Political Parties and Party Systems

Abstract

Within the varied literature that has addressed the relationship between European integration, on the one hand, and the character and development of parties and party systems, on the other, three related concerns have been prominent. In the first place, and often reflecting the earliest tradition of research in this area, scholars have sought to trace the origins and development of transnational — and specifically trans-European — party federations, seeing in these nascent organizations the potential for the emergence of genuine political parties at the European level. The pioneering work in this regard was carried out by Pridham (1975) and Pridham and Pridham (1981) in the period surrounding the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament, and was subsequently further developed by scholars such as Bardi (e.g., 1994) and Hix (e.g., 1995). Second, reflecting a more recent phase of research, scholars have been concerned to analyze the shape and dynamic of the parties and the party systems as they function within the European Parliament. This remains a key and quite dominant strand of contemporary research, with the focus being constantly expanded and reconstituted on the basis of new data derived from roll-call analysis, patterns of alignment, and the shifting memberships of federations and parliamentary fractions. The literature here is also enormous, with pioneering work being carried out by Bardi (1989) and Attinà (1990), and with the more sophisticated recent work being well represented in the collection of papers edited by Marks and Steenbergen (2004).