Beyond the Nation State: Parties in the Era of Integration

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Beyond the Nation State Parties in the Era of European Integration

David Hanley

Beyond the Nation State

Also by David Hanley CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE: A Comparative Perspective CONTEMPORARY FRANCE (with A. P. Kerr and N. H. Waites) KEEPING LEFT? CERES and the French Socialist Party PARTY, SOCIETY, GOVERNMENT: Republican Democracy in France SOCIAL-DÉMOCRATIE ET DÉFENSE (co-editor with H. Portelli) SPANISH POLITICAL PARTIES (co-editor with J. Louglin)

Beyond the Nation State Parties in the Era of European Integration David Hanley Professor of European Studies Cardiff University, UK

© David Hanley 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identiﬁed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9781403907950 hardback ISBN-10: 1403907951 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hanley, D. L. (David L.), 1944 Beyond the nation state:parties in the era of European integration/ David Hanley p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1403907951 (alk. paper) 1. Political parties“European Union countries. 2. European federation. 3. European Union countries“Politics and government. I. Title JN50.H36 2007 324.2094“dc22 2007039402 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Graeme, in thanks for many years’ friendship.

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Contents

List of Tables

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

List of Acronyms

x

Introduction: Parties and Transnationalism

1

1 Parties, Nation States and Beyond: Some General Considerations

8

2 From International to Transnational Party: A Historical Perspective

31

3 European Social Democracy: Riding the Tide of Globalisation

62

4 Christian Democrats and Allies: Identity and the Logic of Numbers

85

5 Liberals and Democrats: In the Shadow of the Heavyweights?

117

6 The Communists and Allies: Still Fighting for Change

138

7 Defending the Periphery, Protecting the Environment: The Regionalist Family and the Greens

157

8 Sovereignists, Sceptics and Populists: As Transnational as the Rest?

179

9 National Parties, Party Families and Their Roads to Transnationalism: A Comparative Conclusion

201

Bibliography

217

Index

228

vii

List of Tables 1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3

Party families and their roads to transnationalism Party strength in EP since 1979 The Party of European Socialists, 2007 The European Peoples’ Party, 2007 The European Christian Political Movement, 2007 The European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, 2007 The European Democratic Party, 2007 The Party of the European Left, 2007 European Free Alliance/Democratic Party of the peoples of Europe, 2007 The European Green Party, 2007 Alliance for a Europe of Nations, 2007 EUDemocrats, Alliance for a Europe of Democrats, 2007 Euronat, 2007

16 43 65 91 101 120 122 148 161 170 181 189 197

N.B.: In all the above, parties are given their original title; wherever appropriate, an English version is provided.

viii

Acknowledgements The CEVIPOL at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, under the energetic and sympathetic leadership of Pascal Delwit, has long played an invaluable role in bringing together those of us who labour on these strange beasts that are transnational parties. The CEVIPOF at Sciences Po in Paris very kindly offered me a visiting professorship, where a fair part of this book was written, and I enjoyed immensely the friendly welcome and support of Pascal Perrineau and his colleagues. Much of the fieldwork was done with the help of a British Academy award (SG-39251), for which I am extremely grateful. In my work, I was helped by numerous politicians, party officials, academics, journalists and others, to whom my thanks are offered in strict alphabetical order: Maria d’Alimonte, Frank Barrett, Christopher Beazley MEP, Alex Beels, Tim Beyer-Helm, Emmanuel Bordez, Jean-Louis Bourlanges MEP, David Boyd, Francis Burstin, Graham Carter, Arnold Cassola, Jakob Chab, Miguel Chevalier MP, Heather Conyngham, John Cusnahan MEP, Pascal Drouhaud, Andrew Duff MEP, Michael Elmer, Bruno Erhard, Heinrich Ettinger, Jill Evans MEP, Patrick Farbiaz, Niall Fergusson, Gilles Garnier, Maud Gatel, Etienne Godin, Radim Gonda, Peter Gijsels, Andreas Helle, Jan Hamacek, Robert Heinrich, Per Heister, Stellan Hermannsson, Milan Horacek MEP, Ellen Kelly, Andreas Klein, Bernhard Kotsch, Ludek Kulacek, Wulf Lapins, José-Luis Linazasoro, Denis MacShane MP, Jan Maertens, Jean Maertens, Wilfried Martens, Eluned Morgan MEP, Pierre Moscovici MEP, Annemie Neyts-Uttebroeck MEP, Jim O’Donnell, Arie Oostlaender MEP, Alojz Peterle MEP, Achim Post, Tony Robinson, Petr Rybar, Helmut Scholz, Philipp Schulmeister, Vladimir Selacek, Reinhold Sohns, Ursula Stenzel MEP, Petr Stepanek, Anthony Teasdale, Stefan Thijs, Gawaine Towler, Anne van Lancker MEP, Jean-Jacques Viseur MP, Margaret Wright, Robert WoodthorpeBrowne, Jan Zahradil MEP, Daniela Zehentner. Ed Steen was a tireless source of contacts, good humour and companionship. Di Scarlett and Tom Lyne were generous with their friendship and hospitality. Barbara Hanley will be glad to see the end of this book, having supported the author loyally and patiently during the writing. My thanks go also to Graeme Garrard, Sean Loughlin and Gordon Cumming for their friendship and solidarity. None of the above bears, of course, any responsibility for the contents of this book. ix

List of Acronyms N.B. This list contains the acronyms most frequently used in the text. All others are available in the appropriate table and are in any case always preceded by the full title whenever the organisation first appears in the text. ADIE Alliance des Démocrates Indépendants en Europe AEN Alliance for a Europe of Nations ALDE Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe CDI Christian Democrat International (since 2001 Christian Democrat and Centrist International) CESP Confederation of European Socialist Parties EC European Community ECSC European Coal and Steel Community EDD Europe of Democracies and Diversities (now ID) EDP European Democratic Party EFA/DPPE European Free Alliance/Democratic Party of the Peoples of Europe EGP European Green Party ELDR European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party EP European Parliament EPP-ED European Peoples’ Party-European Democrats EU European Union EUCD European Union of Christian Democrats EUDem European Democrats/Alliance for a Europe of Democrats GUE/GNV Gauche Unitaire Européenne/Gauche Nordique Verte ID Independence and Democracy (previously EDD) ITS Independence, Tradition, Solidarity LI Liberal International NEI Nouvelles Equipes Internationales PEL Party of the European Left PES Party of European Socialists SIPDIC Secrétariat international des partis démocratiques d’inspiration chrétienne SI Socialist International SLI Socialist and Labour International (1923–1939) TNP Transnational Party/Parties UEN Union for a Europe of Nations x


Readers might wonder why they are being offered yet another book on parties, even one dealing with transnational parties (TNP), i.e. parties that operate outside the framework of the nation state. Some believe that such organisations are not worth studying; one distinguished party scholar does not consider TNP to be proper parties (Seiler, 2003a: 62–3), while van Zyl and Vorster (1997) find they are ‘empty vessels’. Yet the slow emergence of European parties over recent decades as moderately significant actors in the politics of the European Union (EU) has prompted a steady flow of writing.1 The ambitions and methodology of this literature vary considerably, as does its quality. Any survey of work on party transnationalism has, of course, to look somewhat beyond work devoted to TNP stricto sensu. Probably the most prominent type of work is the study of individual party families, which may focus heavily or even exclusively on the transnational dimension. The most widely studied family has been Christian democracy (Hanley, 1994; Jansen, 1998, 2006a; Johansson, 1997). Warner has developed a distinct model for application to Christian democrat (CD) parties, based on rational choice theory (2000). While political science informs these approaches, many good insights are provided by the work of contemporary historians. Gehler and Kaiser (2004) sheds new light on the emergence of today’s European Peoples’ Party (EPP), but it builds on a long tradition of historians working on catholic parties and their transnational exchanges (Mayeur, 1980; Papini, 1988; Buchanan and Conway, 1996). In a similar vein is work such as that done at Leuven by contemporary historians (Lamberts, 1997; van Hecke and Gerard, 2004) or by US scholars (Kselman and Buttigieg, 2003). For other party families, Ladrech and Marlière (1999), 1

2


Ladrech (2000), Hix and Lesse (2002) or Lightfoot (2005) have offered a single-family study of the socialists, as have Cassola and Gahrton (2003) of the Greens; Bomberg (1998: 2002) has done much to enhance our understanding of Green transnationalism. Communist transnationalism has attracted much critical work, especially during the Cold War (Drachkovic, 1966), and more recently Wolikow (2004), to counter interesting but partisan accounts (Claudin, 1975). In a slightly more comparative mode, the collections edited by Pascal Delwit’s team at the Centre d’Etude de la Vie Politique at the Université Libre de Bruxelles have covered the CDs (Delwit, 2003a), socialists (2004), liberals (2002), Greens (Delwit and DeWaele, 1999), regionalists (2005) and, in more comparative vein, the TNP federations (2001). Portelli and Jansen (1986) and Portelli (1983) had earlier attempted a similar exercise for the CD and socialist families, respectively, though, as often happens in these collective works, much of the focus is on individual national parties, with only a certain amount of comparative or transnational material. Turning from party families to more specific work on transnational formations, scholars were quick to focus on the early European Parliament (EP) groups and their predecessors (Oudenhove, 1965; Fitzmaurice, 1975). Pridham and Pridham (1981), prompted by the first direct elections to the EP, raised questions that are still discussed today. From a non-European viewpoint, a rare early attempt to seize the emergent phenomenon of TNP was Goldman (1983), written very much in the context of the ‘Second Cold War’ and the dangerous tension in international relations at the onset of the Reagan presidency. For all its awareness of the emergence of new modes of party activity, the uneven nature of this work, its excessive focus on US perceptions of TNP and its over-optimistic belief that TNP could somehow be a major factor of stability in international relations have, however, made it into something of a museum-piece for today. If readers seek an up-to-date analysis of the European parties, solidly grounded in empirical material, but making able use of party theory, then the obvious references are Hix and Lord (1997) and Bell and Lord (1998). These works have already dated slightly and they do restrict their time frame explicitly to a very recent period. A more specific theoretical approach, based firmly in the school of US legislative studies, but shedding much light on the development of today’s TNP, is Kreppel (2002). Coming to the subject not so much from a comparative politics angle but more from an international relations standpoint, Johansson’s study of the conservative/CD relationship (1997) or his more general work on TNP (Johansson and Zervakis, 2002) offers a further perspective. The recent project of Jo Shaw and Steven


3

Day on the constitutionalisation of the EU pays particular attention to the juridical foundations of TNP, hitherto mainly neglected (Day and Shaw, 2003, 2006; Day, 2005). Ladrech’s work, whether on the socialists (2000) or more generally Party Politics (2002), explores the concept of Europeanisation in party-political terms, i.e. how the ongoing processes of the EU affect, while simultaneously being affected by, the working of parties within the nation states. The special issue of European View (2006) brought together practitioners and academics to chart developments within the TNP. In addition to these specialist studies, sometimes the European parties figure in wider studies of the EU or some of its institutions. Richard Corbett’s invaluable work on the EP, written from the triple viewpoint of an elected politician, former party official and political scientist, has quite extensive sections on the party groups (Corbett et al., 2005: 70–108), though Westlake’s informative study of the EP accords them precious little space (1994). German yearbooks such as those edited by Gabriel, Niedermayer and Stöss (2002) or Weidenfeld and Wessels (2004) give regular updates on the situation of the TNP. There is, then, a burgeoning literature on party transnationalism, dealing both with individual party families and with the transnational phenomenon as a whole; it involves numerous and varied methods of approach. Reading such scholarship makes one aware, however, that transnational activity by parties long predates the activities of European parties and the development of the EP. Most of the party families have had some kind of transnational organisation, dating back, in the case of the socialists, to the mid-nineteenth century. They were followed at intervals by the CDs, liberals and conservatives, who all set up an International; more recently the Greens and what remains of the communist family have followed by creating TNP.2 These Internationals still remain in existence, though some of their functions and visibility have been passed on to the TNP. Their presence does invite questions, however, as to possible continuities between earlier forms of transnationalism which they represent and today’s TNP. The Internationals have had their share of study also, ranging from the partisan to critical. Joll’s study of the Second International (1955) was a pioneering work that introduced a little-known, but important historical reality to modern readers. It was followed by insider accounts such as Brauntal (1966–7) or work of a more general character such as Kriegel (1974, 1985) or more recently Wolikow and Cordillot (1993). Invariably, in the case of the socialists, scholars are soon drawn onto the terrain of ideology, and the Socialist International (SI) in particular is often

4


treated as if it were a theatre that witnessed the clash of huge historical ideas, of which the contending parties were somehow embodiments. Some historians deliberately set themselves onto the terrain of ideological history, such as Angenot with his dissection of the various utopias peddled by leading SI figures and organisations (1993) or Collette’s study of the British Labour Party and internationalism (1998). As a result, the partisan dimension tends to be put on one side; one is soon reading about battles of ideas rather than about party machines attempting to pursue their own interests in transnational structures just as they did at home. Even some very detailed work (Haupt, 1972) or more recent, critical writing (Kirby, 1986) does not, however, evade this trap. Perhaps this ideological focus was to an extent inevitable. The SI parties after all talked in a highly codified speech, framed essentially by variants of Marxism. An important part of the SI’s endeavours was to exchange views about socialism: what it meant, how it was achieved (revolutionaries versus gradualists) and, above all, how it related to questions of war and peace. On all these matters, parties were expected to work out theoretical positions, and they did so in the abstract language that they had developed. Highly formalised polemics were part of SI culture, within parties and across national boundaries. It is true also that the factor that caused the downfall of the SI, i.e. the national question, as it was called, featured prominently in SI discourse and that it lends itself readily to abstract treatment, as innumerable works on the question continue to show. Certainly the notion of internationalism lends itself readily to highly abstract treatments, as witnessed by recent offerings in disciplines as varied as political philosophy (Ishay, 1995) and international relations (Navarri, 2000), neither of which mentions any party Internationals. One wonders, however, whether these factors alone are sufficient to explain another feature of scholarship on the Internationals, namely a strong tendency to be judgemental. This can involve either condemning the SI wholesale for betraying the principles of international socialism (or at any rate accepting the legitimacy of war between capitalist nations) or incriminating some parts of the SI (the German party), if only by implication. Certainly in some quarters the SI is regarded as having failed to prevent World War I; very high standards have been set for an organisation that arguably from the outset could never fulfil them. These accounts are the work of historians, using the assumptions and methods of that discipline. Whether such approaches are overly abstract or too judgemental, or both, they have one thing in common, namely the lack of any institutional perspective. By this we mean attention


5

to the SI as an organism created by its constituent parties, in order to pursue party aims. Scholarly concentration on high policy or the more noble aspects of theory, such as the national question, has displaced our attention away from the fact that the Internationals were set up by national parties in order to fulfil certain aims that could not be reached by the normal route of domestic politics. We need to re-establish the partisan basis of the Internationals. Certainly no analysis seems to have combined a proper respect for historical process with use of some of the more insightful theories about parties and party systems which contemporary political science has developed.3 This omission seems all the more curious in view of the highly sophisticated theory that has developed around party, much of it ambitious and generalising in scope. Scholars have not hesitated, for instance, to propose distinct life-cycles for parties. The most typical pattern sees the organisational form of party as running from the cadre party through the ‘mass and class’ party, which integrates significant social groups into the political process, to the catch-all party, which draws its net ever wider across different social groups from those whom it initially set out to incorporate. The latest point on this status-journey is the position of cartel party, whereby parties are now increasingly part of the state machinery rather than being organs of civil society and have used their access to state power to ensure that their operations are increasingly state-supported: their personnel is increasingly coterminous with that of the state apparatus, and their distance from civil society consequently is increased (Katz and Mair, 1995; Mair, 2006). Such considerations have become standard orthodoxy when discussing party development. This life-journey for the parties all takes place, however, within the confines of national territory. At no point in the itinerary are the transnational experiences of party fed into the explanatory matrix. Yet it would seem that all parties have to undergo this experience as part of their development. Surely it must tell us something more about how parties develop. The aim of the present work is, then, to examine the whole phenomenon of party transnationalism in historical and theoretical terms. By transnationalism we mean the creation of and participation in supranational party structures by nationally based parties of similar persuasion. We stress that we will not present an overarching theory that purports to explain the transnational activity of national political parties, for several reasons. First, the phenomenon seems to be undergoing a significant evolution. All party families have a long history of involvement outside their frontiers, but the recent stage of TNP formation could be seen as

6


representing something of a quantum leap compared with what has gone before. Consequently, the reality of today’s TNP is not well known. Despite the presence of detailed work on the big two families of socialists and CDs, little is written on the other families that are well represented in the EP and in most of the EU states; a part of our endeavour will simply be to make these structures more accessible to readers. Moreover, the evolution of the TNP is by no means finished, even in what seems to be a period of relative stagnation for the EU as a whole. If, for instance, the resolution sponsored by Jo Leinen MEP (Member of the EP) and recently voted by the EP (see Chapter 1) receives any kind of followup from Council and Commission, then it is clear that the life of TNP will have entered into an important new stage. In this fluid situation, it seems important to open up a few lines of enquiry, rather than to lay down binding hypotheses. We do, however, believe that a fairly lowlevel theoretical premise is warranted as a starting point. This is that the TNP are essentially agencies created by a partnership of national parties of broadly similar outlook, hence that their development can only be limited by this very fact. We set out this approach in the first chapter. This premise has guided our approach to the book. It relies to a considerable extent on interviews with key protagonists; some of these are from the TNP certainly, but particular attention was paid to officials (elected and otherwise) of a key number of national parties, drawn from a range of states. These protagonists come from every main party family. On the basis of this work, it became clear that while many experiences of transnationalism were common to all, equally there were nuances and, sometimes, sharp differences between families, and indeed within them. These are what the book aims to expose, in the hope of laying the ground for further research into differential experiences of transnationalism. As the TNP progress, which they will, however slowly, differences should become more marked. This will be the time when more sophisticated hypotheses can be tested; for the moment it is more a question of marking out, very generally, the ground where future change is likely to occur. The first chapter will explore further the concept of transnationalism and elaborate a general theory of party and TNP which we shall seek to apply both historically and contemporaneously. We shall then examine the evolution of transnational activity from its origins through the creation of the European Community (EC)/(EU) to the present situation with its developing TNP (Chapter 2). On the basis of this analysis we shall then consider the major types of party family active today, with a view to seeing how far they fit into or diverge from the general model of


7

TNP set out above (Chapters 3–8). In conclusion, we shall bring together our findings in a comparative, cross-family analysis, before evaluating the usefulness of this type of research for the study of comparative party politics in general (Chapter 9).

Notes 1. To an extent, the terms TNP and European party (rather than ‘europarty’) are interchangeable here. We take the TNP to be those European parties that the EU has defined in its regulations; of course their remit extends beyond the EU. 2. The communist family has a long tradition of transnational activity, but it took the form of the Comintern and later Cominform. These structures are radically different from those of any other family and will be discussed later. 3. An exception to this would be Kalyvas (1995). But this sophisticated politicohistorical analysis applies to only one family, the CDs.

1 Parties, Nation States and Beyond: Some General Considerations

National parties enfeeble themselves, and they will begin to understand that, I hope. They are not able to tackle the European dimension on their own. Liberal MEP, 2006.

Internationalism and transnationalism If we are to treat our subject of transnational activity adequately, we need to define our terms initially. Scholars of international relations and historians of ideas have of late shown much interest in internationalism and related ideas. This development is clearly linked to changes in political, economic and social structures across the world, which are often summated roughly under the heading globalisation. The literature on internationalism is vast, and its angle of approach varies considerably, in particular depending on whether the author is a philosopher or a specialist in the relationships between states. The aim of this section is not to study such differences in depth, but rather to map out a conceptual basis for looking at political parties and their operations outside their own territory. To this end, two brief observations about the existing body of work can be offered. The first is that much of it is, whether explicitly or implicitly, highly normative in character. Many writers, particularly those from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds with an underlying tendency to look at politics primarily from a moral standpoint, come to questions of international relations with an agenda: it is usually about recognizing or strengthening moral communities, however, they might be envisaged. For such approaches, which stem mainly from Kant, politics is based on the ‘rational individual as carrier of a universal moral agency’ 8

Parties, Nation States and Beyond

9

(Colas, 1994: 513). Secondly, perhaps as a consequence of this moralising approach, such work is usually set at quite an abstract level and pays little attention to the actual machinery of international politics. World politics is often portrayed as a process in which ideas and principles contend, ‘nationalism versus internationalism’ or ‘cosmopolitanism versus communitarianism’, for instance. In one recent study, for example, ‘internationalism’ had already enjoyed its heyday by 1789 and has been ‘betrayed’ (essentially by the governments of nation states) ever since (Ishay, 1995). Even a rare piece of work that, to its credit, attempts to root internationalism in the world of political action finds it hard to escape this tendency (Colas, 1994). Missing from such analyses is, invariably, any detailed focus on the agents of international politics, specially parties. Such approaches are very different from the approach to parties that informs this book and that is concerned not with the realisation of universal justice or the development of a global democracy, but with self-seeking actors, preoccupied with more mundane issues of self-preservation or aggrandisement, of adaptation to changing circumstances that they may not be able to control. In terms of international relations theories, it would be located firmly at the ‘realist’ end of the spectrum. Bearing this in mind, we can now set out our terminology. Our concern is with the operations of (national) political parties outside their own territory. To describe this field, we will renounce the word ‘internationalism’. In the first place, it has too often been loaded with normative implications, as stated above. This does not just refer to the type of moralising philosophy concerned to attack nationalism but also refers to the use of the term made by political families, particularly socialists and communists, for whom it came to embody both a mode of political action and the goal towards which such action was intended, namely a socialist commonwealth. More importantly, however, the real meaning of the term has shifted hugely over time, as Anderson shows in an incisive and persuasive analysis (2002). Today, its most frequent meaning is in fact US hegemony and capacity for unilateral worldwide action on a scale never seen before (hence the title of Anderson’s piece, which is a ‘breviary’ for internationalism). But at four different times in the past, at least, the content of internationalism has varied according to the structures of the capitalist economy, the geographical zone in question, the dominant ideological paradigms and the operative definition of nation and its relationship to the subordinate classes. For this reason alone, we prefer to avoid such a polysemic term and adopt the more

10


neutral and descriptive ‘transnationalism’. The term ‘supranational’ will be avoided for reasons of semantic clarity also; although it is the standard term in discussions of European integration, even here it can imply the superiority of the non-national over the national, in a clear hierarchical relationship. This is completely inapplicable to the transnational activities of political parties, as the one thing that can be safely said at the outset is that national parties are always extremely careful not to put themselves in a subordinate position to any outside body. We will continue therefore with ‘transnational’. Transnational activity has recently seized the attention of international relations scholars after what some perceive as an overemphasis on states as actors in the international system. Petersen (1992: 376) urges us to think in terms of ‘an international civil society of various types of societal actors operating across the boundaries of variously structured countries’ and gives a political point to this view by reminding us that many of these organisations strive ‘to create, maintain and change the rules of interaction in the public sphere’. Work on transnationalism is mostly focused on the problem of civil society, which is seen as a rich political resource, whose importance is growing. Civil society is the source of many transnational links, whose relationship to the state, domestic and foreign needs to be clarified. Petersen (1992: 381) distinguishes three broad types of transnational link. The first involves linkages among similar groups already active in different countries; Petersen cites such organisations as banks, companies or even international associations of trade unions, but not, interestingly, political parties. His second type is the cross-border spread of organisations initially established in one country, typical of which are churches. His final type involves linkages between different types of groups to further some common purpose; here he cites such movements as family planning, involving numerous organisations such as pressure groups, charities, private foundations and so on. Other examples that he cites include peace, environmentalist and feminist movements, which sociologists usually construe as ‘social movements’. Clearly, political parties fit most neatly into the first category. Perhaps Petersen was wary of including parties because of his civil-society approach, which necessarily involves taking distance from state actors. Yet the problem with political parties is that they are both state actors and forces within civil society; one of their prime functions is invariably considered to be the linking of the state and society. We may therefore be justified in seeing the transnational operations of parties in a similar light to the way we might look at associations of independent firms


11

across various countries. If we follow this route, we promptly encounter Petersen’s claim (p. 381) that ‘such ties are likely to be organised as arms’ length transactions or loose associations that leave national components considerable autonomy’. We need however to go beyond the concept of ‘loose association’, if only because some of the historical variants of association between national parties and transnational organisations have been anything but loose (e.g., the Comintern). One way of doing this might be to use a theory that attempts to study the type of delegation of authority that organisations make when they agree to invest in some kind of transnational body. Principal/agent (henceforth P/A) theory has hitherto been used to examine relations between national governments and supranational bodies in a highly systematic way. We believe that using it in an attenuated form can help make sense of our overriding problematic, which is how to conceptualise investment by bodies that are heavily national in character into organisations that are transnational. We can say at the start that P/A theory is not a perfect fit for the cases with which we are dealing; but it does offer a general overall perspective on our problem. The alternative would be to make do with some loose theory of pooling authority or delegation on an ad hoc basis, which would not address the persistent underlying nature of the relationship between national and transnational instances. We need first to establish, however, the peculiarly national basis of modern parties.

Parties and their nations: a common genesis Sartori provided probably the most useful definition of a party when he saw it as an organisation seeking to place candidates in office via elections (1976: 63). Janda’s often quoted version, which essentially replaces ‘office’ with ‘government’ (1980: 4), reminds us of a crucial fact, the national dimension of parties as we know them; governments are formed in nation states, which they then attempt to manage. Our understanding of party, nourished by the models of Rokkan (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Flora et al., 1999) and later developments of these such as Seiler (l980, 2000, 2003a, 2004), has proceeded very much on the basis of understanding these organisms within the context of their own national state. Parties arose out of the famous cleavages, moments of high tension within European societies, as they began to modernise economically and politically. They reflected the social interests of groups polarised on to either side of these cleavages. Thus, to take the socio-economic or class

12


cleavage first, property-owners developed liberal or conservative parties to defend their interests in a political process that was becoming more open and competitive as the suffrage began to widen; but these parties would soon be confronted by socialist and later communist parties purporting to represent the propertyless workers. Another axis of conflict was cultural rather than class-based. As modernising, centralising states encountered resistance from the catholic church, in states with a sizeable catholic population, political leaders would develop liberal, anticlerical parties to help them mobilise against the ‘clericals’; the latter, feeling under attack, would mobilise their followers in parties of religious defence, of which modern Christian-democrat parties are typical descendants. A further fault-line in modern societies, the territorial cleavage associated with state-building, would pit centralising parties against parties that defended the periphery, those outlying parts of the newly consolidated states, often with cultures or languages of their own, who resisted being drawn into the modernising orbit of strangers in the capital. The cleavage between sovereignists and European integrationists, heavily discussed in work on European Parliament (EP) groups, can be seen as a contemporary reworking of the centre-periphery split. Integration has meant the displacement of what were traditionally regarded as ‘centres’ and the possible promotion of former ‘peripheries’; this has been a source of particular difficulty for older centralist parties with strong national culture (Chapter 8). Finally, the modernisation of agriculture, with its consequent urbanisation, would pit town against country, parties of the urban interest, be they liberal or conservative, against agrarian or peasant parties. The recent development of parties in Eastern Europe following the collapse of Stalinism is seen by some scholars as reflecting the presence of fundamental cleavages (Dewaele, 2004: 145–60; Seiler, 2002; van Biezen, 2003: 35–43).1 This highly condensed version of party development, familiar from any comparative politics textbook, is recalled here in order to underline the paradoxical nature of the topic studied in this book. For parties have been, are and will for a very long time remain supremely national organisations, rooted in the history and culture of their nation state, and as much a part of the familiar institutions as the national museum, broadcasting service or football team. Parties as we know them could only take root in a ‘Westphalian’ nation state which had developed a certain level of economic, political and cultural cohesion or which, as Bartolini insists (2001), had managed to mark off its boundaries clearly. Within such states, new centres were created (the word is to be taken in the widest sense) that overrode previous modes of representation and


13

around which politics would be structured. Yet we are about to study the phenomenon of transnational parties (henceforth TNP), which seems a contradiction in terms. Parties are about gaining office, it will be recalled; what kind of offices are there at transnational level that parties might seek to fill? It would be easy to answer that there were in reality none, except those of Member of the EP (MEP), and that MEPs represent not TNP but their own national parties who put them on the list and gave them their own party label. Therefore, those organisations that claim to be TNP should not even be dignified with the title of party. Some distinguished scholars come close to this view; Seiler (2003a: 62–3) speaks of ‘agglomerations’ or ‘opportunistic, and in any case heteroclite, groupings’. It is true indeed that when an organisation has acquired the title of party, this has never happened spontaneously. There has invariably been some interest or coalition of interests involved, which have awarded themselves the label (Offerlé, 1997: 40; Gaxie, 1996: 97– 100); it behoves us therefore to keep a wary eye on who sets up and names TNP. Yet this was true even of the national parties when they were created. Perhaps a better approach to the problem is not to view parties rigorously and solely as machines that capture office directly, but to focus on them as living organisms with needs of their own. Office may well be the most important of these needs, but there are others. Panebianco (1988) has drawn our attention to the material basis of party, which the above approach implies. His focus on the survivalist, if not to say egotistical, dimension of party activity is a necessary corrective to much writing that takes party ideology or self-description at face value. We know that parties tend, if successful, to institutionalise (to use his terminology), that is to say that they build up an organisational infrastructure and resources of their own. This then becomes a stake in the calculations of political actors, as the party can now offer careers (administrative and representative), honours, prestige and so on. This coexists with the elaboration of programmes, manifestoes and the development of a distinct party subculture. Leaving aside the question of how adequately the party represents particular social groups, which is usually assumed to be its main raison d’être, the party now exists as an actor in its own right, with interests of its own, which it will obviously seek to enhance. In particular, it will look, as Panebianco reminds us (1988: 53) to control its environment, that is, to remain as autonomous as possible, with regard both to other groups with which it must interact within the political system and to subgroups within its own walls. Pedersen puts this brutally but accurately when he says that parties are ‘organisations

14


that try to control the relations between the citizens and the political régime’ (1996: 28). One consequence of this is that a party must be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities to extend its influence, both to enhance its own base and the better to satisfy its voters. The life of modern parties can therefore be understood as a continuing search for sources of influence, in the widest sense. As the field of possible influence expands, so the party must spread into it; parties follow opportunities as trade was once said to follow the flag. Every new arena that opens up within the field of politics sets a new challenge to parties: How are they to respond to it in a way that enables them to keep control of the agenda, the voters and if possible the decisions? Long before the concept of ‘multi-level governance’ came into vogue, parties have been operating at many different levels, or, to use a word currently in vogue, in different arenas, with varying degrees of commitment. If with Duverger (1981: 24–31) we trace the beginnings of modern parties to cliques of notables in parliamentary bodies, whose party organisation was little more than a local committee of worthies, active long enough only to get its man elected, we see that the field of action of the early ‘party’ was small. It was restricted to the locality and consisted in choosing a man to represent that locality within the capital, which was at this time the only real locus of decision-making. Yet as the scope of politics expanded beyond the capital, and in particular as institutions of local government grew, a new area emerged in which the nascent parties dare not fail to get involved. It was an uneven process across Europe (Caramani, 2004), but the subnational area was vital in building the institutional base of those mass parties, which, beginning with the socialists, followed on the heels of the cadre parties, according to the classic views of party history (Katz and Mair, 1995). If party spread easily enough to subnational levels, filling the elective bodies, there should be no reason why it might not spread outside national frontiers, if the occasion arose. Parties have their roots in their own state, but there is nothing unconditional about their link to this state. They are, we must remember, organisations devoted to preserving themselves and representing their supporters, and these two processes are intimately connected. If it appeared to parties that their two main tasks might need, to an extent, to be carried out beyond the national territory, then they should not, as rational, self-preserving actors, have difficulty with this notion. All this very much depends, obviously, on precisely what opportunities or pressure for transnational action might arise, and to this we now turn.


15

Party extra muros: an overview of transnationalism Historically, parties have been interested in transnational activity of some kind almost from their inception. Even if we discount the experience of the International Working Men’s Association or First International (1864–1876) as a grouping of intellectuals, isolated artisans or professional groups and not of parties stricto sensu, then the Socialist International or Second International (1889–1914) is a much weightier event. This grouping was launched at a time when socialist parties in European states were, with the exception of the German SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), in their infancy. In other words, socialist parties understood that their work entailed a transnational dimension, however small, even as they began to build up their strength at home. The two dimensions of their activity were thus inseparable, though obviously not equal. Since the socialist Internationals, other party families have equipped themselves with transnational organisations, in a process of mimetism that clearly suggests that there is nothing unique about the socialists’ desire for organisation beyond the frontiers.2 As well as transnationalism spreading across all party families, the form of such organisation has also changed and indeed deepened. The advent of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in1952, followed by the European Economic Community (EEC) (1958), gave party families a new arena in which to become active. The ECSC Assembly, which became the European Assembly then Parliament, was a unique transnational forum, consisting of representatives of the member states (initially nominated, later elected). Since the beginning (Kreppel, 2002; Murray, 2004), national parties have organised their representatives along transnational lines, according to party family, within these bodies. A similar procedure has been followed in other transnational assemblies such as the Council of Europe or more recently the Committee of the Regions. Within the EP, the parliamentary groups that were the initial focus of transnational activity have retained their importance, but the party families have developed closer links of an extra-parliamentary nature. By the 1970s (Table 1.1), most of the families had confederal structures grouping the various national member parties. With the agreement to hold direct elections to the EP in 1979, the organisational framework tightened further, and various incipient ‘Europarties’ or TNP emerged. By November 2003, the European institutions had agreed a thoroughgoing Regulation for the supervision and financial support of these TNP (OJ L297/1, 15 November 2003)

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Table 1.1 Party families and their roads to transnationalism 1864 1889– 1919–1939 1914 Socialists

Christian Democrats

Liberals

Communists

Greens

1st 2nd Inter Inter

1945–1958

1958

1970s

Soc group in ECSC NEI-EUCD

Soc group CESP in EP CDI

CD group in ECSC Liberal International Lib group in ECSC Cominform

CD group EPP in EP

1990s/ 2000

LSI-SI

SIPDIC

Entente

Third International (Comintern)

PES

Lib group ELDR in EP EP groups GUE/NGL PEL

EGC

EFGP, EGP

(Schmidt, 2004), which has been operating since 2004 (Day and Shaw, 2006).3 This development took the history of TNP co-operation into a new, more institutionalised phase, but the movement did not stop there. Two years into the new TNP regime, advocates of stronger TNP were busy pushing their case further. Jo Leinen, a Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SDP) MEP known for his federalist opinions, reported to the EP Committee on Constitutional Affairs and tabled a motion to the Parliament on 27 February 2006 [motion 2005/2224(INI)]. Reviewing progress to date, Leinen noted the need for a definitive Statute for the TNP, as opposed to the present Regulation, citing in support the views of most of the leaders of the TNP and a report from the EP Secretary General. His main criticisms concerned finance, particularly the shorttermism of current arrangements, whereby TNP are financed only on an annual basis; the grant is determined every year and can change in function of the number of parties (and the last 2 years have seen a number of new entrants). TNP cannot roll over budget surpluses to the following year and can only vire small percentages from one of their tightly drawn budget lines to another. All in all, such a system discourages forward planning and sound financial management. By way of improvement, the motion suggested paying out more of the funds up front (up to 80 %),


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agreeing on funding for the 5-year cycle of parliament, allowing TNP to build up surpluses and have more flexibility in using funds. At the end of the motion, some bold non-financial measures were advocated; the Commission should be asked to submit proposals for the European political foundations to assist TNP directly. The motion also urged further debate on issues such as whether TNP should be encouraged to draw up European-wide lists for EP elections and have a role in referenda and the election of the Commission President. In short, the Leinen motion concentrated mainly on strengthening the TNPs’ financial base but tried to open the door to the adding-on of some real political powers. These latter proposals in particular represented a weakening of the hold of national parties, and it remained to be seen how much of the motion would be accepted. In the event, the EP approved the motion on 23 March, and it now resides with the Commission and Council for consideration. There is ample opportunity in these instances for the recommendations to be amended, watered down or simply refused, possibly even by ministers from some parties whose MEPs had voted for them. Our guess would be that the financial provisions will be approved more easily than the political suggestions but that remains to be seen. If this were to be the case, then we would be left with a situation where the advocates of integration had gained a further inch in the face of some stern national resistance and where the struggle would simply go on. Such has been the history of integration from the beginning. This recent, acute change in the transnational activity of parties needs to be explained. The postwar world has clearly asked some hard questions, both of parties and of the nation states that are their natural habitat. There are lengthy and specialised debates about how the modern state is being reconfigured, or ‘hollowed out’ in more drastic versions, as it struggles to discharge its functions in a changing world.4 Suffice it to say here that modern states have been subjected to a two-way squeeze; on the one hand, they have found it advisable to hive off various functions to subnational level, whereas on the other, they have pooled part of their powers ‘upwards’, at the level of the European Union (EU), in what is termed the integration process. There is no reason to see this in apocalyptic terms as the ‘end of the state’, as some sovereignists are prone to do. States have not been simple victims of wider trends, such as economic integration or the meshing of various pressures – economic, societal, cultural, technological – which we summate under the term of globalisation. They have, however, been aware of such pressures and sought strategies to adapt to them; these can vary

18


according to state traditions and particular historical experiences. The upshot is that states are nowadays involved in complex, multi-layered processes of government, or as analysts increasingly term it, governance (Kohler-Koch, 1996); these involve the state in relationships with a whole series of actors – public, private, supranational – which are in constant flux. All this is a far cry from the era of relatively self-sufficient and self-governing states in which parties grew and prospered. Just as governments have had to make adjustments and innovations at sub- and supra-national levels, so have parties. Changes in party development at subnational level are beyond the scope of this work, though they have been vigorous and are ongoing. Changes at the level above the nation state have, however, been just as strong, and we would argue that the move towards European integration has taken party transnationalism into new waters. Never previously was there an institution such as the EP, where parties were virtually forced to structure themselves in new ways so as to obtain influence; nor was there ever a development from the detailed and specific type of collaboration involved in EP work to the creation of actual TNP with a role and ambitions beyond the hemicycle of Strasbourg or Brussels. This is why we regard the period since 1979 particularly as something of a quantum leap in TNP activity. This rapid overview of more than a century of TNP activity compresses into the same descriptive framework a number of different situations and a range of relationships between national parties and their transnational instances, which vary both in intensity and in quality. It can be easily objected for instance that a party International is not the same as a TNP; if it were, why should the two continue to coexist as they do? It might also be suggested that the relationship between national and transnational instances could vary according to family. To take the most obvious instance, the Third International or Comintern enjoyed, at the height of the Stalinist era, a radically different position with regard to the national communist parties than did the SI with regard to its constituents. Such objections are valid and must be addressed, but they should not detract from one common thread that runs through the last century and a quarter, namely the pursuit of their interests by national parties via a transnational framework. The way in which they define these interests can vary across time and place; so can the organisational structures to which they are prepared to agree. Yet there is a consistent pattern of extending or at least protecting interests via transnational mechanisms. We need now to try and elaborate a theory of national party/transnational organisation relationships that might fit all the situations that have occurred in the course of recent history. It would need


19

a central, explanatory core while retaining sufficient flexibility to cover the wide variety of situation evoked above.

