Politics and Governance / Competition in the European arena : how the rules of the game help nationalists gain

Why does the European election fail to produce competition between European policy alternatives despite the increased politicization of European integration and efforts to connect election results to the Commission Presidency via the Spitzenkandidaten process? In this article I theorize the European arenas incentive structure for political competition by synthesizing Strøms (1990) behavioral theory of competitive parties (votes, office, policy) and Bartolinis (1999, 2000) four dimensions of electoral competition (contestability, availability, decidability, and incumbent vulnerability). I model EU decidability (party differentials on EU policy) and formulate specific expectations about party differentiation by considering parties vote-, office-, and policy-seeking motives under the European arenas specific conditions. How parties behave under the specific incentive structure of the European arena matters for the EUs development as a polity.(VLID)480011