Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183–2463)

2020, Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 1–5

DOI: 10.17645/pag.v8i1.2706

Editorial

Political Behavior in the EU Multi-Level System

Daniela Braun *, Martin Gross and Berthold Rittberger

Department of Political Science, LMU Munich, 80538 Munich, Germany, E-Mails: [email protected]

(D.B.), [email protected] (M.G.), berthold.rittberg[email protected] (B.R.)

* Corresponding author

objectives of this thematic issue are to conceptually, empirically, and methodologically capture the different facets of this

newly emerged interest in actors’ political behavior in the EU multi-level system. To this end, the thematic issue strives

to highlight the connections between political processes and behavior at the European level and other political layers in

the EU Member States’ multi-level systems. In particular, we aim to broaden the scope of research on political behavior

in the EU and its strong focus on electoral politics across multiple levels of government. To this end, the thematic issue

links research on voting behavior with work on party competition, electoral campaigns, public opinion, protest politics,

responsiveness, (interest group) representation, government and opposition dynamics, and parliamentary behavior more

broadly to the multi-layered systems within EU Member States.

Keywords

European elections; European Union; multi-level system; parties; political behavior; politics; voters

Against the backdrop of its further widening and deep-

ening, the character of the EU has changed fundamen-

tally during the last two decades: “The EU, long char-

acterized as a system of multilevel governance, is mov-

ing to a system of multilevel and perhaps transnational

politics” (Laffan, 2016, p. 922). Whereas much of the

research in EU politics in the past decades has focused

on its ‘institutional development’ (Dinan, 2010; Leuffen,

Rittberger, & Schimmelfennig, 2013; Pinder, 2004), ‘pol-

icymaking’ and policy dynamics in the EU (Richardson,

bly more relevant within the research field of EU studies

(see Figure 1).

As a matter of course, the mounting relevance

of the politics-dimension in research on the EU re-

flects the heightened interconnectedness of policymak-

ing arenas in the EU’s multi-level system. The evolu-

tion of the nomination procedure of the president of

the European Commission in the context of the past

European Parliament (EP) elections can be cited as an il-

lustration of the interconnection of political actors and

Figure 1. Total number of published articles per year with the topic ‘EU politics’ in academic journals covered in the Social

Sciences Citation Index (1995–2019). Source: authors’ calculation.

tional component: The nomination of lead candidates by

transnational party groups was poised to become a pre-

condition for the Commission presidency—at least theo-

retically (see Braun & Popa, 2018; Braun & Schwarzbözl,

2019). Alongside a strengthening of the supranational

component in the past EP elections, the regional di-

was mostly visible in Bavaria and to a much lesser ex-

tent in other German states and European countries,

respectively. Finally, none of the Spitzenkandidaten be-

came Commission President because of partisan conflict

among the party groups in the EP on the one hand, and

because the national leaders in the European Council

were also unable to muster agreement on any of the lead

candidates. This example demonstrates how EU politics

is shaped by ‘subnational,’ ‘national,’ ‘supranational’ and

‘intergovernmental’ decisions as well as the interconnec-

and schools of thought in political science (i.e., interna-

tional relations as well as comparative politics and politi-

cal sociology) which deal with EU politics although refer-

ring to different conceptual backgrounds.

2. A Brief Overview on the Study of Political Behavior

in the EU Multi-Level System

Before we provide a brief overview on the study of po-

litical behavior in the EU multi-level system, we define

the two main conceptual anchors of our thematic issue.

According to the Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior,

political behavior refers to “the attitudes and behavior of

publics, and the citizens’ role within the political process”

(Dalton & Klingemann, 2007, p. 3). The Handbook on

Multi-level Governance defines ‘multi-level governance’

highlights the attitudes and behavior that publics and citi-

zens bring to bear on political processes characterized by

the interconnection of different layers of governance.

What do we know from previous research in this

broad field of political behavior in the EU multi-level sys-

tem? Over the course of the past decades, research on

political behavior in general, and on its various subdo-

mains in particular, has gradually ventured into EU stud-

ies. For instance, public opinion research with its focus

on political attitudes and electoral behavior in the United

2008), which has made EU politics and policies increas-

ingly salient in the domestic arena. Initially, this research

on political attitudes and electoral behavior exclusively

focused on the European level and did not adopt a multi-

level perspective. This changed in the past two decades

with several strands of literature contributing to the

emergence of the research field of political behavior with

the multi-level perspective of the second-order election

model (Reif & Schmitt, 1980), empirical studies of EP elec-

tions analyzed voting behavior in EP elections compared

to voters’ choices in national elections (see e.g., Hobolt

& Spoon, 2012; Marsh & Mikhaylov, 2010; Schmitt &

and more interested in the relationship between public

level (see e.g., Mühlböck, 2012; Wonka & Rittberger,

2014), as well as between the European and the regional

level (see e.g., Dellmuth & Stoffel, 2012; Gross & Debus,

2018). Furthermore, particularly the interest group lit-

erature scrutinizes country-based interest groups and

their multi-level strategies towards the EU (see Berkhout,

Hanegraaff, & Braun, 2017; Binderkrantz & Rasmussen,

2015; Eising, 2004; Klüver, Braun, & Beyers, 2015).

3. Locating This Thematic Issue in the Debate

As laid out in this introduction, this ‘politics turn’ is

2020), interest groups (Berkhout, Hanegraaff, & Statch,

2020), party competition (Lefkofridi, 2020), responsive-

ness (Lefkofridi & Giger, 2020) as well as government

politics and parliamentary behavior (Euchner & Frech,

2020; Heinkelmann-Wild, Kriegmair, & Rittberger, 2020)

more broadly to the multi-layered systems within EU

Member States, but also between EU Member States

(Koß & Séville, 2020). Although the “European polity is

a complex multi-level institutional configuration, which

cannot be adequately represented by theoretical mod-

government (see, e.g., Golder, Lago, Blais, Gidengil, &

Gschwend, 2017). We are therefore confident in conclud-

ing and emphasizing that politics is not only back in EU

studies (see also Risse, 2010), but here to stay.

Acknowledgments

The sequence of authors follows the alphabet. We wish

to thank the authors and the numerous anonymous re-

viewers for their effort, as well as the team at Cogitatio

Press for making this thematic issue possible. The con-

tributions of this thematic issue benefitted from excel-

of Political Science, LMU Munich, 15–16 November 2018.

We wish to thank the GSI for financially supporting this

workshop.

Conflict of Interests

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About the Authors

Daniela Braun is Assistant Professor at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science at Ludwig-

European Social Research (MZES). Her research interests include European Union politics, party poli-

Martin Gross is Professor of Political Systems and European Integration (pro tempore) at the

Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and is asso-

ciated as External Fellow with the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). He works

on local politics, political institutions, party competition, coalition politics in multi-level systems, and

EU cohesion policy.

Berthold Rittberger is Professor of International Relations at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of

in the European Union, democratic representation beyond the state, and regulatory governance. He