Current approaches to the national/transnational dimension of party Existing scholarship has of course attempted to come to grips with the phenomenon of TNP, and there is considerable variation in the way in which they are approached in the literature. At one extreme is the casual language of party professionals, who use the term party to describe almost any type of organisation. Thus, Schoettli, a former secretary general of the Liberal International (LI), describes his organisation as a ‘truly global transnational party’ in the making (1983:173). In similar vein, the website of the Independence and Democracy (ID) group in the 2004 EP invited visitors to read more about ‘the Party’ in its introduction, a surprising self-description by this sovereignist organisation, when it has set its face against becoming a europarty and was bitterly opposed to the European Party Regulation.5 Perhaps such laxity is simply the mark of busy politicians who do not attach as much importance to vocabulary as political scientists; if so, it may say something about the way they regard TNP. Academics have come to the problem from a number of different angles. One of the most experienced observers of group development in the EP, Luciano Bardi, still sees the party federations (his preferred phrase) as being at a very early stage of development, albeit with some potential, provided that national parties allow this to be released (Bardi, 2002a,b; 2006). This approach is broadly in line with our own. A frequent comparison is with US political parties (Hix, 1998; Raunio, 2002b), the implication being that the TNP are the equivalents of the nationwide Democrat or Republican parties, whereas their constituent national parties are the equivalent of the Democrat or Republican organisations in, say, Texas or Ohio. This comparison is in many ways quite unhelpful, despite superficial similarities. Leaving aside the fact that the US is a state, whereas the EU is a unique non-state political system, there is a big difference in scale between the stakes for which national parties compete in Europe and those on offer in state-level contests in the US; the governorship of Montana is not the same as the chancellorship of Germany. This alone takes away some of the utility of the comparison. Similarly, the national or federal parties in the US, even though they are said to be mere shells outside the periods of electoral campaigns, do actually run candidates for the highest office, the presidency; thus far

20


the European TNP cannot even agree on a candidate for president of the European commission. Even if they could, it would be irrelevant, as this office is filled by agreement between representatives of states in the European Council and not by a vote of Europe’s citizens responding to prompts from the TNP. There is, then, a discrepancy in size and function between these alleged functional equivalents in the two systems. Related to this approach is the desire to portray the TNP is terms of a more general federalist model (Jansen, 1995; Johansson, 1996; Hrbek, 2004). German scholars in particular are attracted by this approach, reflecting both their experience within their own polity and an enthusiasm to see the EU evolve along similar lines. This approach relies on assuming that the EU as a whole contains enough features of a federalist nature to justify such a tactic, though its protagonists usually stop short of describing the EU as a federation in so many words. Scholars have doubtless been encouraged in this approach by the TNP themselves, who have referred to themselves as ‘confederations’ in the earlier phase of development and latterly as ‘federations’ of parties. This approach might convince more, however, if the EU really were an unambiguous federation, with clearly devolved powers to both central and subcentral levels, which the structure of the ‘federal’ parties could then match. In practice, this type of structure usually involves some kind of central parliament in which federal parties are represented. Below it are the regional assemblies in which local versions of the federal parties (by no means always coterminous with the latter) would be active, and they would usually also be represented in some kind of senate that looked after essentially territorial interests. The EU, with its uniquely complex structure and perpetual triangulation between Commission, Council and Parliament does not fit very closely to existing federal models, however. Again, the federal model is of limited value, though Jansen, to be fair, suggests that only the German and Austrian experiences among viable federal systems are really relevant to the EU (1995: 163). Another approach that probably owes much to the context of German federalism is Oskar Niedermayer’s famous triptych. According to this, parties can go from a stage of minimal contact to various degrees of active co-operation (roughly where most TNP are today). The third, highest stage is integration; here national parties would have made substantial powers and resources over to a transnational agent, whose decisions would then be binding on them (see Johansson and Zervakis, 2002). One reason why scholars persist with this line of enquiry might lie in the way in which the EU itself has talked about TNP. Long reluctant to involve themselves in the question, Council and Commission eventually


21

agreed, under German prompting (Kulahci, 2005: 8), in the famous Article 138a of the TEU to define TNP functions in what was the beginning of a process to regularise and constitutionalise their status, ending with the party Regulation of 2003. Pedersen is correct to see Article 138a as both ‘opaque’ and ‘high-flown’ (1996: 25). The two main identifying feature of TNP were, in the drafters’ mind, their contribution to raising awareness of Europe and to furthering integration (essentially by reinforcing links between citizens and institutions). TNP thus tend to be thought about as primarily agents of European integration, which may be misleading. In one purely superficial sense, they are obviously agents of integration; simply by existing and co-ordinating activity within the EP, they could be seen as a useful cog in the engine of integration. This description of them, however, also has some normative content; it is assumed, usually implicitly, that TNP are, by virtue of their everyday functions, not just some modest and quite passive part of the integration process, but active and willing protagonists in it, indeed that they were set up for precisely this purpose, presumably by national parties wanting this very objective. If assumptions like this are accepted, then it becomes very easy to start talking in federal terms. We shall see, however, that such blithe assumptions about national parties are in most cases quite unjustified. Two recent scholars provide further angles on the TNP. Lightfoot’s study of the Party of European Socialists (PES) (2005) neatly sidesteps the question of the TNPs’ inability to mobilise voters directly (the voteseeking model of party) or to place candidates directly into office (the office-seeking model); both these failings are of course used by some analysts to deny party status to the TNP. Instead, he suggests pragmatically that we consider the TNP as policy-seeking actors; they operate within a political system, the EU, that is sui generis, and within this they may be able to influence the policy process by acting in areas such as the EP or in pre-Council leaders’ summits. This approach has the merit of concentrating on the TNP as systemic actors without subjecting them to preconceived tests of ‘partyness’, which, given the inevitable bias in such academic exercises, they are unlikely to pass. Day and Shaw bring an approach that reflects their ongoing work on the constitutionalisation of the EU (Day, 2005; Day and Shaw, 2006). They are strongly concerned with issues such as legitimacy of institutions and they see the linkage function between EU-level institutions and citizens as one area where TNP might play a key role. By looking at the internal dynamics of one party, the PES, they detect a pattern of forces at work that we might characterise as a federalist impulse working

22


against an intergovernmentalist one. Thus far, the latter has prevailed without much difficulty, and the suggestion is that it makes more sense to see the TNP at present as facilitators of relationships between national parties and their leaders rather than as possible direct representatives of European citizens at EU level. So long as there is no European demos, this direct representation cannot be expected to happen. In other words, the development of TNP, if there is to be any, depends on the evolution of EU institutions. Though based on the PES, this approach is intended to be generalisable to other party families, and it has the merit of drawing attention to the continuing dynamic of federalist/intergovernmentalist forces inside the TNP, instead of considering them simply as unitary actors. In particular it stresses how wary national parties still are of the possibility of ‘capture’ (2006:103) by TNP if they were to strengthen the latter. One can understand the reluctance of all the above approaches to the development of TNP to make use of the classical instruments of party scholarship. Rokkanian analysis focuses on nation states and the transformations that they have undergone in order to explain the genesis of modern parties. But the latter are single, relatively homogeneous units, not the composites which TNP are. Duverger has a concept of the indirect party (1981: 49–62), which offers some apparent similarity with the case of the TNP, in that he is referring to parties founded by previously existing organisations. Yet on inspection, his examples are all found in single states, and the sponsors or categories of associations that create the parties (trade unions, farmers’ associations, catholic groups, etc.) are all actors within civil society, not parties as such. TNP do not fit in to his model because they are transnational and are, uniquely, founded by existing national political parties. Yet the Rokkanian approach is pertinent in that it rests on one feature that is common to all nation states, the cleavage. All the TNP assemble parties from the same family on a transnational basis. These parties owe their identity to a deeply national experience, the cleavage; but they then bring this identity into a transnational arena, the EU. Cleavages and the experience of them cannot be left at home in a cupboard, so to speak; they are part of the fibre of parties. Some scholars mock the notion of party families as unscientific, rather in the way that it was once fashionable to pour scorn on the idea of left and right. Unfortunately for the academics, in both cases, the protagonists on the ground live and breathe by such concepts, crude as they might be. Parties happily admit to belonging to families because they know that they have shared origins. The different kinds of communists and Trotskyists described in


23

Chapter 6 remember their common origins in the struggle of labour against capital; the liberals of Chapter 5, be they social liberals or pure marketeers, also know that their ancestors fought the same fight against conservative domination. Sometimes there are tensions within a family, but they are usually overridden by underlying affinities. These affinities derive of course from common experience of societal cleavage. We need therefore an approach that takes due account of cleavage analysis but somehow integrates the transnational dimension. Our way of approaching the TNP is much more bottom-up. We see them very much as creations of national parties, put together in (in most cases) a highly functional way, without necessarily any deep commitment to an integration process. As integration has proceeded piecemeal, often in ways that were not chosen by parties that later on have nevertheless to deal with its consequences, certain functions have emerged that require action at transnational level, mainly but not exclusively within the purview of the EP. National parties have adopted, via successive modifications, the current form of the TNP as the most economic way of discharging these functions. To use Panebianco’s categories, this is an instance of institutionalised parties seeking to keep control of their environment. Pedersen would see them as trying to head off another potential threat. If the partisan environment undergoes changes, then the parties have to adjust in consequence; failure to do so means weakening of control. None of these implies any commitment to further integration or a fortiori to outright federalism, though some party families or individual members may be keener than others. As the institutional landscape of the EU evolves, some further changes to the structure and operations of the TNP may become necessary; if so, they will be addressed in their own time by the national parties. Seeing the creation of TNP from this angle as simply the seizing of new institutional opportunities by national parties (and the best way out of a constraint is often said to consist in turning it into an opportunity) takes much of the normative bias out of the question and reduces perhaps some of the emotion or hope that is sometimes invested in these transnational hybrids. Our bottom-up approach enables us to make cautious use of one general theory to help explain the relationship between national parties and TNPs. We refer to P/A theory, which can be used in a modified way, we feel, to make sense of an ongoing pattern of delegation of authority by national parties (Principals) to transnational Agents (TNP). We do not claim a perfect fit between this theory and the reality of the world

24


of TNP, but we believe it nevertheless to be capable of shedding light on the problem. In their recent article on P/A theory as applied to the study of the EU, Kassim and Menon (2003) conclude that this theory is highly promising as an approach to understanding the realities of the EU but that it has perhaps promised more than it has achieved. Certainly, to the scholar interested in political parties, there has been little sign of the P/A approach being used to understand the parties of the EU. The most interesting P/A work remains heavily focused on the state and interstate level; the concern is with the mechanics of national governments’ delegation of functions and resources to supranational bodies such as the EU Commission or European Court of Justice (ECJ) (Pollack, 1997, 2003; Tallberg, 2002). On the intra-state level, much attention is paid to the delegation of authority by national governments to so-called independent regulatory authorities (IRAs) (Thatcher, 2002; Thatcher and Stone Sweet, 2002). In all this work, however, parties scarcely receive a mention. Yet parties are at the core of the modern state; it is they who form the governments which then delegate to supranational organisms. Moreover, the development of supranational delegation by governments within the EU has gone hand in hand with a similar movement among Europe’s main political parties. This parallel or mimetic process has seen the creation in recent years by the national member-parties of the main political families of a series of TNP, based mainly but not exclusively around the EP and spanning all the major families. All these entities involve an amount of delegation to the supranational instances by the national parties that form them. Yet such TNP structures are in our view simply the latest stage in a longstanding phenomenon. Although the mode of operation and the significance of such structures have undoubtedly shifted over time, there remains a clear historical continuity from the early Internationals to today’s TNP. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that a highly adaptable general theory such as P/A has never been applied to the TNP and their predecessors. Certainly, contemporary scholars use P/A theory overwhelmingly to explore interstate dynamics within the regional level that is the EU. But the theory did not originate in international relations, rather in business economics and thereafter in (mainly US-oriented) legislative studies. Clearly P/A theory is a flexible tool, and there seems therefore a case for applying it to transnational relationships between parties, in order to obtain a new understanding of TNP.


25

The mainsprings of P/A theory are widely understood. Typically, a principal (usually taken to be a national government or another statelevel institution) entrusts, alone or in concert with other principals, a function or set of functions to a notionally subordinate actor, the agent. Adequate resources have obviously to be provided for the function to be discharged. The principals may in some cases create this agent directly. This latter, usually an institution in its own right, is expected to carry out these functions to the benefit of the principal(s), or, as the formula has it, to save the principal(s) a number of transaction costs. In Tallberg’s words, delegation is explained in terms of the anticipated effects for the delegating party and is likely to take place when the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs (2002: 25). Transposed to the EU framework, this conceptualisation has been used to study the delegation of functions by principals (national governments) to supranational agents (the Commission or ECJ), but also increasingly, as Pollack reminds us, to a host of new, secondary institutions (2003: 402–14). This trend simply reflects developments within nation states, whereby governmental principals have delegated widely to IRAs, typically in the realm of public utilities (gas, water, transport, etc.). Whatever the context of delegation, though, the principal(s) will have clear motives for such delegation and may well vary the type of function delegated according to the importance they attach to a particular policy area. Principals are aware that agents are not merely passive tools but that they invariably acquire interests and an agenda of their own; in Panebianco’s terms, they become institutionalized (Panebianco, 1988: 53). They may well attempt to put their own interpretation on how they carry out their assigned functions and will try to set their own agenda, not that of the principal(s). They can be expected to develop their own autonomy as far as possible. This tendency towards autonomy (referred to unkindly in the literature as ‘shirking’) is naturally identified as a risk from the start by the principal(s), who usually install structures to ensure compliance of the agent. These can include the initial remit given to the agent, various monitoring and supervisory mechanisms to be applied in the course of the agent’s work and the ultimate weapon of sanctions, ranging from the minor (replacement of awkward personnel, say) to the cataclysmic (wholesale Treaty revision, in the case of the ECJ, whose growing autonomy the national governments wished to check). Using this eminently clear and rational framework, analysts such as Pollack have made persuasive P/A models of the relationship between national governments and supranational EU institutions.

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Still within the context of the EU, it seems that there is a clear a priori case for applying P/A theory to the TNP of the Union and to their ‘parent’ national parties. From the time of the Internationals to today’s TNP, there has been an ongoing process of delegation by national parties to a transnational organism, which they have created. All the problems associated with P/A relationships have surfaced at various times within the history of the TNP and their predecessors: What benefits are expected from delegation? What functions and resources should be delegated? What mechanisms should be installed to prevent shirking? What sanctions can be applied? Scholars have so far used P/A models to analyse state actors (essentially governments), but there is no reason why P/A analysis should not equally well apply to parties, whether they are in government or not. It is not our claim that P/A analysis will explain perfectly every dynamic of the relationship between transnational and national levels, but we do believe that it can shed light on some important areas. We shall now set out in general terms the applicability of P/A theory to political parties and their TNP agents.

Parties as principals: the primary benefits of delegation We recalled above how much the modern party is contemporaneous with its nation state (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Flora et al., 1999). Certain types of party, essentially the conservatives and the liberals, probably found identification with the nation state easier. Yet even those families that arose in apparent opposition to the modern nation state (catholic, later Christian democratic parties, or socialists) had to define themselves in terms of a national political system, even if it was largely the creation of their opponents and the latter kept them away from power by various means. As such oppositionist parties built up strength, however, they became in their turn candidates for power (especially in those states with pluralistic party systems requiring high degrees of coalition), gradually becoming system-parties instead of anti-system rebels. In short, with the possible exception of the regionalist or peripheral family (and even it has strong territorial roots, except that its territory does not coincide with that of modern nation states), all major party families had strong roots within their national political system. This was where they grew, campaigned and when possible governed; this was their frame of reference; they became national institutions in their own right. When in government, party leaders might engage with representatives of sister parties serving in the governments of other states, but that would be a relationship between governing elites, not between party leaders as


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such; it would be state business, not party work. Given their embedding in the nation state, then, if parties are to subscribe to a transnational structure, or, in the language of this chapter, if such principals are to delegate to agents, there would have to be very powerful incentives. Contemporary use of P/A theory has identified a number of reasons for delegation. Some of these are to do with fairly visible or concrete benefits, often summated under the heading of transaction costs. Typically, a principal might want from its agent such transaction-cost benefits as policy-relevant information or quick and efficient decision-making (Pollack, 2003: 403). There can be an obverse to this, which is the cost of failing to delegate. Some theorists would apply P/A theory to demonstrate that principals can set objectives but not allow their agents the means to realise these; some recent debates about the EU’s Lisbon strategy, which thus far has been less than successful, make use of this technique (Dehousse, 2005). These benefits could be described as relatively ‘hard’, quite instrumental in character. Other analysts lay more stress on symbolic benefits: by delegating to an agent, a principal can make a gesture about its objectives or ideology, say, at comparatively little real cost. It can relay a message to a wider public. A more subtle benefit to be had is that of blame-shifting (Thatcher, 2002: 125; 2005); if a policy area is experiencing problems, a principal can find it very useful to point out that it is no longer its responsibility but that of the agent. Rail travellers in the UK, to give one example, are very familiar with this argument. It would, however, need to be established on a case-by-case basis how effective this dumping of responsibility is and how long it can be sustained before voters’ anger focuses on the real culprits; but certainly one can imagine its usefulness as a short-term measure. One benefit of delegation needs to be presented from a rather different angle, and this is the question of credible commitment (Tallberg, 2002; Pollack, 2003: 403; Majone, 2005). By endowing an agent with certain powers, a principal may deliberately put itself in the position of having to accept decisions stemming from use of these powers. Yet by signalling its readiness to do so, the principal sends a very clear signal to partners; they in their turn replicate that commitment by agreeing similarly to commit to the agent. The classic example cited is the European Central Bank (ECB); by making over to it powers to set interest rates, EU governments have shown each other that they are ready to be locked fairly permanently into a monetary policy whose priority is low inflation rather than growth. More importantly perhaps, they have made this commitment to the markets, as well as to each other. One aspect of P/A

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relationships that is sometimes forgotten when discussing commitment is this external dimension; commitment can be shown to a number of external actors as well as to other principals in the P/A setup. Delegation can therefore bring a number of benefits at different levels and in different contexts, and we can now usefully attempt to see how far they might apply to the TNP or their predecessors. Some of the benefits seem on the face of it more relevant than others. If we attempt to rule out some benefits as irrelevant, one obvious candidate is the blame-shifting function. This is an advantage of delegation that has been discovered more recently and may not always have figured in the calculations of principals when setting up agencies. There has probably never been a situation where a party has been able to lay blame for its shortcomings at the door of a transnational instance. It could be objected that the obvious candidate for such a scenario would be the Comintern; but it was never likely to have blame heaped on it by member parties, because the P/A relationship in that instance was a peculiar one, as will be demonstrated. Most of the other purported benefits of delegation do, however, seem to have some degree of applicability to the case of the TNP. The sharing of information would seem a high priority for TNP, from the time of the first Internationals even. Speed of decision-making on the other hand, is a more complex question. We would need to investigate just what decisions the transnational instance is able to take and what implications this has for the principals. The symbolic function is, however, of extreme importance for national parties and can in fact be further refined. By joining a transnational family, a party proclaims its adherence to a certain set of values and goals, by implication universal. At the same time, it states something about its identity; it marks itself off from other political currents, which on some levels may seem close, and firms up its own distinct identity. An example of this might be the case of socialist parties, particularly from Southern Europe, in the early days of socialist internationalism. One of the benefits of joining the Socialist International was to make clear the differences between socialism and a number of other ‘progressive’ political ideologies (republicanism, radicalism, anti-clericalism) which on the domestic scene tended to overlap with it to an extent. The question of credible commitment is perhaps the most relevant of all. Membership of a transnational organisation can send a signal to likeminded parties that one may be ready to commit to certain common actions or programmes. More importantly, though, it sends signals to the rest of the political community. We would argue for instance that


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the Second International was at least as much concerned with establishing itself as a credible actor in international politics as it was with strengthening links between its members in the pursuit of socialism. As such, it had to attempt to commit itself, on behalf of its members, credibly to certain policies of a peace-seeking nature; but this commitment needed to be made in the eyes of bourgeois and aristocratic governments as well as in the eyes of its own members and the class they represented. External commitment is as important as intra-family commitment. The above discussion has focused on benefits that are clearly foreseeable in advance and can be factored into the rational calculations that precede any decision to delegate. Yet one of the lessons of delegation is that unexpected advantages (or indeed the opposite) may accrue. The controls are usually in place to filter out potential disadvantages, but little attention seems to have been paid to incremental or unexpected benefits. Thatcher makes this point with regard to IRAs (2002: 126). We believe that the whole experience of transnational activity by party has thrown up a number of unforeseen benefits. Our next, historical chapter will explore this phenomenon more fully; suffice it to say for now that these benefits have to do predominantly with the identity dimension of party. It would seem then that the P/A relationship might offer a useful way of looking at the delegation made by national parties to TNP. There are clear possible benefits, some of them the result of experience rather than of rational calculation at the start. At the same time national parties were and are always free to put in as many controls over their transnational agent as they feel desirable, in order to rule out any agency loss. In such a situation, it would seem that the national parties must be winners all along the line.

Notes 1. Such accounts suggest indeed using further cleavages such as communists vs. democrats, or maiximalists vs. minimalists (Dewaele 2001, 2004). 2. We use mimetism in Radaelli’s sense (1999: 44–5), namely attempting to resolve uncertainty by imitating organisations perceived as more legitimate or successful. 3. Kulahci (2005) has an excellent analysis of the debate from the Maastricht Treaty to the eventual approval of the Regulation. Argument within the EU’s institutional triad centred inevitably on issues such as: the nature and extent of financing; criteria for party formation (degree of representativeness, democratic credentials) and functions to be fulfilled (should TNP run EP election campaigns?). None of these questions was definitively resolved, and all surface in any debate on TNP.

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4. For an excellent introduction to this discussion see Loughlin (2001: 1–29). His focus is on subnational developments but he sets the wider context of state reconfiguration very clearly. 5. Initial hostility notwithstanding, members of ID had by early 2006 filed not one but two applications to register new TNP under the European Party Regulation. This is elegant testimony to the reality of political mimetism; if rival parties are using new opportunities to protect or enhance themselves, how can one afford not to follow? (Interview with ID officials, Brussels, February 2006).

2 From International to Transnational Party: A Historical Perspective

A European party cannot be more than what its members make of it. Thomas Jansen, 2006. At present we cannot say with confidence that European political parties really exist. John Palmer, 2006.

First experiences of transnationalism: the Internationals The First International or International Working Men’s Association (IWMA) ran from 1864 to 1876. As was always to be the case with transnational endeavours, its creation was a response to developments within the nation states of Europe, which were trying to establish or consolidating their political identity, while at the same time industrialising (Anderson, 2002). The rising bourgeoisie that ran these states found intellectual backing from a Romantic intelligentsia for whom the nation state was a core element of ideology and who talked up the historical founding myths of the modern nation and sought to propagate its language and culture. The subordinate classes were still largely peasant, but the dynamic element within them was the workers. In this early stage of industrialisation, the skilled worker or artisan was prominent, as the era of large factories with a mass semi-skilled proletariat was, in most states, only about to dawn. Such men were confident of their skills, often well read and geographically mobile; boundaries did not mean much to them. Garibaldi could be seen as an exemplar of the IWMA activist (Anderson, 2002: 11). The type of international organisation they created was very much a reflection of their status. 31

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The IWMA was, accordingly, a loose structure that brought together delegates from a wide variety of trade unions and socialist societies, in this era before the rise of recognisable mass parties. Devin (1993: 282) recalls Engels’ contempt for its ‘naïve factionalism’ and his view that it was ‘a link, not a power’. Membership of its executive was awarded on the basis of competence, not by national quotas (Haupt, 1986: 84). It brought together the leftist elites of the day and enabled them to discuss the shape of socialism in the future and the tactics and organisation necessary to achieve it. It probably also achieved a reputation among bourgeois circles as a potential revolutionary threat far beyond its very limited capacity. It is customary to record that the International fell apart through the tensions between its centralist and anarchist wings, led by Marx and Bakunin respectively. This is an oversimplification, but even in its short life the IWMA marked an innovation. It was the first time that organisations from a political family had come together openly on a transnational basis and tried, however uncertainly, to plan actions in common. (Previous transnational movements such as the Carbonari or other republican groups were underground elite conspiracies, without a public, mass presence). Certainly in this pre-party era, the IWMA was a modest beginning, but it had identified possible common work across national boundaries and also revealed some of the problems involved in meeting such a challenge. The Second International or Socialist International (henceforth SI), which ran from 1889 to 1914, is a clear instance of parties responding to changes in their external environment in such a way as to increase influence. Over its quarter-century existence, the SI would show all the problems associated with delegation of authority to transnational bodies. The SI was postulated on the principle of equality between member parties. Even when it adopted a semi-permanent organisation between its 3-yearly congresses, the bureau contained two delegates per country; this clearly did not reflect the discrepancy in real strength between the German SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) on one hand and some of the small parties on the other. The SI parties were also widely divergent in character, allowing the expression of every shade of opinion from modest gradualism to the revolutionary professionalism of the Bolsheviks, though one of the results of involvement in the SI would be to bring them closer in some ways. The nearest that the SI went to a permanent structure was the creation of a small full-time secretariat, headed by the Belgian Huysmans as of 1905; the bureau met twice yearly

From International to Transnational Party

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and increasingly co-ordinated the work of the SI, especially by preparing its debates in some detail. The congress remained sovereign. It might be asked, in view of this light structure, whether we can meaningfully speak of delegation of authority; certainly there were multiple principals, the national parties, but only a weak agent, with little by way of autonomy, the SI central structure such as it was. Devin holds that the SI was no more a centralised political structure than its predecessor: ‘made up mainly of national parties, it was not a “federation” ’ (1993: 283). The bureau was, however, developing some consistency in terms of personnel, providing a dynamic forum for interaction between Europe’s socialist elites and beginning to provide political initiatives by the time the SI’s greatest ordeal was about to arrive in the shape of World War I. Such a body was adequate, in our view, to provide the principals with a number of benefits. National parties from the socialist family had invested much political energy, as well as some financial resources, in this new organisation. They did gain advantages in return. Undoubtedly, the SI through its bureau provided a powerful means of socialisation for the emergent socialist elites in different countries; to read the list of attenders at the bureau is to be reminded, anachronistically, of similar lists of participants at the summits of such as the European Peoples’ Party (EPP) or PES in the 1990s. Clearly the years before 1914 saw the establishment of practices that would enjoy a long life. Socialisation did not just apply to party heads and other leaders, it extended to other parts of the socialist movement. Between 1906 and 1910, socialist parliamentarians from member countries met under SI auspices some five times, in order to co-ordinate parliamentary work on such common topics as anti-war advocacy, the demand for arbitration of international disputes, the shortening of the working day and so on (Kriegel, 1974: 564). Socialist journalists (most parties had a paper) met regularly. Socialist women and youth developed their own organisations, with a permanent office; rising politicians in these organisations included the likes of Clara Zetkin, who chaired the first women’s organisation, and the future political theorist and leader from Belgium, Hendrik de Man, in the youth movement. Increased contact of this kind undoubtedly had effects at the ideological or programmatic level. Parties were helped, by involvement in SI debates, to focus more clearly on the burning issues of the day. The main one was the nature of socialism and how to achieve it. Enough has been written about these ideological jousts between out-and-out revolutionaries like Lenin, sworn gradualists like British Labour and those in between, like the SDP, who managed to keep a strong pragmatic focus on

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parliamentary, reformist work while still espousing a Marxist discourse on revolution. Suffice it to say that all parties expanded their theoretical and political horizons by engaging in this debate beyond their own frontiers. Strong disagreements remained within the socialist family, on such issues as colonialism or the ‘national question’ (essentially the problem of self-determination for peoples caught within the mosaic of Europe’s multinational Empires). But the SI enabled these to be aired freely, showing that they crossed national boundaries and ran through parties as much as between them. When resolutions were agreed (e.g. on the need to abolish standing armies or secret diplomacy), they did become part of the programmes of member parties; Kriegel speaks of the ‘enormous scope’ of such documents (1974: 562), despite their having no binding status other than moral, and says that they were regarded as rules for action by member parties. In short, all this was a process of exchange, hence a learning process, for national parties. The SI membership also brought benefits beyond the intellectual realm. The SI encouraged members to mobilise supporters on numerous occasions, on the same day across Europe. This was done in 1906, 1911 and 1912 for instance, in all cases to try and head off looming international crises by imposing a peaceful solution from the street. Organisationally, the SI helped shape the growth trajectory of modern socialist parties. At its inception it included a wide variety of groups, not just more than one party from many countries but organisations with distinct aims. As well as self-proclaimed socialist parties, whether revolutionary or what would nowadays be termed social-democratic, the SI attracted anarchists, syndicalists and straightforward trade-unions. The internal dynamics of the SI would, over the next two decades, see the gradual ousting of syndicalists and anarchists, as big national parties combined against them. These groups would be left to their ‘direct action’, which envisaged the working class winning power without having to bother with intermediate organisations like political parties; these latter were seen by anarchists and syndicalists as at best irrelevant and at worst as a dangerous diversion from the real business of ‘workers’ self-organisation’. The anarchists and their allies were not interested in the state, but the socialists were. Increasingly, beneath their differences, socialist parties concentrated more and more on electoral activity and running local government. The orthodox trade-unions for their part also moved towards forming their own international links, though the SPD had long tried to keep them in the SI fold, not surprisingly given the particularly close links between itself and the German unions. Their


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departure signalled a formal recognition of a division of labour between parties and unions, who may well have been pursuing the same goal (socialism) but were seen to operate in different arenas, with different priorities and tactics. In short, the SI helped bring about a decantation within the socialist family. Under its aegis, it became clearer what a socialist party was, and which organisations in the various countries could qualify. Devin shows (1993: 285) mixed results for the decantation process; if the SI succeeded in brokering unity between fractions of French socialism to form a unified party SFIO (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière) in 1905, it was singularly unable to generate similar unity among the socialists of Britain, Russia or the USA. This still left, then, a wide variety of parties with different styles and histories, but perhaps by 1914 they were much clearer about what they had in common.1 It is doubtful how far this benefit could have been foreseen by the founders of the SI but it was no less real for that. P/A analysis shows that the founding parties derived benefits from their agent principally in the form of identity functions (symbolic commitment, deepening of identification as a family) but also in the form of learning (about different experiences of and views about socialism). There were also less clearly anticipated benefits in the form of the decantation/legitimation function that the SI came to exert. But P/A analysis can be taken further, particularly into the difficult terrain of credible commitment. The national parties in fact expected far more from the SI than exchange of information, debate, comparison of policy, or even tasks of decantation or legitimation. They expected their agent, weak as it was, to perform a major role in one specific policy area, that of international relations. Here the whole question of commitment to a common policy line would prove vital. Quite simply, in pre-1914 Europe, socialist parties were, despite their growing strength, far from power and thus unable to have significant influence on policy in their own states. In Germany the socialist party had grown on the back of a powerful union movement that pulled in many of the unskilled workers in the new industries; its vote grew rapidly (34.8 % of the vote and 110 deputies by 1914). Its legendary satellite organisations, covering all aspects of civil society from leisure to insurance to education made it into a veritable counter-society within the German Reich. Precisely because of this, however, its hold in German politics was quite precarious; earlier Bismarck had sought to check its rise by repressive legislation (an option that could always be renewed). Even if it did well in Reichstag elections, its deputies were returned to a body that was only

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consultative and where they were unable to influence policy. The united French party SFIO, founded as a direct result of SI pressure in 1905 in a fine example of decantation/legitimation, boasted over 100 deputies by 1914 and a burgeoning empire in local government. Yet this party was still too revolutionary for the mainstream republican parties and was hence confined to the margins of the parliamentary game, thanks to the by then well-honed system of understandings between gatekeeper parties (Hanley, 2002a: 186–7). In the UK, the labour movement was still looking to the Liberal Party to seek reform via the legislature, and only after 1900 would a recognisable Labour Party emerge. In short, the socialist parties, rising or not, were largely powerless in formal political terms. In one area, however, they might achieve dramatic effects, precisely by joining their efforts. This was the domain of international relations, where the questions of imperialism and war and peace grew increasingly acute. Socialists believed that they could unite the working classes of Europe against mass mobilisation whereby governments might unleash war; they could exert a veto or use a deterrent. The International was just the agency that might be able to call this mass veto into being, and this was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for its creation; Haupt is clear that ‘the SI believed itself capable of mobilising an army of 5 million organised workers in the active struggle for peace’ (Haupt, 1972: 11). We know that the different national parties were unable to agree a viable strategy in pursuit of this objective, their disagreements turning particularly around the use or not of the general strike. Hence the SI was unable to produce that ‘speedy and efficient’ decision-making that was expected by its founders. This historical shortcoming does not invalidate the application of P/A theory, however. The various socialist parties (principals) set up an agency in order to obtain results in the diplomatic arena, which the principals individually could not hope for. The national parties had shown an unprecedented degree of inventiveness, not merely adapting to an institutional setting (their relative impotence in domestic politics) but actually trying to modify it (by obtaining leverage on foreign policy through creation of an agency for joint transnational action). If contemporary analysts speak of ‘bottom-up Europeanisation’ to conceptualise the ways in which domestic political forces seek to shape outcomes at European level, then this might be said to be an early example of bottom-up transnationalism.

Strong delegation: the Communist International It is impossible to understand the Third or Communist International (henceforth Comintern) if we forget that it was founded in direct


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opposition to the failed SI; as such it embodied the lessons that a certain strand of the old SI had drawn from this failure. This strand was of course what is usually summated under the heading of Leninism, whose major elements we recall briefly. This doctrine, whose supporters had battled unsuccessfully on its behalf within the SI, had two main planks. First was its analysis of imperialism. Leninists saw contemporary capitalism as highly unstable, driven to expand its markets constantly in the search for profits and thus having recourse to occupation and exploitation of other territories, in various formal and informal guises. Such a world-system always had, however, a weak link, where the innate contradictions of capitalism would be played out in acute form, i.e. the class struggle would be particularly strong, hence a revolutionary outcome possible. This is where the second plank of the theory became relevant, viz. the revolutionary party. Left to their own devices, the oppressed classes would never be capable of organising themselves for the revolutionary struggle that would overthrow bourgeois rule and allow the advent of socialism. A new type of revolutionary party was needed, whose nature and activity were different from the purely rhetorical revolutionary stances of the old SI parties. Comfortably embedded in the developing parliamentary structures of their states, these parties had decayed and proved by their failure in 1914 that they could never bring change. The new party, of which the Russian Bolsheviks were the model, would be genuinely revolutionary in that it sought the destruction by force of the bourgeois state, not its gradual transformation via electoral majorities. Such a party had no use for democracy as it generally was understood. It would combine electoral activity with illegal means (sabotage, sedition, etc.). It would be led by professional revolutionaries, equipped with a scientific (read Marxist) understanding of history and politics; such elites would be derived from the intelligentsia, either traditional or, as Gramsci had it, organic. The party would be vertical and disciplined, according to the doctrine of democratic centralism. In theory this meant that the lower echelons could argue as to policy or tactics, but once agreement had been reached, absolute obedience was expected in implementing the party line. In practice this soon became a vertical conveyor belt, to use Stalin’s phrase, whereby orders were relayed from a high command that was by now impossible to influence from below. Such was the Bolshevik model of a party pas comme les autres, designed to speed a revolutionary outcome that all communists, as they soon became known, thought inevitable in the short to mid-term. The model’s sudden surge of popularity following the success of the October

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revolution and the chaos resulting from the end of World War I can be no surprise in retrospect. What is of interest here is the international dynamic of Bolshevism. The Comintern was set up in March 1919 when the Bolsheviks were struggling in the midst of a civil war and foreign invasion. Haupt has described it (1986: 96) as ‘one of the great moments of historical improvisation’. It was presented from the start as a mechanism for coordinating revolution on a worldwide scale. Disgruntled socialists from old SI parties were invited to start up new communist parties, which would be members of the Comintern. To obtain the communist label and qualify for membership, new parties had to accept the famous 21 conditions, which encapsulate the concept of the revolutionary party set out above. Within a few years, there were communist parties active in almost all countries; clearly the strength and effectiveness of these varied considerably, from those which soon became major players like the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) in Germany or the PCF (Parti Communiste Français) in France to those which never achieved takeoff, like the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain). All these parties were ipso facto members of Comintern and they accepted to follow the lead of the Comintern executive ECCI (Executive Committee of the Communist International). There is clearly a strong pattern of delegation at work here; it works in the opposite direction to the weak form of delegation used by the SI. The latter organisation was set up by a coalition of national parties in order to play a transnational role in world politics. Comintern, however, actually created a set of subordinate agents, the various national communist parties, in order to contribute to a transnational strategy, viz. the hastening of world revolution. In this relationship, the principal was a notionally transnational entity, the Comintern; its agents were the national parties. This invites an examination of the nature of the Comintern executive, which was, as seen, in effective charge of the operations of national parties. Despite the presence of various leading international figures within its ranks, this body was in reality increasingly controlled by the strongest party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). With time, in fact, prestige in domestic politics became, in contrast to the customs of the SI, a positive barrier to membership of ECCI; the Soviets preferred ciphers who were indebted to them (Haupt, 1986: 91). The CPSU was in fact the core of the executive of the Soviet state. We therefore have a situation where a powerful state principal, albeit with a transnational guise, was able to create and direct the operations of a series of different national agents. No-one seriously


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disputes the extent or duration of this control, nor the panoply of tools used to ensure compliance by the agents. These ranged from the thorough ‘Bolshevisation’ of national parties undertaken in the 1920s (i.e. the insertion of Soviet loyalists into leadership positions and marginalisation of dissenters) through various bureaucratic pressures to physical violence, of which the ice-pick has become an historical symbol. The benefits to the principal were immense. It secured in many cases massive leverage on both the foreign and domestic policies of other states. Its local agents were obedient and, once given clear lines, duly mobilised their forces in pursuit of these objectives. This could be seen in some of the sudden and incoherent turns in the policy of some national parties, all undertaken in order to follow changing directions from ECCI. The oscillations of the German communists between insurrectionary strikes, sometimes in collaboration with nationalists of the hard right, and calls for a broad-left coalition in the 1920s are one crass example. Another is the sudden rallying of the French, Spanish and other parties from outright anti-system politics to the Popular Front strategy after 1935, as Soviet foreign policy changed; fascism was now perceived as a direct threat to the USSR, which therefore needed support from the bourgeois democracies. The local parties in the latter were thus directed to stop agitating and put their shoulder to the wheel of reformist coalitions, advocating rearmament and a firm stance against German expansionism. In even starker examples of readiness to place themselves at the service of the general HQ of world revolution/Soviet foreign office, Chinese communists accepted a deal with the nationalist Kuomintang which subsequently turned against them, while the Turkish party quietly suffered banning by the Kemalist state. In both cases, wider Soviet policy calculations placed the need for alliance with ‘progressive’ bourgeois régimes above the progress of the local party. It is hard to think of a more far-reaching or successful example of delegation. The Soviet principal created a number of subordinate agents, whose autonomy was limited (local leaders could always contend that there was scope for interpreting ECCI directives in a local context, but such space was comparatively limited, and those like the Frenchman Doriot, who voiced their disagreements, ended up by being expelled). These agents could be activated at short notice; there was no time wasted in transaction costs. In addition, Comintern brought its founder all the supplementary benefits associated with earlier delegation to the SI, especially the function of decantation. Comintern alone awarded labels of legitimacy to would-be communist parties; Comintern purged and

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restructured the agent-parties it had created. The information-sharing function was discharged vertically; local parties reported assiduously to ECCI. This hugely efficient form of reverse delegation is unique in history. It came about for a number of specific reasons, which are unlikely to be found together again. The most important is the political context of Europe in 1919. A series of revolutions, crushed brutally, except for the Soviet experiment which seemed all the more attractive for that; waves of mass strikes, often highly sophisticated in character; widespread social distress and a feeling that victorious right-wing governments were in no mood to reward populations for their sacrifices in the war; all these factors combined to create a wide acceptance of Leninist arguments, which had struggled to reach beyond a minority audience in the old SI. This cultural matrix is what allowed the pattern of delegation by Comintern to take hold. Thereafter, the efforts of local leaders, backed by the resources and organisational skills of the Soviets, gradually created an enduring and deep Leninist culture; the national parties became counter-societies in their own right, in a deeper version of what the SDP had been before 1914. But that culture was in many respects antidemocratic, and even if it sometimes talked a language of nationalism, it was ultimately ready to put itself at the service of a transnational force that was in reality coterminous with a foreign state. One is forced to ask whether such thoroughgoing delegation as we have described is only possible in a hierarchised, deferential culture of this type. Was it only the communists who can have a pure P/A arrangement?

From Internationals to TNP By World War II, the lessons learned from party transnationalism were mixed. Two possible formulae had been tried. In the one case, a strong form of delegation existed whereby national parties made over authority to an agent which then became the principal; in the other, national parties made only the weakest delegation of authority to the transnational force. The first formula was highly effective, but totally unsuited to democratic polities; the second took account of democratic norms but was of very limited efficiency. This was understood and accepted by all protagonists. TNP activity might never have progressed any further but for the shock of World War II. In the short term the war brought about the destruction of the existing Internationals, as had happened in 1914. The context of postwar reconstruction revived transnationalism, however, and would give it new opportunities.


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The party families did not take long to rediscover their international links after 1945. The clearest example is the SI, which was able to refound itself at Frankfurt in 1951 (Donneur, 1983; Devin, 1993) by methods and on bases which were by now familiar. Contacts between elites soon broadened into party links, and it was clear to all that the minimalist bases of the old SI were the way to proceed. Other families followed suit, albeit more slowly, if only because their pre-war structures had never been as developed as those of the SI in the first place. The CD family found it more difficult, and the stage of personal as opposed to party contacts lasted longer (Gehler and Kaiser, 2004), through the stage of the NEI (Nouvelles Equipes Internationales). To convert this into a proper party International, an outside impulse was necessary, this time from Latin America in the form of the ODCA (Organisación Demócrata Cristiana de América), set up in 1949, where the emergent parties pushed for the formation of a CD International, duly accomplished in 1961 (Dechert, 1967). This was able in turn to influence the formation of a European pole, the EUCD (European Union of Christian Democrats), into which the NEI converted themselves in 1965. The Liberals set up their International as early as 1947. It would be a useful catalyst in the launching of a European-level organisation later on. This could all have been regarded as a mix of simple repetition of learned minimalist behaviour (by the socialists) and mimetism by the other families. Yet the advent of European integration was to raise, however slowly, the question of the adequacy of existing forms of transnational collaboration. The ECSC, then EEC, with its new modes of decision-making and new institutional context would ask serious questions of national parties. Henceforth, transnationalism was to be increasingly understood as part of the process that has come to be known as Europeanisation.

Europeanisation and party Recent literature on Europeanisation has drawn attention to the ways in which parties are affected by this process (Featherstone and Kazamias, 2001; Mair, 2001; Party Politics, 2002). We understand the concept as a dialectic, in which many institutions other than parties are involved. As decisions are shaped at the level of European institutions, or if one prefers another terminology, the further the integration process goes, these decisions inevitably have repercussions on the behaviour of actors at national, and indeed subnational, levels. At the same time, however, the latter are heavily involved in the shaping of these decisions

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in the first place; ‘Europe’ is after all the resultant of the actions of those forces that contend within its institutions, and these are primarily national. National-level institutions are thus involved in a constant process, reacting and adapting to pressures from ‘above’ while at the same time trying to shape these pressures, alone and in alliance with others. This is a very abstract description, but so far as parties go, Europeanisation can be given a more concrete form. We can start by accepting the idea that European integration has had two main phases. The first one is described, rather summarily, as mainly negative, and ran from the founding of the EEC to the mid-1980s. During this period, states were preoccupied with economic reconstruction and welfare-state building; it made sense for them therefore to hive off a number of policy areas (the management of heavy industries such as coal and steel, modernisation of agriculture, internal tariff reduction, setting of external tariffs) to a supranational authority. Freed of this burden, they could get on with building consensus at home on the basis of increasing prosperity. Such is the sense of Milward’s claim that early European integration rescued the nation state (Milward, 1992), a strain of argument carried on by ‘liberal intergovernmentalists’ such as Moravcik (1995). This situation lasted easily enough till well into the 1970s, enabling commentators to speak of a ‘permissive consensus’ on European integration; the topic was not widely debated, and integration could be said to have enjoyed, in contemporary language, ‘output legitimacy’. Publics judged it (insofar as they knew about it or had views at all) by results, not according to academic theories of democracy or legitimacy. These results were generally positive in terms of stability and prosperity. This changed with the reshaping of the world economy after the disturbances of the 1970s. With falling growth and increased questioning of the role of the European Community (EC), European leaders moved into a second more dynamic phase of integration, centring on the completion of the Single Market and including the launch of the euro and the ECB. The making over of some strong tools of economic policy (power to set interest rates and adjust currency, power to protect national industry) from national to European level signified an acceptance by governments (and by most oppositions, in fact) that classical Keynesian methods of economic management had had their day. The new institutional arrangements included a greater role for the EP, perhaps intended as a counter-pole to what would otherwise be a highly technocratic mode of governance. This embracing of the logic of a competitive, global economy in line with liberal orthodoxy and its translation


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into European institutions and practices had implications for all actors. Parties in particular were challenged, not least in their view of their transnational links and how to manage them. In the first phase of ‘negative’ integration, little innovation was required from parties. In a heavily intergovernmental system of decisionmaking, the EP’s role was generally agreed to be marginal. To assure its main functions of debate, all that was necessary was for party families to be structured along traditional lines in party groups. As no further functions (such as organising common policy positions or co-ordinating elections across frontiers) were required at this stage, no more sophisticated organisation was needed.

Group and party: a natural progression? Well before the 1979 direct elections to the EP, the political groups had become essential cogs in the running of the parliament’s machinery (Table 2.1). They served increasingly to absorb incoming members and

Table 2.1 Party strength in EP since 1979 EPP PES GUE Liberals Greens Regionalists† Sovereignsts Independents 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004

107∗ 110∗ 121∗ 157 233 268

113 130 180 198 180 200

44 41 42 28 42 41

40 31 49 43 50 88

9 24 21 38 34

3 6 3 9 5

22 29 20 24 46‡ 64‡

9 7 12 27 27 29

EPP, European People’s Party; PES, Party of European Socialists; GUE, Gauche Unitaire Européenne. This table gives numbers of seats at the start of each parliament and therefore takes no account of shifts of allegiance during it. The names refer to party families, irrespective of name changes undergone by the various TNP; thus Liberals includes European Liberals, Democrats and Reformers, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, etc. ∗ These figures do not include the Conservative group, which joined the EPP as its European Democrat (ED) subgroup during the 1989–1994 EP. The figures for the Conservatives were 1979–64; 1984–50; 1989–34. † Identifies those regionalists who sat with Greens or with predecessors such as Rainbow Group, as opposed to those prepared to merge into a big group (e.g. Slovakian Magyars or Italian Südtiroler Volkspartei [SVP] in EPP). ‡ These figures amalgamate the moderates of the UEN and the harder Eurosceptics of EDD/ID. UEN had 27 in 1999 and 2004; ID went from 18 to 37. Source: Perrineau, P. et al. (eds.) Europe at the Polls: the European Elections of 1999, New York, Palgrave, 2002; Perrineau, P. (ed.) Le Vote européen, 2004-2005; de l’élargissement au referendum français, Paris, FNSP, 2005.

