From Citizens to Parties, from Parties to Parliaments: Is there a Multilevel Problem?

In the times of crises everything becomes more complicated. Economic problems affect ordinary people, how they process the given information and how they decide. Analyzing what citizens think and believe about the political parties they vote, not only in national elections but also in the so called “secondary-level” European Parliament (EP) ones, becomes even more interesting. This paper aims to focus on the expected voting behaviour of the citizens regarding the offered solutions by political parties in Europe. It is summarizing the relationship between national parties and their political groups in the EP, europarties in the light of forthcoming elections. It aims to reflect pre-election public opinion about the elections and compare them with the previous, 2009, elections in order to find a way to measure the effect of economic crises. This paper aims to be the starting point of a deeper analysis on multilevel political parties and institutions, what they offer to citizens. For this reason, a preliminary work will be done on the voting behaviour of European citizens in previous elections vis-à-vis given euromanifesto data. The paper tries to establish a link between citizens, political parties and Parliaments as directly elected institutions. European Parliament and europarties will be put in the center of the analysis in order to see the effect of Europeanization in electoral behaviour. EP will also receive further attention to see the institutional incentive it has, or not. All in all, as a preliminary work, this paper aims to discover the mentioned relations between citizens, political parties they work and directly elected institutions in multilevel.