Social and Electoral Determinants

Abstract

Held since 1979, general elections to the European Parliament (EP) have been a subject of research interest for political scientists as well as sociologists. Voter turnout, the political orientation of candidates, electoral campaigns, the behaviour of the electorate and the relation of EP elections to elections at the national level are topics frequently addressed by various researchers (Berezin & Diez-Medrano, 2008; Eichenberg & Dalton, 2007; Gabel & Anderson, 2002; Lodge, 2005; Niedermayer & Sinnot, 1998; Rittberger, 2005). This chapter will focus on the area of research related to the social (and simultaneously cultural) and electoral determinants of EP elections in Poland. This means that the phenomenon of these elections will be analysed against the background of broader socio-economic and cultural processes taking place in Poland during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It is assumed that these processes are not events in their own right, but constitute integral elements of a sequence of political events (similarly to other categories of elections), socio-economic events (such as the reactions of citizens to various economic or social phenomena) and, finally, cultural events (e.g. declared or fostered values of a particular society).