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Chapter 5 Parties: How the past affects the present, and an uncertain future 

• Chapter Summary
• Useful websites 
• Discussion questions
• Updates
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Chapter Summary

Europe's political parties have gradually developed into institutions with the capacity not just to translate social and ideological cleavages and conflict into workable compromises, but also to provide a voice for those who reject them and demand change.

This essentially historical development means there are significant variations both between parties and over time in the way they organise and appeal to the electorate.

The fact that many of the conditions in which they began and continue to compete are common to many countries means that parties in different states share certain worldviews.

It also means that we can make meaningful comparisons not just between parties in different countries, but also between the party systems that their relative strengths and their patterns of cooperation and competition (along with different electoral arrangements) create. Some of these systems are ideologically polarised and/or fragmented, some less so. 

These systems are more or less in flux, mostly as a result of changes in the electorate, though the extent of this flux can be overstated. Moreover parties are not passive victims of their environments: they adapt to and even help shape them. Because of this and because they are uniquely equipped to play their democratic role linking citizens with government, they are likely to be around for some time, whether we like them or not.

Notwithstanding the creation of transnational federations and the impact of the EU on domestic politics and processes, they seem likely - at least in the foreseeable future - to prioritise (and to organise at) the national rather than the European level.

Useful websites

(For general web materials on European Politics see Tim Bale's Internet Guide)

Links to parties both in and outside parliament, organized by country, are provided by electionworld.org and by the Parties and Elections database 

To get to the Green parties in each country, start at the website of the European Federation of Green Parties 

For Europe's social democratic parties, go to the Party of European Socialists 

Info on and links to Europe's liberal parties is provided by the European Liberal Democrats 

For Europe's Christian Democrats and some of its conservative parties, see the European People's Party 

Party groups in the European Parliament 

Discussion questions

1. What roles are political parties supposed to play in Europe's representative democracies? In your opinion, are there any conflicts and contradictions between those roles?

2. How has the way parties organise varied over time? Should we expect a party's ideology to relate to the way it organises itself?

3. Why do you think some countries' party systems are more fragmented and/or more polarised than others'?

4. Do you think the 'party families' dreamed up by political scientists are useful guides to understanding European parties? What do you see as the pros and cons of categorizing parties in this way?

5. Why aren't there representatives of each and every 'party family' in each and every European country? What is the relative importance of sociology, on the one hand, and institutions, on the other?

6. What are the symptoms and causes of party system change in Europe?

7. Are there any arguments and evidence that suggest to you that some observers might be overstating the degree of change in Europe's party systems?

8. Do you think parties are dinosaurs on their way to extinction or are they destined to be around for some time still to come? If so, why?

9. Why is it easy to play down the impact of European integration on parties and party systems, and would be right to do so?
    

Updates

Autonomy or Independence? Spain's Basque Country 

Turkey: Well on the way to Europe?

Poland: settling down or still wide open?

European Party Families and Domestic Politics

The Beach and the Ballot Box: the Catalan autonomy referendum of June 2006

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