Transnational Voting
The project “Towards transnational voting in/for Europe!?” was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (from 2017 until 2022, Grant No 100017_172651) and comprises four elements:
- a normative proposal for creating a system of transnationally expanded and overlapping national electorates, parties, and parliaments in order to strengthen and to democratize the European Union and other forms of international cooperation among democracies,
- the facilitation of transnational voting on the European level by establishing “eunandi2019” – a transnational voting advice application (VAA) for the election to the European Parliament in 2019;
- the first public opinion survey in which we document and analyse what resident citizens in Europe think about expanding national electorates beyond territory and/or nationality, and
- the development and application of analytical frameworks for understanding and explaining the causes and consequences of expanding electorates beyond territory and/or nationality.
Details will be provided in the following sections.
Prof. Dr. Joachim Blatter
Function: principled investigator
E-mail: joachim.blatter@unilu.ch
Prof. Dr. Alexander Trechsel
Function: project collaborator
E-mail: alexander.trechsel@unilu.ch
Dr. Diego Garzia
Function: co-applicant
E-mail: diegogarzia82@gmail.com
Dr. Elie Michel
Function: post-doc
E-mail: elie.michel75@gmail.com
Dr. des. Johannes Schulz
Function: post-doc
E-mail: johannes.schulz@unilu.ch
Dr. Samuel Schmid
Function: post-doc
E-mail: samuel.schmid@unilu.ch
Giada Hilda Crivelli MA
Function: project assistant
E-mail: giada.crivelli@icloud.com
Johanna Bösiger
Function: project assistant
E-mail: johanna.boesiger@unilu.ch
While supporting the existing opportunities of mobile EU citizens to vote beyond their current nationality and/or residency in the elections to the EUROPEAN Parliament (see next section), the main contributions of the project focus on transnational voting in NATIONAL parliaments.
The Principled Investigator, Prof. Dr. Joachim Blatter, has justified and specified such an approach to democratizing the European Union, and International Relations among democracies in general, in various scientific contributions:
- Blatter, Joachim. „Transnationalizing Democracy Properly: Principles and Rules for Granting Consociated Citizens Voting Rights and Partisan Representation in the Parliaments of Nation States“. WZB Discussion Paper, 2018. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/179933.
- Blatter, Joachim. „Let Me Vote in Your Country, and I’ll Let You Vote in Mine. A Proposal for Transnational Democracy“. Kick-off contribution to a debate at the GlobalCit Forum, hosted by the European University Institute in Florence, 2018. http://globalcit.eu/let-me-vote-in-your-country-and-ill-let-you-vote-in-mine-a-proposal-for-transnational-democracy/
- Blatter, Joachim. „Complementing Democracies Horizontally and Not (Just) Vertically: Aspirations, Theoretical Foundations, Conceptual Innovations, and Comparative Advantages“. In Let Me Vote in Your Country, and I’ll Let You Vote in Mine. A Proposal for Transnational Democracy, edited by Joachim Blatter und Rainer Bauböck. European University Institute, 2019. https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/62225.
- Blatter, Joachim, und Rainer Bauböck. „Let Me Vote in Your Country, and I’ll Let You Vote in Mine. A Proposal for Transnational Democracy“. EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2019/25. European University Institute, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372843.
- Blatter, Joachim, und Johannes Schulz. „Intergovernmentalism and the crisis of representative democracy: The case for creating a system of horizontally expanded and overlapping national democracies“. European Journal of International Relations, 2022. Online First: https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221106909.
He also presented the proposal in public and applied outlets:
- Blatter, Joachim. Die transnational verflochtene Welt demokratisieren. Terra Cognita, 33 (2018), 42-44.
- Blatter, Joachim, Martina Sochin D’Elia, und Michael Buess. „Bürgerschaft und Demokratie in Zeiten transnationaler Migration: Hintergründe, Chancen und Risiken der Doppelbürgerschaft“. Luzern: Studie im Auftrag der Eidgenössischen Migrationskommission (EKM), 2018. https://www.academia.edu/75969725.
The proposed pathway for democratizing the EU and other forms of cooperation among representative democracies can be seen as a complement to attempts to establish a more democratic system of the European or supranational level, but the proposed horizonal approach has major advantages compared to such vertical approaches:
- It builds on established institutions within nation states, and aims to reform them instead of exchange them by similar institutions on the European/supranational level. This in turn, implies, that democratic participation is getting “enriched” and not limited, and democratic processes and structures are getting “thicker” and not thinner as it is the case with many transnational or cosmopolitan proposals.
- It keeps politics closer to the people and empowers individual citizens and collective state-peoples vis-à-vis their governments without endangering further integration and international cooperation as it is the case when we would strengthen only the role of parliaments.
- It grants not only mobile and multiple citizens, but also sedentary mono-citizens the opportunity to elect representatives in multiple democracies.
The project acted as one of the pillars of the design and implementation of the first transnational Voting Advice Application (VAA) for the elections to the European Parliament of 2019, together with the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the European University Institute (EUI). The application has generated two large databases on a broad set of issues - including original items on the transnationalization of voting spaces in Europe:
- The euandi2019 party position dataset documents the positions of 258 political parties competing in the European Elections of 2019.
- Additionally, more than 1.2 million individuals have used the application, generating a one of the largest public opinion datasets of 2019.
Both datasets have been documented, registered, and made available to the wider scientific community (respectively on the FORS repository and the GESIS repository):
- Michel, Elie et al. 2019. Euandi2019 : Project Description and Datasets Documentation. European University Institute. Working Paper. http://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/63870 (October 18, 2019).
- Trechsel, Alexander H., Diego Garzia, and Lorenzo Cicchi. 2020a. Euandi 2919 (Expert Interviews). Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13407.
- Trechsel, Alexander H., Diego Garzia, and Lorenzo Cicchi. 2020b. Euandi 2919 (General Population Survey). Cologne: GESIS Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13408.
These datasets have been used in a number of further publications. For overviews see:
- Michel, Elie et al. 2019. Euandi2019 : Project Description and Datasets Documentation. European University Institute. Working Paper. http://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/63870 (October 18, 2019).
- Reiljan, Andres et al. 2020. “Longitudinal Dataset of Political Issue-Positions of 411 Parties across 28 European Countries (2009–2019) from Voting Advice Applications EU Profiler and Euandi.” Data in brief 31. https://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/69627 (February 28, 2022).
In addition to the euandi-related data, the project produced a unique data stet in as much as it conduced the first survey ever, in which citizens were asked about their preferred boundary of the national electorate.
Resident citizens in 25 EU countries and in Switzerland were asked: “Who should generally be allowed to elect representatives in your national parliament?”
They had four options:
- All national citizens – independent of whether the live in the country or not.
- All legal and long-term residents – independent of whether they are national citizens or not.
- Only national citizens who currently reside in the country.
- All national citizens AND all legal and long-term residents in the country.
In two publications, we presented and analysed the findings of this survey:
- Michel, Elie and Joachim Blatter (2020): Enfranchising Immigrants and/or Emigrants? Attitudes towards Voting Rights Expansion among Sedentary Nationals in Europe.
Ethnic and Racial Studies 44(11), 1935-1954.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2020.1817519 - Blatter, J., E. Michel & S. Schmid (2022): Enfranchisement regimes beyond de-territorialization and post-nationalism: definitions, implications, and public support for different electorates. Democratization, Online first: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2022.2037567
The final and last part of the project tries to make a major contribution for getting a better understanding/explanation of why electorates are expanded and which consequences these expansions have. In further publications, we will:
Present comprehensive frameworks for understanding and analysing the causes and consequences of expanding demoi/electorates. We thereby distinguish between a people-centred framework in which the expansion of electorates is seen as a means for including migrants/mobiles and/or kin minorities in neighbouring countries, and a polity-centred framework in which the expansion of electorates is understood as a symbol for an ambition to create new (trans)national polities.
Apply these frameworks in case studies for testing their adequacy in revealing the causes and consequences of expanding electorates in particular countries. We select those four countries that expresses the four logical options: the nationalist option (including all nationals), the territorialist option (including all residents), the inclusive option (including all nationals AND all residents) and the exclusive option (including only those who are residents AND nationals).
For identifying the countries that represent the four possible trajectories most clearly, we took both, public policies and citizens’ preferences into account. For the three expansive trajectories, we found countries that clearly express them best in Europe.
Romania is the best representative for a nationalist, de-territorial trajectory. There we find strongly inclusive regulations and practices that allow many rN to vote in national elections. In the 1990s, Romania enacted inclusive regulations towards rN, but enacted them in a way that clearly discriminated emigrants against neighbouring kin-minorities. In 2015, it changed its practice and provides now both external groups easy access by allowing to vote by mail. Furthermore, Romania has comparatively exclusive regulations towards nR. It does not grant any nR voting rights in national elections, and provides only EU citizens voting rights in local elections. Finally, Romanian citizens show the strongest support for such a nationalist enfranchisement regime across Europe (67% prefer it against the three alternative regimes).
Ireland is the best representative for a post-national/territorial trajectory. It is not only one of the very few states in Europe that grants particular nR (British and EU citizens) the right to vote in national elections (since this right is conditioned on reciprocity, it is currently limited to British citizens), but it is also among the small minority of European states that still does not grant rN voting rights. This comparatively strong territorial orientation in its regulations is mirrored in the citizens’ preferences. Among Irish, we found the highest level of support for granting voting rights based on residency (25%). This means, for the nationalist trajectory, we found a country that is an extreme case in absolute terms, whereas for the territorial trajectory, we had to settle for a country that is “extreme” only in relative terms.
Portugal represents the inclusive trajectory best. It pursues a selectively inclusive policy towards nR, by including particular nR conditioned by the principle of reciprocity. This leads to a situation where Brazilian residents have voting rights on the national and local level, and many other residents – even many non-EU citizens – have voting rights on the local level. Portugal complements this rather inclusive policy towards nR with inclusive policies and practices towards rN. Such a regulatory regime that shows openness in both directions is mirrored by the strongest support that such a generally inclusive regime receives among citizens in Europe (28%). This information is summed up in Table 1 – for more details and further sources see next section.
The situation is more difficult when selecting a country that represent the most radical alternative to the general trend towards expanding the electorate - limiting or even reducing it by granting voting rights only for those who are both, nationals AND residents. Here we gave precedence for the citizens’ preferences and selected Hungary (instead of Greece or Denmark, which are countries with the most exclusive enfranchisement regulations). In Hungary, no less than 55% of the resident citizens prefer an exclusive regime. This despite, or maybe because of, the fact that Hungary grants voting rights to rN (but discriminates mobile people against neighbouring kin-minorities in terms of access), and includes not only EU citizens, but all nR in local elections. An investigation into the Hungarian case promises to shed light on the processes that led to such a strong citizens’ support for an enfranchisement regime that scholars characterize as outdated both from a normative and from an empirical perspective.
