Political Parties and Public Opinion

Abstract

The extent to which Europeanization has impacted on national political parties, in the same way as other areas of the state, has been an issue of debate. Mair (2000: 4) observes that Europeanization has a limited impact on national party systems. He argues that ‘of the many areas of domestic politics which may have experienced an impact from Europe, it is party systems in particular that have perhaps proved to be most impervious to change’. This may have to do with the fact that while national political parties have incentives and motivations to change and adapt to the new environment, they are constrained in a number of ways. ‘Unlike government bureaucracies, individual politicians, and interest groups, national political parties do not have the ability or opportunity to develop privileged or intimate relationships with authoritative EU actors’ (Ladrech, 2001: 5). Unlike these actors, political parties are constrained by the fact that the Treaties forbid the transfer of EU funds to national parties (Article 191, Treaty of Nice), and in this sense they have little if anything else to gain from EU resources. Also, national parties do not have an extra national space to operate within, since their representative institution, that is, the European Parliament, does not have the mandate or composition to intervene in national circumstances (Ladrech, 2001: 5).¹