The June 1989 European Elections and the Institutions of the Community

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
THE ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN JUNE 1989 will be only the third ever to be held simultaneously in independent nation states. The first two direct elections, however, were marked almost everywhere by disappointment; not only was turnout low −60.7 per cent in 1979 and 57.0 per cent in 1984, but the elections seemed to be more in the nature of plebiscites on the performance of national governments, rather than genuinely transnational, and politicians found it difficult to demonstrate their relevance to a wider public. It is true that small radical new parties, such as the Front National were able to exploit the elections to their own advantage. But this, of course, did not endear the European elections to liberal democrats.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: