The Supremacy of Politics: Federalism and Parties in Western Europe

Hodge, Carl Cavanagh

doi:10.1080/01402388708424630

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…It depends on the degree of autonomy of the regions, on the type of autonomy (see below) and also on the degree of asymmetry in the federation. If the regions are very different from each other, the regional games are very different and the parties have to allow internally for this variation (Hodge, 1987;Hadley et al, 1989). If the federation is more homogeneous, then the development of large catch-all parties, able to integrate the regional differences, is more likely (Chandler, 1987).…”

Section: Systemic Features: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The federal opposition parties have opportunities for regional access to power. This diffusion of power is conducive for the legitimacy of the system, since minority groups have less chance of being totally excluded (Lijphart, 1984;Chandler, 1987;Hodge, 1987;Gabriel, 1989). There are more access points and thus more possibilities for opposing the central government.…”

Section: Systemic Features: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political Parties in Multi-Layered Systems

Deschouwer

2003

European Urban and Regional Studies

135

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The familiar language to describe and analyse the behaviour of political parties is -often only implicitly -a single-level language. That is not too surprising. Indeed, parties and party systems came into being as the result of a process of boundary closure, of the formation of national states and of a more or less simultaneous territorialization and democratization of politics. Major boundarycrossing societal conflicts were domesticated and consequently 'frozen' in national systems of partypolitical competition (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967;Bartolini, 1998;Flora et al., 1999).The institutional environment in which political parties have to function today, however, is becoming to an increasing extent, and in varying ways, multilayered. One of the reasons for this is the politicization of the European level of policy making. This has resulted in increased attention to public attitudes and thus voting behaviour in elections to the European Parliament. The increasing importance of the European Union has led to the labelling of the European system as 'multi-level' and to the rapid development of a wide body of research attempting to understand political activities and behaviour occurring in a system in which levels interact in complex ways. The literature on multi-level governance is, however, very much a party-free zone. The focus is on decision making and on implementation, and generally on non-party actors. One of the reasons for this is obviously the lack of real party politics at the European level. Even if the EU might be treated theoretically as one single -though multi-layeredpolitical system (Hix, 1999), the role of political parties in the EU remains rather limited. Probably the strongest argument against the idea that the EU can be seen as a political system that can be compared with other (national) systems is the absence of party politics and especially of party government.Analysis of European elections has nevertheless generated a number of interesting concepts and ideas that can be very useful in the search for a more general conceptual language for dealing with party activities in multi-layered systems. The notion of 'second-order elections', that was coined in direct reference to the first European elections, has found its way into more general and comparative approaches (Heath et al., 1999).A second reason for increasing attention to party Abstract ★ European Urban and Regional Studies 10(3): 213-226

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Section: Systemic Features: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Systemic Features: Federalismmentioning

confidence: 99%