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would continue to do so even after successive enlargements, leaving only a small proportion of MEPs in the seats of the independents or noninscrits. The main party families accommodated most MEPs, but other groups formed to reflect different political realities shaped by divergent national patterns of development. EP rules were always drawn flexibly enough to permit a plurality of groups, but never anarchy. The groups collaborated in the organisation of EP life, forming the management committees (quaestors and conference of presidents, which increasingly set the agenda). They controlled the allocation of speaking time and carved up, on a proportional basis, chairmanships and vice-chairmanships of committees, rapporteurships for different items of legislation and other rewards such as appointment to investigative missions or goodwill visits. Parliament’s major office, the presidency, is allocated on the basis of collusion between groups, usually the two biggest (socialists and EPP). Pedersen’s description of the groups as ‘giving MEPs an arena for transnational socialisation and a social life away from home’ (1996: 23) thus seems rather flippant, though it is true that he also sees the groups as ‘facilitating some practical activity’, which he does not specify. In fact the EP groups have developed high degrees of internal cohesion, comparable with that found in party groups in the parliaments of any European state. Scholars have long focused on the need to measure the degree of cohesion which transnational organisations can hope to achieve (Attina, 1990; Brzinski, 1995; Raunio, 1997, 2000, 2002a; Raunio and Wiberg, 2002; Costa, 2002; Faas, 2003). The most obvious focus has been on groups in the EP, for the simple reason that in this working environment there are regular recorded votes of MEPs, which can then be analysed. The best-known work on the topic is that of Simon Hix’s European Parliament Research Group (Noury, 2002; Hix et al., 2003, 2005; Kreppel and Hix, 2003; Hix, 2004). By dint of analysing roll-call votes (RCVs) from 1979 onwards, Hix and his colleagues have established a number of hypotheses widely accepted by most scholars working in the field. Briefly summarised, these are that over time, cohesiveness in voting within groups has always been high but has tended to increase latterly; in other words, national interests are not predominant in determining MEPs votes, whereas party-family or cleavagebased concerns are. Indeed the work usually finds that left–right socioeconomic issues are most likely to distinguish the behaviour of different groups. On this basis, Hix and his colleagues have been able to portray an EP moving towards the normal type of party competition observed in national parliaments, where the main axis of confrontation is between


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left and right: ‘the party groups in the EP constitute a highly developed, relatively stable and reasonably competitive party system’ (Hix et al., 2003: 327). Other scholars take issue to an extent with these claims. Gabel and Carrubba in particular challenge the use of RCVs as the basis of the claims (2004). Their objections are well known. RCVs account for less than a fifth of voting in the EP; they can be called by group leaderships for all kinds of reasons (to embarrass rival groups on a sticky question; to lever some of their own members into supporting a line with which they have difficulty; simply to send a message to the outside world, etc.). RCVs are called disproportionately among groups; the smaller ones such as the Greens or Gauche Unitaire Européenne (GUE) or sceptics seem to use them heavily, while the PES seldom bothers. Moreover, RCVs do not always address the big issues; many of these are settled by other methods of voting (show of hands, voice, electronic), none of which leave any trace, as only the total vote is recorded, not how each MEP voted. As a result, not only is much legislative work invisible but, the authors claim, ‘party groups hide the vast majority of legislative votes from the eyes of voters’ (Gabel and Carrubba, 2004: 1). Given these methodological flaws, the authors claim that the existing evidence cannot support the received wisdom about the EP, i.e. that it is a place of left–right competition between cohesive groups and blocs of groups. They conclude that (2004: 8) ‘we really do not know very much empirically about how nationality or transnational political interests affect legislative behaviour in the EP’. On the face of it, this rather depressing conclusion (for Euroenthusiasts) might seem to invalidate any hope of discerning whether transnational interests can be seen to be eroding national interest within the groups. The authors do not, however, present any evidence to suggest that national considerations may be paramount in determining MEPs behaviour. At the same time, RCVs are the only measurable votes available. If it is true that leaderships call them when it suits them to do so, then perhaps this is because they know that they will get a certain outcome; if, say, the objective is to bring a certain national delegation into line and if this tactic works, then this does argue for a certain degree of cohesion within the group, even if it has to be wrung out of the members on occasion. It is true also that no group expressly forbids a national delegation to dissent from a group line. One could argue therefore that delegations do have great freedom and that what is remarkable is that they choose to exercise it so little. The occasions when they do are usually well flagged up for publicity purposes at home (the behaviour of the UK Conservatives in the EPP group is a good example). Such

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occasions are usually well known to group leaders and rebels alike, and both have got used to treating them as part of normal group life. This adds a rough edge to group cohesion, but it is clearly manageable. If it were not, then we would presumably see much more fragmentation of groups, with angry national delegations splitting off more frequently. This is not happening, however. Overall, it makes sense to work on the basis of reasonably high group cohesion, until strong evidence to the contrary is marshalled. Our own encounters with group members and officials identified a number of points of friction, which we shall present in the following chapters, but rarely points of rupture. Such mid- to low-level tensions are part of the life of any national party, it should be recalled. TNP and their groups should not be expected to have higher standards of uniformity. McElroy and Benoit reach conclusions similar to those of Hix et al., using a different route. Using expert assessments to map policy positions of the major groups on a left/right scale, they find that group positions tend, with a few well-known exceptions, to represent the median of member party stances. They detect ‘a remarkably close correspondence between the EP groups and national political parties’ (2007: 21). The evidence for group cohesion seems therefore strong. With this background, the legislative process within the EP appears to function perfectly adequately, and the recent increases in the EP’s power have made no difference to well-oiled mechanisms. National parties, who provide the delegations of MEPs to fill the groups’ ranks, seem well in control of this process. We know from Kreppel (2002: 187–90) that behind the proportional allocation of posts between groups, there is also a nationally based system of allocation within each group; each national delegation expects and gets its share of the group’s resources, roughly in line with its weight within the group. No group has ever been able to impose the kind of whip that major parties in national parliaments can exert; it is accepted by all that a national delegation can abstain or even vote against the officially decided wishes of the group majority. When we add to this the increased surveillance, which many national parties have begun to exert over the behaviour of their MEPs (as explained in later chapters),2 it would seem, in line with our basic argument, that national party principals remain very much in control of the whole EP process and that they have delegated limited but adequate resources to their transnational agent, the group, in order to maintain control. The question therefore arises: Why bother going a stage further to create TNP? Surely the groups were perfectly adequate vehicles for


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the conduct of transnational operations of a precise nature within a clearly defined political space, the EP. In a system that had gone beyond the stage of co-operation and reached that of integration (to use Niedermayer’s triptych), the relationship between group and party would be clear. It would be exactly like that which is supposed to obtain in national politics, whereby a parliamentary group is notionally the vehicle for carrying out parliamentary work in accord with the priorities set by the party leadership. The fact that in most situations the leaders of the party are parliamentarians themselves is irrelevant in this context; the group of MPs is supposed to be a political tool for the pursuit of policy and the leadership expects to wield this tool with a high degree of control. Transposed to the level of the EP, this would mean that the TNP leaderships would have effective control over their respective groups; dissidence would be dealt with by the usual mixes of disciplinary measures and rewards for good behaviour. For such a state of affairs to come about, national parties would have had to cede large amounts of resources and power of control to a transnational authority and accepted in effect to become the subordinates of the latter. It would be a P/A relationship but almost in reverse; the TNP would be the principal and the national parties its agents. Clearly the present situation falls far short of this end stage. National parties have delegated quite limited amounts of resources and powers to the EP groups and even less to the TNP. In their eyes, the groups are more of a barrier to the effective development of strong TNP than they are an encouragement, and the national parties are happy for things to stay like that. It seems clear that for the time being, the national parties intend to keep their major focus on the group, rather than the TNP. Niedermayer (2002: 443) sees a ‘whole row of obstacles’ preventing the TNP from exercising any leadership role vis-à-vis the groups. He lists the different modes of organisation of the two entities, the superiority in the groups’ resources, the groups’ long experience of bargaining and negotiation in the context of EU decision-making. In addition to these weaknesses, he also sees the thus far weaker cohesion of the TNP as preventing them in any case from drawing up any kind of programme that they might then try and impose on the groups; Pedersen makes a similar point (1996: 16). Even the much-vaunted party leaders’ meetings, in the organisation of which the TNP are held to take a major role, may not necessarily be good news; for they might, in Niedermayer’s view, just as easily become elite-centred, semi-secret gatherings, at least in the eyes of their protagonists, with no positive spin-off for party development.

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One very clear hint as to the relationship between group and party is to be found at the level of logistics and resources, which Niedermayer rightly highlights. Until the European Party Regulation of 2004, the groups carried the TNP on their shoulders. Most TNP finance came from the groups, top-sliced from the allowances paid to groups out of the EP budget. Most of the staff whom the TNP employed (usually about 15 people in the biggest TNP and possibly as few as one plus a part-timer in the smallest) were seconded from the group staff, and with the exception of the EPP (which acquired a building outside the parliament in the late 1990s), all the premises used by the TNP were to be found inside the EP, within that quota of the space allocated to each group. This is clearly a top-down relationship between group and TNP, in which the latter were very much supplicants.3 It took the auditors’ findings on the illegality of group financing of the TNP for the European party statute to be gradually voted, and for the above situation to begin to change. What the precise extent of this change is, remains however to be seen.4

A European party system? Much debate has raged as to whether the EP is the site of a European party system. Those of pro-federal sympathies like Jansen have no difficulty with this notion (Jansen, 2006b), whereas for Mair (2001), it is inappropriate to speak of a European party system because the parties within the EP are not properly competitive. For Lord (2002: 40), the EU occupies ‘a middle ground between a party-less political system and one that has full parties of its own’. To an extent, this is a false debate, as some of its premises rest on narrow assumptions. A party system consists of the totality of interactions – in the widest sense – between the parties that make it up. Let us first accept that the main interaction between the TNP takes place within the EP, through the action of their respective groups. Group and party are by no means coterminous, as we have seen, but since the most visible site of inter-TNP relations is the parliament, we will assume for the sake of argument that, in this specific context, party does equal group. Kreppel makes a similar assumption in her informative analysis of the EP party system (2002: 45). The next difficulty lies with the nature of TNP interaction within the EP. We know that the TNP are not competing for office, as happens between parties in nation states; we know also that there are many aspects of TNP interaction that could be described as collusive. Hix, Kreppel and others have drawn attention to the majority requirements to be met if the EP is to use its powers in


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amending or blocking legislation (Hix et al., 2003, 2005; Kreppel and Hix, 2003). In order to present the requisite united front against the Commission or Council at different stages in the legislative process, the EP has, in consequence, often produced very wide majorities, pulling in parties from moderate right to moderate left. Such collusive behaviour has been denounced by some analysts as inimical to proper competition, and it seems to be the combination of collusive behaviour, plus the lack of availability of executive posts for which to compete, that somehow disqualifies the TNP from claiming the status of a proper party system (Mair, 2001: 28). We should be wary of applying rigorously criteria derived from national experiences to TNP. They are not, as Jansen reminds us (1995: 162–3), cast in the national mould, but built on top of the tried and trusted structures of their parent parties and operating at a different level of politics; as such they should be subjected to different conceptual criteria from the latter. If we bear this in mind, it is easier to understand the TNP as part of a party system, albeit slightly different from the types that we know. In terms of competition, first, the TNP are obviously not rivalling with each other to form an executive. Yet there are other prizes on offer in the EP: the presidency and vice-presidencies of parliament; memberships and chairmanships of committees. The TNP are also competing beyond the walls of the EP for the attention of voters. It is true that EP elections are heavily mediated through national parties; but the actions of MEPs in their groups, their access to media and even the work of the TNP outside the hemicycle can have an effect in shaping voters’ opinions. Anyone who looks at the debates of the EP can have no doubt that there is a vigorous exchange of views between all the families. The usual objection to such arguments is that such rewards as are on offer are carved up collusively among the TNP, seriously devaluing the competition within the system. As always with such critiques, the EP system is juxtaposed to some ideal notion, usually implied rather than stated, of perfect party competition in ‘proper’ partisan systems as found in ‘classic’ nation states, where big prizes are at stake and so no holds are barred. Such situations of pure competition are, rather like the perfect markets of a certain type of economic theory, hard to find in reality. Many national partisan systems contain heavy elements of collusion alongside more visible signs of competition. The so-called consociational democracies are open examples of this, and within them collusion is highly valued (though it is usually described in more noble

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vocabulary). Other systems, which often pass for archetypes of partisan confrontation, may rest on unspoken collusion. A prime example is that of the UK, lauded in textbooks as an example of proper untrammelled party competition. Yet such a view would not be shared by supporters of the parties which regularly take over a quarter of the votes but end up with a bare tenth of the seats, such as the Liberal Democrats. The major parties, Conservative and Labour, collude in the maintenance of a first-past-the-post electoral system, which certainly gives governing majorities but at the expense of fair representation. Although both the major parties periodically lose power under this system, both can usually rely on the pendulum of opinion to swing back after two or three terms in opposition and can hence resist any temptation to move the voting system more towards proportionality. Such a practice can be described as collusion without forcing semantics. In short, arguments about the lack of competition do not just apply to the EP and its party system. It is sensible therefore to abandon attempts at disqualification on technical grounds and apprehend the real dynamics of TNP relationships at systemic level.

Transnationalism today: TNPs and Internationals Most national parties in Europe have today, therefore, a dual membership of transnational organisations. On the one hand they belong to a TNP, according to their family origins; equally as a rule they are members of an International. It is useful to try and demarcate the two institutions, which coexist easily enough. Although self-descriptions can sometimes be misleading, such as when the EPP might describe itself as a regional organisation of the Christian/Centrist Democrat International (CDI), it should be understood that there is no formal hierarchy. It would be inconceivable that, say, the SI or CDI attempted to impose a policy line on the PES or EPP over their heads. The obvious first difference between the two types of organisation is historical, in that the Internationals originally provided the matrix out of which the TNP were born; habits acquired in the SI or its liberal democrat or CD equivalents helped launch the transnational groups in the early European assemblies.5 This factor helps explain another difference, namely that of geographical coverage. The TNP are essentially European parties, while the Internationals aim to cover the whole world, with increasing thoroughness at that. Clearly the growth of the EC/EU has been the main driver of the creation of TNP, but the ambit of the TNPs is not always coterminous with that of the EU. A family


51

such as the CDs has been able to boil down what were once two Europewide organisations into one, the EPP; this organisation absorbed in 1999 the EUCD, which had previously catered for those extensive parts of Europe outside the EU and which had existed pari passu with the EPP. Now the EPP is very much an EU-wide party that looks outwards to non-EU Europe and offers parties from these countries either associate or observer status. The Greens on the other hand conceive Europe as not being coterminous with the EU, which is why from the beginning their federation (now the European Green Party) took in members from Ireland across to Georgia. There is more to the differentiation of the two organisms than history and geography, however; we can speak of a functional division of labour. The Internationals are still the main point of contact for family members, for what might be termed identity purposes. These bodies still award family status or not to applicant parties, in line with a general definition of family ideology on which they agree. Within the socialist family, any member of the SI in an EU or EFTA (European Free Trade Association) state, or a state with an association agreement, is automatically eligible for membership of the PES, at the very least as an associate.6 Anyone doubting that this legitimating function still matters should refer to the furore within the SI at attempts by the Blairite leadership of the British Labour Party to broaden out the SI into a sort of democratic or centre-left International, with the particular purpose of including the US Democratic Party, whose leader, Bill Clinton at that time, occupied the White House. This attempt at doctrinal revisionism was soon seen off. By the same token, the Christian Democrat International recently agreed to change its name to the Christian and Centrist Democrat International, at the same time as it chose as president José Maria Aznar, a man decidedly not from a CD background. What this double move signified was an endorsement of the fact that the CD family has deliberately sought to broaden its membership, and thus been ready to dilute its ideology and identity. Recognising this at world level underlines symbolically what has been happening at European level within the EPP for a long time (see Chapter 4). The Internationals have, then, clearly still a role in decanting family identity. There is sometimes evidence of a clear agreement between TNP and Internationals as to areas of influence. As the states of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) prepared for the EU enlargement of 2004, all party families were highly active in the search for suitable parties to join their family and ally with them in the EP and other fora. This involved a

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varying number of tasks: helping to form parties (in some cases), or reviving them after decades of slumber under communism; training their staff; helping them with programmes, logistics or even finance. These tasks appear to have been divided up instrumentally among TNP and Internationals (Delwit and DeWaele, 1998; Pridham, 1996), with, in some cases, help on a bilateral basis between countries whose parties had strong historical links to neighbours. Delsoldato (2002: 274–5) suggests that the TNP took responsibility for candidate countries, while the SI worked with states that were not candidates. She also detects a distinct chronological pattern, whereby the Internationals made the first steps in what she sees as a three-part process (identification of potential partners, recognition and finally incorporation); the TNP only entered at a later stage. It is significant that these tasks were not left to the TNP alone, but shared with an organisation with long experience in such matters. As recently as the 1970s, both the SI and the CDI had guaranteed the emergence of viable centre-left and centre-right parties in Iberia after the collapse of the dictatorships; if the Spanish PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) had strong historic roots and a core of exiled elites on which to build, the same was not true of the PSP in Portugal, which was virtually carried to the baptismal font by the SI, acting mainly through the German SPD and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). On the CD side, the Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) and the Adenauer Stiftung played a similar role. If the logistical effort came from German parties and foundations, the overall guidance of the operation lay with the Internationals, who conferred party legitimacy on the new parties. The Internationals can also have a role that might best be described as parallel diplomacy. By virtue of the fact that they encompass members from so many states, they are able to voice opinions on crucial issues with some authority. The effect of such utterances is uncertain, but the SI certainly has been ready to highlight issues such as development and debt relief or détente and disarmament. At certain critical conjunctures, such as the very tense era in international relations at the start of the 1980s sometimes referred to as the Second Cold War (Halliday, 1989), evidence could be found to suggest that the SI was trying to play a role of diplomatic mediation as a concerted, unified actor (Hanley and Portelli, 1985). This was a far more modest effort than the SI’s endeavours before 1914, but with the same purpose of promoting peace in Europe at a very dangerous conjuncture. Internationals and TNPs retain, then, complementary roles with only a limited overlap.


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Transnational links of a special kind? In addition to their involvement in Internationals and TNPs, many parties have developed more specific kinds of transfrontier contact. We find in particular many instances of what can only be called special relationships, operating on a bilateral or multilateral level. Thus within a given family, party X may well have a particularly close relationship to party Y, both belonging to the same International or TNP. Such bilateral or multilateral links may well have preceded, historically, membership of a formal transnational organisation and they continue thereafter. Familiarity with certain parties soon reveals that, faced with possible difficult decisions inside their family, their first instinct is to consult, largely informally, with a party to which they feel close. We may identify a number of reasons for such closeness. One is clearly geographical and/or linguistic proximity. To take the socialist family, the francophone Belgian PS (Parti socialiste) is happy to admit its proximity to the French PS, with which it tends to line up on major issues inside the PES (these two parties are generally considered to represent the statist end of the socialist spectrum in contrast to the more neoliberal current as incarnated by British Labour).7 In this case, language, history and geography all militate in favour of a special understanding. Yet it is possible for two parties with very similar views, track records and electorates, sharing the same geographical space (to an extent, at least), to be very wary of cultivating special bilateral contacts. A classic example is the Green family in Belgium, where despite the strong presence of factors making for unity, these latter are clearly overridden by the linguistic division of Belgium. The Flemish Groen must therefore take special care not to be seen as to close to the Walloon Ecolo, for fear of being demonised by its Dutch-speaking rivals as too soft in the defence of Flemish interests.8 Nor can Groen entirely compensate for this lack of a ‘natural’ bilateral relationship by investing in co-operation with the Dutch Greens. While Groen feels close to the Dutch on a number of matters, such as peace and security, it also finds some of the culture of the Dutch Greens (e.g. their obsession with animal welfare) quite incomprehensible.9 Geographical or linguistic proximity can be misleading, then, so far as bilateralism is concerned. Geography and history can in fact play surprising tricks in this regard. One of our more surprising findings was the extent to which considerations of territory, understood in a wide sense, can structure bilateral or multilateral relationships. The Czech Greens, for example, enjoy particularly strong relationships

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with their German and Austrian neighbours. These contacts extend far beyond what one might expect as normal transactions between national parties; in other words, it is not simply a question of powerful parties with legislative or governmental experience in their own state lending a hand to a fledgling sister-party next door, though clearly the experiences and resources of die Grünen were not to be sneezed at. In the frontier districts, Green members regularly cross the border to attend branch meetings and participate in party activity; Czechs from Usti exchange with Greens from Saxony, those from South Moravia with colleagues from Lower Austria, while South Bohemian Greens liaise regularly with branches in Upper Austria. The MEP Milan Horacek, elected on the list of die Grünen, is a native of Prague and seen by both Germans and Czechs as the Czech Green voice in Brussels. Such intense collaboration reflects more than the standard Green arguments about ecological problems such as climate change or acid rain being no respecters of frontier. It suggests that the populations of these lands (mainly Habsburg) are aware that historically they constitute a distinct territory in the centre of Europe, which spans the recognised frontiers of today. The type of bilateral and trilateral activity described above is a way of expressing that territorial continuity.10 Sometimes a bilateral link can be triggered by the closeness of leaders or other elites. It seems clear for instance that a major development in the centre ground of TNP politics, namely the departure of the French UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française) and Italian Margherita from the EPP in order to join the Liberal group in the EP and set up a new TNP, the Party of European Democrats, would not have happened without the close friendship of François Bayrou, Romano Prodi and Franco Rutelli. The driving force behind this initiative is Franco-Italian bilateralism; but despite obvious potential sources of bilateralism to which one could point, such as cultural or geographic proximity, this was never particularly in evidence before the emergence of this leadership trio. Whatever their sources or durability, bilateral and multilateral links often play, therefore, a role in the everyday life of parties. Such links cannot be ignored but they do need to be understood within the context of wider allegiances. We should not assume, for example, that just because a party feels particularly close to another, the two will always form a bloc or caucus on any given issue inside a TNP or International. Numerous variables can intervene to prevent the workings of such solidarity. Parties can come to different analytical or strategic conclusions from those of a close friend; even if they might agree, they can be


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influenced to vote differently by their position in government (or not). Fears of voter reaction will be crucial. For all these reasons, bilateral and multilateral solidarities can break down within a wider arena. Nevertheless, they do operate, and it is always prudent to see if they are at work when considering the dynamics of TNP.

The foundations: a transnational infrastructure Any enquiry into the transnational operations of parties soon runs up against the presence of political foundations. Although they play a key role, particularly in developing TNP activity in recently democratised areas of Europe (as well as in other continents), there seems relatively little scientific literature on them (Dakowska, 2003). The role of the political foundations is intimately linked to the transnational activities of both national parties and TNP. While a number of states boast such institutions (Austria, the Netherlands, the UK with its Westminster Foundation), it is the German foundations which dwarf their European counterparts.11 Each major party family has a foundation closely associated with it, albeit without, crucially, any kind of formal or hierarchical ties. The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) is close to Christian democracy, the FES to the socialists. The liberals have the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, while the Greens have more recently acquired the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The most recent is the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, close to the leftist PDS (Partito dei democratici de sinistra), and which the latter was only able to secure after a bitter battle with the other parties.12 German foundations are funded by public money, unlike most of their counterparts in other states. Each one’s share of the available finance is determined by a formula similar to that which governs state financing of parties, that is to say, it depends on electoral performance. Clearly the big governing parties, CDU, SDP and to a lesser extent the liberal FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei), have been the main beneficiaries of this system over half a century, and their foundations have reached an impressive critical mass. The newcomers, Greens and leftists, cannot obviously compete in the same league. In addition to their large, modern and well-equipped premises in Berlin and Bonn, the foundations maintain a network of offices abroad. The field officers, of whom there are dozens, play a crucial role in the interaction with TNP, as shall be seen. The brief of the foundations is quite clear; it is political in the sense that they are supposed to promote democracy and political development, but it is not party-political, since

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they are explicitly forbidden to help specific parties financially. On the contrary, their expertise and resources are available to any group wishing to avail itself of them, even if it does not belong to the same family. Indeed such take-up of offers by groups from other families does occur.13 This precaution does, however, mean that taxpayers’ fears are assuaged and they need not fear public money being thrown away for narrow partisan purposes. There are of course other means of helping parties than finance, and it is here that the foundations come into their own. They can provide a think-tank or programmatic resource for aspirant parties in newly democratising states; they can offer training seminars and schools for party cadres, as the CPSU used to do long ago. They can give help with setting up and running a modern party office, or running an election campaign. They offer all these activities freely to interested groups in developing democracies (much of their work takes place outside Europe, but for our purposes the focus is ECE). But perhaps more important than any of this, and certainly it is the function which comes first in the sequence of events, the foundations are the key locus in the identification and selection of possible partners for the TNP. Our interviews showed a quite clear pattern; before the TNP come into play, local field officers will have identified politicians and movements who have the potential to become useful members of a TNP and thereby give that family a solid presence in the country.14 Once this vetting has been done, the TNP or in some cases International (or even, exceptionally, a party with strong bilateral links) will step in and carry negotiations further. After this the foundations’ role is purely logistical; they will help with training, publicity, campaigning and so on. But it is clear from the above that their role in decanting viable partners from the mass of would-be members is crucial. They are undoubtedly a useful piece of transnational infrastructure for the party families.

The different levels of transnationalism: how to prioritise? Transnational party activity has, historically, always been a matter of national parties reacting to pressures that they either felt unable to ignore or that might somehow bring them new opportunities. Over the past 150 years, they have therefore developed a wide range of responses, ranging from bi-national or multinational networks through parliamentary groups to TNP to full-scale Internationals.15 Most individual national parties will be involved, to varying degrees, in one of these structures.


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It is clear, however, that not all of these structures have the same value or urgency for those who belong to it. Whatever the hopes of their founding fathers, the Internationals have long since been downgraded to loose networks that permit networking between family elites and the exchange of some highly general ideas; anything beyond this, such as the occasional diplomatic venture by the SI, is a rare bonus. At the same time, bilateral and multilateral contacts have always been important to certain parties, before they ever joined any wider organisation, and they remain so even inside the wider type of transnational structure; such contacts can indeed serve as the first basis for the rapid organising of positions which may be later taken on board by the wider organisation. Bilateralism and internationalism could be said, then, to be on the fringes of transnational action for most national parties and hence might be given low priority. Yet if the micro and macro levels of transnational action can be downplayed, it is much harder for parties to avoid the meso level, that of European integration. The majority of European states have committed themselves to the EU, or are in the process of doing so. They have therefore accepted to conduct a part of their politics in a transnational framework with a unique set of rules and institutions. One major consequence of this has been the need for a party organisation that goes beyond classic national boundaries; it must be firmer than an International because it has to assure a certain degree of co-ordination and action. It must be more than a mere EP group, because some of its work lies outside the space of that parliament. (This is not to minimise the role of EP groups but simply to point out that they have helped by their action to bring about a situation that requires forms of organisation beyond their capacities; one could say that they were, in a way, victims of their own success.) In short, the TNP or European party seems the most significant locus, at present, of party activity beyond the frontiers. By focussing on such parties, we will have the best measure available of what national parties are really doing when they sign up to transnational structures. It might be tempting in the era of globalisation to write off the meso level as insignificant and see nothing between largely impotent national governments and uncontrollable worldwide forces, be they economic or cultural. To do so would be a mistake. It makes more sense to regard regional organisations such as the EU as the product of globalisation but also as a framework within which national governments believe that the processes which we term globalisation can be better controlled. Either way, nation states are forced further into European collaboration, and

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so are their national parties. Globalisation is a series of pressures, but membership of the EU is a strategic choice, which brings its own institutional and political consequences. For this reason, we will concentrate mainly on the development of the European parties in our examination of how different families have reacted to outside pressures, while not neglecting other dimensions of their transnational activity where appropriate.

National parties and their international operations Before examining how different party families have set up their transnational activity, it is worth pausing briefly to consider the organisational or logistical bases on which such activity rests. The way in which parties handle their international operations varies enormously. Behind the descriptions of international secretariats or European departments which adorn the websites and literature of many parties, a huge variety of situations pertains, as any researcher carrying out fieldwork will soon discover. It is extremely difficult to generalise about this with any confidence, so varying are the situations that one encounters. The best approach is probably to identify a number of variables that seem present in all cases, albeit in very different configurations. One obvious one would seem to be the type of party family. We might expect that some types of party, especially those with a strong rhetoric on European or transnational action, might equip themselves with a stronger international office than others, maybe less keen to stress nonnational priorities. A second, more telling factor would be resources; one can clearly imagine parties who stress their transnational credentials and are keen to develop their action, but simply do not have the means to do it as they would like. Many Green parties fit clearly into this category. Such considerations do not exhaust the list, however. The machinery that parties create to do their international business varies hugely. The classic model might be that of a well-funded major party, with a long record in government, comfortably off and established in roomy, well lit and comfortable premises. Such a party can clearly afford a full international department with an International Secretary and a team of collaborators. The German CDU in its new Berlin premises in the heart of the government quarter springs to mind, as indeed does its rival SPD a mile away on the other side of the Reichstag. A similar situation obtains, perhaps surprisingly, in an oppositionist party like the Czech and Moravian Communist Party (KSCM); notwithstanding the party’s


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respectable performance in elections (around the 20 % mark), this is perhaps more a reflection of past glories than anything else. The more common reality for smaller parties, however, is a downtown premises, usually rented in one of the scruffier off-centre districts and reflecting very much the character of its neighbourhood, where full-time staff of any sort are at a premium. In such cases, there will probably not be an international officer, and the work will be picked up by other parts of the party, often in an ad hoc division of labour between one or two administrators, funded by various expedients and often on a very tight footing, and one or more elected officials (national MPs or MEPs) who have come to specialise in this area and who tend to be left alone by the rest of the party to get on with their task. Thus two of the more successful Green parties, the Belgians of Ecolo and de Groen, have their transnational work done by advisers or former advisers to ministerial private offices, who are effectively loaned to the party for this purpose.16 Even the prestigious German Greens do not have a full-time international officer, this task being undertaken in a sort of rotation by different members of the executive board, including heavyweight politicians like Buttighoeffer.17 Some of the medium-sized parties with strong transnational interests struggle to keep their operations going. If a governing party like the Belgian PS can afford a small international bureau, then its long-term partner the Walloon Christian democrat Centre des Démocrates Humanistes (CDH) seems to delegate transnational work to a key leader, the federal MP Jean Jacques Viseur. The French UDF, proud of its record as the most pro-European of the French parties, relies nowadays on the voluntary help of skilled advisers working in the private sector and the energy and commitment of the head of its delegation of MEPs to put together a transnational operation. This is a long way from the days when its predecessors the CDS (Centre des Démocrates Sociaux) and MRP (Mouvement Républicain Populaire) had major international offices and provided the CD European operation with its Secretary General. It is true that the UDF was badly hit by the 2002 split, which saw over half the membership and elected officials sign up to Jacques Chirac’s UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) Party. But this is a salutary reminder of how easy it can be for a party to slip backwards and how in these cases the international department is often the first to suffer. Size, resources and tradition all play their part in determining the way in which a party will configure its transnational operations. Whatever the style of the operation, however, one variable must always be isolated.

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This is the way in which the transnational operations relate to the rest of party activity, or to put it another way, the extent to which the party leadership invests in and pays attention to such operations. Without anticipating our findings for some of the families, we can say at the outset that, as with actual configuration of transnational machinery, the relationship between party leaderships and transnational operatives varies hugely. Situations range from a very close degree of supervision by the leadership (it will surprise few to learn that the British Labour Party comes high on this scale) to situations where the transnational specialists enjoy large degrees of autonomy, speaking in transnational fora on various issues in the name of their party and expecting to be backed up by the latter after the event (which usually happens). Whether this is due to indifference on the part of the leaders towards transnational matters, whether they simply trust their specialists, or whether the latter have accumulated enough knowledge, authority and track record to have made themselves indispensable, is something that will have to be seen according to the party concerned. But this is certainly one of the key issues in any national party so far as its action outside the territory is concerned. Having outlined a number of general considerations relevant to the TNP, we turn now to the different party families and their transnational development. It seems logical, on historical grounds, to begin with the family that invented transnationalism, the socialists.

Notes 1. Kriegel sees the key variables as the process of founding the party and relation to unions. She identifies four varieties of party on this basis (1974: 559). 2. Whitaker (2005) and McElroy (2006) point out the increased attention paid by national parties as to which MEPs are put on to committees, especially the more powerful ones. 3. Interview with PES Secretary General, Brussels, October 2003. 4. For regular updates on the progress of the TNP, see Weidenfeld and Wessels, Jahrbuch der europaïschen Integration (Baden-Baden, Nomos, annually). 5. An exception to this pattern is the Greens, who currently have no International. If one comes into being, it will happen the other way round, so to speak, with the global level being built up from regional contacts. 6. Statutes of the PES, December 2006, paragraph 8.3. (Statutes agreed at 7th PES Congress, Porto: see PES website). 7. Interview with PS International Secretary, Brussels, November 2005. 8. Interview with Ecolo official, Brussels, November 2005. 9. Interview with Groen official, Brussels, November 2005. 10. Interviews with Petr Stepanek, Green International Secretary, Prague, October 2005, and Milan Horacek MEP, Brussels, February 2006. It should


11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

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be pointed out that some Czech parties, particularly the centre-right ODS, do not enjoy such close relationships with their equivalents in the Germanspeaking world. There is tension in particular over the issue of the property rights of Sudeten Germans expelled in 1945, these rights being annulled by the so-called Benes decrees of 1946. But this difficulty within one party family does not invalidate the general point about territorial solidarity. The US foundations International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) are also very well endowed and have undoubtedly played a role in Eastern and Central Europe, particularly in the states bordering the Russian Federation. They have of course no links to European TNP and thus their activity lies outside the scope of this study. Interview with PDS official, Berlin, October 2005. Interview with FES officials, Berlin, October 2005. Interviews with KAS and FES officials, Berlin, October 2005. One could add the presence of transnational groups in such bodies as the Committee of Regions or the Council of Europe, which follow broadly lines similar to those of the TNP and their EP groups. Interviews with Ecolo and Groen officials, Brussels, November 2005. Interview with board member of die Grünen, Berlin, November 2005.

3 European Social Democracy: Riding the Tide of Globalisation

Whatever its moral authority, no international Socialist organisation could ever assume mandatory powers. Denis Healey, 1950 A source of much hope, and often of disappointment. Belgian socialist official’s view of PES, 2005

From the SI to the PES Even as the Schuman plan for an ECSC was being discussed, the SI had commissioned a study group involving the socialist parties of the six countries concerned. When the Common Assembly opened, it was therefore easy to set up a socialist group. By 1953, it would have a bureau and secretariat in Luxembourg, and be chaired by the French PS (Parti socialiste) leader, Guy Mollet (Hix and Lesse, 2002: 10). On non-ECSC matters, links between parties continued to be maintained by the SI, which coordinated socialist activity in bodies such as the Council of Europe Assembly. In advance of the creation of the EEC, and under the aegis of the Dutch PvdA in particular, the parties of the Six assembled in a congress that set up a permanent liaison committee between the six parties, with regular congresses and the possibility of other meetings. The aim of the liaison bureau was to work out common positions on the new European institutions. The party congress worked out detailed structures for co-operation. The liaison bureau would have two officials from each national party, plus observers from the Council of Europe and the socialist group in the Common Assembly, with which it would meet regularly. A budget and scale of fees for member parties was approved. The congress brought 62

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together socialist elites, the bureau members being joined by delegates from national parties, plus Assembly group members. Thus, as Hix and Lesse remark, it brought together national party and European level delegates in a common structure (2002: 13). The congress agreed on the need for a common European programme for the parties and on the need to have the Assembly directly elected by universal suffrage. By 1962, the parties were ready to state that ‘European integration has a political goal, which is the ultimate creation of a “United States of Europe” ’; this Europe should give a decisive role to an elected EP, as well as featuring such socialist nostrums as incomes policy and economic planning. A single currency was favoured, as was majority voting in some areas. Socialists favoured the admission of the UK into the EEC. It would take the end of the Gaullist era and the General’s resistance to further integration for any of this agenda to progress. In 1971, with enlargement pending, the six parties reiterated their commitment to federalism, aware that the incoming British and Danes might be less keen. The Bonn congress of 1973 saw a high degree of programmatic unity, however. The Office (as the bureau was now called) of the social democratic parties of the European Community drafted a resolution that was widely approved by the congress and contained a raft of social policy demands, including the right to work, an EC industrial policy, standardisation of social benefits, provisions for worker participation and income redistribution. It also, however, allowed opt-outs for parties unable to accept certain parts of the programme, setting thereby a precedent (Hix and Lesse, 2002: 21). In April 1974, the Confederation of the Socialist Parties of the European Community (CSPEC) was set up. It was intended to be high profile, but the structures of co-operation did not alter significantly, save that some bureau decisions could now be taken by majority vote (two-thirds). Decisions could not really be made binding on members who disagreed. Evidence for this soon surfaced in the prolonged process of trying to write a common manifesto for the 1979 direct elections. Various parties had huge objections to different parts of the CSPEC draft, and a meeting of party leaders had to be summoned to sort out an agreement in June 1978. The British Labour Party (BLP) did not attend. Eventually a declaration was agreed, but national parties could have their own manifestoes alongside it; the declaration was clearly of a highly general character, though all parties except the BLP made some use of it in their campaign. It was clear by now that the hopes of such as Mansholt or Vredeling for a genuine transnational organisation able to give a strong steer to its members were fanciful. Toornstra, the Dutch secretary

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general of CSPEC, put the position trenchantly when he asked member parties if they wanted ‘a confederation with some political power or just a European Socialist Post Office Box’ (Hix and Lesse, 2002: 33). In fact, the 1980s would see the CSPEC withdraw from any ambitions it may have had to steer the national parties or the group and concentrate on a role of policy elaboration and coordination. Even here, some areas (such as the shape of EU institutions) had to be avoided, it being safer to concentrate on issues such as enlargement where there was less disagreement. Probably, the main development within this period was the growth of leaders’ summits, which always included Commission President Jacques Delors, at this time leading the drive towards Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); these were seen as a way of applying policy development to actual decision-making within the EU and ensuring that the socialist family had a more coordinated input into the process. The Kok report, which the Confederation had commissioned from the PvdA leader into its own functioning, acknowledged these developments, but also, in a direction more sympathetic to supporters of an integrated TNP, Kok reopened the question of majority voting as opposed to unanimity, and sought greater coordinated planning between the confederation and the EP group. By the end of 1991, the process of dialogue within the CSPEC had meant that each member party had roughly the same views on EMU, that is they were basically in favour but insisted on a strong element of social cohesion to mitigate possible adverse effects of monetary union (Hix and Lesse, 2002: 55). The renewed saliency of the TNP issue after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty and its Article 138a, referring specifically to the role of European parties in furthering integration, forced the socialists to look yet again at their organisational structures. Following a report by Fayot and Wöltgens, it was decided in November 1992 to name the organisation the ‘Party of European Socialists’. Using the argument of subsidiarity, various different national translations of the party title were allowed, in deference to strength of the sovereignist – or, as the case may be, integrationist – feelings of member parties.1 If nothing else, these show the linguistic flexibility, or, to use a suggestive French expression, le flou artistique, which has always characterised socialist discourse. The new party included parties from the incoming states. Innovations in the rule book included a commitment to gender balance on committees, the formal institutionalisation of the leaders’ conference and new rules on decision-making. Policy areas decided by Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) in the EC council could now be similarly decided within the PES, but any party could have an opt-out, provided it declared


its wish in advance. The qualified majority threshold was set at 75 %. Finally, observers and associates had right of initiative at party meetings. Thus, the socialist family had followed the Christian democrats and equipped itself with a TNP. AT the start of 2007, the PES had 33 full members drawn from the EU-27 plus Norway, with five associates and five observers (Table 3.1).2 Looking back over the slow formation of the party, it seemed clear that much of its development had taken place Table 3.1 The Party of European Socialists, 2007 Full members Austria – Sozialdemokratische Partei Österereichs (SPÖ) Belgium – Parti socialiste (PSB) Sociaal-progressief alternatief (SP.A), formerly Socialistische Partei (BSP) Bulgaria – Balgarska Socialisticeska Partija – Bulgarian Social Democrats Cyprus – Kinima Sosialdemokraton Czech Republic – Ceská strana sociálne demokratická (CSSD) Denmark – Socialdemokratiet (SD) Estonia – Sotsialdemokraatlik Erakond (Estonian Social Democratic Party) Finland – Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puoloue (SP) France – Parti socialiste (PS) Germany – Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) Greece – Panellinio Socialistiko Kinima (PASOK) Hungary – Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt (MSP) Ireland – Labour Party (LP) Italy – Democratici di Sinistra (DS) – Socialisti Democratici Italiani Latvia – Latvijas Socialdemokratiska Stradnieku Partija (Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party) Lithuania – Lietuvos Socialdemokrata Partija Luxembourg – Parti Ouvrier Socialiste Luxembourgeois (POSL) Malta – Partit Laburista (PL) Netherlands – Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) Norway – Det Norske Arbeiderparti (DNA) Poland – Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (SLD) – Unia Pracy (UP) Portugal – Partido Socialista (PSP) Romania – Partidul socialdemocrat Slovak Republic – Socialnademokracia (SMER) – suspended as of 12 October 2006. Slovenia – Zdruzena Lista Socialnih Demokratov (ZLSD) Spain – Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) Sweden – Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetarpartei (SAP) United Kingdom – Labour Party (BLP) – Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP)

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Table 3.1 (Continued) Associate members Croatia – Socijaldemokratska Partija Hrvatske (SDPH) Macedonia – Socialdemokratski Soyuz na Makedonia Switzerland – Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz/Parti socialiste suisse Turkey – Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Observers Andorra – Partit socialdemocrata Iceland – Samfylkingen Israel – Israel Labour Party – MERETZ San Marino – Partito Socialista Sanmarinese Associated organisations Union des élus locaux et régionaux socialistes d’Europe Federation of Retired People SAMAK International Union of Social Democratic Teachers European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity

in reaction to events (EMU, enlargement) rather than in anticipation of them, and that national parties were willing to concede to the TNP some freedom in the realm of policy development, but still comparatively little by way of the ability to give political leadership and in particular control the EP group. Delegation seemed thus comparatively weak. Analysis of the party’s structures leads to similar conclusions.

The structures of the PES The PES statutes (PES, 2004) give a clear indication of the party’s nature. Much of the document is taken up with outlining the statutory organs typical of modern continental parties – presidency, bureau, council, etc. – the functions of which vary little across different party families; this description can be assumed to be broadly valid for succeeding chapters, unless otherwise stated. Among the general aims set out in the preamble, what stands out is the notion of ‘developing close cooperation or close working relationships’ between the member parties and various EU-level institutions. The party sees itself very much as a facilitator, though it does have programmatic ambitions, namely ‘to define common policies for the EU’ and adopt a common manifesto for EP elections. Article 7.2 makes it clear that in all PES organs, ‘efforts shall be made to establish the broadest measure of agreement following full consultation’.


