Europe's 'political space,' its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the...

Voting behavior in elections to the European Parliament seems to follow a regular pattern, as many EP-election studies have found: Parties in government at the national level tend to lose vote shares in EP-elections as compared to the last domestic electoral contest; small and ideologically more...