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Introduction
Political scientists generally assume that subnational and supranational elections are best understood in some way as a subordinate function of national-level politics. This assumption is captured by the second-order election (SOE) model which lies at the basis of many studies on non-national elections. Reif and Schmitt (1980) introduced the SOE model in their study on the first election to the European Parliament (EP) in 1979. These results were not to be understood as the single outcome of one EP-wide election, but rather as the aggregation of 'simultaneous national SOEs'. Reif and Schmitt observed that turnout tended to be low, that parties in national government were likely to lose vote share while opposition, small and new parties gained votes. This electoral behavior comes about because, as Reif and Schmitt (1980, pp. 8-9) proposed, more is 'at stake' in elections that determine the composition of national governments, that is, 'first-order' elections, than in 'second-order elections'. Reif and Schmitt (1980, p. 10) also noted that SOE effects follow a cyclical logic; they are strongest at the mid-point between elections that produce national governments, and less strong soon after, or in the run-up to, a national election.
This conceptual framework was foundational for the study of EP elections (Norris, 1997), and remains the starting point for EP elections analysis today (Schmitt, 2004; Clark and Rohrschneider, 2009; Marsh, 2009; Hix and Marsh, 2011). Reif and Schmitt (1980, p. 8) also proposed that second-order electoral behavior might be observed in the 'plethora of "SOEs" ' that are variously held, that is: 'by-elections, municipal elections, various sorts of regional elections, those to a "second chamber" '. This 'invitation' has been taken up by many scholars studying subnational elections, in particular by scholars who study regional elections taking place in the United Kingdom (Heath and Taylor, 1999; Bromley, 2006), but also in France (Duporier, 2004), Germany (Jeffery and Hough, 2001), Italy (Tronconi and Roux, 2009) and Spain (Pallarés and Keating, 2003).
One of the striking findings in the literature is that the SOE model does not seem to apply in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as well as in Western Europe (Schmitt, 2004; Koepke and Ringe, 2006; Hix and Marsh, 2007). In addition, Koepke and Ringe (2006) apply the SOE model to...