Thus, although administrative decisions can be reached by majority vote, political decisions ‘shall in principle be taken on the basis of consensus’; the only exception to this rule is that policy areas subject to QMV in the EU Council can be decided by similar means within the PES. A qualified majority here is a hefty 75 %. Article 7.5 allows a member party not to be bound by a QMV decision. The non-constraining nature of the above on individual parties is apparent. Article 10 has minute detail on voting weights; suffice it to say that these reflect strictly the demographic weight of the member states, with a top-up element based on performance in the latest EP election. The other main object of interest is Section VI, devoted to the Party Leaders’ Conference, whose role is worthy of some discussion. It includes the leaders of full member parties and PES heads of government; the PES president, vice-presidents and secretary-general; the leader of the EP group; the SI president; two PES commissioners and the president of the EP (if a PES member). Article 24 states that notwithstanding the sovereign role of the party congress, the leaders’ conference can adopt recommendations and resolutions to member parties and organisations. In conclusion, the financial provisions (Section VIII) note that the PES is financed from the EU budget, as well as fees from member parties and donations. Stripping away the lengthy descriptions of statutory organs, we have a light vehicle, whose main motive force would seem to be the leaders’ conference. PES decision-making structures are designed to be highly consensual and non-constraining on members, and the only concession of authority to the transnational level applies to areas where the EU as a whole uses QMV. If this were not enough, member parties ultimately have a fair amount of financial leverage on the PES. The main ambition would seem to be a modest degree of programmatic co-ordination. Our descriptive history of the PES, and the organisational analysis that has followed it, may not seem to have advanced the debate on TNP a great deal. They conceal, however, much of the real trajectory of European social democracy since 1945, which can be said to have undergone a veritable mutation. The PES and its growth need to be seen as symptoms of much wider and deeper processes at work in the world of social democracy, to which we now turn.

The crisis of social democracy and the integration process It is widely accepted that social democracy across the world has been in some difficulty since at least the mid-1970s.3 We take the concept of social democracy in a wide sense, loose enough to encompass different

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national variations and traditions; one cannot help feel sometimes that the study of these sometimes seeks national particularities obsessively at the expense of much more common underlying bases. Post-war social democracy was a political practice in which a family of national parties sought to win power at the polls within their own state and pursue a series of structural reforms or transformations, depending on one’s point of view (Hamilton, 1989).4 The object of these was to improve the life chances of the mass of wage earners who were the voter base of these parties. The means to this end are often summated under the heading of the welfare state, a series of institutions (health services, education, pensions, family allowances, housing, etc.) financed mainly but not exclusively from taxation of the better-off. Such a system needed a strong economy with steady growth. To secure this, social democrats used a variety of management tools, ranging from public ownership, planning agreements and degrees of micro-regulation to more enabling, supply-side measures. The bases of macro-economic policy were firmly Keynesian, instruments such as monetary or exchange rate policy usually being deemed sufficient to keep the national economy steered towards growth and full employment. Some parties believed in varying degrees of ‘social partnership’ or neo-corporatism, trying to involve business and unions in their wider economic strategy, perhaps not always in formal or visible ways; others eschewed this route. Some were able to govern alone, others (in states with strong pluralism) worked in coalition, often with Christian democrats whose social objectives were broadly compatible. All parties understood governance primarily in national terms; even after the advent of the EEC and the growing internationalisation of their economies, they were confident of being able to manage the economy effectively using traditional Keynesian tools honed for use by nation states. Such was the broad picture of social democratic practice in the three decades after 1945, when European economies passed through a ‘fordist’ phase of high employment and productivity, generating enough surplus to sustain a strong welfare base. This practice was successful enough to bring long spells in office for social democratic parties and even to be imitated, episodically and opportunistically, by non-socialist parties. This virtuous cycle came to an end, however, as Western economies began to readjust following the oil crises of the 1970s, which in retrospect can be seen as harbingers of a new mode of production. The new economy arose in the wake of a powerful tide of neoliberalism. Capital moved more rapidly and in greater quantities, seeking


opportunities where regulation was less rigorous. Growth was most dynamic in these areas, located increasingly outside Europe. European industry would be progressively closed down (extractive industries, shipbuilding) or moved overseas. The Western economies would become increasingly tertiarised, relying more on knowledge and skill than on traditional factors of production. The effects on social structure were soon felt, with a decline in numbers of the manual working class, fragmentation and diversification of what remained of it, and a corresponding rise in the white-collar sector. For parties of the left, the emblematic miner or steelworker who had long figured on their posters would have to be replaced by a technician seated at a computer. This transition to a global economy was not seamless, as governments of left and right found it difficult to adjust. Even if growth returned, as in the UK after the Thatcher experiment, it often did so at the price of persistent unemployment. Clearly, governments and parties of the right found it easier to adapt to the new norms of flexibility and deregulation, which were what investment capital required. Although some left governments, such as those in Scandinavia (Radice and Radice, 1986), were able to manoeuvre better so as to preserve their traditional objectives of welfare protection and high employment, most other struggled. Even the Scandinavian success involved some sharp adaptation of the existing model (Loughlin et al., 2005). In an increasingly global market where capital could come and go at ease, traditional management tools such as exchange rate policy or interest rate manipulation were of limited use. Fiscal policy, too, had run against the buffers, with voter resistance to higher taxes and benefits being manifested in events such as the defeat of Swedish social democracy after 40 years of hegemony. Even social democratic culture was beginning to show ragged edges, with growing belief in individualism and choice, as opposed to traditional public modes of providing services (cf. the success of Thatcher’s sales of council houses in the UK or the spate of share-buying into newly privatised utilities). In short, by the 1980s the social class base of social democracy was eroding, as was part of the social democratic culture. The policy tools on which it had relied to steer the economy were losing their usefulness in an ever freer economy, as the U-turn of the Mitterrand governments in the mid-1980s illustrated plainly. It is precisely when the social democratic family was struggling, and in most cases in opposition, that the re-launch of the European economies occurred, but a re-launch explicitly predicated on neo-liberal, deregulatory principles, even though it was envisaged as a response to the pressures of globalisation. A key part

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of the new EU strategy was of course EMU, with the makeover of key policy tools to an independent agency, in the shape of the ECB. The Union had gambled on this strategy to deliver sustained growth after an initial period of pain, while national economies were purged of their deficits and deregulation set in. Most political forces went along with this strategy, as Ladrech (2000: 45) and Scharpf (1991) show. Social democrats also endorsed EMU, perhaps unhappily, as Scharpf suggests, because they had no plausible alternative (1991: 270). Even British Labour’s pleas for ‘socialism in one country’, as enshrined in its infamous 1983 election manifesto, had revealed their electoral impotence by then. Delors strove (Ladrech, 2000: 50) to inject a social dimension into the new Single Market (the ‘European social model’), but with little success. The new European economy came in under the auspices of neo-liberalism. As Ladrech rightly suggests, this set particular problems for European social democrats as a family. Long accustomed to obtaining results in the framework of their own state, they would now have to revisit the whole notion of transnational action, in order to attempt to steer an economy whose mainsprings lay more and more outside the control of any one state.

The PES as a way out of crisis? How, then, have European socialists attempted to use their TNP as a means towards solving their political dilemma by developing more transnational forms of action? The main change in the recent PES has been the making over to it of a think-tank function. By allowing it to assemble and reflect on their own theoretical and practical inputs, based on their experience in office in many cases, and to come up with general policy documents,5 the national parties have clearly saved on an important transaction cost. It would be possible to imagine such work being done by a lengthy series of bi- or multi-lateral contacts, but use of the PES obviously saves time and effort. At the same time, one could envisage such a task being carried out under the auspices of the SI; the main objection to this would presumably be that the SI may not have the resources to do it and might in any case not be able to give a sufficiently EU-focused slant to its work. The PES seems thus to be the right organism at the right time at the right level. Its work enables the national parties to argue more coherently within EU institutions against the dominant neo-liberal discourse in a way that is probably more effective than if each tried to do it separately. No one should underestimate the importance of this ideological/programmatic function


(Lightfoot, 2005). Nor should we forget the importance of access to key information, especially for parties in opposition. Ruairi Quinn recounts how around 1996, as Irish Finance Minister and thus a regular attender at Council of Economic and Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) and its premeetings for socialist ministers (which he helped to institutionalise), he was able to supply papers from that venue to Gordon Brown, then chancellor-in-waiting (Quinn, 2005: 350–1). He makes it clear that the PES was the mediation for this exchange. The other main structural change has been, for Ladrech, the highlighting of the leaders’ meetings, now enshrined in statute. He sees this as the main locus of change, which has given an impulse to renewed transnational activity. He lays much stress on the socialising function of this organ, and it is clear how central he regards it as being. At times he uses the public policy concept of an ‘advocacy coalition’ to describe the PES in its function of trying to set a new agenda on issues such as employment. This clearly connects closely to the role of the leaders’ meeting. More generally, he describes the PES as a party network; one would almost be tempted to reverse his terms and speak of a ‘network party’, so well does this description fit the elite-centred nature of its action. Ladrech is right, however, to show that national parties have not given that much away; in fact, he might have developed this point further. Both the programmatic function and the use of leaders’ conferences have a long history, as shown in the historical overview of the PES; so too has the reluctance of national parties to sign up to any very constraining dispositions. The PES has produced overarching programmes in some policy areas, but these are not necessarily binding on any member party if it comes to office. In truth, most parties would, if elected, probably pursue policies broadly in line with such texts in any case, simply because their room for manoeuvre has been sharply curtailed. If the national parties have made a ‘calculated sacrifice of autonomy’ and the PES has won some ‘relative autonomy’ (Ladrech, 2000: 134), then this cannot be said to amount to very much. In P/A terms, the principals have made a limited and specific delegation in return for precise, tangible benefits. The limits of PES ability to impose a common line are well illustrated by Kulahci’s study of the failed attempt to load a common fiscal policy on members in the mid-1990s (2006). The project was driven by the Walloon PS, known as perhaps the keenest supporter of integration within party and EU alike, and with the crucial support of the then ÖVP chairman of the PES ECOFIN group. The party was eventually presented with proposals from its working group that provided

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for extensive harmonisation in personal and corporate taxes, as well as an explicit wish to link fiscal policy to other areas of economic policy. Although the German-speaking parties were behind the proposal, as were the Scandinavians, albeit with reservations, the opposition of the BLP and the Irish and Luxembourg parties was unflinching. Schröder then over-ruled his own party, and the project fell by the wayside. The PES eventually put its weight behind much less ambitious proposals by Commissioner Monti to outlaw ‘damaging’ fiscal competition only. One can only agree with Kulahci’s view that this episode shows that the PES could not become pro-active but simply reacted to others’ agenda. It is clear that the PES is in no way a superparty, autonomous from and superior to its members. It has not been allowed to take on two of the main functions of parties, namely engage directly with those voters whose interests it is supposed to aggregate or provide, directly, a set of governing elites. Only its member parties do this. It has, however, been granted access to another important party function, in the shape of formulation of demands into a programme. Overall, social democratic parties have been prodded into strengthening their transnational operation by the palpable difficulties encountered in trying to run domestic economies by classical Keynesian means. A wide variety of parties has held office, and all have seen their programmes inching towards neo-liberal paradigms, be they Southern parties like PASOK or the French PS, with a strong statist discourse and tradition, or whether they are from a less radical discursive tradition, like British Labour or the Dutch PvdA, and have embraced market economics that more openly. It made sense to try and amalgamate these experiences into a broadly based common reflexion, and the PES has been the vehicle for this. It remains to be seen what effects this will have in return on the parties’ domestic positions, and indeed how such effects could be measured. For the moment, we may note that in accord with time-honoured precedent, the national parties have sanctioned a limited, functional amount of delegation.

National parties and the PES: control maintained? In order to illustrate this situation, we present now a number of case studies of the relationship of individual national parties to the PES. British approaches to the PES: an unchanging logic? The BLP has a long association with transnational movements. At the peak period of the Second International, the Independent Labour Party


of Keir Hardie, not yet part of the BLP as such, was a key player in the attempts to use the SI to head off the threat of war. When the pieces of the collapsed International were slowly put back together after 1919, Labour played a key financial and administrative role in maintaining the Socialist and Labour International, as it then became, with its seat initially in London. Even at this stage, it was clear that the BLP saw little beyond a modest co-ordinating role for the SI. After 1945, when much BLP foreign policy was inspired by Denis Healey, the party’s International Secretary, this line became even clearer. Healey’s linguistic skills and vast knowledge of Continental socialism did little to encourage him to view it very positively (Healey, 1950; Hanley, 1983). Mistrustful of what he saw as the ideological excesses of parties inevitably roped into coalitions within plural systems, he argued for a strongly nationbased, bottom-up approach to socialism, as the quotation at the head of this chapter makes clear. On a more cultural level, it is clear that his sympathies lay much more with the pragmatic approach found in Commonwealth parties than with more theoretically grounded models. Healey’s views have strongly marked BLP approaches to transnational collaboration ever since. The whole issue of UK membership of the EU notoriously divided the party for years, almost fatally (Featherstone, 1988: 41–75). As UK membership gradually became a fact of life, and as Labour’s keenest integrationists such as Roy Jenkins or Shirley Williams were effectively forced out in the 1980s, the party has tended on the whole towards a very intergovernmentalist view. Recent developments have gone even further. The rise of Blairite New Labour on the strength of its espousal of a more market-friendly, flexible and deregulationist set of policies has seen the UK government try to position itself ‘at the heart of Europe’. In practice, this has meant seeking alliances for its neo-liberal line against the champions of more regulatory approaches; party rhetoric invariably casts this approach as ‘giving leadership to Europe’ and leading it towards ‘reform’. The BLP manifesto for the 2005 general election is typical of this (Labour Party, 2005). Looking away from the government’s approach to that of the party (more heavily subordinated to government now than at any time past), we might expect the BLP not to be very interested in promoting any kind of integrationist vehicle, but perhaps to show some moderate keenness in any possibility of deepening governmental links. The party’s early involvement in the Confederation after UK entry in 1973 suggested no great enthusiasm for the new structure. It was unable to sign common manifestos for the direct EP elections in 1979 and again in 1984.6 Thereafter, it has not felt the need for opt-outs,

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however, and it joined the PES as a full member from the outset. From 2001 to 2004, Robin Cook, a former Foreign Minister, widely respected within the BLP for his leftish leanings as well as his European feelings, was actually President of the PES. This elevation occurred at the height of the BLP’s success, however, when it had recently had over 60 MEPs, compared with the 19 it boasted after 2004. One should therefore be wary of thinking that it denoted a significant change of view. What the BLP sees in the PES is mainly a networking arrangement, which enables leaders to exchange views and where possible co-ordinate positions.7 Senior Labour figures warn against ‘Utopian’ tendencies within the PES, which they contrast with the repeated electoral success of the BLP, an achievement for which it initially secured much respect within the PES, according to our information. In this context, one senior figure cited as a major achievement of the PES its having helped former communist parties to ‘mature’. The implication of all this is that the PES can be helpful in modest ways but that it must never aspire to any policy-setting role for member parties. In practice, this refers to attempts by some PES parties to create more integrated policies on issues such as social legislation or the fiscal harmonisation referred to above, which would impede the more flexible approach to social and economic policy undertaken by New Labour. As one MEP put it, London does not want to see more social legislation coming out of Brussels.8 Some Continental parties were resentful of Cook’s leadership, feeling that whatever his personal feelings he was only too ready to do Blair’s bidding and generally slow down any integrationist dynamics within the PES. This is doubtless the key to his being replaced not by the Italian Amato, reputedly the British favourite, but the Dane Rasmussen, believed to have more energy and ambition to develop the PES. One further angle on transnationalism, related to the desire to set limits to the PES, is the heavy bilateralism developed by the BLP, dating from when Keith Vaz and then Denis MacShane were Ministers for Europe. Every PES party is assigned a corresponding MP and MEP from within BLP ranks,9 whose duty is to cultivate close relationships with figures in that party. The relationship thus covers both national parliaments and the EP. In this way, a core of expertise and of close contacts is built up, which can be mobilised at short notice. Our informants felt that this was particularly useful if the party was in opposition. Clearly such an arrangement can be made use of as the BLP wishes, and it has probably not made as full a use of it as it might (despite very good BLP/PSOE relations, for instance, Blair had never met Zapatero before he became Prime Minister of Spain). What strikes one about the structure,


however, is precisely that it lies outside the PES, existing as a sort of short cut or alternative option. Other parties in other families use significant bilateral relationships (the German/Austrian/Czech triangle is one example), but we have never seen such an extensive structure, which exists in parallel to the PES. As such it says much about the BLP’s reservations about the latter. One way of measuring national parties’ desire to control any tendencies towards autonomy by TNP is to examine the relationship between the national parties and the parliamentary group, in particular how the national parties attempt to retain control over those members whom they have had elected to the group. The case of the BLP is highly instructive. Labour has in fact undergone considerable change in the context of Europeanisation. No new structures have been created within the party for European elections, where the multi-member seats are simply amalgamations of existing Westminster seats. Yet important changes have occurred with regard to selection of MEPs and their role in party decision-making. As for selection, Wring et al. (2000) have shown how the use of National Executive Committee (NEC) panels has enabled the leadership to gain control of candidate selection, an operation made much easier by the adoption of multi-candidate constituencies, where the NEC can determine the order of the list. Much of Labour’s enthusiasm for the semi-proportional system now in use can be ascribed to the possibility that it affords the national leadership of removing control of candidate selection from local activists (Messmer, 2003: 213). Certainly according to Wring et al., this move enabled the centre to empty the EP group (known as the EPLP – European Parliamentary Labour Party) almost overnight of most of its awkward squad. By their count, a bare third of retiring MEPs identified as ‘old Labour’ (believers in state socialism) were given electable positions on regional lists in 1999 (2000: 243). The remainder were loyal Blairites. If the new election procedures could be seen as a stick, the carrot came in the form of what Messmer (2003) calls the link system, whereby EPLP spokespeople are attached to the appropriate office in Whitehall as part of the ministerial team in that policy area. This possibility of influence on policy certainly gives MEPs incentives to toe the party line (though few MEPs seem to detect any real influence on policy on their part) and also gives Labour’s central leadership an early input into EP decisionmaking, what Messmer calls (2003: 206) an ‘early warning system’. Thus by a system of sticks and carrots (tighter candidate control plus positions of apparent influence), the Labour leadership has tightened up control

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over its MEPs.10 The latter appear to play very little role, moreover, in the annual conference; in 2005 for instance they were not even on the panel for the question-and-answer session on Europe. They are clearly expected to do a precise legislative job in the EP and no more. It is true that this attempt to regain control of elected officials keys into long-standing patterns of behaviour. The Labour leadership has been attempting to regain control over elected officials at all levels since the early 1980s, when infiltration of the party by trotskisants of the Militant tendency was perceived as a real threat, especially in Liverpool where the Militant-run city council oscillated between farce and tragedy. The modernisers around Blair needed central control of candidates wherever possible, so as to determine the type of person elected. The latter needed to be market-friendly, mildly pro-European Atlanticists, not the ‘old Labour’ state socialists often picked by constituency activists. All kinds of devices have been used by the Labour centre to wrest control of candidate selection from local activists. For Westminster seats, a favourite device is to bribe a sitting MP (perhaps with a peerage in the Lords) into retiring just before election day, thus leaving insufficient time for local selection procedures to operate and allowing the NEC to step in. Parity legislation can be another way of achieving this objective of inserting a ‘safe’ candidate. By a strange paradox, even the normal method, namely OMOV (one member one vote – designed essentially to weaken the influence of trade-union delegates in the selection process) will, however, have become safer for the leadership, as droves of leftinclined members have quit the party of late, leaving a hard core of Blairite modernisers to do the central party’s bidding. Europeanisation has, then, played a secondary role to endogenous factors in changing Labour’s organisation in a more centralist direction. The struggle to gain central control over candidates goes back beyond Blair to Kinnock, as the ‘modernisation’ of the party began after the crushing defeat of 1983. None of these changes, however, our substantive point, which is about control. Party leaderships like to control their elected officials and deny them autonomy. This applies to parliamentarians in Strasbourg as much as it does in Westminster. The national party delegates as little as it can afford to get away with. Labour is, at least for the present, a strong party of government, with a well-established image and policy style (both summated under the term ‘New Labour’). It governs in a state that is outside the eurozone (though the British political class in general accepts neo-liberal logic, arguably more fully than many parties in states that have signed up to EMU). Its need for a think-tank function from the PES might therefore


be less than that of other parties, hence its reluctance to concede very much. It probably knows that it is not going to be able to convert fellow members from the core states to its flexible, pro-market approach, but for the time being it has an audience among the new members from Eastern and Central Europe and will be confident that the movement of globalisation will eventually push the bigger parties in its direction. In short, the BLP does not need a lot from the PES, so its investment in it can only remain on the negative side of neutral. The party is thus faithful to its history, and major changes will need to ensue domestically and internationally before this situation evolves. A party in opposition, and likely to stay there for a while, might, however, find the presence of a transnational instance more helpful, as the following brief example suggests. Our own interviews with senior PS officials in Paris showed, for instance, that the French PS, badly traumatised by the 2002 defeat, and in need of new ideas and a new profile, was ready to invest much more in the PES than before.11 Hence its campaign to have the Danish leader Rasmussen (long regarded as too far to the right by the PS in a previous era!) elected as president instead of the Italian Amato, seen as too Blairite. The reward for this help was that the PES secretariat now went to a Frenchman. Beyond the level of party games of this sort, however, it is clear that a TNP can seem differentially attractive according to one’s position. A strong social democratic party with a programme that works (or at least secures its re-election) is clearly not going to invest much in a TNP and will even take precautions to rein in any of its officials who might have inclinations in this direction. A weaker party, struggling with the rejection of its policies by voters, will find the investment worthwhile and may be less keen to keep tabs on its élus.12 Between government and integration: the SPD The SPD’s attitudes to the PES reflect something of the paradoxes of the party’s position. On the one hand, as a party from a federal state, it has long been seen as in the vanguard of the integrationists; on the other, it is a governing party whose main task is to deliver to a national electorate. Representatives of other parties seem at times to detect contradictory impulses at work in SPD behaviour towards the socialist TNP (see below), and our own interviews found similar evidence.13 The SPD certainly favours a sharpening of the structures of the PES, notably by developing a more decisive presidency (and perhaps stripping away some of the innumerable vice-presidents). Part of this would involve using more majority voting, not necessarily always qualified majorities; indeed, one

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of the tasks of the party should be to determine more exactly when QMV should be used. The PES has thus far been very reluctant to do so. The party is also keener on individual membership than many of its closest colleagues. None of this means, however, any greater policy-setting role for the TNP. It could most usefully confine itself for the present to obtaining very broad ideological agreements among members on some key questions; examples of this would be the stress that the PES nowadays puts on education and training as core issues, or work that has been done to bridge the gap between understandings of French socialists on the one hand and British Labour on the other about how public services should be provided (one might wonder how shared the understanding really is).14 Another key function in SPD eyes is its role in bringing together the international secretaries of member parties before meetings; the key here is whether the secretary can speak authoritatively on behalf of the party leader, in which case other parties will know before the actual meeting what is acceptable by way of a compromise. Key international secretaries usually bring this authority with them; for instance, the BLP’s International Officer was previously a member of the office in 10 Downing Street. This clearly places a heavy premium on the role of these secretaries; at times it can seem as if they are the real carriers of the whole TNP, given the well-known penchant for social-democratic leaders to skip PES summits.15 The PES could be said thus to fulfil a sort of early-warning function. An SDP officer seconded to the PES in Brussels also stressed the need for a clearer division of the work of the EP group and TNP, hinting that the forceful personality of the TNP leader was causing friction with the group. One of his proposals for future action by the Commission, for instance, was severely criticised by the SDP finance minister for its unrealistic costing. The implication here was that the TNP was treading on ground reserved for national governments.16 At bottom, then, the SDP does not expect to see the PES exceeding certain limits. It could certainly become more streamlined and improve its co-ordination with the group; its early-warning function remains vital. It can help ease national parties towards a very broad consensus. But there is no way in which it can exercise any sort of leadership role.

Regionalists, federalists, socialists: the Belgian parties The case of the two Belgian parties reveals some interesting similarities and differences in their approach to transnational socialism. After the linguistic split of the late 1960s, the united Belgian socialist movement


eventually split formally into two separate parties in 1978, the Dutchspeaking BSP, since renamed SP.A (Sociaal-progressief alternatief), and the francophone PS, based in Wallonia. International relations had tended to be run, in the united party, by Flemings, notably the wellrespected international secretary Oscar Debunne. Party leaders such as Willy Claes and Karel van Miert were also busy internationally. Yet since the separation, it has been the Walloons who have invested more in transnational activity. The PS is the natural party of government in Wallonia and enjoys frequent office at federal level, a fact reflected in its infrastructure; its international secretariat is certainly well equipped with a full-time secretary assisted by a group of officials. This contrasts sharply with the situation of SP.A, strapped for cash after being fined for its involvement in the Augusta arms scandal17 ; as a result, the party had to dispense with a full-time international office and relies on parttime contributions from officials employed in ministries.18 Not the least surprising aspect of PS transnationalism is the party’s heavy engagement in the Socialist International19 ; none of the parties to whom we have spoken attaches so much importance to the SI. The PS however sees it as a major source of visibility for its leader Elio di Rupo, who chairs its Local Authorities Committee, and as a source of access to traditional areas of Belgian influence, such as Central Africa (the PS is influential on the Sub-Saharan Committee, where it is involved in training political cadres in democratisation programmes). Some set the PS involvement in the SI within the wider context of francophonie; by attaching itself to this structure, the party would gain access to wider diplomatic influence. The PS International Secretary made the comparison between the party’s international role and that of the Belgian state within the EU; in both cases, a relatively small institution was able, in the hackneyed phrase, to ‘punch above its weight’. This unusual degree of interest in the SI has not prevented the PS, however, from investing in the PES. For a start, it is usually serving ministers who attend key meetings of the party. It is clear from the viewpoint of its International Secretary that the PES is not yet a proper party, in the sense that it can take up positions and act independently of governments where its members are present; in particular, it needs an authoritative programme, which national parties should then try and implement as far as possible. Such a position obviously goes far beyond that of most PES members, and it is interesting in this context to see how the PS understands the configuration of forces within the TNP. It sees the real champions of a strong TNP as itself and the French PS, with qualified support from the Germans. At the other end of the scale are those parties

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who want to keep the PES to a minimal level of operations. Chief of these is, unsurprisingly, the BLP seconded by the Dutch PvdA and Polish SLD; the other parties occupy middling positions, though latterly the SPD has, in PS eyes, been pulled too far towards BLP positions, mainly through the influence of Gerhardt Schroeder and his close rapport with Tony Blair. This ambiguous and seemingly changing position of the SDP was evoked more than once in our interviews. Newcomers from Eastern and Central Europe are a particular concern, having been socialised far too heavily, in PS eyes, into neo-liberal market culture; this grates strongly against the core beliefs of what is still a very traditionalist socialist party in many ways. Attitudes towards the PES also mirror, to an extent at least, the basic socio-economic stances of national parties. It is no accident that the parties most associated with fairly classic notions of socialism (a predominant role for the state in economic management and redistribution20 ), namely the French and the Walloons, tend to try and use the PES as a forum in which to convert sister parties to their views; those parties that have gone furthest down the neo-liberal road, like the British, tend in contrast to reduce as much as possible any chance for the PES to set agendas for national parties. Finally, the PS tends to see parallels between national party positions on the PES and the views of their respective states on European integration in general. In short, the PS sees the PES as a locus of polarisation within the socialist family. Recognising the difficulty of winning over the whole of the PES to its line, the PS talks increasingly of ‘enhanced co-operation’ between like-minded parties on certain issues. It is uncertain how this would work in practice, much as is the case in the EU at large, where the threat of such co-operations is frequently brandished against perceived laggards, but seldom used. A more likely scenario is continuing friction between the two main tendencies within the PES, with compromises being brokered when necessary on given issues; this is after all what happens within most socialist parties inside their own countries. A good example of this brokering is the hammering out of an agreed text on the revision of the Bolkestein directive and its country-of-origin stipulation, which had sharply divided the neo-liberal tendency (in favour) from the statist wing (opposed, on grounds of protecting national providers of services). The Belgian PS and the Swedes produced a carefully crafted text, which even Labour was able to sign in the end, and the socialist group helped pilot it through the EP. In the immediate period, the PS expects the new leadership team of the PES to take the initiative in provoking debate about the whole European social model, in the hope


of shifting the positions of some of the new entrants in particular, but also some of the older parties that have taken the liberal road.21 Overall, the PS probably sees the PES as a more positive tool than some of its colleagues. Its hope would be for the party to persuade its members to agree a sort of programme close to its own aspirations. While recognising the difficulty of this, it continues with its allies to push socialist aspiration within the organs of the party. The position of its SP.A colleague is not entirely similar. While recognising some similarities with Southern European socialism (insistence on public services), SP.A is less market-unfriendly and less hostile to involvement of private capital in the provision of services.22 In a different register, it does not share the militant secularist laïc culture of the PS, unsurprisingly, given the strong presence of Catholicism in Flanders and the fact that a secularist alternative has always existed in the shape of the liberal party. SP.A has also – partly as a result of straitened circumstances – deliberately concentrated its transnational activity on the PES rather than the SI. Its officials admit also that latterly the party has concentrated heavily on Belgian and Flemish politics, possibly to the point where PES issues have taken a back seat, with leaders seldom attending PES summits. Party spokespeople are at pains to argue that apparent SP.A distance from the TNP reflects not some growing Euroscepticism or lack of faith in the European project, but simply awareness that some policy outputs of the EU are deeply unpopular with socialist voters. Under the new leadership of Van de Lanotte, however, this is beginning to change. The campaign against the Bolkestein directive led the SP.A leadership to see the advantage of leaders’ meetings as a place for agreeing positions and maximising leverage in the process of trying to change the directive. SP.A sees a clear division inside the PES, though its view is not entirely similar to that of the PS.23 Again making the parallel with EU Council positions, it sees a fundamental polarity between the British and the new entrants on one hand, and the Continental parties, which includes the SDP, on the other. Qualifications are made to this, however, in that the PvdA is seen to have gone too far towards neo-liberalism (showing that linguistic kinship is no guarantee of ideological proximity); on the other side of the equation, nuances are observed within the new entrants. Whereas the Slovak party is cited as an apostle of neo-liberalism, the Czech and Hungarian parties are seen as much closer to the SP.A. One issue on which SP.A seems much closer to the statist end of the spectrum is the issue of job security; the party is clear that this comes before the flexibility associated with New Labour in particular. Generally, the

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party sees the Scandinavian parties as being in the middle of the spectrum and to an extent representing an alternative model, particularly on aspects such as defence and security. SP.A feels that the Scandinavian states have managed best to retain most of the advantages of traditional welfare guarantees while at the same time coping with the challenges of globalisation. Social-democratic Prime Minister Persson was admired by the Flemish socialists for his refusal to accept ‘social dumping’, and they see this as perhaps a sign that some of the bigger parties are moving towards acceptance of the need for more integrated European social policies. Certainly SP.A, in keeping with Belgian federalist aspirations, would like to see a more integrated PES. It is among the few parties to strive actively for transnational lists for EP elections, with the first ten candidates being nominated by the TNP. It also wants PES to propose specifically a candidate for Commission President based on EP results. In 2004, it attempted some mild transnational experimentation, by nominating SP.A leader Stevaert on the Dutch PvdA list, while PvdA leader Bos had a place on the Belgian list. This was deemed illegal by the Belgian authorities on the grounds that candidates had to reside in the country that they represent. But a mark had been put down, and the party intends to continue in this vein. In general, then, SP.A is on the more integrationist wing of its TNP, and is strongly behind Rasmussen in his attempts to bring greater coherence to the party. In this it is like the francophone PS. There are nuances between the two, and there are also more direct clashes of interest (Walloon attachment to subsidising their sugar-beet farmers, for instance) as well as the constant concern to represent their linguistic/ethnic group. That said, it is clear that there is a high degree of collaboration between the two parties; in the EP group, it is no accident that all the Belgian delegates meet as a group to prepare decisions, despite coming from two distinct parties.24 Both see the transnational level as a useful vehicle for arguing for a European type of social democracy that they see as under threat and for trying to defend it within EU institutions. Their anti-liberal positions and their origins in a federal state provide the common impulse for their action, transcending cultural or linguistic differences.

Conclusion The socialist parties of Europe have no easy answer to the dilemmas of globalisation, as evidenced in their varying national strategies, which


vary from high flexibility to unconvincing attempts to protect practices and situations that may be historically doomed. There seems little agreement among them as to how a TNP might be best used in this context. The overriding concern seems to be to concede as little autonomy as possible to the transnational vehicle; generally, these principals wish to keep their agent in a fairly weak position. It is no accident that those keenest on strengthening the PES meaningfully are the parties closest to the statist/regulationist end of the spectrum. For the remainder, the PES seems at best useful as a site of leaders’ co-ordination and of very general ideological co-ordination. Historians might be forgiven for thinking that since 1900 very little has changed.

Notes 1. In English, French, Greek and Spanish, the title is ‘Party of European Socialists’; in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish, it is ‘Party pf European Social Democrats’. The Germans use ‘Social Democratic Party of Europe’, the Italians ‘Party of European Socialism’ and the Portuguese ‘European Socialist Party’. 2. At the start of 2007, the Slovak party SMER was suspended for embarking on a coalition in Bratislava with a far-right party, showing that the PES can still discharge its gatekeeper or decantation function. 3. General studies include Marks and Lemke (1992); Padgett and Paterson (1991); Paterson and Thomas (1986); Moschonas (1994). Scharpf (1991) is focussed on macro-economic and employment policy, while Kitschelt (1994) is concerned with changing opportunity structures and how socialist parties might use them. 4. Arguments about the scope of social democratic transformation are aired in Bergounioux and Manin (1979); Buci-Glucksman and Therborn (1980); Grunberg (1997). 5. In areas such as employment policy, overseas aid policy, energy or sustainable growth. See PES website for list of publications. 6. The BLP and Danish SD were both opposed to EMU and increased powers for the EP. 7. Interview with former Minister for Europe, London, May 2006. 8. Interview, May 2006. 9. I am grateful to Eluned Morgan MEP for providing me with a list. 10. One MEP did stress that this ‘anticipatory mechanism’ had the advantage of avoiding frantic last-minute phone class when the BLP delegation was about to vote. In the past, there had been considerable confusion as to how to vote on issues such as EU structural funds (Interview, May 2006). 11. Interview with PS foreign spokesperson, Paris, July 2004. 12. It is not unknown for the French PS delegation to split three different ways in votes; the draft Constitution provided evidence of this. 13. Interview with SPD International Secretary, Berlin, November 2005.

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14. Interview with PES official, Brussels, February 2006. 15. The key role of these pre-meetings of International Secretaries in setting up leaders’ contacts was confirmed by the International Secretary of the Czech socialist party CSSD (Interview, Prague, October 2005). 16. Interview with PES official, Brussels, February 2006. 17. A classic example of defence contracts being awarded in return for sidepayments, which found their way into party coffers. 18. Interview with SP.A international officer, Brussels, February 2006. 19. Interview with PS International Secretary, Brussels, November 2005. 20. To this should be added another staple of Southern European socialism, namely anti-clerical secularism. Its importance is probably diminishing, though it is unwise to underestimate its strength as a cultural identifier and tribal rallying point. 21. An example of PS attempts to influence the direction of debate is its pushing for discussion of fiscal harmonisation, effectively rendered taboo thanks to the insistence of the LP and, for once but quite understandably, the Luxembourg party. French – language versions of PES texts did however contain references to the concept (Information from PS International Secretary). 22. Interview with SP.A MEP, Brussels, November 2005. 23. Interview with SP.A international officer, Brussels, February 2006. 24. Information from SP.A MEP, Brussels, November 2005.

4 Christian Democrats and Allies: Identity and the Logic of Numbers

The EPP is without question further along the road to becoming a trans- or supranational party than the Socialists, the Greens or the Liberals. The EPP can in no circumstances abandon either its European federalist goal nor its ambition to be, in essence, Christian democratic. Thomas Jansen, former EPP Secretary General (2006a).

The nature of Christian democracy It can never be repeated too often that CD parties are first and foremost parties of religious defence (Seiler, 1980: 303). In the latter half of the nineteenth century, modernising states stepped up their attack on the Catholic Church (Kalyvas, 1995). It mattered little whether these modernisers and nation-builders were conservative aristocrats like Bismarck or radicals and republicans like the French laïcs who have so decisively shaped modern France; their fundamental impulse was the same. They perceived the church as a source of non-rationalist values and, by the same token, a rival focus of loyalty to the state. Central to this perception was the church’s place in public life, particularly in the education system. The modernisers would accordingly take measures to remove the church from public life, and much of the battle centred on schools: who paid for them and who should control them. The reaction of the catholic hierarchy was, after a period of shock and a failure to achieve any progress by normal diplomatic means, to mobilise its faithful. This mobilisation was not directly political in its first phase, however. Typically, Catholics would form defence leagues or 85

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civic pressure groups in defence of their educational rights. This movement would develop particularly after 1918 into the major network of associative movements – for women, workers, students, farmers – which are often summed up under the heading of Catholic Action. Catholic lay persons found it difficult, once mobilised, to ignore the political dimension, especially as the civic mobilisation did not always bring desired results. In a second wave of mobilisation therefore, and as Kalyvas shows, usually against the wishes of the hierarchy (which preferred to keep a monopoly of catholic political activity), catholic activists set up Christian parties of various sorts. The role of the clergy (both nationally and at Vatican level) is one of the key factors in understanding the fortunes of any given CD party. These inter-class or people’s parties varied in character across different states, some being paternalist or sympathetic to authoritarian politics (provided the church’s interests were protected), others more open to democratic values or concepts of social justice. All were, however, concerned to defend catholic interests against statist modernisers. Relatively few of these forces had regular experience of government (the Benelux states are the obvious exception here), but after 1945, this would change rapidly and the CD current, as it was now increasingly referred to, became one of the major forms of political ideology and practice across Western Europe. It is possible to identify a number of features within the CD model. Most parties subscribed to the ideology of social personalism, derived from the writings of philosophers like Jacques Maritain or Emmanuel Mounier (Dierickx, 1994). This type of thought places the person at the centre of the political process. In contrast to the individual who inhabits liberal theory and who is essentially a competitive being, the person is open to others and only flourishes truly in a community; this term includes the family, neighbourhood, school, workplace, nation and Europe. None of these levels of belonging is necessarily superior to the other, which explains why CDs have less emotional difficulties with European integration than other party families. As well as enjoying multiple identities, the person recognises the need for others to flourish; persons live in a world of mutual obligations and solidarities. Social justice is therefore an important part of personalism and has obvious policy implications. At the same time, the person, respecting the liberty of others, is committed to democracy, and any programme of social justice must be enacted in a democratic framework. This type of thought clearly downplays Marxist concepts of class-conflict, believing that compromises can always be found between contending interests.

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This flexible ideology proved well suited to a distinct style of CD government, usually undertaken in coalition and often with social democratic partners/rivals. Social policy was at the centre of it (Kersbergen, 1995), and it had a strongly redistributive tone, privileging the family rather than the individual as the locus of redistribution. In cultural or educational policy, the CD parties were usually able to broker deals with their socialist or secularist partners. In other policy areas, CD parties remained the most committed to European integration, indeed to outright federalism, while in security policy they remained loyal Atlanticists and staunch opponents of the USSR. The CD parties were thus able to keep together an inter-class coalition of Catholics for several decades. Conway is probably correct to say that the middle class and farming sectors of the CD alliance did better than the urban workers (2001: 55–6); but the latter did well enough for the compromise to have held up for years. Commentators have thus felt able to distinguish a classic style of CD politics, based on a supple and efficient ideology. If the above applies to national parties operating in their own polity, what implications are there for transnational relationships?

The ancestry of the EPP The interwar period saw the first real attempt at any transnational collaboration between ‘parties of Christian inspiration’, as these relative newcomers tended to call themselves at the time. Principally at the behest of the Italian Popular Party and its leader Don Luigi Sturzo, by then already exiled by the fascists, there was set up in Paris in 1925 a Secretariat international des partis démocratiques d’inspiration chrétienne (SIPDIC) (Papini, 1988: 31–45). The small French PDP (Parti populaire démocrate) and its secretary Raymond Laurent were at the heart of this operation (Delbreil, 1990: 259–72). The organisation was obviously conscious of the socialists’ disappointing experiences of transnationalism, in that it proposed only a loose framework for exchange of ideas and information between parties, few of whom had in any case much government experience; the biggest player was the German Zentrum, strong under the Second Reich and now a regular coalition partner in Weimar governments. The SIPDIC was hopeful also of exerting some pressure for peace in an increasingly tense period of international relations. The organisation never had more than 13 members,1 and by no means all of them corresponded to what we know since 1945 as a typical CD party (see below); some of them (from Austria or Slovakia, say) would

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be nearer to the ‘social catholic’ tradition of paternalism combined with a certain sympathy for authoritarian rule.2 The SIPDIC struggled with tensions between its members, notably between the French and German parties over the problem of reparations and, more widely, the whole way in which post-1918 Germany had been dealt with by the victors of 1918. There was little agreement on how to exert pressure within international relations, once Germany began to rearm, though the organisation supported the League of Nations and peace initiatives such as the Locarno treaty. Subject to increasing internal tension and aware of its lack of influence on events, the SIPDIC could only look on helpless at events such as the Anschluss; its response to this was an appeal to the Pope to intervene. World War II merely completed an unravelling process that had been going on for some time, and the SIPDIC collapsed as disappointingly as its socialist cousin had done in 1914. Thus far, the experience of the two families seems quite similar. The most that could be said for the SIPDIC was that it had brought together a number of élites from different countries, many of whom would play important international roles after 1945. The world after 1945 offered much more attractive prospects, however. Christian parties began to enjoy a golden age of ascendancy in Western Europe (Conway, 2001). In the polarised context of the Cold War, they formed a useful alternative to older, centre-right forces sometimes discredited by their record under the Occupation. With the positive backing of the catholic hierarchy (not always kindly disposed to democracy in the past), they were able to draw on the tribal loyalties of Catholics, who in the past had often scattered their vote across the political spectrum. Some were powerfully revamped or reconfigured (the German parties), others achieved a long-promised breakthrough (the French MRP) or resumed their previous position [Italian Democrazia Cristiana (DC) or Benelux parties]. By now most of these forces had adopted positions consonant with mainstream CD thinking, in which European integration would rapidly come to occupy a key place. They would all be parties of government, usually central to the multi-party system of their respective states. Such circumstances might be thought to favour a renewed attempt at transnational collaboration, and one is rather puzzled at Kaiser’s affirmation that the CD rivals, socialism and liberalism, were somehow intrinsically better prepared for the Europeanisation of their policy because of their ‘solid, secular, international Weltanschauung’ (Kaiser, 2004: 222). The type of CD ideology described above, which had gradually coalesced, was eminently plastic and suited


to transnational forms of collaboration, arguably more so than that of its rivals. What is striking about such attempts on the part of the CD family is, however, the hesitant and rather indirect way in which transnational links were actually rebuilt. The form that CD transnationalism borrowed after 1945 was that of the NEI, described by Delwit as a ‘movement that was loose and not very integrative’ (2003c: 9). The Popular Party of Switzerland convened a first meeting of interested parties, and the Belgians chaired the first official meeting in 1947. The NEI brought together parties, groups and individuals in a minimalist form of co-operation; representation was rather patchy, with a party as important as the French MRP, then at its zenith, refusing to attend because it thought the influence of conservatives too strong. The CD label figured only in the movement’s subtitle Union Internationale des Démocrates Chrétiens. A parallel development, more important in the view of some historians, was the annual Geneva meetings between leading CD elites, concerned with building an anti-communist front and getting Germany rehabilitated among the nations of Western Europe. Gehler sees these high-profile, confidential elite contacts as useful in socialising NEI elites, particularly with regard to approaches to European integration and anti-Sovietism (2004: 216).3 On these modest bases, the CD movement in Western Europe gained some cohesion and, by the mid-1950s, was able to think about deepening its links. By then tension ran high between those favouring a united programme for European integration with a strong Christian slant (Italian DC, Swiss and Austrian parties), and those like the MRP who wanted to downplay their Christian origins in the hope of winning broader support for their social radicalism (Kaiser, 2004: 222–5). Resentment slowly grew against the MRP, which occupied the organisation’s seat in Paris (therefore documents were published in French) and which was felt to be a dead weight. Eventually the seat would be shifted to Rome in 1965, with Rumor becoming president and Tindemans secretary general. Meanwhile, a series of meetings had occurred between the NEI, the Latin American CD movement Organisación Democráta Cristiana de America (ODCA) and the Union Démocrate Chrétienne d’Europe Centrale (essentially a movement of exiles from the communist countries). By 1961 it was possible to launch, in Santiago de Chile, the World Union of CDs, which would in 1982 rename itself the Christian Democrat International (CDI) (Dechert, 1967). In 2001 it changed names again, keeping the initials but adding on the words ‘and centrist’ after ‘Christian democrat’. Since then the Christian democrat title seems to

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have disappeared, leaving just the centrist label. This linguistic subtlety captures effortlessly the changes that the movement has undergone. Broadly speaking, it has followed the path of its European equivalent, seeking expansion at the cost of ideological cohesion. At European level, the NEI had felt the need to tighten up its operations. In December 1965 at Taormina it became the EUCD, with 14 members but still no French party. Within this structure, a political committee was set up consisting of parties from EC member states to address specific EC-related problems, such as direct elections to the EP. In July 1976, with the first direct elections on the horizon, the committee became the EPP, under the presidency of Leo Tindemans, former secretary general of the EUCD. It included 12 parties, all of CD origins except for the Irish representative, Fine Gael (FG). Its federalist aspiration towards a ‘United States of Europe’ was explicit. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the new party was its name. The historic CD parties of Italy and the Benelux had wanted the words ‘Christian democratic’ explicitly in the title, whereas the Germans were opposed to this. Clearly there was already a difference about the nature of the EPP; should it be pure CD or a looser centre-right grouping? A compromise was struck, with the full party title being ‘EPP, Federation of the CD Parties of the European Union’. The group of MEPs was the site of a similar struggle. Its original title (since 1952) had been ‘CD Group of the EP’; in 1978 there was added in brackets ‘(Group of the EPP)’. In 1979, in a sure sign that the terms of political trade were changing, it became ‘Group of the EPP (CD Group)’. An early sign that the looser conception of the EPP was gaining in strength came with the joining of the Greek Nea Demokratia (ND) in 1981; it had begun in the conservative European Democratic Group, but its MEPs joined the EPP group and shortly afterwards the party itself joined EPP. At the leaders’ summit in April 1991, EPP declared its intention of collaborating with and indeed granting membership to ‘popular parties’ in other states whose social objectives were similar to EPP’s and which shared its views on European integration. This would trigger a rapid expansion of numbers (see below). During this period, the original CD Europe-wide organisation, the EUCD, had continued to exist; an ad hoc division of labour with EPP was established, the latter grouping EU member parties and EUCD catering for those outside the Union, an increasing number of whom were by now candidates for entry. EUCD prepared and encouraged parties in candidate countries, with a view to their future incorporation into EPP. By 1999 it was felt that EUCD had fulfilled its historic function, and it was duly merged


into EPP. Strong performances in the 1999 and 2004 EP elections, plus a steady influx of members from new entrants, meant that EPP was, by 2005, the biggest party in the EP. It currently boasts 41 members, 8 associates and 17 observers (Table 4.1) (Hanley, 2005). Table 4.1 The European Peoples’ Party, 2007 Full members Austria – Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP)∗ Belgium – Centre démocrate et humaniste (CDH) – Christen democratisch en Vlaams (CDV) Bulgaria – Demokraticeska Partija (DP) – Sajuz na Demokraticni Sili (SDS) [Union of Democratic Forces]∗ – Balgarski Naroden Sajuz (BNS) [People’s Union] – Demokrati za Silna Balgarija (DSB) [Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria] Cyprus – Democratic Rally (DR)∗ Czech Republic – Krestanská a demokratická unie (KDU) Denmark – Det Konservative Folkepartei∗ – Kristendemokraterne Estonia – Pro Patria and Res Publica Union∗ Finland – Kansallinen Kokoomus (KK)∗ France – Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP)∗ Germany – Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU)∗ – Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU)∗ Greece – Nea Demokratia (ND)∗ Hungary – Magyar Demokrata Forum (MDF) – Fidesz- Magyar Polgári Szövetség (MPP)∗ Ireland – Fine Gael (FG) Italy – Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e dei Democratici di Centro (UDC) – POPOLARI-UDEUR – Forza Italia (FI) Latvia – Jaunais Laiks (JL) (New Era) – Tautas Partija (TP) Lithuania – Tevynes Sajunga (TS) (Homeland Union) – Lietuvos Krikscionys Demokratai (LKD) Luxembourg – Chrëstlich Sozial Vollekspartei (CVP) Malta – Partit Nazzjonalista (PN)∗ Netherlands – Christen Democratisch Appel (CDA) Poland – Platforma Obywatelska (PO) – Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL) Portugal – Partido Social Dermocrata (PSD)∗ Romania – Partidul National Taranesc Crestin Democrat (PNTCD) – Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség (RMDSZ) – Partidul Democrat (PD) Slovak Republic – Krestanskodemokratické Hnutie (KDH) – Slovenska Democratická a Krestanská Únia (SDKU) – Strana Madarskej Koalície (SMK)

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Table 4.1

(Continued)

Slovenia – Slovenska Demokratska Stranka (SDS)∗ – Slovenian People’s Party/Slovenska Ijudska Stranka (SIS) – Nova Slovenija – Krscanska Ijudska Stranka Spain – Partido Popular (PP)∗ – Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC) Sweden – Moderaterna ∗ – Kristdemokraterna (KDS) Associate members Croatia – Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (HDZ)∗ Norway – Höyre∗ Switzerland – Evangelische Volkspartei (EVP) Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei (CVP) Observers Albania – Partia Demokratike (PD) Partia Demokrate e Re (PDR) [New Democrat Party] Belarus – Abjadenanaja Hramadzianskaja Partyja (United Civil Party) Bielaruski Narodny Front (Belarusan Popular Front) Bosnia-Herzegovina – Stranka Demokratski Akcije (SDA) [Bosnian] – Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (HDZBiH) [Croat] – Partija Demokratskog Progresa (PDP) [Serbian] Croatia – Demokratski Centar – Hrvatska Seljacka Stranka Finland – Suomen Kristillisdemokraatit Italy – Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP) Moldova – Christian Democratic People’s Party Norway – Kristelig Folkepartei (KrF) San Marino – Partito Democratico Cristiano Sanmarinese (PDCS) Serbia – Demokratski Stranka Srbije (DSS)∗ [Democratic Party of Serbia] – G17PLUS Turkey – Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) [Justice and Development] Ukraine – Nasia Ukraina (NU) [Our Ukraine] – People’s Movement of Ukraine (NRU) ∗

Also holds membership of IDU.

The crisis of Christian democracy This apparently effortless rise to preponderance conceals a number of difficulties. Like its social democratic rival/partner, the CD family has had to adapt to adversely changing circumstances since the 1970s. Conway discerns by the end of the 1970s ‘a perceptible crisis within Christian democracy that subsequent events have only reinforced’ (2001: 60). The growing problems of sustaining a welfare state in an era of increased global competition have hit the CD family as hard as the socialists. The central role of social policy in balancing out the interests


of different social groups requires a strong element of redistribution, as social democrats also know. Thus CD parties have had to address this problem urgently (EPP, 1992, 1999). They have suffered from another difficulty also, that of their basic culture. Christian democracy was based on a network of social organisations but all these had in common their religious origins. Seiler is right to insist that these are parties of religious defence, which therefore bring together a community; for this reason, attempts to ‘deconfessionalise’ CD parties have always been doomed to failure (2003b: 47). The associations were supposed to propagate Christian (mainly catholic) values, while the parties were to defend catholic interests in the political process. This arrangement worked so long as religious values were widely shared across the population; this usually meant also that Catholics would tend to live, to an extent, in communities or at least in geographical proximity. This obviously facilitated endogamy and hence reinforced the passing on of core values. The so-called pillarisation of Dutch society, where the different communities lived side by side, each with its own political, media and cultural organisations, is the locus classicus of this. Conway has rightly highlighted the tribal nature of the CD vote, and the above are among the means by which tribes perpetuate their culture. The decline in religious practice, however, and the weakening hold of religious values within European populations (the two are of course not co-terminous) have dealt a blow to this cultural foundation. The decline in ‘catholic action’, that nexus of interest groups within civil society, is one symptom of this cultural weakening. The decline in the CD vote is related to this in some ways, though CD parties have found ways of addressing this (Hanley, 2002b). All national CD parties have had to confront these challenges within their own frontiers. The European level of Christian democracy, the EPP, has had another challenge in addition, namely the changing dynamics of the EP. In the original Europe of six, CD parties were major players, usually vying with the socialists as the main force in the EP’s predecessors; these parties were also quite similar in origins (church/state cleavage), structure and programme. Successive enlargements brought growing difficulties, however, as most of the incoming countries had no real CD tradition, usually because the church/state conflict had been resolved in different ways (the ‘Lutheran solution’ of an established church, closely meshed with the state apparatus, in Northern Europe, or the pragmatism of the British approach in the nineteenth century, which admitted Catholics back into the political process in open recognition of their growing weight). The socialists by contrast could welcome in

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successive waves of sister parties, based mainly on the working class and usually having had a prior socialisation inside the SI. If the CD parties were not to be left behind, they needed to address the question of raising their numbers. One way to do this might have been to keep a fairly hard-core CD party at European level and try to ally it – permanently or on an ad hoc basis? – with whatever groupings on the centre-right might be available. The main possibilities were a European conservative group pivoting around the UK Tories or some sovereignist group, to use a term not yet fashionable [mainly Gaullism plus the Irish FF (Fianna Fail)]. The more radical solution was to try and incorporate newcomers into the EPP; if the gambit worked, it would be the biggest (or at worst, second largest) group in the EP, with all the advantages that accrue to a large, united force within a stable institutional system, as opposed to a coalition in need of constant renewal, hence imposing high transaction costs. The problem with this strategy was ironing out the differences between what was by now the received idea of Christian democracy and the various national/conservative stances of the newcomers. Seiler sees this as the true dilemma of modern CD parties: either they keep to a classic CD ideology and practice, knowing that this will have less and less appeal in the modern world, or they try to expand their appeal, but at the cost of diluting their ideological consistency (1980: 333). The EPP went through some conflict over its orientation, though with hindsight the result was never in much doubt (Delwit, 2003b). While a hard core of old CD parties resisted expansion at any costs (essentially the Benelux parties, part of the Italian DC, which would in any case soon fragment, plus some French and Irish), they were overcome by the vigour of the expansionists, whose motor was the German CDU (Jansen, 1998). General Secretary Thomas Jansen was particularly forceful in arguing that (in his view excessive) ideological rigour should be no obstacle to co-operation with parties whose values were not that distinct from those of CD parties and who were ready to progress European integration. Both these points could be questioned in regard to some of the soon-to-be members of the EPP, in fact.

Expansion as a way out of crisis? The strategy of expansion was consistently pursued. In earlier enlargements, there had been little controversy about the incorporation of such as the Greek ND or Irish FG. Both were from small states; the Greeks added an Orthodox variant to the Christian family, and the Irish, while deriving arguably from a centre-periphery cleavage rather than one of


church versus state (Seiler, 2003a: 218–9), nevertheless subscribed to CD ideology at least as vigorously as some of the older parties. More difficult were the Southern members. The Spanish Partido Popular (PP) certainly contained some CDs but was essentially a broad conservative vehicle for elites wishing to move over from Francoism and acquire legitimacy in a democratised Spain (Chadel, 2003; Balfour, 2004). It was granted membership of the EPP group, in the first instance, in a tactic that would become classic for ‘awkward’ new members. By working with CD parliamentary colleagues, the newcomers would, it was hoped, prove their value and win acceptance by a party much of which was still mistrustful. Eventually they could be incorporated into the full party, not just the group. This use of the group as a sort of antechamber to full acceptance and legitimacy is an example of the creative instincts of parties when they have problems to solve; the founders of the original groups would probably have been very surprised to see them used for this purpose. The tactic proved successful in fact, as it was repeated for Berlusconi’s FI in 1998. Again, while FI contained some CDs (the rest having scattered into mini-parties following the implosion of the DC after the mani puliti earthquake which overthrew the party system in Italy), it was widely perceived as an ultra-liberal, pro-business party, indeed designed primarily to serve one very powerful man. Eventually the EPP leadership would get the party to accept FI as a member, but only following a struggle (on the original decision to take them into the group, the deputies had split, with the purist CD members voting against). The one difficulty proved to be the UK Conservatives. No-one could challenge their democratic credentials or accuse them of being the vehicle for one man, but unlike the PP or FI, they were intransigent on the question of European federalism. It is often forgotten that during Edward Heath’s leadership, the Tories applied for membership of the emerging CD International but were refused, ostensibly on grounds of their secular nature but possibly also because of suspicions about their fundamentally nationalist orientation (Dechert, 1967). The 1960s’ conservatives, or at least their elites, were, however, rather different from the Tory Party as it evolved under Margaret Thatcher, embracing a thoroughgoing economic liberalism, strongly tinged with nationalism, and turning its back on the neo-corporatism and pro-European stances of Heath. By 1991, though, there was just a hint of change. John Major, fragile in his own party, was keen to rebuild links with European allies, and the Tory Party was chaired, unusually, by Chris Patten, a Catholic and admirer of Christian democracy. Taking advantage of this rare hiatus in the party’s anti-European drift, the leadership duo brokered a deal

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with the EPP whereby the Tory MEPs could join the group (Johansson, 1997: 131). On this basis, their MEPs joined the EPP group, where, it is fair to say, they have been a source of difficulty ever since, despite their numerical weight and the financing this attracts. They can be counted on to vote against any legislation with a leftist socio-economic tinge, like much of the group, but on the other hand will refuse angrily to support any text with a hint of federalist sentiment. Retrospectively, for all the speculation about the possible Europeanisation of UK conservatism, it never seemed very likely that even the alliance of a talented short-termer and a CD of some charm and persuasive power would ever shift this party away from some deep-lying instincts. The case of the Tories will be examined in more detail at the end of this chapter. Such are the main stages in the expansionist strategy prior to the major enlargement of 2004. To them should be added less spectacular, but significant additions. One is the Portuguese PSD (Partido Social Democratico), recruited simply out of the Liberal group, the EPP having expelled the much smaller CDS (now PP) for euroscepticism. Given the much larger size of the PSD, compared with its CD neighbour, one could say that this is a fortunate instance of self-interest coinciding with principle. It certainly enabled EPP to enjoy an important but seldom avowed objective of all TNP, namely the ‘full hand’ (at least one member in every state). The Scandinavian conservatives were also a fairly easy fit. One can probably accept at face value, for once, EPP statements that their values do not diverge fundamentally from mainstream CD parties. They are more intergovernmentalist no doubt than pure CD parties, but this is now a matter of degree rather than principle. A final part of EPP’s expansionary strategy concerned enlargement. By the late 1990s, the EPP (and its rival TNP) were in a position to influence events in the newly democratised countries of ECE. All the TNP and their Internationals invested heavily in this new market. The position was quite fluid. In some cases, parties (mainly Christian or social democratic) had pre-existed the Stalinist period; TNP had to decide if it was worth reviving them, a task complicated in some cases by the existence of ageing leaderships in exile who thought that they were now entitled to take the stage, whereas new, younger leaders had emerged from the struggle against Stalinism. More usually, a host of new, untried parties had sprung up, with several often vying for the official family label. Working at this juncture through the EUCD, EPP took in as observers or associates (the distinction was not always clear) more than one party from the same country, terming these groupings ‘équipes nationales’ in a throwback to the 1940s. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation played a key role


in identifying individuals and movements with meaningful prospects before serious dialogue could begin. Clearly the intention was to decant the newcomers in the medium term into one solid formation. Applications were dealt with by ad hoc commissions, which then made a recommendation to the EUCD council (Fitzmaurice, 1998: 68). The process suited both sides. Postulant parties received a label of legitimacy to use in their own country and abroad, and they could see TNP membership as the first step on a ladder of virtue that would take their country eventually into the EU (though for most of them at this time, NATO was probably the main priority). The EPP and other TNP saw their membership strengthened in view of impending enlargements and the future balance of power in a bigger EP. But one obvious consequence of this was that the original CD core of the EPP could only be further diluted, most of the newcomers being conservatives or nationalists (Fogarty, 1999). We have described the mechanisms of EPP expansion. Its political logic needs further exploration, however. The need to surpass the socialists was certainly a prime motive. One can add that from the point of view of the incomers, joining a growing and probably hegemonic grouping was always likely to be more attractive than starting up in a medium-sized and untried conservative group. Such considerations of material interest are very important, yet they might not have on their own led to a fusion that seems in retrospect fairly easy. For this to happen, some ideological concession was necessary, arguably on both sides, but in particular, we believe, on the part of the EPP. Essentially, the party shifted its discourse away from the social-corporatist tones of classic Christian democracy towards a much more market friendly, neo-liberal posture. This much can be easily inferred from study of EPP texts, as we argued apropos of the 1999 EP elections (Hanley and Ysmal, 1999: 211–13). The EPP manifesto praised the virtues of the market, competition and free enterprise; it wanted to reduce taxes and regulation on employers. Although it did recognise the need to address inequality through redistribution, it also had a much more anti-state tone than before, even going so far as to say that usually state action did more harm than good. This neo-liberal shift sat uneasily with traditional CD references, such as the importance of the family as a social unit and the need for ‘social partners’ to dialogue on social and economic policy. The overall impression was of a movement being pulled very strongly in the direction of neo-liberal globalism, which in the past it had regarded with some suspicion. It is fair to say that since then, this tone has if anything become stronger. The 2004 manifesto does not mention Christian democracy or

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personalism but stresses that the EPP draws from the Enlightenment as well as from Christian thought, and it talks up the similarity with US values (EPP, 2004).4 These pressures on EPP at the European level are only a larger version of what was happening at national level. A French quip of the early 1990s had Bayrou’s UDF ‘discovering liberalism’ after 150 years. As the ‘European social model’ came under increasing difficulty, CDs turned towards the reinvigorated current of neo-liberal theory and practice. It was perceived as offering solutions to the struggling European economies and, if successful, possibly enlarging their shrinking electoral base, on the basis of results obtained rather than tribal loyalty. It therefore made sense to replicate at European level what was happening nationally; if one had allied with the tenets of neo-liberalism at home, why not ally with some of its representatives inside a TNP? Such was the compelling logic, and though some of the purists within the EPP put up a fight, even forming short-lived and ineffectual fractions such as the Schuman group, the result was never in doubt. EPP would expand into a catch-all party of the centre-right.5

The conservative family: transnationalism at last? One important parallel development was taking place in the 1980s. This was the transnational linking of the conservative family, the last of the older party families to go down this route. This label essentially covers parties whose origins lie in the owners/propertyless cleavage. Often among the oldest of parties, they have long learned to adapt to democracy and the workings of the market, whatever reservations they may once have had. They are essentially pragmatic, flexible machines, aimed at securing office, and they have usually been highly successful at this (Girvin, 1994; Wilson, 1998). Their evolution on questions such as religion or personal liberties reflects their non-dogmatic, instrumental view; they will do what it takes to secure election. Nowadays they are in fact frequently described as the ‘secular conservatives’. The neo-liberal economics, which they have increasingly adopted latterly, is not an essential part of their make-up, either, and could (as it has been in the past) be replaced by some more dirigiste approach if it were felt necessary. Even the nationalism associated with such strongly rooted parties is a moveable feast. Such parties pride themselves on not being ideological. This very summary description should make it apparent that they are not natural partners of Christian democracy, with its very specific


ideology and social projects. Yet equally, these supreme pragmatists are perfectly capable of working with CD parties if appropriate. By 1978 the European Democratic Union (EDU) existed as the regional branch of a genuine International, the International Democratic Union (IDU) (EDU, 1998). The IDU grouped some of the heavyweight parties of the non-European world, with long experience of government, such as the US Republicans or Australian Liberals (Table 4.1). While the European-level EDU included among its 18 members such parties as one might expect – UK Conservatives, French RPR (Rassemblement pour la République), Swedish Moderates – the EDU’s membership list also contained some prominent members of the CDI/EPP, notably the German CDU/CSU and Austrian ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei). The EPP parties not enjoying dual membership were, unsurprisingly, the hard core of purist CD parties – Benelux, Irish, French UDF, Italian DC. Membership (or not) of EDU was thus a kind of litmus test for CD parties. Those who stuck to a purist vision of the movement would not join EDU. The pragmatists, CDU at their head, saw no problem in belonging to both EDU and EPP. Given the ideological movement of the EPP towards EDU positions and the organisational overlap, it was possible to ask by the 1990s whether the EDU would continue as a separate organisation. Expansion of the EPP has raised questions about the future of EDU. While the conservative International IDU, which was actually founded 5 years after EDU, is flourishing and has recently set up a further regional organisation for Latin America, the same cannot be said of EDU, nominally its regional branch at European level. Jansen recounts (2006a: 193–8) a decade’s attempts to merge EDU into the EPP much in the way that EUCD was absorbed. Despite elaborate offers to win over recalcitrant parties (such as the possibility of having the EPP represent every member of the EPP within EDU), no formal merger has ever taken place, essentially because a number of EPP parties insist on making acceptance of the federalist agenda, as inscribed in the Athens Programme, a condition of merger. For reasons of economy, the EDU headquarters has now been shifted into the EPP building in Brussels in 2000, and its website today directs enquiries to the EPP (IDU has now relocated to Norway). Yet in theory a separate structure still remains for the conservative parties of Europe, even if as Jansen remarks (2006a: 197) that the resignation of the Austrian Secretary General Wintoniak in 2002 ‘effectively marked the end of the EDU as a distinct entity the de facto if not formally agreed integration of the EDU in the EPP’. Logical and tidy as this version of events is, it does beg one question, namely that of continuing membership of EPP parties within the wider

100 Beyond the Nation State

IDU. At the end of 2006 by our count, no less than 21 EPP parties were listed as IDU members, including all the major players (UMP, CDU/CSU, PP, etc.). Absent from the list were of course exactly the parties one would expect to find, namely those that cling strongest to a CD identity – Benelux, Italians, Irish. Thus although the question of double membership, overlapping and redundant structures might have been solved, or swept under the carpet, at EU level, it remains an issue within the centre-right families at large, suggesting that on fundamental questions, there are still strong differences of identity. The problem of the wider links of EDU outside Europe may have seemed a barrier to a fusion of the two organisations, but against that it could be said that the enlarged EPP in Europe had already climbed over some very large barriers and that within the CDI there was by now a very wide range of parties. The residual EDU structures do allow parties with wider loyalties than to EPP to meet in parallel with the latter, but the value of this must be debatable. The situation in ECE and the Balkans is also considered sufficiently fluid by some as to warrant keeping on an extra transnational outlet for parties from that region. It was suggested to us by one conservative official that some leaders such as Iain Duncan Smith wanted to keep on a residual EDU as a sort of ‘insurance policy’.6 In all probability, however, the insurance will not be needed. EPP has converged sufficiently with conservative positions for the latter to feel perfectly able to carry out such transnational collaboration as they need. As good pragmatists, they can only really consider EDU as a rather wasteful piece of reduplication. While therefore its short-term survival may not be in doubt (more in deference to certain national sensibilities about ‘federalism’ than to any common sense), its long-term prospects might be less promising.

Limits of absorption: the non-EPP Christian parties The preceding account has implied a fairly irresistible convergence of parties from a CD background with those from the world of the secular conservatives. There are however limits to what can be absorbed into an all-embracing party. An undoubted symptom of the failure of the EPP to embrace the whole range of Christian political opinion is the foundation of what is perhaps best described as an embryonic TNP, the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM). Founded in Hungary in November 2002, this organisation aims to bring together political parties on an explicitly Christian basis. There seems no doubt that the origins of these parties


are firmly rooted in the cleavage between the state and organised religion, meaning that they should be ‘natural’ candidates for EPP membership. Their values are certainly those of parties of ‘religious defence’. ECPM’s membership list (Table 4.2) shows some small parties and organisations, including a couple of fairly peripheral members of the EPP; although its membership seems to include catholic organisations, the majority of its parties and their geographical location suggest that it is mainly Protestant in character. It is another sign of the strong surge of Protestantism, including Protestant parties, in recent years, particularly in Latin America and Africa (which may explain the presence of an African party on the membership list). Certainly its founding declarations (ECPM, 2003) have a strong Biblical tone not normally found in catholic texts. ECPM aims at ‘consensus within the family of European Christian parties behind a Christian programme for Europe’ and to ‘establish a European structure for our co-operation’. Key ECPM values highlighted are as follows: protection of life, including opposition to euthanasia and cloning; the family (as traditionally understood) as cornerstone of society; a strong role for religions and civic organisations; subsidiarity, and stewardship of the environment. Unsurprisingly, ECPM wanted an explicit reference to Christian values and their historic contribution to European development to be included in the draft Constitution.

Table 4.2 The European Christian Political Movement, 2007 Members Armenia – Working Group on Christian Politics Belgium – Chrétiens démocrates francophones – C’Axent Bulgaria – Bulgarian Christian Coalition Estonia – Estonian Christian Peoples Party Germany – Partei Bibelteruer Christen – Zentrumspartei Hungary – Magyar Demokrata Forum (MDF)∗ Iceland – Kristilegi Lýdroedisflokkurin Lithuania – Lietuvos Krikscionys Demokratai (LKD)∗ Moldova – Partidul Popular Chrestin Democrat Netherlands – Christen Unie (CU) United Kingdom – Christian Peoples Alliance South Africa – African Christian Democratic Party ECPYN – European Christian Political Youth Network ∗

Also holds EPP membership.


ECPM’s statutes (ECPM, 2005) provide all the trappings of a TNP, with annual congresses electing a management board, and membership based not on individuals but parties or organisations. It is uncertain yet just how it might operate as a political force, given its so far modest membership; in particular, its relationship to the EPP is likely to be problematic. For the present we may note that its very existence is symptomatic of a growing dissatisfaction felt towards EPP by those whose political commitment stems first and foremost from Christian values. While much ECPM ideology sounds very like received Christian democracy, it is clear that on ethical issues such as the role of the family or bio-medical questions, the EPP is seen as having gone too far towards secularist viewpoints. ECPM thus shows again that one of the prices of expansion is dilution of parts of the original corpus of values and alienation of some ‘natural’ constituents; if the ‘secular conservatives’ are to be included, then by the same token, some more strictly religious parties cannot be. Just how extensive or damaging this shortfall will prove remains to be seen.

National parties and the EPP We turn now to a number of case studies that illustrate the complicated patterns of convergence and divergence within and around the EPP. Christians and conservatives at loggerheads: the Czech right The EPP has two connexions with the Czech centre-right. The CD party KDU–CSL (Krestanskà-demokratická Unie–Ceska Strana Ludove, or Christian Democrat Union–Czech People’s Party) has been a member, first of EUCD, since the early 1990s. Its bigger rival ODS (Obcanska demokratická Strana or Civic Democratic Party) is a member of the EP group, but a querulous one that will not entertain full membership of the party, like its UK conservative friends. The contrasting story of these forces tells us much about the way in which national parties can use opportunities beyond the frontiers. The CSL’s history goes back before 1939, when it figured regularly in the government of the Czechoslovakia. It could be seen as a good example of a party of religious defence with an inter-class basis, developing towards the model of Christian democracy familiar after 1945 (Perotino, 2004). During communist party rule, the CSL did not dissolve itself but survived, like a number of parties in other Stalinist states, as a rump party, tolerated by the communists as fig-leaves within so-called ‘national front electoral pacts’, supposed to mask the total dominance of


the CP apparatus and create an illusion of pluralism. Within this limited space, the CSL tried to defend its cause as best it could. Thus when democracy returned in 1990, the CSL could not just appeal to historic memories but actually had a set of experienced elites and proven structures, including an electorate that has remained faithful. To this core would be added new activists, untainted by any participation in the old regime; it is in acknowledgement of their presence that the party took on the additional and more explicit title of KDU.7 When the Konard Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and EPP came recruiting after 1990, CSL was an obvious immediate contact; the interest for both sides was apparent. EPP had a ready-made member, provided it could be reassured about the democratic credentials and record of some of the surviving leadership. CSL could hope to benefit both from rapid access to important leaders of the centre-right family and, more importantly in the short term, from the legitimation that comes from acceptance into a recognised big family. KAS, backed up in particular by the CDU and ÖVP, duly played a strong role in training new cadres in democratic and organisational skills and helping organise electoral campaigns. CSL has usually achieved 8–10 percent of the vote and elected some 20 MPs, enough to make it a pivot party in what is a tightly contested partisan system; it has governed with both social democrats and ODS. It seems very much at ease within the EPP and values its summits, to which it usually sends as delegate the Czech Foreign Minister, a party member. It has had no difficulty in accommodating to EPP’s expansionist strategy. While it may wonder privately about the politics of some fellow members (the Hungarian Fidesz, nationalistic and ultra-liberal, was one example cited in discussion), the party is quite clear that the major objective has to be to have the largest EP group. Pragmatism prevails over ideological scruple. The only party in EPP with which it sees major differences is the UK Conservatives (though, notwithstanding coalition deals, the ODS would really have to be added to the list). Significantly, in a relationship that one also sees in other families, it feels especially close to the German and Austrian parties; history and territory are powerful markers. Even the problem of the Benes decrees (which endorse the confiscation of property abandoned by Germans who fled in 1945 and are accepted by all Czech parties) is not seen as threatening. In CSL eyes, the problem is more for German or Austrian politicians, who have to square their electorate off on this question; the politicians themselves may not be that concerned. This may be an optimistic reading but it shows how keen CSL is on this local multilateral arrangement.


KDU–CSL is a smallish party occupying a distinct niche in Czech politics. Membership of EPP has helped it achieve legitimacy, and it sees its own pragmatic approach to politics reflected in the evolution of EPP. This is not true of ODS, however. It gradually emerged as the most coherent force out of the wide variety of civic activists who came together to promote the Velvet Revolution. It soon came to stand for a very neo-liberal approach to the economy, allied to a strong Atlanticism and an attitude to EU membership that was at best lukewarm; at times it flirted with the idea of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) membership. To that extent, it was like many new centre-right parties emerging after 1990 in Eastern or Central Europe, though, unlike some, it was not obsessed with punishing former communists, even welcoming in some of them who became successful at business. Increasingly, however, it stressed the primacy of Czech national interests as it saw them (it was a major force in the split with Slovakia, for instance). Its dislike of the CSL and its Austrian friends in the ÖVP was palpable, since it saw them as soft on the question of ex-German property. Under the energetic leadership of Vaclav Klaus, successively prime minister and president, it became the major governing party, with only the socialists capable of providing an alternative. ODS backed Czech membership of the EU but without the enthusiasm of other families; Klaus’s opposition to the euro, for instance, is well known. As for its international links, the party joined the IDU, logically enough for a party that might be called national-liberal in the late nineteenth-century sense; within the EP, however, it has ended up in the EPP group, but not in the party per se. Along with the UK Conservatives, ODS makes up the European Democrats (EDs) part of the EPP–ED combined group. Conceivably, the Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN) might have been an option for such a party, but size and proximity to major governing parties matter to a party as used to governing as ODS. Its lucid and authoritative delegation leader Jan Zahradil explained the move towards EPP in historical terms.8 In the transition period, ODS was exposed to a number of key influences. One was the German KAS and CDU (but not the ÖVP), logically enough given territorial proximity; the other, however, was the British Conservative Party, whose international operations at this time were overseen by Geoffrey Pattie, close to Mrs Thatcher. Personal and ideological ties were forged in joint seminars and other meetings that would persist years afterwards. Clearly the ODS international team felt close to the neo-liberal, Atlanticist and nationally assertive view of the Thatcherite Tories; in particular they shared Tory wariness of much of the EU. It is clear also that ODS respects the weight


and power of the CDU but feels that it can cast a rather patronising shadow over smaller parties when allowed to do so. It therefore made sense to follow the conservatives into the EPP group, as a critical presence from one point of view, or a Trojan horse from the other. This background enables us better to situate ODS with regard to the EPP. From a Czech nationalist point of view, the party is too dominated by catholic CDs, of which CSL is absolutely typical; but the Czech Republic not being a catholic country, that party cannot claim to represent Czech interests properly. This catholic identity at the core of the EPP, which emerges in an ideology such as personalism, is clearly a problem for politicians brought up in the more austere culture that characterises Hussite Protestantism; for Zahradil, it was difficult to understand how Nordic Protestants like the Swedes could feel at home in such a party. This is not merely a matter of abstract sentiment; there is a real clash of political style and substance here. Inseparable from EPP’s catholicism is also its federalism, which ODS firmly refuses. The result is a fairly uncomfortable position within the EPP group. In addition to the above problems, there seems from ODS’ point of view a lack of basic unity, with sometimes three broad strands in the group, which often find expression in votes where liberals can line up against CDs against nationalists, among whom Eastern Europeans are prominent; ODS votes some 90 % of the time with the Tories. ODS reports that the ED part of the group has had constant struggles to get the group as a whole to honour the financial commitments that it has conceded to ED; the latter have had difficulty, for instance, in having funding for their own conferences and have been forced to contribute to the costs of (federalist) propaganda of which they disapprove. There is now some feeling within ODS that EPP has maybe had its best days and that the future may well see a split and the effective reconstitution of a conservative group. While recognising the difficulties of such an enterprise, ODS remains open to the possibility. Clearly much depends on how the UK Conservatives move on this question, and this will be examined shortly. There is no doubt, however, that the Europe that ODS seeks is marketdominated and open (including towards Turkish membership), weakly intergovernmentalist and Atlanticist; the EPP is not offering this. For the moment, we can note that, contrary to CSL, ODS has had a conflicting and ultimately unsatisfactory relationship with EPP. The major grounds of dissatisfaction would seem to be cultural incompatibility, manifested in the tension over the religious underpinnings to politics and the clash of federalism and nationalism.


The Belgian case: misery and compromise Before the linguistic split in Belgium, the CD party CVP/PSC (Christelijke Volkspartij–Parti Social Chrétien) could arguably lay claim to political hegemony, only exceptionally being absent from government. Since the party’s division into the Walloon CDH and Flemish CDenV (ChristenDemocratisch en Vlaams), as they are now called, the fortunes of the two have diverged somewhat. CDenV still remains the biggest party in Flanders, albeit by not very much,9 though it has recently had to begin a second term in opposition at federal level. CDH now polls around 17 % in Wallonia and a bare 5 % at federal level; out of power at federal level, it has had to settle for being junior partner to the dominant and very secularist socialists in the Walloon executive. Both these variants of the CD family were long regarded as classic exemplars of the genre; subscribing to doctrines of social personalism and the social market economy, they federated an inter-class electorate of Catholics and were backed up by a strong network of associations within civil society, typical of the so-called ‘pillarised’ system of the Benelux countries. Perpetual members of coalition governments, theirs was a culture of negotiation and compromise, whether with their liberal or socialist competitors, both of whom strove to assemble those of a secularist worldview. Both were strongly committed to European integration. Recently, conscious of the decreasing hold of religion, both have attempted to diversify their appeal beyond their hard-core catholic vote, with similar difficulty (Billiet, 2003; Delwit, 2003c). In the light of this, their transnational experiences might be expected to be similar, but this is by no means the case. CDH has experienced what it sees as the rightwards drift of the EPP with a bitter sense of powerlessness; it no longer recognises the type of Europe, free-trade and Atlanticist, rushing headlong towards enlargement at the cost of increased political cohesion, which EPP appears to be promoting, and which has little to do with the ‘Rhenish model’ to which the party adheres.10 The internal crises within EPP that attended its expansionist strategy were particularly painful for the party, which played as big a role as it could to try and block the strategy. The entry of the UK Conservatives was a first blow, but the real betrayal (to use the International Secretary’s expression) was the refusal to sanction the ÖVP and its coalition with the far-right party of Jörg Haider. CDH actually considered leaving the EPP at this point, but consideration of the options was not encouraging. The Liberal group (where their colleagues Bayrou and Prodi would eventually go) was not feasible, given that in Belgian politics


that family is CDH’s worst enemy (the Socialists may be secularists, but on social and economic policy, they are closer). UEN, for all its underlying catholic sensibility and conservative stance on many moral issues, was considered too far to the right on socio-economic issues; unfavourable comparisons were made between it and the German CSU, conservative morally but seen as more generous socially. The force of political gravity thus pinned an unhappy CDH into the EPP fold, where it tried to organise resistance to the dominant strategy via the Schuman group. This of course achieved precisely nothing, a failure that CDH ascribes partly to MEPs’ fear of missing out on opportunities if they were seen to be too far from the dominant line and, more seriously, to the lack of a leader willing to head a serious fractional endeavour to change policy. Bayrou, Jean-Luc Dehaene or Hansenne (a former head of the International Labour Office) had all probably the stature, but not the will. The party found itself increasingly ‘orphaned’ within the EPP, with only a few scattered allies (mainly the remains of the old Italian CD and some Benelux colleagues). The Flemish CDenV, with which it might have been expected to share some strategy, remained in CDH eyes too committed to its strategy in Flanders, where it is forced to take on a more nationalist tone simply to avoid being upstaged by the Vlaams Belang (VB). Its International Secretary feels that these days it has a more useful transnational outlet in the CDI, where at least it can work with many of the CD parties from Central and South America which refuse US-inspired market liberalism. In short, CDH’s place in EPP is most uncomfortable; it clings on in an organisation which it cannot hope to change and where others constantly attack it, mainly because the exit options seem worse. If the exit option is ruled out and the voice becomes harder to make heard, there remains only – for how long? – the option of loyalty. Of all the national parties to whom we spoke, CDH’s transnational experience was probably the least rewarding in any way. CDenV has by contrast found a more comfortable place within EPP. It is no accident that it has provided EPP’s longstanding leader Wilfried Martens, who has followed another respected Flemish CD, Leo Tindemans.11 The fact that EPP seems to draw its leaders almost naturally from this party says something perhaps about the type of compromise politics that it embodies. Certainly its spokespeople do not experience life within EPP in the rather bitter conflict-ridden way that their CDH colleagues seem to do.12 For CDenV, the evolution of the EPP has not altered its Christian democratic character, certainly not to the point where the Flemish party might have to question its membership. Divisions within EPP can be exaggerated by observers; after all, the


