Understanding leader evaluations in European Parliament elections
| Author | Claes H. de Vreese,Katjana Gattermann |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211046108 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Understanding leader
evaluations in European
Parliament elections
Katjana Gattermann
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Department of
Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Claes H. de Vreese
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Department of
Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Abstract
Leader evaluations are a crucial aspect in representative democracy. We analyse the pat-
terns, antecedents and consequences of European Union leader evaluations against the
backdrop of the 2019 European Parliament elections in ten countries. The article shows,
firstly, that leader evaluations are unidimensional, both among voters with low and high
knowledge as well as partisans and non-partisans. Secondly, among the antecedents of
leader evaluations, European Union trust and performance evaluations are positively
associated with leader evaluations, while European identity hardly plays a role compared
to other factors. Lastly, the positive effect of leader evaluations on vote choice is con-
ditional upon the individual leader and their party affiliation. Our results have important
implications for expectations towards and evaluations of European Union leadership in
the long term.
Keywords
European Union, leader evaluations, personalization of politics, public opinion, voters
Corresponding author:
Katjana Gattermann, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Department of Communication
Science, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 15793, 1001 NG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: k.gattermann@uva.nl
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(1) 141–160
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211046108
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
The European Union (EU) has undergone a number of pivotal moments in recent history.
These comprise both changes to the polity, such as new treaties, enlargement and Brexit
and external shocks, including the financial crisis, the so-called refugee crisis and most
recently the Covid-19 pandemic. They have thereby contributed to the increased contest-
ation within and of the EU (see Van der Brug et al., 2022). Political observers and scho-
lars perpetually emphasize the (limited) role of EU leadership in times of crisis (e.g.
Tömmel, 2020; Van Esch, 2017). However, most studies have approached EU political
leadership from the perspective of inter- or intra-institutional relations at the EU level
(e.g. Cini, 2008; Kassim and Laffan, 2019; Tömmel and Verdun, 2017). We know
little about citizens’perceptions of EU leadership, although the question of EU leadership
contests that are decided by European voters is increasingly being considered important
for the EU’s legitimacy (e.g. Føllesdal and Hix, 2006; Hobolt and Tilley, 2014).
In response to rising legitimacy concerns, the European Parliament (EP) designed the
so-called Spitzenkandidaten procedure for the 2014 EP elections, by which pan-European
party families nominate lead candidates for the President of the European Commission.
The procedure was discontinued with the nomination and election of Ursula von der
Leyen, who had not been a Spitzenkandidat during the campaigns, as Commission
President. Indeed, a growing body of research has thus far mainly dealt with questions
pertaining to the effectiveness of the procedure with respect to media attention paid to
Spitzenkandidaten (e.g. Schulze, 2016), party campaigns (e.g. Braun and Schwarzbözl,
2019; Popa et al., 2020), voter awareness (e.g. Gattermann and de Vreese, 2020), political
attitudes (Maier et al., 2018; Popa et al., 2016) and electoral behaviour (Gattermann and
Marquart, 2020; Schmitt et al., 2015). However, research has thus far not examined the
extent to which European voters consider lead candidates ‘fit for office’. This question
does not have a direct bearing on the debate about the procedure’s effectiveness, but it
is central in research on political leadership and a crucial aspect in representative democ-
racy, which is particularly relevant amid the EP’s aim to ‘(reinforce) the political legiti-
macy of both Parliament and the Commission by connecting their respective elections
more directly to the choice of the voters’through the Spitzenkandidaten procedure.
1
Against this backdrop, the aim of this article is three-fold. Firstly, we seek to under-
stand the patterns of EU leader evaluations, particularly the extent to which these
are multidimensional (RQ1). Secondly, we are interested in the antecedents of leader eva-
luations and specifically in the role that party preferences, information and attitudes
towards the EU play for the images voters have of EU leaders (RQ2). Thirdly, we enquire
about the consequences of EU leader evaluations for vote choice in EP elections (RQ3).
The article proceeds by underlining the relevance of understanding patterns and antece-
dents of EU leader evaluations in the first place and discusses possible scenarios. After that,
we explore leader evaluations provided by panel survey data from the 2019 EP elections
from ten EU member states (Goldberg et al., 2019), which include questions about how
respondents evaluate five attributes –leadership skills, empathy, reliability, competence
and charisma –for outgoing Commission President Juncker and the Spitzenkandidaten
Manfred Weber (European People’s Party, EPP) and Frans Timmermans (Party of
142 European Union Politics 23(1)
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