Voting Advice Applications and Elections in Europe

Voting Advice Applications [VAAs] have become a widespread phenomenon within electoral campaigns in Europe. These popular online tools are designed to help voters to compare their policy preferences on major issues with the positions of political parties/candidates on these policies. As they have been established in many European countries and for the elections of the European Parliament – and as they are used intensively by voters – VAAs have started to constitute a field of social science research resulting in national research projects, publications and a European networking. In the last years, a progressive interest has arisen with respect to the consistency and reliability of the voting advice provided by these applications. Additionally, the impressive numbers of users visiting VAA-websites during election campaigns have led political scientists to research the effects of these tools on users’ electoral behaviour. Finally, VAAs have started to become a topic of democratic theory. The panels of the section are expected to address the role of VAAs in European democracies and the European Union; they bridge VAA research to central fields of political science such as electoral studies, party research, and democratic theory. The proposed section is a follow-up to the successful VAA section in Bordeaux that saw 20 papers and more than 30 authors attending; many qualified papers had to be rejected due to time constraints. This time the empirical focus will be set on comparative analyses of VAA usage across Europe. Additionally, the section could serve as the first opportunity to exchange research findings on the implementation and usage of VAAs during the European Elections in May 2014. Bios: Prof. Dr. Stefan Marschall is a full professor of political science and Chair of German Politics at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf/Germany. He is a specialist on the po-litical system of Germany, political (online) communication and comparative as well as transnational parliamentarism. He is one of the coordinators of the activities of the European VAA research community. Dr. Diego Garzia is Jean Monnet fellow at the European University Institute. He has authored articles in journals such as Electoral Studies, Political Psychology, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly and West European Politics. He is co-editor (with Stefan Marschall) of “Matching Voters with Parties and Candidates: VAAs in a Comparative Perspective” (forthcoming with ECPR Press).