Athens Programme is still valid, and over 30 parties out of 60-odd have some explicit CD reference in either their title or their programme. EPP is in fact a union of parties with similar values; this leaves space for different national members to translate these values into policy in ways that suit their particular circumstances. This approach, based on distinguishing shared values from policy output, is doubtless disingenuous, but it enables CDenV to be very inclusive and to recognise the existence of a genuine left/right polarity within the EPP. It also enables the party to sidestep the awkward question of the UK Conservatives; what for the CDH was an invasion of CD space by an outside body becomes simply a technical problem, a purely parliamentary arrangement with some awkward allies that does not implicate the party per se. None of this implies a totally passive acceptance of EPP policy. CDenV did participate in the Schuman group and does not regret this; it still believes that its best option is to try and influence policy through the various workgroups. Voice still remains a viable option. It is clearly hard to measure the success of such a tactic, but perhaps the party would point to the growing EPP opposition to Turkish entry to the EU as one issue on which it has helped move opinions. In fact CDenV sees the EPP as a more fluid organisation than does perhaps CDH, with different groups of parties allying more flexibly according to the issues, rather than a straight clash of CDs versus the rest. In a very Belgian phrase, their spokesman said that ‘it is not always black or white’. Generally CDenV has no real reservations about being in EPP or on the way the party operates. It would like to see a better co-ordination of international officers, especially before summits, a measure that EPP Secretary General Lopez Isturiz has been pushing. It would also like to see national parties entrusting international contacts to more heavyweight figures than is often the case. This would enable the ground to be prepared for better agreement on policy measures at the summit, whose efficacy CDenV values. The heading off of Verhofstadt as a possible runner for the Commission presidency is presented as one example of this type of co-ordination. It seems surprising that two parties from the same state can have such different experiences of transnationalism, especially when they are located at the very heart of the EU. Yet in a sense this experience reflects the reality of domestic political life. CDH is a struggling party, resigned to a support role in the weaker part of Belgium; it has tried to renew itself but remains at heart a classic CD party. CDenV has also tried to dilute its identity in the interests of attracting voters, but remains the leading party in Belgium’s most dynamic and confident region, and its return


to national office cannot be long delayed. It has made a long historic investment in the EPP and been rewarded with high office therein. It sees EPP as very much the type of forum where its negotiating and compromise skills can be constantly used; perhaps some ground has to be conceded on certain issues but in return EPP can be kept together and dominate the EP, while exercising huge influence in new states. Wilfried Martens has been a forthright and skilled exponent of this type of leadership for years. The Belgian case would seem to suggest that national parties can choose different approaches to a TNP, but that diffident sticking to principle is probably likely to be less satisfactory than strong leadership in the name of pragmatic realism. The British Conservatives – a failure of boldness? The Tories’ on–off relationship with EPP reveals the cruel constraints of domestic politics, while also suggesting that some leaders bend to these rather more readily than others. After the 1989 EP elections, conservative MEPs had applied for membership of the EPP group, but given Mrs Thatcher’s known hostility to integration, the EPP leadership preferred to put the issue on the back burner (Jansen, 2006a: 151). There was some surprise in 1992 when Chris Patten, party chairman and a close colleague of John Major, brokered a deal that allowed conservative MEPs to become members of the EPP group in the EP; the question of membership of the party was, however, left to later. The Danish conservatives were also included in the pact and in fact applied for observer status in EPP as early as 1993. The weight of Helmut Kohl and the determination of Wilfried Martens were decisive in forcing this issue. The significance of this hard-won alliance, to use Johansson’s apt phrase (1997), for the TNP system was potentially huge. It meant the end of what hitherto had been a viable conservative group in the EP since 1973 (the European Conservative Group, later European Democratic Group – EDG). It was a further step in the expansionary strategy of EPP, comparable to the taking in of FI and the PP, which would occur soon afterwards. It also seemed, from the UK domestic angle, to denote a big step by the Tories towards a more pro-integration attitude, barely 3 years after Thatcher’s famed Bruges speech. More cautious analysts might have noted the unusual conjunction of events that lay behind the move; Patten, who is happy to be described as a CD, was very untypical of his party and was to become increasingly so. Christopher Prout, leader of the conservative delegation, was also an integrationist. Major, a new leader with an uncertain grasp of European affairs and a relatively narrow power base in the party, was unlikely to push a revolution in European policy


if his party felt strongly against it. All these factors were major question marks against the new direction sought by Patten. Subsequent developments are well enough known to warrant scant recall. During the 1990s, the conservatives moved steadily towards quite eurosceptical positions, even more so outside the parliamentary party; a beleaguered Major faced frequent rebellions from a hard core of backbenchers (whom he memorably described as ‘bastards’). Even his obtaining British opt-outs from the Employment Chapter or monetary union was never enough to disarm his critics, and the resultant divisions within the Tory Party were a major factor in its 1997 defeat. Since then, a succession of leaders, from Hague through Duncan Smith (one of Major’s most determined rebels) to Howard, have hardened the party’s relationship to the EPP group, bullying a number of concessions out of the leadership. In July 1999 at the Malaga summit of EPP, Hague struck a deal, endorsed by Aznar, Berlusconi and Schäuble, whereby the group name became EPP–ED,13 and references in group texts to a ‘United States of Europe’ were to be replaced by ‘principles of subsidiarity and decentralisation’ (this has tended to happen, though not so fast as the conservatives would like). At the same time, ED members’ freedom to diverge from the group whip was recognised (in practice no-one has ever been able to prevent it). Shortly before his overthrow, Duncan Smith was on the point of taking his party out of the EPP group and was reportedly in active negotiations with the Polish PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, or Law and Justice) and Czech ODS about reconfiguring the conservative group.14 After the 2004 elections, the more pragmatic Howard negotiated a further deal, whereby the ED elements of the group (i.e. the Tories and ODS) would get a guaranteed vice-presidency, their own staffing and finance on a pro-rata basis, and freedom to publish their own (eurosceptic) material. One of the few things that the ED is forbidden to do is recruit members without the approval of the EPP group as a whole. Although conservatives frequently complain about the reluctance of EPP functionaries to implement properly the terms of the deal, there can be few examples in history of such a degree of autonomy being conceded to a fraction within an organisation, even when the latter is a parliamentary group rather than a party. Any possibility of joining the EPP as a member party has of course long since disappeared off the radar screen. The current leader David Cameron has now reached, perhaps not entirely intentionally, what appears to be a point of no return. During the campaign for the Tory leadership following Howard’s resignation after the 2005 general election defeat, Europe became a major


theme, mainly at the insistence of Liam Fox, a contender positioned on the nationalist right of the party (Bale, 2006). In order to defuse this challenge, the two main contestants, David Davies and Cameron, both made assurances to the eurosceptics. Davies promised to repatriate various powers from Brussels (taking up Howard’s rhetoric), while Cameron went one step further by pledging – not always in the most public of ways – to pull the Tory MEPs out of the EPP group. It is doubtful if he realised the full significance of this promise or indeed if he was fully briefed on what happens in the EP. Upon becoming leader, he then experienced the difficulty of trying to discharge his promise and build, around the Tories, a new EP group, based on free-market economics, deregulation, minimal intergovernmentalism among proud nation states and unstinting Atlanticism. The main problem is, quite simply, that there are not sufficient parties of any size available for such an adventure. It would be mathematically possible, as shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague discovered on his visits to Brussels, to cobble together a mini-party that would fulfil the bare conditions of the Regulation, and journalists amused themselves for a few days by speculating on possible joiners. Yet if a new party were to make an impact, it would have to be more than a coalition of minorities and malcontents. Duncan Smith had already recognised the need to balance the Tories with at least one other big party. The natural contenders were ODS (see above); yet for all their coolness towards integration, its leaders were pragmatists enough to prefer the large tent to pastures unknown. We were assured by a very senior EPP source that Topolanek had promised that if ODS won the 2006 elections (which in fact resulted in a dead heat), the party would stay in the EPP group. It has shown no desire to leave. The other fancied partners were the Polish PiS. Even leaving aside the legendarily difficult bargaining style of the Kaczinski brothers, close inspection of this party shows that it is in the right place within UEN. Its Catholicism, fierce nationalism, moral conservatism and defence of economic losers in the name of solidarity set it poles apart from the type of modern, open, deregulating, socially liberal type of centre-right party that the Tories seek to be. With the two main potential partners of any weight removed from the equation, the outlook is unpromising. The conservatives could not invest UEN, because its sensibility is on the whole nearer to that of the PiS than the EPP. Their way into the ID group is blocked off also by the presence of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), notwithstanding the fact that some of its other members may not be entirely desirable as associates. In short, political gravity, and their own past


decisions, pin the Tories firmly within the EPP. It is too late now to dream of a viable conservative group, including the Scandinavians, which might be big enough to pull in some Mediterranean conservatives (PP, Nea Demokratia?) and thereby catch up with a diminished EPP. If that was the strategy, then the time to adopt it was the 1980s, as enlargements began to loom. The Patten/Major decision to invest EPP proved fatal for the nationalist/conservative line. Escape from the EPP group might now only be achievable at the cost of ending up in a miniparty and committing the equivalent of self-mutilation.15 Small wonder that Cameron and Hague eventually bought some breathing space by proclaiming that they would quit the group but only after the 2009 EP elections. It might be asked why the world’s oldest party of government has got into such a conundrum. The evolution of the EPP in latter years has been in exactly the direction that the conservatives sought; indeed it could be argued that their presence within the EP group has helped that evolution. Today’s EPP plays down federalism in favour of the less loaded concept of subsidiarity; it is far more open to the market and less socially generous or inclined to corporatism. Even its Atlanticism is more visible. It is true that it would push for more integration on some dossiers than the Tories would like to see, but such tensions are the norm in all TNP; the TNP is the place where they can be managed. The main area of friction is in fact institutional, particularly with regard to the draft Constitution, and even this issue has lost saliency after the French and Dutch referenda.16 Given the advantages associated with membership of a large group (posts of responsibility, speaking time, etc.), is there really enough difference between the mainstream EPP and the conservatives to warrant the latter’s departure? Surely it would make more sense to continue within the group, gradually winning over yet more parties to their line; this is after all what their Nordic and Mediterranean colleagues have decided to do. Conservative notables are well respected, not just within the EPP, for their contributions in committee and their brokerage skills; they could look forward to a continuing growth of influence. They could even, if they wished to make a symbolic point, cling to the fact that they are only members of the group, not the party, though there is a bolder strategy available (see below). The only plausible motive for this rejectionist strategy can be the pressure of domestic politics. Observers such as Bale have noticed a steady hardening of the eurosceptic line from the early 1990s, from optouts to delaying a decision on the euro to a definite refusal of it, and a new discourse about repatriating certain policies (fisheries usually being


cited as a priority). The threat of withdrawing from the EU has only figured in the discourse of peripheral figures, though Duncan Smith was a keen promoter of a North Atlantic Free Trade Area, an idea that has made some headway inside EPP. At the same time as hardening its line, the party has, however, never really sought to exploit European questions flat out, because they inevitably throw up intra-party rifts that voters can see. The result has been an inching towards middling eurosceptic positions, pushed along to some extent by the force of UKIP, which claims to have cost the Tories up to 27 seats in 2005. This strategy has hardly paid off in electoral terms, as Europe generally rates low in voters’ priorities; this is so because, as Bale points out (2006: 394), Labour agrees with most Tory positions (bar perhaps outright refusal of the euro and the rhetoric of repatriation, which it judges as unworkable).17 In a sense, the party has the worst of all worlds; it dare not be totally eurosceptic and follow UKIP (nor does it want to), but equally it seems dissatisfied with the status quo. The aborted escape from EPP merely mirrors that dilemma. Rather than hide in a new and ineffective EP group, it might be time for the conservatives to take the bull by the horns. They could adopt what Bale terms a eurorealist approach, attempting to de-dramatise the European policy process and strip it of much of the myth and emotion which attend it and which politicians in the past have been tempted to try and convert into electoral gain. By so doing, they could stress to their voters that far from becoming a federalist superstate, the EU is a unique type of limited pooled sovereignty, whose further development is likely to be slow and cautious; in simple language, it remains a common market with some shared competences, increasingly open to global competition, whatever some member states may believe. They could point out that the EPP has moved a long way towards this vision, compared with what it was at its origins; today less than half of its members are CDs. Many of them are very close to the Tories, except that they have not allowed themselves to be trapped, by domestic pressures, into a no-win situation, where rhetoric about superstates prevents common-sense approaches to a much more prosaic reality. If this is true, it follows that the place for a serious Conservative Party is at the hub of the EPP group. Indeed, logic dictates that the conservatives should actually join the party, where they would constitute one of the biggest parties. They could exploit their very close relationship with the CDU to mutual advantage (Mayer and Stehling, 2005). One day the EPP will have a President who will not be a Benelux Catholic and a Secretary


General from somewhere else than Germany. Either of those posts could fall to a Briton. Needless to say, such a strategy would mark a radical turn, and it would have to be undertaken in the teeth of some internal opposition and a media that takes no prisoners. The prizes could be considerable, however; a successful Tory investment in the EPP might do more to put Britain ‘at the heart of Europe’ than a decade of phrasemaking. Forty years ago, Edward Heath tried a similar strategy when he tried to enrol the Tories in the CD International (Dechert, 1967). He was turned down, mainly by the Italian DC, for lack of federal enthusiasm and religious difference. Today’s EPP is not so catholic or so federalist, and the DC has passed into history. At the time, Heath was making a bold ploy, though one could argue that in those days leaders had more freedom from media scrutiny and that a ‘permissive consensus’ over Europe still prevailed among political elites. Nevertheless, it was an original and long-term strategy. Some leaders are not always subject to pressures that may not be as acute as newspaper editors claim; they are ready to take a chance. Time will tell if Cameron is one of them. At the start of 2007, however, as the eurosceptic voices of millionaire donors to the Conservative Party became increasingly strident about Cameron’s alleged lack of toughness with ‘the Europeans’, few observers would bet on any radical moves from the Tory leader.

Conclusion EPP likes to see itself as further down the road to an integrated party than its rival TNP. The party still falls, however, a long way short of fully integrated status. It certainly has a dynamic leadership, which is adroit and quick to present the party view on events as they develop. Yet there must be doubts about its internal consistency, as evidenced by its failure to incorporate properly some of the most significant members of the European centre-right. Divisions persist on issues such as Turkish entry to the EU or what to do with the failed Constitution. In P/A terms, one might conclude that the agent may be slightly more robust than that of some other families, but it still remains under strong supervision by most of its principals.

Notes 1. Papini lists as members (1988: 40): the German Zentrum, Austrian Social Christian Party, French PDP, Italian PPI, Dutch Catholic Party, the


2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

National League of Christian Workers of Belgium, the CD parties of Hungary, Lithuania and Poland, the Swiss Popular Conservative Party, the Luxembourg Party of the Right, the Christian Party of Slovenia and the Popular Party of Slovakia. Contact was also established with some Latin American parties and with personalities from Ireland, Romania and Spain. Seiler sees this type of catholic party as deriving from the integrist tradition of catholic theory (2003b: 43). The strongly elitist and networking character of these early meetings is illustrated by the fact that the French MRP did not attend, but its leader Bidault (by then virtually a permanent figure in government, as prime minister or foreign minister) did. The intensification of EPP’s neo-liberal and Atlanticist drift is discussed in Hanley 2004. According to our information, neither the Schuman group nor a short-lived predecessor, the Athens group, ever functioned meaningfully as a caucus or fraction, defending a classic CD line inside the EPP. (Interviews with John Cusnahan MEP, November 2003, Brussels, and Jean-Louis Bourlanges MEP, November 2005, Paris). Interview in Brussels, February 2006. The CDU was reportedly very keen to wind down EDU but deferred because it would have divided the EP group. The Conservatives and CSU were the keenest to preserve EDU. The CDU International Secretary confirmed that EDU was being kept alive essentially at the behest of the UK Conservatives, ODS and Turkish Justice and Development Party (Interview with Dr Bernhard Kotsch, Berlin, November 2005). Interview with KDU–CSL International Secretary, Prague, October 2005. Interview, Brussels, February 2006. With 26 percent, it is less than 2 percent ahead of the far-right VB (Vlaams Belang). Interview with J. J. Viseur, MP, International Secretary of CDH, Brussels, November 2005. Dutchman Piet Bukman and Luxemburger Jacques Santer led EPP between Tindemans and Martens, meaning that it has always had Benelux if not Belgian leadership. Interview with CDenV international spokesman Peter Gijsels, Brussels, November 2005. Allegedly the term European Democrat was picked on the suggestion of Carl Bildt, because of its reference to both EDU and the old EDG, which was the name of the conservative group. Information from Mr Antony Teasdale, EPP group, Brussels. Interview with Conservative official, Brussels, February 2006. An additional complication is that some of the Tory MEPs would almost certainly refuse to leave the EPP even if ordered to. One official estimated that a third of the delegation fell into this category; at least one MEP reminded us that they were elected on a promise to sit in the EPP group and intended to honour it (Interviews in Brussels, February 2006). According to one EPP official, on all votes (as opposed to simple RCVs), the Tories diverge from the group less than 20 percent of the time, and such

116 Beyond the Nation State issues are almost invariably institutional. Interview in Brussels, February 2006. 17. Both parties agree, in Bale’s view, on: not joining the euro, reforming the CAP in the direction of co-financing, further deregulation, resistance to further ECJ encroachment, enlargement, and a common security policy tied closely to NATO.

5 Liberals and Democrats: In the Shadow of the Heavyweights?

It is quite easy to understand what socialism or conservative thinking means. But what does it mean to be liberal? FDP Official, Berlin, 2005 Liberalism is not so much a tangible concept as a way of life – easy to identify, but hard to define in concrete terms. Lex Corijn, ELDR Secretary General, 1998

From the origins to ELDR Liberalism is an old ideology and practice; its origins are to be found in the struggle between landed property (represented by conservatives) and rising bourgeois groups in early modern parliaments (Seiler, 1980: 60–2). If the later rise of working-class movements tended to push liberals and conservatives together in defence of common interests, this by no means resulted in mergers everywhere. Liberal parties continued to defend their original supporters or sought new support from middle-class groups now entering the political process; increasingly their offer would focus on a mix of economic and cultural liberalism, the better to distinguish themselves from conservatives. The church/state cleavage has therefore offered particular scope for their development. Perhaps the earliest of the major political families to create viable parties of government, liberalism was not, however, the first to internationalise its links. Yet on the face of it, liberal ideology is, with its highly general theory of the free individual underpinning a functioning democracy while buying and selling in a competitive marketplace, the most predisposed to transnational structures. Certainly most subsets of liberalism have usually been slow to proffer nationalist discourses.1 117


Doubtless early access to national government and the need to create internal markets left the liberal parties with the feeling that there was more than enough conflict to be resolved at home without engaging in polemic against outsiders. According to Schoettli (1983: 149), regular meetings between liberal politicians from several European states began before 1914, but it was August 1924 before a regular structure, the Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques, saw the day in Geneva, following an initiative by the French Parti radical of Edouard Herriot. Eleven parties, including some from Central and Eastern Europe, signed up, and the Entente held annual meetings until 1934. Like its sister Internationals, the Entente did not survive the advent of fascism and World War II, but by 1947, liberals from 19 states could meet in Oxford and sign a manifesto that created the new Liberal International (LI). For the next two decades, the LI had a low profile, much of its activity being conducted by informal individual and group contacts, but in 1967, a new Oxford Declaration signalled a fresh lease of life for the LI (Coosemans, 2001). Particularly important was the arrival of a major governing party, the Liberal Party of Canada, which also extended the LI horizon beyond Europe. In the 1980s, the LI opened up to democratic movements from the Third World and had representatives from some 50 states by the time of its 1981 Rome congress. Today it numbers some 57 member parties, 16 of them non-European and 18 observers. By 1972, the LI could anticipate direct elections to the EP and prepare accordingly (Sandström, 2001) by forming an EC-wide organisation of liberal parties. Some hesitation was evident, however, as to the nature of the new federation; this reflects some of the underlying ambiguities of liberalism, which have attended the movement practically since it began. Should it be restricted to the classical type of continental liberal party (strong on individual and market freedoms, but less so on social issues), or should it include more progressive forces, who often preferred titles such as ‘democrat’? Thus at Stuttgart in May 1976, at the inaugural congress of what was to become the European Liberal Democrats, 5 of the 14 invited parties did not immediately join the new federation. The opters-out included such as the French Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche, then in alliance with the socialists and communists, and the Dutch D66, which had been founded as a progressive split from the more traditional liberal party VVD (Volkspartij voor vrijheid en democratie or Popular Party for Freedom and Democracy). By 1979, ELD had eleven members, drawn from every EC state except Ireland and including two each from France, Belgium and Italy. The Mediterranean enlargement

Liberals and Democrats 119

brought a big gain in the shape of the Portuguese PSD (Partido Social Democratico), which later proved that names do not necessarily always mean what people think by leaving the liberals, not for the socialists but for the bigger EPP. One result of the PSD’s presence was, however, to add another letter to the federation’s title, the last R standing for Reformers. In 1993 ELDR added the word ‘party’ to its title, though without, as Sandström shows (2001:129), making any changes to its structure The 1990s enlargement saw ELDR do well in Scandinavia, picking up not just the liberal parties but also the agrarians (usually going under the name of centre parties), whose lukewarm attitude to integration was out of sympathy with the views of the majority of liberals.2 Prior to the 2004 enlargement, the LI and ELDR worked hard in the incoming states, few of which had much by way of a liberal tradition. Looking back in the late 1990s, Lex Corijn, ELDR secretary general, saw the past decade as one of heavy liberal investment in the emergent democracies. ELDR had, along with the Naumann Foundation, specialised in vetting suitable partners to form potential liberal parties (sometimes, as they admitted, making mistakes and briefly admitting authoritarian forces – further proof of the attractiveness and looseness of the liberal label). Rather than trying to help financially (as most of its interlocutors seem to have wanted), ELDR had mainly organised training and seminar activity at ELDR level for new elites, before specialising in more concrete help with actual party organisation and then elaboration of (especially economic) programmes. The idea was very much to show potential liberals from the East how Western parties worked in practice, in a non-prescriptive way, rather than embarking on some sort of ‘political neo-colonialism’ (Corijn, 1998: 202). The work of the liberals in Central and Eastern Europe seems to have been shared out between ELDR, the LI and some national parties, in proportions difficult to determine; at a later stage, the influence of the ELDR parliamentary group was cited as vital in inducting the EP observer members of the 2004 candidate states prior to enlargement.3 Whatever the division of labour between liberal transnational organisations, they found representatives in most of the accession states, and the 2004 EP elections brought ELDR a fair number of MEPs from Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states and Slovenia. On 30 April 2004, ELDR was set up as a European party under the auspices of the Regulation, as a non-profit making organisation (ELDR, 2004). In 2006, the ELDR numbered 51 members from 31 states or regions; unlike some other TNP, it has only full members and affiliates, who may apply for full membership after 2 years (Table 5.1).

120

Table 5.1 The European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, 2007 Members Albania – Partia Aleanca (DAP) Andorra – Partit Liberal Andorra (PLA) Austria – Liberales Forum (LIF) Belgium – Mouvement Réformateur (MR) – Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD) Bosnia/Herzegovina – Liberalno Demokratski Stranka (LDS-BIH) Bulgaria – Dvizenie za Prava i Svobodi (DPS) [Movement for Rights and Freedoms] – Nacionalno Dvizenie Simeon Vtori [National Movement of Simeon II] Catalunya – Convergència Democràtica (CDC) Croatia – Istarski Demokratski Sabor (IDS) [Istrian Democratic Assembly] – Hrvatska Socijalno Liberalna Stranka (HSLS) [Croatian Social Liberal Party] – Hrvatska Narodna Stranka (HNS) [Croatian People’s Party] Cyprus – Enomenoi Dimokrates (ED) [United Democrats] Czech Republic – Obcanskà Demokratická Aliance (ODA) Denmark – Det Radikale Venstre (RV) – Venstre Danmarks Liberale Partiet Estonia – Eesti Reformierakond (RE) [Estonian Reform Party] – Eseti Keskerakond (K) [Centre Party of Estonia] Finland – Suomen Keskusta – Svenska Folkpartiet (SF) Germany – Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) Hungary – Szabad Demokratáki Szövetség (SZDSZ) [Alliance of Free Democrats] Ireland – Progressive Democrats (PD) Italy – Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI) Italia dei Valori-Lista di Pietro (LDV) Movimento Repubblicani Europei (MRE) I Radicali Kosovo – Partia Liberal e Kosoves (PLK) Latvia – Latvijas Cels (LC) [Latvia’s Way] Lithuania – Lithuanian Republic Liberal Movement (LRP) Naujoji Sajunga (NS) [New Union] Liberalu ir Centro Sajunga (LiCS) [Liberal and Centre Union] Luxembourg – Demokratesch Partei/Parti Démocratique (DP) Macedonia – Liberalna Partija na Makedonia (LPM) Liberalno-Demokratska Partija (LDP) Netherlands – Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) Democraten 66 (D66) Norway – Venstre Poland – Partia Demokratyczne (PD) Romania – Partidul National Liberal (PNL) Russian Federation – Yabloko


Serbia – Liberali Srbije (LS) [Liberals of Serbia] Gradanski Savez Srbije(GSS) [Civic Alliance of Serbia] Slovak Republic – Aliancia Nového Obcana (ANO) Slovenia – Liberalna Demokracija Slovenije (LDS) Spain – Unió Mallorquina (UM) Sweden – Folkpartiet Liberalerna Centerpartiet Switzerland – Freisinnig-demokratische Partei/Parti radical-démocrate (FDP/PRD) United Kingdom – Liberal Democrats (Libdems) Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI)

As for liberal group in the EP, its existence dates back, like that of the socialists and Christian democrats, to the ECSC Assembly. Since 1979, it has been markedly inferior in numbers to its two big rivals, usually mustering some 40 MEPs. The 2004 elections brought it a major stimulus, however, as ELDR did better than expected in the accession states and, more significantly perhaps, the group proved able to attract members away from the EPP. These were mainly the followers of François Bayrou of the French UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française) and former Commission President Romano Prodi, leader of the Italian umbrella party La Margherita. They are mainly disappointed Christian democrats, or in some cases federalists from a more secular background, who find the EPP’s increasingly lukewarm attitude to federalism and its acceptance of quite right-wing parties no longer acceptable. The leader of the liberal group, Graham Watson, whose knowledge of and contacts in Italy and France are extensive, worked hard to facilitate the entry of the newcomers. As a result, the liberal group, now renamed ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe), now counts some 88 MEPs. The Prodi/Bayrou group also took advantage of the European Party Regulation to set up a new TNP, the European Democratic Party (EDP), in a clear bid to give themselves a separate and rather more socially progressive identity within the liberal family.4 Political historians would be reminded of a similar coexistence between political liberals and radical democrats on the eve of the 1848 revolutions, though the EDP is not about to man any barricades. Indeed, looking at the joint text that the two groups signed at the start of the 2004–2009 Parliament (ALDE, 2004), it seems hard to distinguish any EDP input that would distinguish it from, say, the ELDR’s election manifesto (see below). At the start of 2006, it numbered seven member parties from seven states,

122 Beyond the Nation State Table 5.2 The European Democratic Party, 2007 Members Belgium – Mouvement des Citoyens pour le Changement Cyprus – European Party Czech Republic – Ceska Zmeny France – Union pour la Démocratie Française Italy – Democrazia e Libertà/La Margherita Lithuania – Darbo Partija Spain – Partido Nacionalista Vasco

slipping adroitly over the minimum hurdle in order to qualify as a TNP (Table 5.2). A UDF official estimated that 28 of ALDE’s 88 MEPs were democrats alongside 60 liberals.5 Representatives of liberal parties to whom we spoke were invariably sceptical about both the motivations behind the creation of EDP and its prospects for survival, but only time will tell whether their doubts are justified.

The structures of ELDR The party has the normal set of governing organs (Sandström, 2001: 130– 4; ELDR, 2004). A sovereign annual congress makes general policy, using an increasing amount of majority decision-making. There is a bureau that manages current affairs, and an intermediary body, the council, whose raison d’être is frankly hard to discern alongside the two major organs; but such plethoric representation is to be found in more than one Continental party family and must presumably be ascribed to the need to give symbolic satisfaction to party faithful. The leaders’ summits, not using majority voting, unlike the other organs, are emerging as the major locus of decision-making, and outputs from this instance of ‘network governance’ can then be fed into the more formal channels. Plans for individual membership were long resisted by national parties fearful of seeing rival loyalties emerge among their supporters, but the principle of individual membership without voting rights eventually made its way on to the statute book (ELDR, 2004). Additionally, the party now has a sort of e-membership, which seems mainly restricted to councillors and officials.6 One feature worth attention is the relationship between party and EP group. It is usually agreed that liberals, being mostly in opposition within their states, tend by compensation to invest heavily in work within the EP. ELDR produces for each election a detailed manifesto;


national parties are free to use it as they wish and mostly ignore it, but it does serve as the work programme for the liberal group in the ensuing Parliament and cannot therefore be written off as irrelevant. In addition, ELDR has the final say over the composition of the EP group, enjoying thus a potential veto on admissions. Thus, although the group may be the most visible public face of European liberalism, it nevertheless works in tandem with ELDR. From 1993 onwards, its official title was ‘group of the ELDR’. Overall, one can agree with Sandström’s view of the party as having reached the co-operation stage of Niedermayer’s triad (2002: 138). There is as yet, however, little to single it out as a more integrated party than any of its competitors.

Liberal ideology ELDR ideology was laid down fairly clearly in the founding statement of 1976. Its integrationist and liberal perspectives are seen in demands for greater powers for the EP, proportional representation for EP elections, responsibility of Council and Commission to the EP, greater use of QMV in Council, greater rights for regions and minorities. In addition, the party favoured economic and monetary union with a European Central Bank, plus common energy and security policies. Some of this has now become part of the acquis, but the party has never ceased to push its agenda further, being one of the most energetic proponents of the proposed Constitution. Within the EP, its group has been particularly active in the federalist intergroup, chaired by Andrew Duff and the socialist Jo Leinen.7 ELDR’s manifesto for the last EP elections thus offers a strong set of institutional proposals aimed at deepening EU democracy, based around increased powers for the EP and greater transparency. It campaigns for the protection and enhancement of personal and collective liberties. On economic matters, it echoes classic liberal free-trade preoccupations, arguing for strengthening the single market and trying to contain globalist trends, which it sees as positive, by careful regulation. If ELDR enthusiasm for outright federalism is not so much stressed as in the past (the party prefers to talk about subsidiarity), the liberals nevertheless push for further integration along a number of axes, advocating strong community-level policies on environment, immigration and asylum, and certain aspects of the judicial system, as well as a strong CFSP with an integrated military force; QMV should become the norm in Union decision-making rather than the exception (ELDR, 2003). ELDR offers therefore a clear set of


integrationist and liberal (in the widest sense) values. Consensus within its ranks seems high, with disagreements often occurring as much on the basis of personal judgements as on clear national lines; differences can occur within national delegations (e.g. not all UK Libdems agree on energy or conservation issues). Probably the main qualification to this general consensus would be the mild euroscepticism of the Scandinavian centre or agrarian parties, though, as interlocutors quickly point out, they are flanked by authentic liberals from the same states who share ELDR values. Otherwise, such differences such as exist over security policy (e.g. the Finnish KESK [Suomen Keskusta or agrarian party] has traditionally been neutralist) or over environmental legislation (some parties favour severe measures against industry, others are more conscious of the electoral drawbacks of such policy) can apparently be brokered without the kind of friction that has surfaced in, say, the EPP. It might have been possible in the 1970s to claim that the liberal family was more heteroclite than either the EPP or the PES, but this seems difficult to sustain today. Sandström finds that since the 1970s the party has developed ‘a remarkably sophisticated mechanism for building consensus’ (2001: 134).8 The often-quoted distinction between so-called market liberals and social liberals can be overplayed. It is simply not the case that some parties, such as the UK Libdems are inherently more socially generous than allegedly pure market liberals such as the Dutch VVD; the truth is that most parties contain marketeers and social liberals in differing proportions.9 Indeed, the balance between them can shift over time, as seems to be currently happening within the Libdems in favour of the marketeers (so-called ‘Orange Book’ supporters, after a set of policy proposals designed to shift the party towards a more business-friendly posture). One can conclude also that if any party felt ELDR to be insufficiently generous in social policy, then it could signal its displeasure by moving to the EDP. Few have chosen to do so.

ELDR today In terms of geographical spread, ELDR has sound bases in most of the core states of Western Europe. While the Czech and Slovak republics have been disappointing so far, it is nevertheless represented in most of the other 2004 enlargement states. In the Balkans, which will provide the next wave of members, the liberals also appear to have viable partners. Yet there are some serious absences. Italy has a number of small parties, reflecting the longstanding divisions within Italian liberalism,


yet arguably the main contemporary expression of that current is La Margherita, which is not in ELDR. France is a peculiar case in many ways, as the Radical variant of liberalism was long one of the mainstays of French politics, yet the country of Tocqueville, Guizot and Alain has currently no representative in ELDR. This owes more to the internal dynamics of the French party system than to any intrinsic shortcomings. For many years, Giscard’s Parti Republicain (PR) was prominent in ELDR; although some (notably the Libdems) objected to its presence, it was recognisably part of the market-oriented, anti-statist current of liberalism prominent in many continental states, which is as authentic a part of liberalism as the more anti-clerical variety of the family incarnated in the French Radical party, also a longstanding member of the LI. But the need for the non-Gaullist right and centre to ally against the growing appetites of Gaullism led to an alliance between these varieties of liberalism, and others, in the shape of the UDF. Subsequently, UDF members sat in more than one group, until eventually Giscard took all of them (bar one uncompromising secularist) into the EPP; then the Gaullist RPR joined the EPP before absorbing in its turn most of the UDF. As recounted above, the remaining UDF representatives joined the ALDE group but set up their own Democrat party rather than join ELDR outright. Their origins are not those of classic liberals (cf. above), though it would be fair to classify them as social liberals with a strong integrationist impulse. So one could say that French liberalism was after all represented, albeit in a convoluted way, in transnational institutions. Mercifully the picture is clearer elsewhere in Southern Europe, where the major gaps are to be found in the Mediterranean states. In countries of catholic or orthodox tradition, anti-clerical and liberal values have often been carried by the socialist left (Giner, 1982). Greece has never really produced a viable liberal movement since 1945, and Spain saw only a brief institutionalisation of liberalism through a part of the UCD party that briefly governed after the transition to democracy. Portugal, which had a strong tradition of secularist anti-clerical liberalism before the Salazar years, did produce the PSD, which initially pulled some weight within ELDR. In purely ideological terms, there is no reason why it should not still be there, but it left for the EPP in 1996. At one level, this can be seen as realism or opportunism; it is better to be in a big bloc than a smallish third force. On another level, however, it illustrates the more general difficulty of liberal parties. There has clearly been enough policy convergence (in the sense of a general drift towards liberalism) to allow liberal-minded voters to find an adequate outlet either in EPP parties or even (if they prefer a more socially inclusive and personally


libertarian version of liberalism) in the parties of the centre-left PES. Even established liberal parties of government can feel this squeeze; for parties that never got a proper start in the first place, it might well be too late to carve out a space.

National parties and liberal transnationalism If ELDR can be understood as a significant player at European level, occupying strategic ground between socialists and centre-right, not all of its members come to it from the same position; nor do they use it in the same way. The following examples illustrate the flexible attitudes of liberal parties towards their transnational organisations.

The French UDF and the squeeze of domestic politics The UDF was the creation of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, president of France and an enthusiastic liberal (and surprisingly, in a national tradition of liberalism dominated by anti-clericalism, a Catholic), who defined himself very much in opposition to the state-centred, dirigiste style of political management associated with Gaullism. Additionally, he was pro-integration at a time when Chirac’s Gaullists were still viewing the EU as primarily an erosion of sovereignty. Giscard’s selfdescription – ‘liberal, centrist, European’ – set the tone for his new party. The party was in fact more of a coalition, grouping Radicals (perhaps the major expression of one type of continental anti-clerical liberalism, stemming very much from the Church/state struggle), more laissezfaire economic liberals, such as the group from which Giscard himself came, and, significantly, the remains of French Christian democracy (by then the Mouvement Républicain Populaire [MRP] had been wound up, but its avatars still represented maybe a tenth of the electorate). This coalition seemed to many a forced arrangement, driven by the internal partisan logic of France, to the extent that it brought together all those who were against the left but also opposed Gaullist monopoly of the right and centre-right, even though there were sizeable differences among them (notable the tension between liberals and Christian politicians). But if the mere force of political gravity explained the ‘centrist’ part of Giscard’s concept, the ‘European’ dimension was something that both liberal and CD politicians espoused with enthusiasm. The UDF therefore went into the 1979 EP elections with some enthusiasm, and its MEPs all sat with the liberal group. Their governmental allies/rivals, the Gaullists, sat with the sovereignists. The scattered nature


of the French right’s representation across several groups (for additional lists outside the Gaullists and UDF would flourish until this day) became a source of frustration to many. In 1989 Giscard, now without a role in French politics, invested his time heavily in the EP and took his troops out of the liberal group into the EPP. By 1994, the French right was able to run a joint RPR/UDF list led by D. Baudis, all of whose members went into the EPP (except for one, J.-T. Nordmann, a Radical of classic secularist stamp); in the meantime, the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), as the Gaullists were called from 1976 to 2002, had secured entry into the EPP as a member party (cf. Chapter 4). This was not the end of the story, however. The changing nature of the EPP, particularly the perceived watering-down of its federalist message and its expansion towards conservative and more nationalist forces, grated increasingly on the core of the UDF. Some of those involved have singled out a number of key moments. Thus, the admission of the UK Conservatives in 1992 was not in itself a problem, given that Christopher Patten and Christopher Prout (delegation leader) were seen as pro-integration10 but their move towards much more frankly sceptical positions soon became problematic, especially after John Major’s departure. Secondly, the arrival of Forza Italia produced a big negative reaction, since UDF saw it as an anti-European party. Finally, the failure to sanction the ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei) for letting Haider’s Freedom Party into a coalition in Vienna provoked fury. However well founded the scepticism of some EPP leaders, notably the CDU, as to the real effect of symbolic sanctions, UDF felt that the EPP as a whole should have reacted more strongly; in particular, they were concerned with the encouragement that Haider’s success might offer their own farright opponents in France, the Front National (FN). Increasingly, UDF felt that the leadership of the EPP group was weak and only interested in attracting big numbers. UDF further suspected that the EPP hierarchs may well have felt that UDF was finished as a national force anyway, after the creation in 2002 of a united centre-right party in France, the UMP (Union pour une Majorité de Progrès), which promptly attracted a good half of UDF office holders, leaving a rump ‘UDF maintenue’. In the event, the 11 MEPs returned in 2004 showed there was still life in the most pro-integration party in France. By then, however, their relationship with EPP had degenerated beyond repair, and it remained only to find another place within the EP. The liberal group duly provided a home, and this was the basis on which the Democrat TNP could then be constructed.


It is fashionable to attribute this move to purely domestic factors, namely the presidential ambitions of Bayrou. If he is to make a credible challenge to the UMP’s Sarkozy, the argument goes, then he cannot really do so if his party shares the same EP group and TNP as the UMP. In domestic politics, the UDF remains in a sort of semi-opposition, reluctant to side openly with the left (though it did vote for a socialist censure motion against Villepin’s government in 2006); it should therefore do something similar at EU level. This argument has obviously some truth, but it needs nuancing. We might reflect in the first place why Bayrou is so keen to promote his candidacy to an office that most people, including possibly himself, know that he cannot really win. Leaving aside personal ambition, it is clear that the UDF can only really continue to exist as a viable party if it marks itself out clearly from the UMP, which has by now, let us recall, already absorbed a good half of its strength. It could doubtless continue as a parliamentary rump, living off whatever scraps Gaullism chooses to throw it, before finally accepting to disappear into a merger. Yet if it wants an autonomous profile, then it needs to sharpen its identity; the presidential election is precisely the moment when it must stand up and be counted. Given that UDF’s electorate is fairly conservative in its views, though possibly slightly more generous on social issues than that of the UMP, the only real identity marker is the question of European integration. Although the UMP has clearly softened its sovereignist language, there is still a part of the French electorate that regards it with suspicion. The core of this vote is to be found on the catholic periphery, where the old MRP was strong; and the MRP always picked up the pro-European vote, whatever its shifts on other issues. For today’s UDF, then, a distinct European profile is vital, both for ideological reasons (it does actually favour a more integrated Europe) and more basic reasons of political survival (it needs a core issue around which to rally its remaining supporters). Thus domestic and European imperatives combine strongly to make UDF’s continued presence in EPP unviable and to push it towards the creation of an unequivocally integrationist force. In fact, UDF cannot afford not to have a distinct transnational presence; this is not a luxury, but a part of its survival strategy. That said, with the flexibility and growing power of attraction of the UMP, which has used its position in government cleverly, the space for an autonomous UDF has been closed down considerably, and the movement towards a catch-all conservative party, a French PP or CDU, seems harder to resist. The best space for such resistance remains nevertheless transnational.


Czech liberalism and the search for an identity The ODA (Obcanskà demokratická aliance), or Democratic Civic Alliance, is an eloquent illustration of the difficulty of creating a viable liberal party in Eastern and Central Europe. With the return of democracy in 1990, party families that had pre-existed Stalinism, such as the social democrats and Christian democrats, were able to re-emerge. The great mass of activists who had taken part in the civic movements that hastened the end of the communist regime had, however, no such historical slots into which they could easily fit. In Prague, therefore, the first elections saw the dominance of a large fairly unstructured bloc of broadly liberal-conservative hue, which brought together people whose differences would gradually out once the initial excitement of political freedom had subsided. The civic bloc (Obcanske forum) duly broke up into a national conservative pole, the ODS (Obcanskà demokratická strana or Civic Democratic Party) (cf. Chapter 4), and some smaller more liberal formations of which ODA was perhaps the most important; certainly it achieved around 7 % in two elections and partnered the bigger ODS in government. Differences between ODA and ODS proved strong, however. Despite the general pro-market rhetoric of deregulation and privatisation to which both signed up, ODA never saw ODS as a truly liberal party11 ; its privatisations tended to favour key supporters, it had a whiff of clientelism and corruption about it, and it was none too fussy about admitting without question former communists turned businessmen. This was a serious matter for liberals concerned with transparency and open government. ODS’s strident nationalism also grated on the ears of true liberals. In fact, the liberals saw ODS as a sort of cartel party, comfortably ensconced in the machinery of state. This explained, in their view, its reluctance to cut taxes, despite promises: this failure also displeased the liberals. When ODS eventually lost office, voters turned against ODA also; there had meanwhile been a self-proclaimed liberal split from ODS, namely the Freedom Union (US – Unie svobode), which took much of the ODA electorate and effectively replaced it as the liberal presence in parliament until 2006. Today the liberals are split between several weak groups, of which the remains of ODA and US are probably the best basis from which to rebuild. ODA is clear that the European dimension was vital to its revival. It joined ELDR in November 2004, after having been briefly in the conservative EDU (proof perhaps of the relevance of the quotations at the head of this chapter, to the effect that it is difficult to translate


liberal ideas into real political form). It sees ELDR as the only force that can bring together the scattered forces of Czech liberalism into something like a viable national party; the protagonists on the ground seem incapable of doing this.12 ELDR has been trying hard to knock heads together, but the results remain meagre so far. Certainly ODA values membership of a TNP as a confirmation of its identity, which it can deepen by contact with established liberals. Here then is a striking example of how a weakened national party can turn to a TNP as a source of guidance and influence, with the hope that this will improve its domestic position. The results are yet to be seen, but for a party family as scattered and debilitated as the Czech liberals, transnationalism is perhaps the last chance of revival.

Established parties and their uses of ELDR Fledgling parties such as ODA or parties from non-liberal origins such as UDF provide two illustrations of what transnationalism can mean to forces based in one nation state. We can also learn much from the study of older parties closer to the liberal core. Both the Belgian parties, Flemish VLD (Vlaamse Liberalen en Demokraten) and francophone MR (Mouvement réformateur), are long established parties, even if they have undergone several name changes, and are used to regular periods of office. The German FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) also comes from a long tradition and is used to regular office at either Land or federal level, mainly, but not inevitably, with the CDU; it has recently been absent from the EP for two legislatures, however. Finally, the UK Libdems have seen their strength rise steadily in parliamentary terms (both in Westminster and Brussels) and retain the loyalty of around one-fifth of British voters; their experience of office remains confined to subnational level, of course, given the punitive nature of the UK electoral system towards ‘third parties’. These four parties shed differing light on the transnational dimensions of liberalism. Both Belgian parties clearly prefer a light touch so far as ELDR is concerned. While both clearly value the information-sharing functions of TNP, both are first and foremost used to being in office in Belgium, both at federal and regional levels, and this colours their attitude to transnational collaboration. One feature that both stressed was that structures such as ELDR enabled the two parties to co-ordinate strategy on policy; one spokesperson even alluded to a division of labour on certain dossiers.13 Such collaboration is less visible than what happens at purely Belgian level, when the two are often side by side in government;


so to that extent the TNP structure might provide a convenient framework for the sort of deals that are politically necessary but which might upset some of the more ethnically or linguistically-driven supporters on either side of the Belgian cultural divide. VLD is special in that it is led by one of the longer-serving federal prime ministers, Guy Verhofstadt. Verhofstadt is known for his ability to drive compromises and is appreciated beyond the confines of his own political family (cf. his friendship with Tony Blair). His position in Brussels places him at the heart of intergovernmental exchange within the EU. All this means that VLD European policy is always likely to be implemented in a very personal way, in which case the need for TNP networking mechanisms becomes that much less acute. It is not surprising therefore to find that the man responsible for VLD international relations is Verhofstadt’s former press secretary, now an MP. The clear implication is that the premier wants to keep a close eye on the international contacts of his party but that the real business is probably done elsewhere, at intergovernmental level. When a party leader is so close to the seat of decision-making, the need for transnational forms of intermediation becomes far less. The feeling of VLD’s international spokesman seemed to be that his party was, by its presence as a major governing party, giving far more to ELDR than the other way round. For a party shut out from power, however, a TNP can seem much more useful. The FDP was absent from the EP from 1994 to 2004, and left government when the CDU was defeated by Gerhard Schroeder in 1998. The risk of marginalisation is never far away for a party of this size, given the 5 % threshold that operates in Germany. Suddenly, a party that had long run German diplomacy through leaders such as Hans Dietrich Genscher found itself in a peripheral position. In the words of an FDP official, the party was ‘in danger of losing its link to the European level’.14 This is precisely when its links with ELDR became valuable, not least in that the ELDR president for much of that period until 2005 was Werner Hoyer, whom the party had nominated for that office precisely as a kind of insurance policy against being excluded. Instead of being at Council of Ministers meetings, the FDP could now use its contacts in ELDR, many of whom were still engaged in governing their own states and some seven of whom were now Commissioners, able to attend ELDR summits. In this way, it could keep in touch with developments, even if its own input could only be indirect. Now that it has returned in force to the EP, we may expect to see it asserting its weight within the ALDE group and ELDR.


