Robert Ladrech

Europeanization and Political Parties: Towards a Framework for Analysis

Europeanization is a term used to describe the effects of European integration on the politics and policies of its member states as well as the process of enhancing European-level political institutions. Within this growing literature there is no systematic effort to incorporate the role of political parties. However, party analysis has only recently begun to acknowledge the EU as an environment that holds potentially significant consequences for parties. In this article, I attempt to begin systematic research on Europeanization and political parties by presenting a basic framework for analysis. Five areas are singled out: (1) policy/programmatic content; (2) organization; (3) patterns of party competition; (4) party-government relations; and (5) relations beyond the national party system.

National Political Parties and European Governance: The Consequences of ‘Missing in Action’

This article first summarises the findings of a three-year research project on the Europeanisation of national party organisation, then proceeds to a critical analysis of the consequences for national as well as EU governance. The account begins with the general finding that mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties have not created new procedures to make their leaders more accountable for their actions in EU decision-making, nor expanded to any appreciable degree the number and/or influence of party personnel responsible in the area of EU matters. It then identifies three clusters of impact: a) public opinion and partisan discourse; b) the legitimacy of both MEPs and transnational party federations; and c) the dynamics of party government at the national level. The article concludes with discussion of the ‘democratic deficit’ inside parties and the merits of politicising the EU without taking into consideration the role of national parties.

Europeanization and the variable influence of the EU: national parties and party systems in Western and Eastern Europe

The literature on the Europeanization of post-communist states often points to the substantial difference between this process and that occurring in the older member states. Primary attention has been drawn to the relationship between the European Union (EU) and the new and prospective member states, namely, conditions laid down in the economic realm—transition to a market economy— and the political realm—monitoring progress in meeting democratic criteria, administrative reform, and the promotion and institutionalization of human rights and minority rights. The direct and indirect involvement of the EU in this transition by post-communist states has no comparable equivalent in Western experiences of either becoming a member of the EU or in subsequent domestic change as a result of membership (i.e. Europeanization). When we turn our attention more specifically to the issue of Europeanization and political parties, there is also a clear difference between the Western and Eastern experiences. This is not surprising, given the fundamental degree of political system change that has and is occurring in post-communist states. Nevertheless, it may be worthwhile to compare and contrast more clearly and explicitly the distinction between the two processes, and in so doing gain further insights into the trajectories of change in each set. Employing Ladrech’s five research dimensions of Europeanization and parties, the paper briefly summarizes in Part 1 findings in each dimension among Western parties, and then contrasts these general findings with those among Eastern/post-communist parties. Due to the constraints of space, the presentation and comparison will remain at a fairly general level of analysis. As the concept of Europeanization is employed in its ‘top-down’ understanding, a consideration of the ‘top’, that is, the EU itself, or more specifically its influence or attraction on its current and prospective member states, will be explored as an explanatory factor in variable Europeanization dynamics. Part 2 therefore explores the variable nature of the

Social movements and party systems: The French socialist party and new social movements

This article examines the apparent difficulty of various French ‘new social movements’ of the 1970s and 1980s to coalesce in the form of a ‘green’ or ‘new politics’ party. In addition to the nature of the French electoral system and dominant policy‐making apparatus, this article focuses upon relations between the Socialist Party and feminist and ecology movements. The major argument is that the Socialists, in their bid for hegemony among the left throughout the 1970s and 1980s, effectively undercut post‐material value‐oriented support for a ‘new politics’ party.

Toward the Twenty-first Century

By the mid-1990s Europeans could point with pride to many postwar achievements: the reemergence of Europe as a powerful economic and cultural force, the growth of affluence, the rejection of authoritarian government in the south, greater independence in foreign affairs, and the end of European overseas colonialism. But most important was the end of the Cold War and the division of Europe. With the demise of Stalinism and Leninism and the end of Soviet rule, Eastern Europe and the successor states of the Soviet Union began to move toward more democratic forms of government and a closer association with Western Europe.

Europeanization and French social democracy

France being one of the founders and leading members of the European Union (EU), the process of European integration has therefore been an integral part of French post-war modernization. With the assumption of power by François Mitterrand and the Socialist Party (PS) in 1981, the European integration policy paradigm entered more explicitly than ever before the political and economic orientation of French social democracy, contributing to the evolution in the identity of the French Left. The neo-liberal policy orientation of the EU, especially assertive since the 1986 Single European Act; the end of the Cold War and with it the disappearance of counter-capitalist models; the inroads made into national economic policy-making by globalization; all of these events and trends have combined in the past 20 years to force a transformation of French social democracy, and with it the PS, into a more explicit reformist and European party. This is not to say that the impact of these tremendous pressures has resulted in the homogenization of all West European social democratic parties, simply that a new and common set of constraints and opportunities for a revised political strategy has brought French social democracy closer to a median European model. If by Europeanization one means ‘an incremental process re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EU political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy-making’, and that ‘organisational logic’ refers to the ‘adaptive processes of organisations to a changed or changing environment’, then we certainly have plenty of evidence of France and the PS adapting to the new external stimuli of the EU, particularly since the late 1980s. In this article, I shall focus on this adaptation by the PS, and by extension, French Socialist governments, to the new environment in which the EU has become an additional level (and

