Voter Turnout in the 2014 European Parliament Election in Poland
Abstract
European Parliamentary election 2014 were the third elections for countries that joined European Union in 2004, including Poland. As we may observe from the very beginning of the EP's history, elections suffer constant drop in voter turnout, and since 1999 the turnout total for less than 50%. There are many theories explaining this state of affairs, with most notable “second-order elections" and democracy deficit theories. Polish profile of voter turnout in EP elections seems to fit into frameworks of these theories, and is positioned among EU's members with the lowest turnout. What is specific for electoral behaviour in Poland is stability: the turnout and support for political parties seems to stable and even petrified. This assessment seems to be supported by the results of election within past four years, both on aggregate and individual levels of data.
Key words:
EP elections, voter turnout, electoral behaviour in Poland, petrification of political scene
References
Bhatti Y., Hansen K. M. (2014), Turnout at European Parliament elections is likely to continue to decline in the coming decades, London School of Economics European Politics and Policy blog, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/07/25/turnout-at-european-parliamentelections-is-likely-to-continue-to-decline-in-the-coming-decades/, (16.09.2014).
Cześnik M. (2006), Voter Turnout and Democratic Legitimacy in Central Eastern Europe, „Polish Sociological Review”, vol. 156: 449-470.
Cześnik M. (2007), Partycypacja wyborcza w Polsce. Perspektywa porównawcza, Warszawa: Scholar.
Cześnik M. (2008), Polish ‘Exceptionalism’: Voter Turnout in Poland in light of CSES data, paper presented at the CSES Conference and Planning Committee Meeting, Warsaw, April 2008.
Cześnik M. (2009), Voter Turnout Stability – Evidence from Poland, „Polish Sociological Review”, vol. 165: 107-122.
Cześnik M. (2011), Uczestnictwo wyborcze a struktura społeczna w świetle badań PGSW. Czym różnią się głosujący od niegłosujących, „Studia Polityczne”, nr 28: 7-28.
Cześnik M., Zerkowska-Balas M., Kotnarowski M. (2013), Voting as a habit in New Democracies – Evidence from Poland, „Communist and Post-Communist Studies”, vol. 46: 95-107.
Follesdal A., Hix S. (2006), Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik, „Journal of Common Market Studies”, vol. 44(3): 533–562.
Grönlund K., Setälä M. (2007), Political Trust, Satisfaction and Voter Turnout, „Comparative European Politics”, vol. 5: 400–422.
How much legislation comes from Europe?, House of Commons Library, Research Paper 10/62, 13.10.2010.
Jasiewicz K. (2008), The New Populism in Poland: The Usual Suspects?, „Problems of Post-Communism”, vol. 55: 7-25.
Markowski R. (2006), The Polish Elections of 2005: Pure Chaos or Restructuring of the Party System?, „West European Politics”, vol. 29: 814-832.
Markowski R. (2008), The 2007 Polish Parliamentary Election: Some Structuring, Still a Lot of Chaos, „West European Politics”, vol. 31: 1055-1068.
Markowski R., Cześnik M. (2002), Polski system partyjny: dekada zmian instytucjonalnych i ich konsekwencje, [in:] R. Markowski (ed.), System partyjny i zachowania wyborcze. Dekada polskich doświadczeń, Warsaw: ISP PAN and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Marsh M., Mikhaylov S., European Parliament elections and EU governance, Living Reviews in European Governance, http://europeangovernance.livingreviews.org/ (16.09.2014).
McDougall O., Mody A. (2014), Will voters turn out in the 2014 European Parliamentary elections?, VOX, http://www.voxeu.org/17.05.2014 (16.09.2014).
Millard F. (2009), Poland: Parties without a Party System, „Politics and Policy”, vol. 37(4): 781-798.
Moravcsik A. (2008), The Myth of Europe’s “Democratic Deficit”, „Intereconomics”, November/December 2008.
Reif K., Schmitt H. (1980), Nine Second Order National Elections: A Conceptual. Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results, „European Journal of Political Research”, vol. 8(1): 3–44.
Ulrich J. M., Harris A. L. (2003), GenXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture, Madison: Popular Press.
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
