Transnational Trends in European Parties and the 1994 Elections of the European Parliament

Abstract

The main objective of this report is to assess the impact of institutional factors and elections on the transnationalization of European parties and on the evolution of the European Union's (EU) party system. Institutional factors, which are effective during the European Parliament's (EP) legislative term, appear to favor the consolidation of the longerestablished and larger EP party groups (EPP, PES, LDR) and ultimately of the EU party system. By contrast, elections can be very disruptive, especially for the more recent and smaller EP groups, and are a negative factor in party system consolidation. The two combined effects appear to have contributed to the creation of a two-speed party system in the EU, characterized by an increasingly institutionalized core and by a mutable and unstable periphery. KEY W 0 R D S • elections • Europarties • European Union

What Role for Parties in Eu Politics?

“…The direction of such adaptation was, moreover, towards concentrated and centripetal party structures in the EP, as national party delegations migrated from small to large parliamentary groups, and alignments of the centre left (PES) and the centre right (EPP) formed the core of most voting coalitions. The bias towards concentration of group membership and centrist voting were, in turn, linked to the institutional contexts of party politics in the EP; first, to minimum thresholds for the formation of groups (Corbett et al, 1995); second, to the rule that most parliamentary powers required a majority of the EP's membership and not just of those turning out to vote (Bardi, 1996;Hix and Lord, 1997); and, third, to the 'institutional design' of the EU as a 'legislative triumvirate' (Kreppel, 2000, p. 342) in which the probability of the EP achieving its objectives is constrained by the preferences of two other cross-party bodies: the Commission and Council of Ministers.…”

Eastward Enlargement by the European Union and Transnational Parties

“…Similarly, an emerging European party system has been compared to that of national party systems (Andeweg, 1995;Bardi, 1996;Bardi, forthcoming). A substantial part of European transnational party theorizing is in fact an adaptation of the historical developmental models of national parties.…”

The Choice of Spitzenkandidaten: A Comparative Analysis of the Europarties’ Selection Procedures

“…The CSPEC, forerunner of the PES, had considerably more difficulties in agreeing on electoral manifestos than the EPP (Gagatek, 2008). Finally, while it is often claimed that the Green party federation did not develop consolidated party structures compared to other Europarties (Bardi, 1994;Bardi, 1996;Jansen, 1996), they actually did succeed in building a more integrative and transnational party organization (Dietz, 2000). The strong heterogeneity in policy preferences of their member parties, however, continues to hinder decision-making on the basis of majority principles rather than unanimity.…”