European Parliament Elections after Eastern Enlargement
About this ebook
The book also examines the first European Parliament election after the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe joined the European Union. The central question is: what has changed? Are the voters in the new member countries different and if so, why? Did the Union suffer from a loss of democratic legitimacy after Eastern enlargement?
Each chapter is empirical-analytical; most are based on the post-election surveys of the group that were conducted in all but one of the 25 member countries, others focus on the results of content analyses of news media and party manifestos.
This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.
About the author
Hermann Schmitt is a research fellow of the MZES and a Privatdozent for Political Science at the University of Mannheim. He was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1996-7), Science Po Paris (2001-2), the Australian National University (2003), the IAS in Vienna (2005), and the UAM in Madrid (2008). He received his doctorate from the University of Duisburg, and his first habilitation from the Free University of Berlin. He has been participating in a number of comparative projects; perhaps most important is his involvement, from 1979 onwards, in the series of European Election Studies. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on electoral behaviour in multilevel-systems and on political parties and political representation in the EU.
