Aplicación del modelo

Office seeking parties maximize the number of politicians they can place in important offices in order to be able to govern. Governing or being part of a governing coalition brings concrete benefits to parties and politicians. The goal of an office seeking party is traditionally that of gaining executive power because once a party enters a governing coalition, it is able to place its members in influential cabinet positions and enjoy the rewards of office. As a result, most studies of the electoral strategies of parties and coalition politics have been restricted to the pursuit of legislative office in order to enter executive politics (Riker 1962; Austen-Smith and Banks 1988; Laver and Schofield 1990; Laver and Shepsle 1996). These rewards include personal benefits to those holding office (cabinet positions) as well as power over those positions in which these politicians hold (cabinet portfolios)(see Laver and Schofield (1990) and Riker (1962)). In order to maintain the recruitment of loyal and experienced

party members to serve, the party must offer incentives to individuals who contribute labor and often these incentives are the prestige, power, and sometimes lucrative salaries that governing ministers enjoy (Norris 1997a). Thus party leadership plays an important role in determining the value of office for the party’s goals. Because office provides many valuable positions to the party, the leadership can use these positions to reward themselves and loyal party members (Strom and Muller 1999). Entry into the European legislature lacks this governing capability since no executive body is formed from the EP. National parties enter the EU executive by gaining governing status at the national level. The institutional function and structure of the EP thus creates a new situational regime that must be addressed to understand if, and when, parties contesting EP elections may be office seeking.

There are two key features of the institutional framework of the EP that make the pursuit of office, as it is currently understood, relatively unlikely in European elections. First, the lack of opportunity to build a governing coalition or executive body means that European governing positions for national parties cannot be reached through winning legislative seats in the EP. The executive body of the EU, the European Commission, consists of commissioners that are appointed by member state governments and the ministers that meet in the Council of Ministers are those currently serving in national government cabinets. Therefore, gaining legislative office in the EP is not the way to access the benefits at the European level that are usually associated with executive office. In addition, the candidates for the president of the Commission are formally proposed by the European Council and then elected by the EP (but not from the MEPs). The EP, therefore, has little power beyond the approval or denial of a Council nominee to determine the composition of the executive bodies of the EU.

Seeking office in order to gain executive power is therefore not a feasible goal in EP elections.

In addition to gaining lucrative cabinet positions, gaining office can also mean partici-pating in majority legislative coalitions (Strom 1990). One of the benefits of a legislative majority, beyond building executive power, is agenda control. Control of the legislative agenda often implies that parties can push the legislative docket closer to their preferred areas of policy and keep those areas which they do not wish to participate off the legislative floor (Cox and McCubbins 1993). This provides benefits in terms of future office seeking goals as parties that perform well in the legislature are better poised to perform well in the

next election (Strom and Muller 1999). However, the EP does not have agenda power in the current institutional arrangement granted by the Lisbon Treaty (nor did it have this power in any previous treaty) and a party’s ability to create its own legislative majority is non-existent. Since the legislature consist of 750+ legislators and the largest national dele-gation is Germany with 99 MEPs, no one party, even if it takes all of the EP seats available to its country, in any given election, can make a legislative majority. While the EPGs do create large groups of MEPs that build legislative coalitions together, no rational party will prioritize office seeking to enter the majority because they have no control over the parties, voters, or elections in other member states.

Given that parties cannot gain executive office or majorities on their own, there are only a few conditions under which office seeking parties may exist in European elections. Returning to the discussion of the benefits of office, one concrete benefit of office holding is allowing parties to reward party activists and leaders with government positions. Therefore office seeking goals may be part of a party’s strategy to recruit and maintain valuable political capital because it offers private benefits to the party’s members (Norris 1997b). The ability of the party to provide these private benefits to individuals allows parties to maintain a professional core of members that is ready to do its bidding and support its governmental and electoral goals (Clark and Wilson 1961;Wilson 1962;Strom and Muller 1999). Without such incentives for individuals, parties would experience great difficulties in sustaining willing labor to maintain its organization and work for its electoral success. When considering the party goals of national parties in the EP, this presents a dilemma. On one hand, the empirical difficulty of establishing the goals of parties in any given real election has led scholars to assume that office seeking goals are purely those of seeking executive office (Strom and Muller 1999). If we restrict our theoretical understanding and analysis to this goal alone, there cannot ever be an office seeking party contesting European elections. Under no circumstances would a party pursue a pure office seeking strategy defined as accessing executive power because it simply is not possible. However, if by refining our definition of office seeking to include access to legislative positions, there are conditions under which parties may hold office seeking goals.

Office seeking parties in European elections are those with limited national opportunities,

either having just lost an election or a limited history of national representation. The United Kingdom’s Independence Party, for example, had nine members in the EP in the seventh term, but had failed to gain any seats in Westminster prior to the 2009 European election.

Thus, they should view EP office as a priority, simply as an opportunity to reward a few of their members with office. Parties like this, that have little to no history of representation in their national legislature, or new or small parties that cannot pass national electoral thresholds, will seek office in European elections. Parties also seek European office when denied access to national legislative institutions. These conditions are likely to occur when EP elections follow national parliamentary elections and a party has experienced a significant loss in votes, and subsequently, seat share. This means several of its best members have lost their legislative and government positions. For example, when speaking about seeking re-election in 2014, a current German liberal MEP expressed a muted concern that he may not have a choice if his party performed poorly in the upcoming German federal election.

If his party were to lose a significant number of seats in the Bundestag, it was implied that an ousted Bundestag member may be nominated in his place.⁹ His concern proved to be well deserved given the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) experienced their worst electoral showing since they entered the Bundestag in 1949. In September of 2013, the party failed to reach the 5% threshold for Bundestag representation and subsequently, 93 members of the chamber lost their seats (FinancialTimes 2013).

On one hand, an national loss may encourage party leaders to view EP office as a holding ground for these politicians until the next national election allows them to regain their national office, much like regional or municipal elections may function. Depending on the length of time between the last national election and the EP elections, many politicians may be looking for a home to tide them over for the interim governing period. On the other hand, the party may also wish to punish their “unelectable" politicians and place new, fresh faces in the European campaign. Given that EP elections are generally low stakes elections, they could be an opportunity to refresh the party image while preparing for another national election. Therefore, some parties may use the EP elections as a way to place their newest, but rising, politicians in office until the next national election comes along.

9Interview 9.19.2013. European Parliament. Brussels, Belgium.