The British Libdems have always tried to make maximum use of their presence within EU institutions. Given that they are structurally excluded from sharing in the government of the UK (though they do have coalition experience in devolved administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff), they have always invested heavily in both the sub- and the supra-national levels of multilevel governance.15 In Brussels, their MEPs are known as hard workers in committee on subjects close to the liberal heart – environment, human rights, consumer and single market issues, and political integration. The ALDE leader Graham Watson is respected as a skilled and energetic leader. Even if the current political context in the UK has obliged them to downplay their federalism (they admit that an EU Constitution and UK membership of the euro are off the political agenda for years and they stress subsidiarity more than they used to), they remain the most outspoken voices in favour of further integration. Their attachment to ELDR has therefore been strong from the beginning, when they were among the first to object to the presence of Giscard’s party, surely, in their eyes, a group of right-wing conservatives. (Generally Libdems see themselves as towards the left of the ELDR family, with sympathy for social-liberal parties such as the Danish RV or D66; they have had occasional difficulties with the more conservative parties such as VVD.) Given their size as the largest liberal party in Europe, the Libdems feel that they should exert major influence in ELDR.16 This is especially felt as ELDR is seen to be bringing forward more policy proposals, with a view to obtaining consensus among members; the failed Constitution was one area where ELDR continues to try and press forwards, but international affairs has also been prominent. (One proposition to emerge was that the EU as a whole should have one Security Council seat at the United Nations, instead of separate French and British seats; this caused the Libdems some problems, as might be imagined). It is possible that the Libdems have not always maximised their effect within ELDR, as one possible source of influence, namely leaders’ summits, seems to have been underused.17 Charles Kennedy, though personally very sympathetic to ELDR, was often forced to choose between investing in UK activities with attendant media visibility, and engagement with ELDR, which brings, as our informant observed, very few votes with it. Whether the new leadership of Menzies Campbell will prove more interested remains to be seen; certainly party president Simon Hughes is said to be keen to get involved in policy discussions. For the moment, it seems that the Libdems put much effort into EP work and that the TNP aspect, while useful, is clearly secondary.


These brief studies suggest that parties that are weak, such as ODA, or slipping back within their domestic arena, such as UDF, show an increasing need for involvement in and support from their TNP. Established parties of government can afford to look more coolly on an organisation to which they feel they are sometimes doing a favour simply by helping it to survive. Some established parties, less used to governing, seem more ambiguous; if their instincts are towards further involvement, their limited resources seem better spent, for the moment, on domestic campaigns.

The future of ELDR The election of Annemie Neyts to the ELDR presidency in 2005 heralded a new phase in the party’s life. Neyts is an outspoken and charismatic figure, much respected outside Europe for her role as Development Minister in Belgian governments. She believes that ELDR has a valuable role to play in forcing its members to debate European issues; in her view, some member parties have been happy to go along with the process of integration by stealth and reluctant to bring issues out into the open.18 This position is no longer sustainable, when for instance a virtual European army has been created under the CFSP without most citizens being aware of it. She will attempt therefore to get the ELDR to open debate about this and other issues of integration (such as a common energy policy) with a view to fleshing out a genuinely liberal line on where Europe should be going. Such a process would, it is hoped, also have the effect of bringing national parties closer to their TNP; hitherto they have remained far too distant. This think-tank function may well be the most useful employment for an organisation where there seems relatively little substantial disagreement between members and where there may not always be the will to explore possible areas of difference. It remains to be seen how successful the initiative will be. Neyts has the profile required to provoke the ELDR, in that she is a respected figure with a distinguished record in national politics, who is now ready to put her energies into animating a TNP. To that extent, she resembles Wilfried Martens or Poul-Nyrup Rasmussen from the two big rival forces. Such figures are clearly necessary to maintain the visibility of the TNP, which have suffered in the past from having lesser figures at their head. The party has two other main tasks. The first is to continue the search for valid partners in the Balkans and EU periphery, where future candidate states are to be found. So far steady progress seems to be being


made. At the same time, ELDR must step up its attempts to unify the Czech liberals and achieve a meaningful presence in Slovakia. A final achievement would be to unify the two strands contained within ALDE, by bringing the EDP and liberals together under a common roof. Much depends here on the domestic context of France and Italy in particular; but it will not become any easier to sustain an independent EDP, and it should not be beyond the wit of ELDR to offer acceptable terms for the entry of the democrats. If this were to happen, it would give ELDR a serious presence in two of the big founder states and close an embarrassing credibility gap. Beyond this, the future of ELDR remains that of third player between the two big blocs, both in the EP and still to a large extent in national politics. ELDR and its members can continue to champion liberal issues and be the firmest advocates of integration. There are worse positions for a party to be in. By judicious use of its weight, ELDR has secured some major prizes (the election of Pat Cox as EP President for 1999– 2001, thanks to a deal with the EPP, or the re-composition of Barroso’s proposed Commission in 2004, with the eviction of the catholic conservative Buttiglioni, this time thanks to a ‘broad left’ alliance of liberals, PES, Greens and GUE). This shows that the liberals are not just makeweights; they can score occasional victories as well as simply bearing witness to the values of today’s secularist left.

Conclusion Close acquaintance with the liberal family can leave researchers with the feeling of unfulfilled potential. Liberalism remains in a solid third place within the ranks of transnational forces, but, given the lack of ambiguity of their positions, it might be asked why ELDR and ALDE have failed to make more progress. A number of explanations are possible. To deal with the easiest part of the puzzle, it seems clear that the traumas of the transition in Eastern and Central Europe did not leave very favourable circumstances for the emergence (or in a few cases, the re-emergence) of organised liberalism. The forces of democratic opposition to Stalinism gathered at first in forum- or bloc-types of formation, combining conservatives, nationalists and Christian politicians, as well as recognisable liberals. Only slowly would these composites decant into their component parts, and in some cases, it would become apparent that parties were little more than groups of followers of charismatic leaders, often about to fall spectacularly from grace. In the meantime, politics had become dominated by the pursuit and enjoy-


ment of office, usually to the detriment of principle, as more than one liberal has regretted.19 When voters turned against the incumbents, the liberals suffered along with the rest. In the meantime, the reconverted communist parties, which now offered a social-democratic alternative, had probably won over some of the elites who might have otherwise found a place in liberal movements. The space for the development of liberal parties was thus squeezed, for all the efforts of ELDR and the Naumann Foundation. The story in Western Europe is different. ELDR has no really big parties, but it does have a number with longstanding government experience, notably in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. All of these are used to governing in coalition. Perversely, the biggest party in ELDR has had no experience of office since the 1920s, while the next most important has just returned to the EP after a two-legislature absence and it has not governed since 1997. We refer to the Libdems and the German FDP, both of which are strong and active, both domestically and in Brussels, but not parties of power. One could say that the bipolar bias of UK and German electoral systems produced this effect, but that is only to touch the surface of the problem. Liberal parties are always more vulnerable than some other families. This is because the historic goals of liberalism (the Rechtsstaat, with its guarantee of freedoms and due process, plus a market economy based on free trade) have, in advanced states, been largely adopted by all mainstream parties with ambitions to govern. In those states where the liberal party has declined most (or never got off the ground in the first place, as is the case in the Iberian peninsula), liberal ideas have usually been carried by the social-democratic left20 ; those older liberal parties that have resisted best have done so only in countries with a more proportional system of voting. Many liberal parties must feel, as Michel Rocard remarked of the French socialists during the presidency of Giscard d’Estaing, that their ideas are in power even if they themselves are not. So long as centreright and centre-left parties can persuade voters that they can represent liberal ideas adequately (a process that involves regular borrowings and updates), it will be hard for the liberal parties to win back their historic clienteles or embrace new ones. ELDR and ALDE will inevitably feel stuck between the two big forces, EPP and PES, with only limited prospects of expansion.21 This gloomy scenario does leave possible room for progress, however. The situation in Eastern and Central Europe remains fluid in terms of party formation, and it is possible that more progress can be made in states such as the Czech Republic or Poland in consolidating a genuine


liberal force. More important than this geographical perspective is, however, the political appeal of ELDR. The party nowadays stands for the clearest expression of federalism and is the most persistent supporter of integration along any axis possible. Herein lies its best chance of increasing its support, given that there is a hard core of voters for whom the sovereignty/integration cleavage is the most important. This core must, moreover, be capable of expanding, albeit not immediately. The present conjuncture is clearly one of increased intergovernmentalism and mild scepticism in some cases; the evolution of the EPP on this point is significant. It would be a mistake for ELDR to follow EPP down this path. Discontent with ‘Europe’, and the capacity of national governments to blame everything on ‘Brussels’, will not last forever; one day, more of Europe’s voters will need a party making a consistent prointegration offer. The liberal family has in ELDR a tool that can make that offer more visible. A greater investment in transnationalism might be the best way of strengthening liberal parties, not just at EU level but also in their home states.

Notes 1. An exception would be the national-liberal variant, confined mainly to the German-speaking countries, which praised the market and the free individual but saw the creation of a strong nation state as the ultimate guarantor of these. It was therefore willing to ally with national-conservative forces in the interests of nation building. 2. It is uncertain how far such parties can be called actively eurosceptic. The Swedish centre party keeps as silent as possible on the topic, as it has an organised eurosceptic faction to manage, but sees quite a strong role for integrated policy in environmental and police and security matters (Aylott and Blomgren, 2004). Such views might arguably put them nearer to the sovereignists of UEN than the Liberals. Hearl believes that it is their strong Green profile, plus their deliberate wish to position themselves between right and left, which ELDR finds attractive (2005: 131). 3. Interview with secretary-general of ELDR group, Brussels, October 2003. According to ELDR group leader Graham Watson, the 2004 manifesto was particularly useful for campaigning in Eastern and Central Europe (Hearl, 2005: 134). This does not seem to have been the case in the West; the manifesto of Watson’s own party, the Liberal Democrats (hereafter Libdems), appears to contain no mention of ELDR, though its contents are in fact identical with the latter’s manifesto. 4. Interview with J.-L. Bourlanges MEP, Paris, December 2005. 5. Interview, Paris, December 2005. 6. Interview with Libdem international secretary, London, May 2006. 7. See the Union of European Federalists at http://www.federaleurope.org

Liberals and Democrats 137 8. The common position agreed by the EU on the revision of the famous Bolkestein directive (harmonisation of rules governing provision of services) in November 2006 was largely brokered by the liberals. This ability to compromise over a key article of liberal faith (and a text designed by one of their own) bespeaks a high capacity to overcome divisions. On tensions between federalists and sovereignists, Andrew Duff MEP certainly believes that the remaining opponents of federalism have now been forced out of ELDR (interview, Brussels, February 2006). 9. Interviews with VLD international secretary, Brussels, February 2006 and with Libdem international secretary, London, May 2006. 10. Interview with J.-L. Bourlanges. 11. Interview with ODA international spokesman, Prague, October 2005. 12. It is not obvious why there is this failure to constitute a relevant political force when there seems to be a reasonable electoral demand, and one should certainly avoid the essentialist assumption that Central European political culture is somehow inimical to organised liberalism. Our ODA interlocutor blamed the failure on a ‘lost generation’ of potential liberal leaders who had left Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, despairing of democracy ever being realised. 13. Interviews with MR and VLD international secretaries, Brussels, February 2006. 14. Interview with FDP international officer, Berlin, October 2005. 15. Andrew Duff MEP confirmed how important the ELDR was as a source of information and support during the period when the Libdems were unrepresented in the EP. Interview, Brussels, February 2006. 16. Interview with Libdem international secretary, London, May 2005. 17. In fairness to the Libdems, other parties do not always make full use of the leaders’ meetings either, despite their being clearly the most important locus of decision within ELDR (Sandström, 2001: 131–2). 18. Interview with Mme A. Neyts-Uttebroeck MEP, Brussels, February 2006. 19. Interview with ODA spokesman, Prague, October 2005. Corijn (1998) does stress the difficulty that liberals and their partners faced in applying market shock-therapy to economies and societies ill-prepared for it. 20. Giner (1984). 21. One exasperated ALDE MEP said that without prior accord with one of the big two, any liberal contribution to the EP was merely ‘témoignage’ (going through the motions).

6 The Communists and Allies: Still Fighting for Change

We say today: another world is possible. The future is here. History has no ending. PEL founding congress resolution, 2004. The overwhelming majority of parties making up the Party of the European Left (PEL) and participating in the EP group known as the GUE are communist by origin, even if in many cases they have dropped the tag from their official name. Communist parties were always known as ‘partis pas comme les autres’, but that has not prevented this family from undergoing a crisis as distinct as those that have marked more mainstream families. This crisis has affected the parties as both domestic and transnational actors.

The origins of communist parties Communist parties stem directly from the cleavage dividing property owners from the propertyless, but with a special rider. Socialist and social-democratic parties were the first vehicles created by the industrial working class towards the end of the nineteenth century, though of course such parties varied considerably across different states, notably on the question of how far to pursue reform within capitalism rather than outright revolution. The failure of the SI to prevent the advent of World War I and the visible involvement of some socialist parties within ‘imperialist’ national governments strengthened the hand of revolutionaries like Lenin, who had long argued the futility of trying to reform capitalism from within. Once the October Revolution was carried out and the new Soviet Republic created, the Leninist version of socialism enjoyed huge prestige among European workers, particularly 138

The Communists and Allies 139

those returning from the trenches. The Russian Bolsheviks encouraged sympathisers elsewhere to split off from established socialist parties and imitate their type of party. The result is well known; within a decade Europe, and other parts of the world to an extent, were equipped with Leninist parties of varying size and efficiency. These parties were predicated on the Soviet model; that is, they were designed as a new type of political instrument aimed at prosecuting a revolution, which their founders believed to be inevitable, sooner rather than later. This second wave of parties of the propertyless gradually settled down into national political systems alongside the original socialists, with whom they enjoyed highly competitive and angry relationships. Never fundamentally changing their revolutionary discourse (which is not to say that the communists failed to produce a whole theology of what a ‘democratic revolution’ might mean, in the hope of reassuring potential voters worried by their apparent devotion to Soviet practices), the parties nevertheless took root in their domestic systems. Some failed to take off altogether. The successful ones acquired, however, real footholds in local or subnational government, a major presence in the labour movement and often an extensive network of social movements, all this in addition to steady parliamentary representation; in their best years, parties like the PCF could take a quarter of the vote, or the Italian PCI (Partito Communista Italiano) a third. There were even spells in broad-left coalition governments in some cases. In short, these parties gradually assumed a recognisable role in their national systems as the repository of a protest vote. Georges Lavau called this their advocacy role (fonction tribunicienne); their task was to articulate the grievances of deprived social groups. The party leaderships did not see it in quite this way. Their longterm perspective remained that of a 1917-style revolution, which would occur when the contradictions in capitalism had matured sufficiently. In their eyes, there was no contradiction between the short-term role of defending ‘le peuple’ or ‘the exploited’ and the longer aim of building a revolutionary machine, which would one day be able to lead such people into a revolution. It can be left to historians to argue as to when communist parties gave up, in reality if not in discourse, on the idea of a replay of 1917 taking place. The question was relevant before 1939, even; there is controversy as to whether communist participation in Popular Front majorities in Spain and France meant the end of revolutionary ambitions for these parties or was simply a phase of temporisation that happened to suit the


current interests of Soviet foreign policy. French specialists have asked similar questions of the PCF’s role in 1944, when, to the anger of many militants, it stood down its Resistance militias, which controlled large tracts of France, and entered coalition politics with de Gaulle. After 1945 the question of revolution was viewed differently, according to which side of the Iron Curtain one stood. Communist leaders in the Soviet bloc now found themselves installed, usually with Red Army help, at the head of would-be revolutionary regimes, attempting to replicate Soviet patterns; they would rule for 40 years. Their comrades in the West, including the two biggest battalions of French and Italians, would have to find a role in a polarised Europe, where the Soviet model, which had so influenced them, was largely rejected in their half of the continent. The Western parties remained for decades, then, with a singular profile. They were Leninist parties, defined as revolutionary; controlled vertically by a tight system of discipline, which enabled a narrow elite to reign and reproduce itself; underpinned by a strong family identity and tribal feeling, even to the point where communists tended to socialise increasingly and marry among their own kind. Yet these revolutionaries were strongly institutionalised, in Panebianco’s terms, with all that this implies in terms of maintaining stability and expanding influence. It is small wonder that such paradoxical creatures long attracted far more academic attention than the boring moderate or social democratic forces that actually governed in Europe for over four decades after 1945. As Western Europe became more affluent and politically stable, while at the same time the communist states struggled increasingly to increase prosperity and establish their legitimacy, the pressure increased on Western parties to find a satisfactory role. Those that had spent long periods underground during the Mediterranean dictatorships, and whose cadres had learned much of their trade exiled in the USSR, tended to endorse the Soviet model fairly uncritically, even after the return of democracy to their countries. Thus parties like the Portuguese PCP (Partido Communsta Portugues) or Greek KKE (Komministiko Komma Elladas) would come to be seen as unrepentantly Stalinist, even as their electoral strength seeped steadily away. The bigger parties operating in stable democracies searched endlessly for a local ‘road to socialism’, which could be offered to voters as proof that the party stood for something different from the USSR and that it could be trusted with office. Such an approach, of which the ‘eurocommunist’ phase of the 1970s represents the high watermark, involved willingness to criticise the USSR; the Italian PCI was willing to go much further than the French PCF, albeit prudently. None of this really paid off for the


Western communists, however. The PCI hovered around the fringes of office for years with its talk of ‘historic compromise’. The PCE (Partido Communista Espanol), whose leader Carrillo had been a major promoter of eurocommunism, never achieved real electoral take-off once democracy returned to Spain. By the time the PCF entered government as junior partner to Mitterrand’s renascent socialists in 1981, the party was clearly slipping backwards. By the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet bloc disintegrated rapidly, the Western parties were in retreat, usually to the advantage of the socialists. This retreat was not just political but sociological. The class composition of Western society was shifting; the old manual working class, stable in job, habitat and culture, which had provided the power base of the communists, was eroding. Increasingly it was replaced by a new middle group of white collars, whose political culture and loyalties were more fluid. Even what remained of the working class was more diverse, with increasing numbers of immigrants, part-timers and women workers, none of them categories with which the parties were familiar and whose demands needed to be addressed in new ways. Western parties found themselves increasingly defending ‘new poor’ of various sorts, essentially the victims of economic modernisation, and in this task they had to compete with new right-wing populisms. The collapse of the Soviet bloc produced a major decantation within the communist family. A number of ex-ruling parties moved very smartly to convert themselves to social democracy, succeeding in gaining acceptance by the SI and soon afterwards by the PES. The Polish and Hungarian parties are the clearest examples of this strategy, which can only be described as highly successful; certainly both have enjoyed prolonged spells in office since 1990. To them should be added the PCI, now DS, which led the way in the move towards social democracy. More interesting from the point of view of this chapter, however, are the parties who refused the move towards the PES. They include sizeable dissidences in Italy such as the Partito della Rifondazione Communista (PRC) and Partito dei Communisti Italiani (PdCI), important Western parties such as the PCF, KKE and PCP, as well as the KSCM (Komunista Strana Ceska-Morava or Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia) in the Czech Republic. In both halves of Europe, then, a similar process seems to have been at work. Communist parties have decided either to give up on leninism and join the social democrats, or else soldier on in the difficult role of protest/defence of the economic losers. Dunphy characterises the latter parties as transformatory – ‘parties to the left of social democracy that have historically called for a transformation of


the capitalist system and that still voice such aspirations’ (2004: 2). It is such parties who are the heart of the PEL/GUE, and we turn now to their current situation.

Transnationalism and integration: the communist perspective One could consider the PEL/GUE as simply a response to the logic of European integration, like that offered by any of the other party families. To do so would be to miss, however, the essential factor of communist history, for the communist parties had a deep and lasting experience of transnationalism that long precedes the foundation of the EU. As recalled in Chapter 2, communist parties had a dual nature right from their foundation. Actors within their own domestic system, they were also sections of the Comintern (a fact reflected in their titles, initially at least). Action in their own state was simply part of a wider revolutionary framework, co-ordinator of which was the Comintern executive. We have suggested that the parties could be regarded as the agents of a very powerful principal, the ECCI, which of course soon became co-terminous with the leadership of the Soviet party CPSU. National parties accepted Soviet guidance more or less without reservation, even to the point of having to perform some spectacular policy reversals (over issues such as the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact) at short notice, in deference to the current needs of Soviet foreign policy. But once the parties had been ‘bolshevised’ (put into the hands of Soviet loyalists), such procedures came to be seen as normal; the party, and behind it the CPSU, knew best. Trust in and dependency on Soviet leadership ran very deep in these parties, whose leadership was increasingly schooled in CPSU cadre schools. To that extent, the official dissolving of the Comintern in 1943 by Stalin, in order to reassure his wartime allies, and its replacement by the short-lived Kominform after Tito’s dissidence in 1947–8, changed little underneath. Communist leaderships, with the exception of the Italians, continued to think transnationally, in the sense described above.1 They have been regularly accused of putting Soviet interests above their own, as for instance with the alleged PCF instruction to followers to cast a ‘revolutionary vote’ in favour of Giscard d’Estaing in the 1974 presidential election, because he was believed to be less Atlanticist than Mitterrand. One can speculate endlessly as to whether a more critical approach, and one more visibly autonomous from the USSR, might have benefited Western parties; for what it is worth, the


party perceived as being most autonomous, the PCI, never bettered a third of the vote. Yet in some ways this line of enquiry is irrelevant. Given the sort of men running these parties, their training and their mindset, it was never likely that they would stray too far from learned behaviour. Bilateral and multilateral contacts between Western parties and the CPSU remained strong in any case, long after the formal dissolution of international communist organisations. The result was that by 1990 these parties were struggling to keep their position within their own systems, while their major inspiration and principal was about to implode. Since 1990, the Soviet party has lost most of its clout, and many of the ruling parties in the Soviet bloc have reinvented themselves as social democrats, as shown above. The remainder, whether old parties from the East like KSCM or from the West (be they still Stalinist like the PCP or KKE, or engaged in a process of ill-controlled reform like the PCF), now have to find a role at home, without reference to a Soviet model, and, more tellingly, have to reinvent a new form of transnational action. There is no longer a grand frère or principal to guide the smaller brothers or agents. Not surprisingly, this search for a new transnationalism has proved difficult. The first moves towards European integration already caused difficulties. Most parties could agree on a negative response for several reasons. The EEC was a highly developed form of capitalist market; integration into it would hamper the possibility of socialist policies in any one state. At the same time, communists drew analogies between the EEC and NATO, seen as a threat to the Soviet bloc. Such reasoning dispensed communists from doing very much by way of transnational organisation in the early days of the EC, the more so as none of them were in government by then. Yet even this negative consensus soon found dissenters, the PCI opting from the late 1970s for a pro-European stance, arguing that socialism had more chance at a regional than at a national level (Bell, 1996: 224; Dunphy, 2004: 53–68).

Transnationalism at EP level: problems of group formation Despite their dislike of European integration, communist parties entered the EP as early as March 1969, the PCI with rather more enthusiasm than the PCF (Bell, 1996; Bell and Lord, 1998: 134–50; Dunphy, 2004: 53). These two dominated what would be the communist and allies group until 1989, and their positions reflected the tension within the communist movement between the majority who, like the PCF,


mistrusted European integration and the Italian-led minority (PCI, Spanish PCE and the ‘interior’ Greek party, as opposed to the ‘exterior’ KKE), which saw Europe as a means of increasing its influence within Italian politics. The PCI, anticipating the moves of many European trade unions, also saw the possibility of setting a Europe-wide agenda on working class issues like pay and workplace conditions. It was also keen to develop a strong Community Mediterranean policy (Dunphy, 2004: 57). In retrospect it seems clear that it was already moving towards an explicit social democratic line that would duly enable it to integrate the mainstream socialist movement. In Bell’s view (1996: 135), these divergences meant that the group barely functioned, MEPs acting mainly as part of their national delegations. Dunphy highlights its inability to issue even an EP election manifesto (2004: 53). By 1989, tensions between the two main subsets of parties were becoming acute, and after the EP elections, the PCI led the way in setting up the GUE; it had 28 members, drawn from the PCI, Spanish IU (Izquierda Unida, a broad-left group into which the PCE would become increasingly subsumed) and a number of Greeks and Danes. The PCF set up in reply the Coalition des Gauches, with 13 members, including the Portuguese and Greek communists, and campaigned vigorously against German reunification and the Maastricht Treaty. Bell notes the member parties’ participation in a short-lived International, led by the East German ruling party SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), then on its last legs; this organisation was devoted to rebuilding links with China, North Korea and Cuba. Such a move speaks volumes about the orientation of such parties, when we recall that this was at the height of Gorbachev’s attempts to reform USSR and CPSU. In 1991 the PCI changed its name to the PDS, provoking a split in the membership. When it joined the PES group in 1992, two of its MEPs stuck with the Rifondazione Communista (RC) faction, but the GUE was now down to only six. After the 1994 elections, all the remaining EP communists came back into the GUE, along with some other leftist parties. Realisation that division spelled weakness, and concern about Maastricht even among the more pro-European parties, explain this convergence. The biggest delegation was the Spanish IU, itself a grouping of Greens and regionalists as well as communists, and they were accompanied by MEPs from the PCF, RC, KKE, Swedish and Finnish left (excommunist) parties, as well as the Danish Socialist People’s Party (SF). The Scandinavians brought with them the group’s subtitle of Nordic Green Left (GNV or Gauche Nordique Verte in French) and remain an official subgroup within GUE.2


The main feature of the 1999 EP intake was the arrival of the PDS, whose constituency lay in Eastern Germany among the losers of reunification. PCI dissidents were now represented not by one maintained communist party but two, the Partito dei Communisti Italiani hesitating initially about joining GUE. In a sign that the PCF had no monopoly of the protest vote, French voters sent five Trotskyist MEPs, from the two different fractions LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and LO (Lutte Ouvrière), to the EP; they were let into the GUE without great enthusiasm but kept well away from positions of responsibility.3 Relations between Stalinists and Trotskyites seem to have been correct, though presumably no ice-picks were provided at GUE drinks parties. GUE also hosted some left-socialist followers of the French Mouvement des Citoyens, following the departure of its leader, J.P. Chevènement, from the PS on grounds of its uncritical endorsement of European integration. GUE has also welcomed at times Danish eurosceptics of similar hue. For the 2004–9 Parliament, the GUE claimed some 41 members. The German PDS remained the most powerful grouping, followed by the two Italian parties. If the Greeks and Portuguese held up their totals, as did the Scandinavians, the PCF declined remorselessly, while its Trotskyist frères ennemis were unable to get themselves re-elected to the EP. Two new features were the entry of the Cypriot AKEL (Agorthotikos Komma Ergazomenou Lóou, or Progressive Workers’ Party) and, in a different register, of the KSCM from the Czech Republic, a rare instance of a former ruling party from the old Soviet bloc. A final novelty was the presence of an MEP from Ireland and a colleague notionally from the UK; these two women were of course the Sinn Fein representatives, marking the arrival of a new type of party, definitely not communist, among the ranks of the GUE. In 2006 GUE drew its MEPs from 13 states and 16 parties.4 The shape of the GUE is now fairly clear after several elections. Its core is the old communist parties, trying to reassert their relevance, but such parties are surrounded by an outer core of left-socialists, some tinged with green, and some radical nationalists.

Outside the EP: the move to a European left party While collaboration proceeded in the EP on little more than an ad hoc basis, some forces on the left wanted a more structured approach. From 1991 the European New Left Forum brought parties together for exchange of ideas and projects; its animators were the new ‘Red-Green’


parties of Scandinavia, but it included many ex-communist parties and other left groups like Chevènement’s Mouvement des Citoyens (Ettinger, 2004); by 1997 it numbered some 15 members but seems to have become obsolete today. GUE also attended as an observer. Useful as it was, such networking was still insufficient for a number of key protagonists, however. The German PDS under Lothar Bisky’s leadership pushed particularly hard in the later 1990s for the creation of a European party. Even for the 1999 EP elections, a number of parties were prepared to sign a joint appeal, if not a fully fledged common manifesto. Meetings in 2002 and 2003 led to the creation of a steering committee, which was charged with drawing up draft statutes and a programme for a European party. Its conclusions were hotly debated at a January 2004 meeting in Berlin, where the pro-TNP group were keen to confront the adversaries of such an idea, notable the diehard Greek KKE. There was enough support, however, for a founding convention to be summoned to Rome in March 2004, where the PEL was formally set up. The main drivers of the process were the PDS and PRC, whose leader Bertinotti duly became the PEL’s first president. Ettinger sees two main motives, first, to make the different left parties more effective vehicles at EU level (thereby accepting that this level was at least as valuable a terrain of struggle as national politics) and, secondly, by that very process, to become a more attractive partner to the various social movements and NGOs which were proving increasingly adept at mobilising citizens on an anti-capitalist basis (2004: 16). To this can be added the desire to head off attempts by the KKE to group the hardline opponents of the EU on a more permanent basis and to reduce the influence being cast on certain PEL parties by the mainly Trotskyite grouping of parties, the European Anticapitalist Left (EACL).5 The PEL’s statutes make it clear that it attempts to group forces of the ‘old left’ (communists, socialists, labour movement) and of the new or post-materialist left (feminism, gender equality, environmentalism, international solidarity) (PEL, 2004: preamble). There is a formal statement of a break with the past (what Germans call Vergangenheitsbewältigung), when the party condemns unreservedly ‘undemocratic Stalinist practices and crimes, which were in absolute contradiction to socialist and communist ideals’. The European dimension is seen positively as ‘both an opportunity and a challenge to regain the political initiative for left forces’, and left parties have to be willing to take on responsibility for European action. The form that the new party takes, however, inspires some note of caution. PEL is (Article 1) ‘a flexible, decentralised association of


independent and sovereign left-wing parties which works on the basis of consensus’. Article 5 further underlines this sovereignist or intergovernmentalist view of transnational co-operation: ‘all decisions concerning choices and attitudes of EL member parties in their own countries remain strictly under the sovereignty of national parties’. Probably the most significant institution of the new party, amid an absolutely standard set of TNP structures, is the leaders’ meeting or Council of Chairpersons, which is to meet at 6-month intervals (Article 14). It decides who is admitted to the PEL and it makes recommendations and resolutions to the executive board. This very intergovernmental instance is clearly the main locus of power. The strengthened role of the leaders is a comparatively recent development, as, prior to 2004, interviewees invariably stressed how far behind other TNP the left was in this respect, usually ascribing this to its almost ubiquitous absence from government. Yet there is no doubt of the role played by strong leaders in the decisive moves towards the PEL, nor of the role that is henceforth theirs by statute. The party’s objectives are couched in very general terms; co-operation and exchange of ideas and ‘co-ordination of (members’) orientations at European level’ are mentioned. Perhaps the most concrete proposal for action is co-operation in the preparation of EP elections, but only guidelines will be issued to parties in this respect; in other words, there will not be a common manifesto. All this bespeaks a very cautious attitude on the part of the founders, who clearly seek for the present no more than a loose network of autonomous parties, a very weak agent who will remain carefully supervised by its principals. This is doubtless why the membership remit of the party is drawn quite generously; observers for instance can actually submit propositions to the executive (Article 6.5). There is, however, provision for individual membership for a trial period, which suggests the will to build a European mentality among national party members. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly given the founders’ anxiety to secure consensus, there seems to have been no difficulty in naming the new TNP; in all its members’ languages it comes out simply as European left. The contrast with the linguistic contortions of some other TNP, notably the PES, is striking. At its outset, PEL had 15 full members, drawn from EU states, candidate countries and Switzerland (Table 6.1). There were four observers, including the important Cypriot AKEL and the Czech communists of KSCM (PDS International, 2004). Some of the guests at the founding congress have since become observers.

148 Beyond the Nation State Table 6.1 The Party of the European Left, 2007 Members Austria – Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ) Czech Republic – Strana Demokratického Socialismu (SDS) Estonia – Esti Sotsialdemokraatlik Tööpartei France – Parti Communiste Français (PCF) Germany – Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS) Greece – SYNASPISMOS (Coalition of Left Movements and Ecology) Hungary – Munkáspárt (Labour Party) Italy – Partito della Rifondazione Comunista Romania – Partidul Alianta Socialista San Marino – Rifondazione Comunista Sanmarinese Slovakia – Komunisticka Strana Slovenska (KSS) Spain – Izquierda Unida (IU) – Partido Comunista de Espana – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (Catalonia) Switzerland – Partei der Arbeit der Schweiz Observers Czech Republic – Komunistická Strana Cech a Moravy (KSCM) Cyprus – Anorthotiko Komma Ergazomenou Lóou (AKEL) [Progressive Workers’ Party] Denmark – Enhedslisten (Red – Green Alliance) Germany – Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) Italy – Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI) Luxembourg – Dei Lenk Portugal – Bloco de Esquerda (BE) Turkey – Özgürlük ve Dayanisma Partisi (ÖDP) [Party of Freedom and Solidarity]

Using the PEL; national parties and their strategy The wide range of opinion within PEL and the consequent difficulty of making it into an effective transnational tool can be seen if we examine the approaches of two parties, the Linkspartei or former PDS and Czech KSCM. Both have communist origins, though clearly the PDS has gone much further in distancing itself from these. Acknowledging the death of the old SED ruling party in East Germany, it sought after reunification to position itself as a radical, post-communist party, offering a socialist alternative to the moderate SPD. This proved a hard task, the party’s representation being restricted for a long time to the former GDR and particularly Berlin, where it could elect a small number of MPs and share municipal power. The PDS has tried to confront its past and show voters that it is not Stalinist. The other parties did it no favours, trying to use


the law to deny it a foundation pari passu with the other parties; these attempts failed in the end, and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is now an active outlet for the German left.6 PDS’s big breakthrough came in the 2005 elections, where discontent at the relative failure of two SPD/Green governments was strong enough for it to embody a sizeable protest vote; it emerged with 54 MPs, including some from the West, and seemed to be on the way up. The KSCM’s experience was very different. The collapse of communism in the Czech Republic did not dent its prestige as much as might be expected. In 2006 it sat on some 18 percent of the vote and elected a quarter of the MPs; its vote is probably stronger in rural areas than in the cities.7 It still has comfortable buildings in central Prague and a number of staff beyond what many parties can afford. A critical opposition voice in a polity where corruption is seen as widespread and where voters tend to sanction outgoing governments, it has a comfortable position and sees less need than some similar parties to agonise over its past. It stands unreservedly for a Marxist socialism that aspires to transform Czech society (KSCM, 2004). The attitude of these two similar yet contrasting parties towards the GUE and PEL provides a fascinating instance of how differently national parties can perceive transnational opportunities. KSCM texts refer naturally enough to the need for transnational action, but it is worth noting the lukewarm way in which it is evoked. A party resolution of 2005 submitted to the PEL ‘calls on all radical left-wing parties to be active and employ a co-ordinated approach and the highest level of united performance in supranational organisations’ (KSCM, 2005). Closer inspection reveals that this co-ordination is meant to apply loosely across a whole range of international organisations, ranging from the Nordic Council to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea; in other words, the EU dimension is heavily downplayed. The idea of a Europe extending far beyond the capitalist EU and reaching from the Atlantic to the Urals is at the heart of KSCM thinking, and parallels with Green ideas of Europe are not misplaced. Such an approach is, of course, often party-speak for a mistrust of European integration and a reluctance to engage with its structures; the KSCM seems to be in this situation, as one might expect of a party that campaigned against Czech entry into the EU, but has since grudgingly accepted the voters’ verdict. Its closest allies are, unsurprisingly, the Greek and Portuguese communist parties, known for their euroscepticism; it criticises the French party as insufficiently socialist.8 While it admits to a special relationship with the pro-integration PDS, one may ascribe


this to geographical proximity (also seen to be important for the Green family) and a common past as ruling elites, rather than to strong political agreement. KSCM’s dislikes are as much a clue to its transnational beliefs as are its friendships. It seems especially wary of the Italian PRC and its leader Bertinotti; the latter’s strong personality and energetic leadership style are resented, but the main objection seems to be his wish to narrow down PEL activity mainly to the EU framework. Czech communists felt that their ideas were not listened to in PEL circles and resented the fact that the small party SDS (Strana demokratického socialismu, or Party of Democratic Socialism – a split from the old communist party, but which seems to enjoy strong PDS support, despite its failure to achieve much profile in Czech politics) had been offered full membership of PEL. Much of the argument with the PEL centres on the notion of Stalinism, which the PEL founders were anxious to flag up as a major error in the communist past, the better to show how far they have moved on since then. KSCM objects to such a blanket word, preferring to talk of anti-democratic abuses of the past.9 On the face of it, this might seem like a theological dispute, and in strictly academic terms, one could side with the Czechs and say that Stalinism was indeed a ragbag term without precise scientific meaning. Academic rigour apart, however, the term does refer to a very precise historical reality, namely a systematic and ruthless form of one-party rule, aimed at mass mobilisation and transformation of society, and perfected during the lifetime and particularly under the aegis of Josef Stalin. Stalinism had common features beyond the USSR across all the states where it was applied. The term is certainly recognisable by those who have endured the reality, so for that reason alone, it should not be barred from use. The point of this semantic dispute is precisely that not using the term implies to an extent condoning the reality, or at any rate refusing to look entirely closely at some bad episodes of the party’s past. So long as this symbolic refusal carries on, other parties, now post-communist, will obviously find difficulty with those who refuse the term; and these latter will feel equally uncomfortable with the post-communists, whom they might see as turning their back on some historic achievements. Officials of other parties to whom we spoke thought that time was needed before the KSCM came round on this question. At any rate, by mid-2006 it still remained only as an observer within PEL (though arguably the strongest party therein). KSCM representatives told us that even from this position they could still debate and put forward initiatives like any full member; the only difference was that they paid no


fees. Given the fact that their ideas tended, by their own admission, to be ignored, this may have been putting a brave face on it. The fact remained that KSCM had a comfortable position in its own state, strong sympathies with other ex-communist parties not in PEL and thus very little incentive to change its rather aloof stance vis-à-vis the PEL. The Czech elections of 2006 brought about, however, a sharp reversal of its position, as its vote went down from 18.5 to 12.8 percent, and it lost 15 deputies out of its 41. It remained to be seen whether this reverse might force it to rethink its line and, if so, whether it might thereby discover a greater need for the PEL than it has so far felt. The Czech experience contrasts strongly with that of the PDS, which had clearly invested heavily in the idea of a TNP well before its recent domestic breakthrough; there seems little doubt that PDS leaders saw it as a winning gambit. They would increase their own weight within the European left, and at the same time, membership of a wider grouping was expected to have a dynamic effect on the PDS itself. Strategically, the PDS sees no alternative for the left but to work within the structures of an integrated Europe while trying to invest them with a stronger social and environmental content. It may be that this vision owes something to the strong presence at its summits of numerous cadres with experience in foreign policy, especially former GDR diplomats, who were sacked in droves after unification.10 Certainly the PDS is recognised to have been the main driver, along with the PRC, of the moves towards setting up the PEL. The party favours the development of stronger European common policies for the left and sees the PEL as a means of pushing for these. A further interesting possibility is use of the PEL to co-ordinate Europewide campaigns on topical themes, a strategy that Green parties also espouse. Part of the PDS post-communist identity has been the stressing of a strong participatory, activist ethos; such basisme, as the French term it, fits well with extra-parliamentary campaigns that are intended to bring politics out of closed elite circles and on to the street. The PDS is always careful to respect the difference between a social movement and a political party, but it does insist that social movements sooner or later need a political outcome.11 Perhaps the most vivid example of this view is the close attention paid by the PEL to movements like the World Social Forum, at whose 2005 Porto Alegre gathering the PEL was an accredited observer. Clearly for a party like the PDS, such approaches are a means of getting through to younger activists turned off by traditional party politics, and the PEL a natural vehicle for such approaches. It is true that, historically, communist parties had a long tradition of colonising social movements and turning them into appendices of the party, so


clearly care will be needed to respect boundaries between the two forms of action. PEL is valuable in another way. Over time it can be a means of gradually bringing together the remains of the communist family into some kind of umbrella organisation. Mention was made of the Czech SDS, which a successful PEL might one day be able to bring back into the fold with the KSCM. The PDS feels similarly about the small DKP (German Communist Party), a maintained communist party that has still not yet addressed its past. The PDS was hopeful that over time a TNP like the PEL might be able to broker agreement between the post-communists and their ‘maintained’ cousins.12 This of course is a classic example of the decantation function of TNP. The relationship of the different parties to PEL suggests different standpoints. As an established party with still relatively strong prospects in its own state, KSCM feels unwilling to invest further in a TNP, at least so long as some of its objections are not met. On the other hand, parties like RC or the PDS, who have something of a power base at home, but perhaps a fragile one, feel that little is to be lost by trying to use this party for purposes of mass campaigning, even if it involves development of some further integration. Some, like the PCF, seem to remain in the middle, reacting to others’ agenda; but this has been the PCF’s life-story in French politics for a long time now. If the PEL shows any success in transnational mobilisation, perhaps it will become more worthwhile for parties to strengthen it. Certainly, if the ex-communists continue to rely exclusively on the national arena for making progress, then their prospects do not look strong.

