European Journal of Political Research (EJPR) has honoured Professor Hermann Schmitt

On the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR), experts commented on seven influential EJPR articles published between 1973 and 2013 with a view on how political science has evolved over the last four decades. The Anniversary was celebrated at the 2013 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference in Bordeaux, held from 4 to 7 September.

One of the selected articles was the 1980 paper "Nine national second-order elections: A systematic frame-work for the analysis of European elections results" by Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt. In their article Reif and Schmitt analysed the first European Parliament elections, held in 1979 in the then nine member states of the European Economic Community. The concept of “second-order elections” has been proposed in this article and has become very influential in comparative electoral research since.