. In hindsight, it appears that these fears were unfounded: Until now, research has suggested that Central and Eastern European member states collectively fare well on the formal transposition of EU law, yet they struggle with de facto implementation. In search of an explanation for similar compliance patterns across Central and Eastern Europe, Esther Ademmer finds that compliance processes and outcomes among newer member states are not so homogenous after all. In her article “Capitalist diversity and compliance: economic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe after EU accession” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Esther uncovers variation in Central and Eastern European member states’ compliance with the Single Market acquis. Drawing on the Varieties of Capitalism literature, she identifies two clusters of newer member states, liberal and coordinated market economies, with different sets of explanatory factors shaping compliance patterns in the two groups. While the effectiveness of governments and their ideology appear to drive compliance in the liberal market economy cluster, Esther’s analysis suggests that among Central and Eastern European coordinated market economies “the interplay and preferences of various state and non-state actors are arguably more important for understanding compliance processes and outcomes”.