Introduction: Europeanization and party politics in the territory of former Yugoslavia

The study of national political parties and the European Union (EU) has evolved over recent years in two directions. The first direction one might term ‘levels of analysis’, in which research focuses on the relationship between the European, national, and in somecases, the sub-national, level of party relationswithin theEU. Thiswould include the organizational development andactivities of transnational party federations (or Europarties), the development of programmatic positions on theEUamongnational parties, etc. Itwould also include the analysis of the pattern of competition within the European Parliament between party groups and the impact of the EU on national party systems. The second direction in which national political parties havebeen approachedwithin the context of the ‘impact of Europe’ has been related to EU enlargements. The establishment of a scholarly connection between European integration on the one hand, and the dynamics of national political parties on the other, was originally confined to political phenomena in Western Europe. This is not surprising as the first studies explaining the emergence of Europarties, analysis of direct elections to the European Parliament, and soon thereafter individual party stances vis-à-vis the EC/EU, began to emerge at the end of the 1970s when competitive party systems were located exclusively in this area of Europe. This changed with the processes associated with the accession to the EU of a number of post-communist countries in 2004. From the late 1990s onwards, scholars investigated the impact of theEUon the emerging political systems and economies of these countries, in many cases under the label of ‘Europeanization’. During the pre-accession period, approaches to the study of parties and elections in these countries were based on those developed to study competitive elections in the West. Thus models of voter volatility, party organization, etc., were incorporated into analytical frameworks for Central and Eastern European (CEE) parties and party systems. By the early 2000s, however, adjustments based upon empirical political reality promoted new advances in the study—and expectations—of parties and the EU inCEE countries. Rates of electoral volatility, in general, have remained high compared to theWest; Eurosceptic public opinion has been changing (often with ups and downs in the specific country’s success in relations with the EU); party organization remains weak; etc.Apart from these ‘generic’ features, it should benoted that inmanypostcommunist countries Europeanization under the slogan ‘returning to Europe’ became anew ideology supported bymanypolitical parties aswell as an informed positive opinion among decision-makers and opinion-formers, making the EU a credible alternative for CEE post-communist countries during the 1990s. Since EU

The Jospin government and European social democracy

The article situates the Jospin government in the mainstream of European social democracy, and its experience highlighting the continuing diversity of national social democratic governance. The article is divided into four parts. First come a brief consideration and definition of social democracy, followed by a more detailed discussion of the elements necessary to construct a comparative framework of analysis. The third section focuses on the French experience, specifically setting the Jospin government within the framework developed above. The conclusion re-addresses the nature of social democracy by demonstrating how the Jospin governments time in office contributes toward a general understanding of its evolving practice.

Political parties and climate policy: A new approach to measuring parties’ climate policy preferences

This study presents an innovative approach to hand-coding parties’ policy preferences in the relatively new, cross-sectoral field of climate change mitigation policy. It applies this approach to party manifestos in six countries, comparing the preferences of parties in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom over the past two decades. It probes the data for evidence of validity through content validation and convergent/discriminant validation and engages with the debate on position-taking in environmental policy by developing a positional measure that incorporates ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ climate policy preferences. The analysis provides evidence for the validity of the new measures, shows that they are distinct from comparable measures of environmental policy preferences and argues that they are more comprehensive than existing climate policy measures. The new measures strengthen the basis for answering questions that are central to climate politics and to party politics. The approach developed here has important implications for the study of new, complex or cross-cutting policy issues and issues that include both valence and positional aspects.

Rethinking the Relationship between Europeanization and European Integration

Europeanization, understood as domestic change in which the EU is wholly or partially involved, has added an important dimension to comparative analysis of domestic European politics. Indeed, whether it is electoral politics or policy development, the analyst is obliged to consider including the EU in a research design or in the process of tracing change in the national political system. Despite the maturing of Europeanization studies and in the wider context of European integration studies, the study of the European integration process has continued to represent a separate level of analysis, where international relations theories continue to maintain legitimate perspectives. This chapter is concerned less with aspects of the Europeanization approach to understanding domestic change and more with answering the following question: does member states’ Europeanization impact the European integration process itself? The processes of European integration and Europeanization have been considered two distinct phenomena for analytical purposes, yet it may be the case that over time, as the EU has matured as a political system, the two phenomena have developed a reflexive or dependent relationship, necessitating a reconsideration of the research agenda for both. First, the level of development of the EU, in particular the increase in authority and policy scope of EU institutions since the Single European Act (SEA), has had a profound effect on member states.