Competition in the European Arena: How the Rules of the Game Help Nationalists Gain

Abstract

Why does the European election fail to produce competition between European policy alternatives despite the increased politicization of European integration and efforts to connect election results to the Commission Presidency via the Spitzenkandidaten process? In this article I theorize the European arena’s incentive structure for political competition by synthesizing Strøm's (1990) behavioral theory of competitive parties (votes, office, policy) and Bartolini’s (1999, 2000) four dimensions of electoral competition (contestability, availability, decidability, and incumbent vulnerability). I model EU decidability (party differentials on EU policy) and formulate specific expectations about party differentiation by considering parties' vote-, office-, and policy-seeking motives under the European arena's specific conditions. How parties behave under the specific incentive structure of the European arena matters for the EU's development as a polity.