Prospects for the PEL The left parties have been among the last to accept the need for their own TNP. Memories of the top-down approach of the Comintern and its often damaging consequences for national parties have obviously left a deep mark on the left parties’ psyche, and more than one interviewee prefaced their comments on transnational action by remarking that there could be no return to this type of structure. Having long scorned the need for such a vehicle, they have latterly rushed into the creation of the PEL with surprising speed. It would be a mistake to see this as simple opportunism, the desire to take advantage of new funding opportunities. Acceptance of transnationalism has meant a change of mindset for many left parties. For long enough they subscribed to what could be seen as a sort of negative transnationalism; that is to say, although they had


no formal organisation such as the Comintern, they had imbibed from their historical experiences and Soviet links a ready-made set of beliefs about the unacceptability of European integration. These could be put forward without too much reflection, while the parties got on with what they saw as their main task of constructing a political platform within their own state. This latter task demanded more by way of resources; inventing a ‘national road to socialism’, distinct from that of the USSR, was much more difficult than simply saying no to Europe. Thus, if a number of left parties have come to embrace the idea of a TNP with considerable enthusiasm, we need to ask what benefits they hope to derive from it. If co-ordination of action at EU level is one, then the GUE group might be the place to start. Certainly its level of coherence and unity could be improved, but one would have to ask why this has not happened already. Usually EP groups had developed high degrees of coherence before the parties came on the scene; it is hard to think of an instance where a TNP has actually brought unity and better discipline to an existing EP group. The reason for the relative lack of unity is of course the presence within the PEL, and more particularly the GUE, of parties with radically opposed views. If the PDS, PdCI or PRC, or the Spanish IU have decided that the EU is a major level of activity, through which real gains (social, environmental, developmental) can be made for its voters, the same is hardly true of many others. The PCF has probably given up on the idea of exiting the EU, but the Scandinavian Red–Greens continue to aspire to this, in tune with their voters’ feelings. So long as their states remain members, they will naturally work in the EP to try and influence legislation in a progressive sense, but that is a far cry from weighing in seriously to a TNP committed to harmonising actions wherever possible. They will in any case carry out EP work on their own terms, according to an intergovernmentalist logic, and they still have hopes of detaching their state from membership. It is in fact not possible at present to unify such a wide range of forces under one roof, and that is why the Red–Greens have not joined the PEL; the most that can be hoped by way of common action is ad hoc collaboration in the GUE, where the Scandinavians jealously guard their autonomy as an official subgroup. Since February 2004, the EU Red–Greens have been linked to their fellows from Norway and Iceland in the Nordic Green Left Alliance.13 The disunity of the left parties can be further seen from another angle. To look at the PEL membership list is to notice the missing members; apart from the Scandinavians, the KKE and Portuguese CP are


conspicuous by their absence. Yet as communist parties go today, these are among the most significant. There are local factors that partly explain this absence, though major disagreements about the speed or desirability of integration lie at the heart of the dispute. The ‘eurocommunist’ faction of Greek communism, long known as the ‘interior’ communists and nowadays united with various ecologists and left socialists under the Synaspismos label, has proved a more congenial partner to the PEL heavyweights than the KKE; but by the same token, this has made it harder for the latter to enter an organisation that is seen to favour their historic rivals. Similar remarks could be made about the Portuguese case, where the PEL now has as observers the Left Bloc (BE), another eclectic mix of leftists and environmentalists, which competes directly with the PCP. In an exchange of views at the January 2005 executive of the PEL, the Czech delegate pointed out that there were still some 27 ex-communist parties (mainly in the former Soviet sphere) that should by rights be eligible for membership, but they were never considered.14 These are major absences from any party that seeks to pull in the whole spectrum to the left of social democracy. Last but not least, there is a whole subset of parties outside the PEL orbit, namely the Trotskyist organisations grouped loosely since March 2000 in the EACL. These groups are in direct competition with the left parties and can in some cases pose a serious electoral threat; it is no longer easy to laugh them off as student revolutionaries playing political games. The PCF in particular has lost out to such groups. The 1999 EP elections saw the Trotskyists enter the EP, mainly at PCF expense, and this humiliation was repeated in the French presidential elections of 2002 with the Trotskyist Besancenot outperforming the PCF candidate. Some PEL parties even attend meetings of the EACL as observers, and this bigamous behaviour (to use a term once applied to the French Radical party, often eclectic in its friendships) can only be a further illustration of the fissiparous nature of the PEL. It is even possible for some parties of this family to conceive of membership of Green organisations. The Danish SF (originally a leftist split from the old communist party, and a rare successful example of such a move) has now put its MEP into the Green EP group, leaving GUE. The rationale for such allegiance can only be belief that the Green family has perhaps more of a future as a locus of promotion of radical politics than the ex-communist family. If so, it is a further weakening of the latter. The positional dilemmas reflect the fundamental ambiguity of the ex-communist family. They began as parties of a special type, designed


to promote socialist revolution. As the likelihood of this receded, the parties clung on to their structures and with them the institutional gains they had accumulated in many countries at least. The collapse of the Soviet bloc dealt a body-blow to remaining aspirations to socialist transformation and also called into question the top-down organisation of these machines. As a result, these parties have been de-stalinising to various degrees and becoming, in their internal organisation, more like social democratic parties. Leaderships can no longer impose the iron discipline of old; they have to bargain with the few barons and local caciques whom their party still manages to elect. As for their political project, however, this has been a harder task to specify. The ex-communist parties can only, realistically, hope to be a kind of conscience of the moderate left; perched on its shoulder, so to speak, they can only exhort it not to backslide or compromise overmuch when in office. In many cases, they will have had to do electoral deals with the social democrats in the first place, so as to remain viable in national politics. Obviously this constrains the extent of their opposition; they can no longer pose as all-out adversaries of social democracy, but rather as reluctant yet demanding allies. In this way they manage to occupy a certain political space and defend some vulnerable social groups. This space is extremely narrow, however, and they are constantly challenged for its ownership. Trotskyists and unreformed Stalinists (some of them within parties that have undergone de-stalinisation) advocate a roots and branch opposition, the logical consequence of which is avoidance of office. Greens advocate a more critical type of reformism, apparently more able to speak to newer social groups. Even the personal libertarian or rights-driven agenda, to which many excommunist parties have signed up, can be advocated more plausibly by liberal parties (D66 in the Netherlands or the Libdems), to whose tradition such issues belong. In short, these parties have a hard task maintaining a distinct role and message. It is probably this, as much as any other factor, which has complicated their task of finding effective transnational forms of action. If it is hard to define your role at home, why should it be any easier at European level?

Notes 1. Stefano Bartolini explains the relative autonomy of the PCI in historical terms. Driven underground and harassed by Mussolini almost from the outset, it developed its own methods of struggle under indigenous leaders


2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

like Gramsci and Togliatti. The CPSU found it hard to penetrate such an elusive structure. This contrasts with the PCF’s experience within a functioning democracy; here the CPSU was easily able to install Thorez and surround him with similar obedient loyalists. (Lecture at Nuffield College, Oxford, 1986). See http://www.nordic-green-alliance.org Interviews with GUE officials, Brussels, October 2003. See http://www.guengl.org An English website for EACL is available at http://www.enhedslisten.dk Interview with PDS official, Berlin, October 2005. Interview with KSCM officials, Prague, September 2005. Ibid. See the exchange between Bertinotti and the head of the KSCM International Office Hassan Charfo in Berlin, January 2005. PEL website. Interview with PDS official, Berlin, October 2005. This point was stressed by both PDS and GUE officials in interview. Interview with PDS official, Berlin, October 2005. See the Danish SF website at http://www.sf.dk. PEL website at http://euroleft.org

7 Defending the Periphery, Protecting the Environment: The Regionalist Family and the Greens

What use is a strong Green German party in a desert of nonGreen countries? Member of executive board of die Grünen, November 2005. It might seem surprising to place two distinct political families, deriving from separate cleavages, into the same chapter. It could also be seen as opportunistic, insofar as it apparently simply takes as read the alliance that has existed at EP group level between Greens and regionalists for two legislatures now. There is, however, much in common between these two families and their experience of transnationalism; their legislative alliance is about more than the arithmetic of EP rules. Both have been seen as ‘new social movements’ in Alain Touraine’s phrase, along with feminism or antinuclear protest, rather than as political parties. Both mistrust the nationstate and prefer some type of federalism, regionalism or decentralisation. Both are essentially minorities within their own political systems and likely to remain so. Both have similar political and ideological concerns, though the overlap is of course by no means complete. Both seem possessed of European elites of similar profile and capacity. Finally, though both are usually seen as belonging to the more integrationist end of the political spectrum, each family has sufficient ambiguity on this question to produce interesting tensions.

The Regionalists: from the nation to Europe Although the regionalist family of parties stem from the same cleavage, face the same enemies, and probably start from the least promising position of all the party families, they have found transnational 157


collaboration beset with pitfalls.1 These parties of the periphery strive to defend peripheral territories and ways of life against the centralising forces of modern states, inevitably, but unfairly, finding themselves accused of obscurantism and resisting progress. Minorities by definition in the nation state in which they find themselves, such parties have strong local bases, where usually they compete with state-wide parties, all to a greater or lesser degree centralisers, be they of left or right (Seiler, 1994; Lynch,1996; Dewinter and Tursan,1998; Vanhaelewyn and Dauwen, 2006). While such parties may have a long pedigree [the Basque Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) recently celebrated its centenary] and may be able to score well in their local jurisdictions or even become the government here (cf. the PNV in the Basque Country or the Catalans of Esquerra Republicana in Barcelona), they have difficulty in gaining much influence on the wider polity of which they form part [in optimal conditions, the Welsh Plaid Cymru might have four MPs and the Scottish National Party (SNP) half a dozen in a House of Commons of some 650].2 Regionalist parties began making transnational contacts as early as 1948, following the Hague Congress of the European Movement (Lynch, 1996: 136 ff.) A Congress of European Communities and Regions would meet through the 1950s, very much under the impulse of the Breton federalist movement MOB (Mouvement pour l’Organisation de la Bretagne), which advocated a federal Europe. The Congress had a standing bureau that ran its affairs; it demanded common European institutions of government, including an assembly based on regional representation. Its most dynamic elements moved into other areas of activity, such as the movement for Breton decentralisation, and the Congress ran out of steam. In the early 1970s, a Bureau of Unrepresented European Nations was set up, with the participation of the Welsh Plaid Cymru, Basque PNV and Cornish, Alsatian and Occitan nationalists. The Bureau’s main function was to lobby as a pressure group in Brussels, voicing matters of concern to regionalists; this function seemed the most practical one to adopt, as virtually no regionalist parties were currently represented in the EP. With the coming of direct elections in 1979, however, it made sense to develop a more partisan type of organisation that could help organise minority nationalist and regionalist parties electorally and, it was hoped, link up the successful ones in an EP group. It should be stated at this point that regionalists were extremely divided in their views on Europe. One can distinguish centre-right, pro-European federalists, more right-wing nationalists opposed to

Defending the Periphery, Protecting the Environment

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integration, and left-wing nationalists who were also anti-integration (but on different grounds; they saw Europe as a capitalist invention designed to stop socialism, whereas the rightwingers saw it more as a block to the formation of proper nation states). The rise of European-level institutions set problems for this family. Europe could at first be dismissed as an irrelevance or a diversion from the true struggle for autonomy in or independence from the state in which one lived. Yet the growing role of the EP and the slightly more generous electoral systems on offer for EP elections made the prospect of European representation more attractive; Europe could be seen as a way of reaching round the back of the oppressive nation state, so to speak, and gaining access to other sources of authority, funds and political contacts. The regionalist parties grasped this opportunity, usually fighting under the slogan of a ‘Europe of the Regions’, a formula flexible enough to combine demands ranging from outright independence to varying degrees of regional autonomy. By the mid-1980s, the deepening of European integration and the formulation of the concept of ‘Europe of the Regions’ enabled parties to reformulate their strategy as ‘Independence within Europe’; bigger parties in particular SNP or ER could thus continue to affirm their national identity while being comfortable with Europe. The creation of a common organisation lagged, for the above reasons, behind that of rival families, and we can observe a twofold movement, at the level of the EP and outside. After the 1979 EP elections, an MEP from Volksunie (VU – moderate Flemish nationalists), together with the Irish Fianna Fail dissident Neil Blaney, began to co-operate within the confines of the then Technical Co-ordination and Defence of Independent Groupings and Members, along with Danish Eurosceptics and Italian Radicals and leftists. In 1984, the two VU members were joined by a Sardinian and a Basque from Eusko Alkartasuna (EA – a left split from the PNV), and these three joined with ecologist MEPs (as the Greens were mostly then called) to form the Rainbow Group. In the meantime, a series of meetings between regionalist parties culminated in the Brussels conference of January 1981, at which European Free Alliance (EFA) was first mooted, with a loose charter and the beginnings of a secretariat; it was still only, as Vanhaelewyn and Dauwen remark, ‘an amalgam of parties and movements that shared the principle of a Europe of the Peoples’ (2006: 21). By July, however, EFA was officially set up, with nine parties from five states signing the so-called Brussels Convention and several others present as observers. The driving force in all this was the VU, then at its apogee.


By 1989, the Greens were strong enough to have their own EP group, but the Rainbow continued with representatives from Scotland, Catalonia, Corsica, Andalucia, the Canary Islands and the Italian Lega Nord, in addition to the early members. The Lega’s outspoken nationalism (not in the positive sense usually understood by regionalist parties) and its participation in an Italian government alongside the ex-fascist Alleanza Nazionale soon led to its departure, but after 1994 the Rainbow was kept viable by the addition of Italian and French radicals, hardly parties of the periphery but welcome allies in the struggle to keep up enough numbers to have a group. The formation of the Committee of the Regions in 1994, where regionalist parties are better represented, also saw the creation of groups, the regionalists going into a European Alliance including some ecologists and independents but also, in a rare example of ambiguous identity, members of Fianna Fail (who sit with the sovereignist group UEN inside the EP).3 Progress on party and group fronts has been, therefore, mixed. Since 1981, regionalist parties in the EU have liaised in a formal structure, the EFA, and have worked out common positions on European issues (EFA, 2000; 2002; 2006a,b). Electoral progress within the EP arena has been subject to the same difficulties as the regionalists encounter in their respective nation states; in the 2004 EP, they numbered just five MEPs, the two Scottish Nationalists constituting the biggest subset alongside a Plaid Cymru representative, a Catalan from the Republican Left party and a representative of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia. The original motor of EFA, the Flemish Volksunie, having undergone a split and a change of name (to Spirit), now found itself without any MEPs, while the UK members of EFA now found themselves in an unaccustomed position at the forefront. Regionalists are understandably bitter about what they see as a big shortfall in their due representation at EU level. They have been busy in other Europe-wide organisations, however, such as the Assembly of European Regions, which provided an international forum; Jordi Pujol, the Catalan leader, was very active at this level. In 2004 the EFA assumed the status of a European political party, adding to its title the acronym DPPE (Democratic Party of the Peoples of Europe), this on the suggestion of the Catalan ERC (Esquerra Republicana Catalana). Thirty-one parties, including five observers, signed the memorandum of association. Following its 2006 General Assembly, EFA had some 33 full members, two observers and one personal member, the MEP Tatjana Zdanoka, representing the Russian speakers of Latvia; her party Par Cilvçka Tiesîbâm Vienotâ Latvijâ (PCTVL) (For Human Rights in a United Latvia) is not yet an EFA member (Table 7.1).


161

Table 7.1 European Free Alliance/Democratic Party of the peoples of Europe, 2007 Members Austria – Enotna Lista [Carinthia] Belgium – Partei der Deutschsprächigen Belgier Spirit [formerly Volksunie] Czech Republic – Moravané France – Ligue Savoisienne Mouvement Région Savoie Partit Occitan Union Démocratique Bretonne Partitu di a Nazione Corsa Union du Peuple Alsacien Greece – Vinozhito/Rainbow party [Macedonian Minority in Greece] Italy – Libertà Emiliana – Nazione Emilia Liga Fronte Veneto Partido Sardo d’Azione Union Valdôtaine Slovenska Skupnost Union für Südtirol Lithuania – Polska Partita Ludowa [Lithuanian Polish People’s Party] Netherlands –Fryske Nasjonale Partij Poland – Ruch Autonomii Slaska [Silesian Autonomy Movement] Spain – Bloque Nacionalista Galego Chunta Aragonesista Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya Eusko Alkartasuna Unitat Catalana Partido Andalucista Sweden – Ålands Framtid UK – Mebbyon Kernow Plaid Cymru/The Party of Wales Scottish National Party Observers Bulgaria – Omo Linden Pirin [Macedonian minority] Romania – Liga Transilvana Banat Slovakia – Magyar Föderalist Párt (MFP) [Hungarian Federalist Party] Spain – Partit Socialista de Mallorca i Minorca – Entesa Nacionalista

Despite its small number of MEPs, EFA can claim to be strengthening as time passes. A steady trickle of applications has raised its membership to over 30 parties or organisations, as described above, and its 2006 General Assembly had some 500 delegates, almost enough to fill the Brussels Hemicycle. New applications continue to arrive, though by no means all are accepted. EFA’s youth wing, founded in 2000, is busy


(Vanhaelewyn and Dauwen, 2006: 81). Thus, while it is always likely to be difficult for EFA to have major representation inside the EP, so long as nation states refuse to adopt a very proportional system of election, the party nevertheless fulfils an increasing demand for networking and exchange of ideas and experiences among the representatives of Europe’s periphery.

Ideology and political platform EFA seeks to represent the internal nations or stateless nations of Europe and help them towards enhanced self-government.4 The party’s remit is thus drawn deliberately in a broad way; it includes parties speaking for ‘regions’, autonomous communities and other concepts used to denote entities within existing states and it covers a wide set of goals espoused by such movements, ranging from outright independence to varying degrees of internal autonomy. It can thus describe itself as (EFA, 2006a) ‘a European Political Party composed of progressive, democratic, nationalist, regionalist and autonomist parties within the EU’. Once this broad context has been set, EFA can then present its version of the nationalism which underpins the thinking of all its members (EFA, 2000). EFA stands for what it calls ‘progressive nationalism’, in implied contrast to the more trenchant versions of nationalism espoused by right-wing formations such as the French Front National (FN) or the Vlaams Belang (VB). This democratic nationalism is located firmly within a constitutional and non-violent tradition of politics, even when existing constitutional arrangements in nation-states are unfavourable to its expression. Using one of the more sophisticated developments of nationalist theory, care is taken to situate EFA nationalism within the ambit of civic as opposed to ethnic nationalism. It has to be said that this distinction, which seems very plausible in theoretical terms, is probably extremely hard to operate in practice, as, rhetoric apart, many if not most nationalist parties appeal to voters almost instinctively on a tribal basis. EFA nationalism is, moreover, firmly to the left of centre. EFA texts stress repeatedly such values as social justice, solidarity and a commitment to public services. They argue for sustainable development and environmentally friendly policies, as well as trade arrangements that would benefit the Third World. They favour consensual, pacific approaches to international relations. EFA believes firmly in gender equality and rebalancing of roles. There is a strong basiste tone to its pronouncements; democratic, grass-roots input into decision-making is valued and encouraged. These goals go hand in hand with more cultural


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objectives, notably ‘to pursue the meaningful realisation of European linguistic and cultural diversity and equality of all European languages’ (EFA, 2006a). Thus, although the historic raison d’être of EFA’s members is to defend the values of the periphery, the core of these values would seem to be highly contemporary, owing more to the experiences of the 1960s than to mythic versions of some idealised past. One can argue that the insistence on so-called minority languages and cultures as identifiers does not sit entirely comfortably with the list of progressive values just enumerated, but the general tonality of EFA texts is very much that of the post-industrial left. On the face of it, such an ideology would place EFA nearer to the GUE or the Greens than to the EPP or some of the nationalists of the AEN/UEN group within the EP. This tends to be the case in legislative behaviour. Hix confirms (2001: 168) the existence of a progressive bloc on most votes, with EFA/Greens combining against EPP and UEN and ELDR (though the latter tends to side with the progressives on libertarian issues). EFA’s ideology has led it to seek over the years a number of reforms of the EU. The concept of subsidiarity has been seized with enthusiasm and used to argue for devolution of more power to subnational units. Typical demands include the right for members of substate governments to attend Council as of right, where appropriate (i.e. on issues where substate authorities will have a role in applying EU law, hence a very open-ended possibility). It has even been boldly suggested that the delegation of an existing state might have to split its vote if a QMV decision were involved and disagreement ensued between territorial and national representatives. EFA demands also include prior consultation of substate authorities where appropriate by the Commission, pari passu with what happens with member state governments. It also wants such authorities to have right of access to the ECJ and to participate in the Conférence des Organes Spécialisés dans les Affaires Communautaires et Européennes des Parlements de l’Union Européenne (COSAC), the EU-wide committee of European Affairs Committees of national parliaments. It seeks the right to what it calls internal enlargement, effectively wanting the EU to assist peoples within member states to secede if they so wish. For both the EP and the Committee of the Regions, it seeks a new basis for representation. At present, this is based on member states as a whole, using fairly crude numerical criteria; EFA seeks special recognition of territorial clusters with distinct cultures within such states, which amounts to seeking a special weighting in favour of its own member parties.


Most of these demands have been part of the programme for years, and EFA probably holds out little hope of their being realised soon. They do, however, give concrete expression to the party’s identity, for they all seek equal recognition for their component territories to that given to member states and their governments. In this way, the party links its ideology to its everyday political campaigning. One institutional factor has played an ambiguous role in the development of EFA. The creation of the Committee of the Regions via the Maastricht Treaty might on the face of it have seemed an opportunity for the regionalist family to progress (Loughlin and Seiler, 1999). Most parties supported it as a worthwhile initiative for the time being, while demanding more thoroughgoing representation for their interests. Within the CoR, the main TNP have naturally organised their members as they do in other institutions, but this process has not been seamless for the regionalists, in that only four groups are operative in the CoR; alongside the EPP, PES and Liberals, the regionalists have to share a group with the sovereignists of UEN, known as UEN-EA (the EA stands for European Alliance). It is probably fair to say that they have been disappointed with the way the CoR has turned out. Its members are nominated by governments of existing states, not by subnational organisms; while this does not exclude trade-offs within the political system of member states, it is a far cry from the regions electing their own. While the CoR can give opinions to the Commission on certain proposals, these do not necessarily come before the EP, a key actor in the legislative process. Sometimes they arrive after the EP has voted on the issue in question. One MEP who is also an alternate on the CoR told us that it seemed mainly to duplicate the work of the EP and that many MEPs scarcely knew of its existence. Altogether it seemed a missed opportunity, and one of the biggest member parties of EFA, the Welsh Plaid Cymru, now felt that it should either be radically strengthened or scrapped.5

Unity and diversity in EFA The situation of EFA’s members is such that there are many more factors binding them together than dividing them. They are all fighting on behalf of groups outnumbered in their existing states, even if, as EFA spokespeople invariably point out, they can often claim to represent a majority in their own territory, such as Euskadi or Catalonia. To that extent, they have little time or incentive to stress their differences. One point that came up in discussion was, however, the extent to which EFA


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should be a TNP for parties seeking autonomy (say PNV, SNP or ER) or for parties simply seeking to defend a peripheral minority threatened in its language and culture (say the party of Russian speakers in Latvia). At present it is both, and it may be that this ambiguity will continue to define it; but some parties think that the question should be debated further. One major problem that EFA has to address is that of missing members. EFA representation in the EP is small, and the party is certainly not helped by various national electoral systems. That said, it can be asked whether the party has maximised its assets. There are a number of MEPs and their parties who, on the face of it, should be within EFA’s walls but are not. Certainly such groups have their origins in the centre/periphery cleavage. Two clear cases are separatist parties that espouse radical right-wing views across a whole range of issues. The Vlaams Belang (VB) seeks an independent Flanders, the Lega Nord (LN) an independent Padania (on paper at least). Such ideology should put these peripheral parties firmly in the EFA orbit, were it not combined with a fiercely xenophobic and authoritarian discourse; interestingly, the LN was at the outset in EFA and could conceivably have taken over the motor role previously held by the VU (Lynch, 1996: 150), until the truly radical nature of its discourse became clear. After some friction and attempts by rival EP groups to smear EFA by association, it left before it was pushed out, joining a Berlusconi government that included the post-fascist party, Alleanza Nazionale, an object of deep suspicion to many EFA members (Vanhaelewyn and Dauwen, 2006: 54–5). (Plaid Cymru actually left EFA temporarily in protest until the LN was removed). Given the leftish nature of EFA’s civic nationalism, there can obviously be no place for such parties. Yet they capture audiences on what is natural EFA terrain; in particular, the rise of the VB in Flanders has to an extent been at the expense of the VU, long the godmother of EFA. This is a loss by any standards. It seems clear that over the years EFA leaned over backwards to try and accommodate the Lega Nord, before eventually concluding that it was irremediably compromised by racism and xenophobia; in an open letter, Nelly Maes, the feisty EFA president, suggested that the Lega find a home with Le Pen and the VB.6 Similar efforts were made to keep Danish Eurosceptics on board, at least on EP group level; the June Movement of Jens-Peter Bonde was in the Technical and then Rainbow groups with EFA, before setting up an openly Eurosecptic group, EDD and later a TNP based on this. Leaving aside questions of parliamentary


arithmetic and the legendary parliamentary skills of Bonde, it seems hard to see what EFA might have in common with a group that is not of the periphery (unless one counts the whole Danish state under this heading). The June Movement’s critiques of democratic deficit and wasteful bureaucracy would appeal certainly, but such a discourse is by no means a monopoly of theirs. This search for an alliance with the hardest Eurosceptics suggests that divisions about integration ran very deep within EFA; it is no coincidence that the group’s former general secretary, Hermann Verheirstraeten, ended up in a similar role with the EDD group. The Basque PNV is a different case. This party is the oldest nationalist party, but its anti-Castillian ethos has always been accompanied by a distinctly catholic influence; in terms of its economic and social policy, strongly influenced by catholic social teaching, it belongs in the Christian democratic family, the more so as on moral or libertarian issues it has a conservative stance. It was indeed in the EPP until the latter effectively forced it out in favour of Aznar’s PP, as part of EPP’s expansionist strategy. Since then, it has wandered uneasily, before finding a current resting place in the new European Democratic Party, which sits with the Liberal ALDE in the EP. It did spend time as an observer in EFA, but clearly felt uncomfortable, the more so as it had to sit alongside EA, a more radical split from its own ranks. From the PNV’s point of view, the present solution is doubtless the best (though it must be unhappy at some of the socially permissive ideology of ALDE). Yet from the point of view of EFA as a TNP, this must seem a failure, in that the two non-violent wings of Basque nationalism could not be brought together under one roof. Such brokering is of course one of the classic tasks of TNP. The failure to pull in the Catalan CiU might also be mentioned here, though this was long a natural party of government in Catalonia and indeed a pivot party in virtually any all-Spanish governing majority (Dowling, 2004). Rich and powerful, thus the opposite of most of the EFA members, such a party would probably always be tempted by the proximity of similar forces in the EPP. Thus in the two main Spanish territories, EFA has missed out on the main players, even if it has, as Lynch remarked, picked up the more leftward regionalists of ER and EA as compensation. A similar omission is the Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP), also a peripheral party with a strong catholic identity, currently enjoying observer status in the EPP. It is uncertain how far the SVP’s need of an electoral deal with Berlusconi’s alliance in order to secure an EP seat is a determinant of its action. Yet there are other Italian regionalists in the EFA, and


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the absence of SVP is clearly a gap. The Hungarian minority parties in Slovakia and Romania, both viable at national and European level, are a similar case. Catholic as well as ethnic, they offer a classic fusion of two different cleavages, church/state and centre/periphery. Not surprisingly, the lure of the big EPP has proved too powerful, especially as one of these parties has had government experience in Romania. If these cases are on the right of the regionalist family, so to speak, on the other extreme, the Irish Sinn Fein (SF) is currently progressing steadily, both in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Republic. Its tax and spend, public-sector-oriented populism, based on a firm cultural nationalism, fits well with the main discourse of EFA (Rafter, 2005: 188– 242). Yet the party has ended up with the GUE, though it has not yet joined the PEL. There seems little contact between it and EFA parties.7 Given the strong upward trajectory of SF, this again would seem to be another powerful ally who escaped. Yet the process of decantation worked in some instances. The acrimonious split of the VU into a left fraction, Spirit, and a right faction the Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie (NV-A) led to both bidding for membership of the EFA. Spirit, led by Maes was able to convince EFA that it was the legitimate continuator of the VU and thus obtained the exclusion of NV-A. Decantation thus worked, but the price was probably an MEP’s seat; NV-A did an electoral deal with the Flemish Christian democrats in 2004, which let them win a seat. The elected member then joined the EPP. There are clearly questions here about the capacity of a small TNP to carry out some of the tasks of integration associated with these organisms.

Wider links Like the Greens, the regionalists have never set up an International. Both these forces can be seen as relatively late arrivals on the partisan scene and to that extent may have benefited from the transnational experiences of other families, deciding to be less ambitious and build up links on a regional rather than world-wide basis. Nevertheless, the cleavages from which they stem are just as relevant outside Europe as within it. EFA’s only serious contact in this respect appears to lie with the Parti québécois (PQ), logically enough as Québec is usually seen by regionalists as a highly successful example of how to lever everincreasing autonomy out of a central state. It is unclear however what the PQ provides to European regionalists other than political example.


The Greens The Green road to transnationalism Unlike the older party families, the Greens came early to transnationalism; one could say that their development within their own polities has always run parallel to the forging of transnational links, even if these two processes have usually been uneven. The Greens themselves tend to divide their transnationalism into three periods, starting with the Green Co-ordination, which ran roughly from the late 1970s to 1993 (Cassola and Gahrton, 2003). The transnational body during this period was the European Green Coordination (EGC), to which activists often simply refer as the European Greens. The second period is described as federal and runs from 1993, when the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) was set up to replace the EGC. The third period was inaugurated with the establishment of a TNP, the European Green Party (EGP), in February 2004. This activity is, however, only part of the Greens’ transnational endeavours; from 1984 they had MEPs elected, and the Green group within the EP has exercised a marked influence on Green transnationalism. The Co-ordination of European Greens and Radical Parties was founded informally, according to its first joint general secretary, Sara Parkin, on 17 July 1979, in the aftermath of the first direct EP elections (Cassola and Gahrton, 2003: 42–3). Its aims were to exchange information, including policy ideas, take joint action on European issues, hold seminars and develop a common statement or manifesto. The initial participants were the German Greens, the two Belgian parties, the UK Ecology Party, French Mouvement d’Ecologie, plus the Italian Radicals and the Dutch Politieke Partij Radikalen, which would be nearer to the type of ‘red-green’ parties now familiar in Scandinavia. By the time of the 1984 EP elections, tensions between Greens and radicals were apparent, and the radicals dropped out. The European Greens, as the co-ordination was now called, carried on with conferences in Belgium and the UK, attracting 700 delegates from some 20 countries worldwide. The 1984 EP elections saw a number of Green MEPs elected (see Table 2.1), along with steady progress within some national political systems (inevitably those with some element of proportionality in their electoral systems). More parties joined the Coordination, from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland and Switzerland. Following the collapse of Stalinism, the Greens felt the need for tighter structures. Arnold Cassola, the long-serving general secretary of the EFGP, speaks of this structure as ‘a necessary and natural step forward’


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(Cassola and Gahrton, 2003: 51), as the need emerged for the Greens to be more visible internationally, to decide issues quicker (hence by some use of majority voting) and generally to face up to the new issues shaping post – Cold War Europe. The EFGP was duly created in 1993, despite the apprehension of many delegates, deeply socialised into national approaches to politics. Ralph Monö, EFGP secretary general from 1995– 1999, sees this period as one where a ‘new sense of federation identity emerged’ (Cassola and Gahrton, 2003: 114), with the strengthening of administrative structures (development of a website, newsletter, regular reports to EFGP Council from its committee), help for small parties and brokering of conflict between member parties, as well as the production of a manifesto for the 1999 EP election (previously done by the EP group). Transnational activity now also extended beyond Europe; as the Kyoto conference approached, EFGP co-ordinated 65 Green parties on five continents to agree a common statement on climate policy. The final step was towards the creation of a Green TNP; here the Greens followed the other families in making full use of the European Party Regulation. The European Green Party (EGP) was duly launched at Rome in February 2004 and takes its place as one of ten such parties. It currently numbers 35 full members and 7 observers from 34 states (Table 7.2). The EGP is now one of a number of Green TNP that are organised on different continents (Federation of Green Parties of Africa; Federation of Green Parties of the Americas; Asia-Pacific Green Network; EFGP); growing co-ordination between these bodies may soon lead to the creation of a Green International (though it will probably not be given such an old-fashioned name). In April 2001, some 800 delegates from 72 countries met in Canberra under the auspices of a North American inspired Global Green Co-ordination; a further such gathering is anticipated in Kenya in 2007–2008. Current debate among Greens seems to centre on whether such an organisation should be based on continental federations or individual national parties.8 If such a structure arises, the Greens will have caught up with their older rival families in every respect. Alongside these developments, Green strength in the more specialised arena of the EP has grown steadily (see Table 2.1). Early success in 1984 has been consolidated; until 1989, the Greens were never really strong enough to form their own group, usually constructing pacts with other radical forces of various hues in so-called rainbow alliances. Bomberg sees this early period as one where they ‘used the Parliament as little more than a showcase or platform for disruption’ (2002: 41). Since 1999, however, they seem able to count on the presence of some 30 odd MEPs,

170 Table 7.2 The European Green Party, 2007 Members Austria – Die Grünen Belgium – Groen! Ecolo Bulgaria – Zelena Partia [Bulgarian Green Party] Cyprus – Kinema Oikologón Periballontistón [Cyprus Green Party] Czech Republic – Strana Zelenych Denmark – De Grønne Estonia – Eesti Rohelised Finland – Vihreä Liitto France – Les Verts Germany – Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Georgia – Sakartvelo’s mtsvaneta partia Georgia [Georgian Green Party] Greece – Ecologoi Prasinoi Hungary – Zöld Demokraták Szövetsége Ireland – Comhaontas Glas Italy – Federazione dei Verdi Latvia – Latvijas Zala Partija Luxembourg – Dei Greng Malta – Alternattiva Demokratika Netherlands – De Groenen Groen Links Norway – Miljöpartiet de Gronne Poland – Zieloni 2004 Portugal – Os Verdes Romania –Verdi Russia – Zelenaya alternativa Slovakia – Strana Zelenych na Slovensku Spain – Los Verdes Sweden – Miljöpartiet de Gröna Switzerland – Grüne/Les Verts Ukraine – Partija Zelenych Ukrajiny UK – The Green Party (England and Wales) Scottish Green Party Observers FYEG – Federation of Young European Greens Albania – Te Gjelberit Denmark – Socialistik Folkepartiet Moldova – Partidul Ecologist Alianta Verde di Moldova Slovenia – Stranka Mladih Slovenije Spain – Los Verdes/Izquierda Verde Yugoslavia – Zeleni


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and these have concluded what seems a fairly durable alliance with the regionalists of EFA/DPPE. This usually makes the group the fourth biggest in the EP, slightly ahead of the ex-communists of the PEL, but still outside the magic circle of the EPP, PES and ELDR. It seems clear that this stabilisation, which coincides with an increase in the EP’s real powers, has also led the Green group to engage in EP politics in a much more constructive way. The nature of Green transnationalism On the face of it, this family should have fewer problems than its rivals/predecessors with transnational issues. If acid rain, pollution and GM crops are no respecters of frontiers, why should parties whose raison d’être is to fight on such issues have any difficulty in transcending national barriers? What is usually understood as the core of Green ideology could be seen as intrinsically transnational: concern with the abuse of nature at the hands of markets and the social dysfunctions that stem from this; a peace-oriented approach to international security; the need for radical redistribution of resources, including towards the third world; a culture of personal libertarianism, with a commitment to grassroots democracy and mistrust of traditional modes of leadership, all of it endorsed by electorates that are younger, better educated, more urban and usually better off than those of most other families. Yet when it comes to implementing real transnational action, the Greens have found it no easier than any others. Problems of self-definition were evident early on. Initially, Greens teamed up with radicals, usually from a far-left or Marxist background; in the 1970s, such collaboration could be defended on the grounds that both were primarily parties of protest and anti-capitalist in orientation. This did pose problems, however, for those Greens who sought to define themselves not in traditional left/right terms (in which case they simply became a variant of the mainstream left), but as an entirely new type of party; in Rokkanian terms, they stressed their derivation not from the cleavage between owners and the propertyless but from the nature/market cleavage. This dispute about identity labels ran right across individual parties, of course, as evidenced by the split in the French Greens between the purist minority who followed Waechter and the realist majority, led by such as Voynet and Mamère, who preferred to hang in with the mainstream left. In time, as the Greens became stronger, this problem would be decanted, with most of the radicals going to parties of the GUE (the ‘Red-Greens’) or in some cases to the Liberals. This episode did suggest some uncertainty within Green ranks,


however, and the same could be said of Green positioning on the whole question of European integration. The EGP and its predecessor deliberately drew their remit to cover the whole of Europe, not just the EU. The German Greens are said to have pushed hard for this orientation. The EGP thus stretches from Ireland to Georgia, with none of the hierarchy of membership (observers from candidate countries, associates), which other TNP have seen fit to use. Six of its current 35 full members are from outside the EU. This suggests deep ambiguity about the EU. It is an open secret that some parties see European integration as the best way towards the regulated type of society that they seek. Others share the mistrust of leftist parties towards an entity seen as too liberal and favouring the unrestrained march of global capitalism, and they believe that the nation-state may still offer the best framework for action. Bomberg sees Germans, Belgians and Italians as the core of the first group, with Scandinavians, British and Irish more typical of the second, and this typology conforms broadly to our interview findings (Bomberg, 2002: 41).9 Motives for opposing integration seem to vary considerably, and more could be done to investigate them; while pro-integration Greens can appreciate the reluctance of Swedes to engage fully with the EU for fear of having to sign up to environmental regulations that would actually be less demanding than those obtaining in Sweden, they remain perplexed at the antiEuropean feelings of, say, the English Greens, some of whose attitudes might seem to rest on attachment to a certain political culture as much as on purely pragmatic considerations.10 Certainly the deep divisions inside EGP a propos of the European constitutional treaty were evidence of continuing uncertainty about the future configuration of Europe.11 Some influential figures within parties have difficulty with what they see as an over-concentration on the European level, as it involves a risk of developing parochial attitudes instead of focusing on world-wide issues of international development.12 Green attitudes to transnationalism have clearly been affected by experience of or proximity to office. Bomberg sees a general softening of ideology in those parties that have experienced office at national or subnational level, but office has also changed their approach to collaboration beyond the frontiers. Belgian Greens for instance came into federal office at the time when the Balkans conflict was at its worst and the EU’s incapacity to address it at its most visible. As a result, they had to revise their largely pacifist views on international relations and are now much more amenable to humanitarian interventions. Clearly such operations involve a higher degree of foreign policy co-ordination


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among EU states, which makes an instrument like a Green TNP potentially much more useful.13 It is no coincidence that the German Greens began paying more attention to the EGP and sending a higher calibre of delegate to its meetings once they found themselves running German foreign policy in the SPD/Green coalition after 1998. By contrast, those parties whose prospects of office seem distant can approach transnationalism differently. Smaller parties in Central and Eastern Europe can see in the EGP a source of experience and technical help, even if funds are tighter than in bigger families.14 It is also possible for them to cash in on their international links domestically, so to speak; parties from this region have been present when EGP has prepared positions on issues such as use of the Danube for hydroelectricity and are able to argue to voters at home that they helped influence such an outcome.15 Alternatively, small parties can use such instances to defend sacred national principles for the benefit of activists at home, confident that these positions are unlikely to be tested by a spell in office. There is more than one way of getting satisfaction in politics. Tension between partisans of further integration and more cautious Greens emerges in views about the role of the EP group. For Belgian and French officials, it has too much by way of resources, finance, research and communications capacity in comparison with the party; hence a temptation to set the agenda and narrow it to EP-focused issues at the expense of wider debates. The group is seen to be freer of national constraints than Green parties and better able to make deals and compromises that would not be acceptable ‘at home’.16 This is compounded by a longstanding reluctance of some national parties to send their top people to EGP meetings; and those parties that do tend to be the biggest, well represented in the group and often with governmental experience. Prime among these are the Germans, who are accused by some of excessive centralisation; one informant accused Cohn-Bendit of wanting the EGP to be ‘the party of a single state’. German dominance of the group was evidenced, for some of our interviewees, by their success in watering down pro-Palestinian resolutions (out of sensitivity to Israel) or their reluctance to accept criticism for German government anti-Green policies such as the sale of nuclear power reactor parts to China. An additional rider that we frequently encountered in interviews was uncertainty as to how much importance to attach to EGP as a political tool. Many activists in the wider ecological movement are not engaged in Green parties but in a whole variety of social movements, of which


Atac or the European Social Forum are among the most prominent. Many within actual Green parties seem uncertain how to articulate their work with that of such movements. The balance sheet for the EGP would seem modest so far. The party has managed to produce manifestoes for the last two EP elections that were used to varying degrees by national parties, though without usually mentioning the EGP. Yet the organising of summits for leaders runs well behind that of most other families,17 and it is no longer enough to plead lack of governmental experience as an excuse. If the Greens are in office, they need quicker and better co-ordination with family friends in other states, and TNP are the best way of assuring that. German Greens are impatient at the failure to set up a vehicle that can co-ordinate Green party views and articulate them forcefully in European arenas.18 Decision by consensus remains the norm, even in areas where QMV can operate. Bomberg certainly sees a failure on the part of EGP to engage with some fundamental questions such as EMU, further integration or enlargement, the party preferring to concentrate on easier dossiers such as the democratic deficit, on which all can agree.19 Some of our interviewees spoke openly of their impatience at ‘waiting for the English and the Swedes’ and the possibility of creating an avant-garde within EGP that would be the equivalent of enhanced co-operation among a group of member states. The EGP would seem to be facing some hard decisions about its progress. Greens and regionalists: the logic of rapprochement Electoral arithmetic will always compel the regionalists to seek membership of a larger group within the EP, as their best electoral performances have only ever seen them scrape into double figures in terms of MEPs, even with the cross-over of one or two members from other groups during the legislature; the immediate future does not look promising (Dewinter, 2005). It is fair to say that almost by definition, major statewide parties, used to governing multi-ethnic states, are usually highly mistrustful of regionalist parties, this dislike often extending to refusal to share basic information about EU policies with them. In other words, groups such as the EPP or PES are unlikely to welcome the regionalists into their ranks with open arms. Yet there is more than one possible alliance. One MEP saw strong similarities between the GUE parties and those of EFA and regretted the absence of a stronger, unified group.20 One major stumbling-block to a GUE/EFA alliance is undoubtedly the instinctive centralism of many GUE parties, a relic of their communist past. Leninism was always,


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among its many other identifying features, firmly Jacobin. The Greens for their part have not always partnered EFA in the EP and have seldom, if ever, done so in national or subnational bodies, where deals with social democrats or even liberals seem more normal.21 Boy and Chiche (2005) argue that there is a high degree of compatibility between the Greens and the radical left, as incarnated in the GUE parties, in that both are parties of protest; though they do qualify this thesis in some respects (differences of ideology and electorates). Opinions seem, then, divided as to who are the ‘natural’ partners for EFA. In fact the Greens are as plausible as any other force. There is a broad ideological fit between EFA and the Greens (as good as that between the Greens and GUE/PEL). Both are committed to a strong ethic of grass-roots participation, which extends to decentralisation; both favour sustainable development, are critical of globalisation and advocate solidarity with the Third World; both approach international relations from the standpoint of peace and consensus building rather than force and unilateralism. There are differences on libertarian and ethical issues (German Greens like to joke that they are the only true liberal party in Germany, for instance), as well as on the provision of public services, though many of the EFA parties are nearer the Green position on the first type of issue, and probably some Green parties would be nearer to EFA-type policies on the second. On European integration, most members of both families are generally more in favour than opposed. It has even been suggested that in some political systems, there is little direct competition between the two forces; thus in Spain, for instance, the Green space has been largely filled by EFA parties.22 Such arguments probably underplay both the different origins of the two forces and the fact that parties need to expand in order to survive, but they do hint at underlying compatibility. In terms of electoral support, those EFA parties at the more radical end of the spectrum probably attract electorates similar to that of the Greens. The latter’s supporters are known to be younger, more female, better educated and more likely to be in professional jobs needing high qualifications (Boy and Chiche, 2005: 224–5). Certainly Green officials in interviews remained quietly confident that history was on their side and that the more dynamic and sophisticated part of the electorate was swinging towards them. EFA parties with a more traditional support in rural areas clearly do not conform to this model. Given these compatibilities, the two parties were able quite easily to sign a Protocol of Understanding, whose initial statement encapsulated the spirit of the agreement. The Greens/EFA group was ‘the expression


of the will of two separate and progressive European political families to co-operate in order to strengthen their mutual political interests in the European Parliament’ (EFA, 1999). The administrative structures gave due primacy to the Greens, who had the presidency, with EFA taking the senior vice-presidency. Funding was pooled, with safeguards to prevent one partner from spending the other’s share of resources, and staff were to be appointed mostly on a joint basis. While decision on voting was to be by consensus, EFA retained the right to express a minority vote if necessary. In short, the deal was a pragmatic compromise between two fairly like-minded forces, designed to maximise their influence in the EP, while at the same time providing safeguards for the smaller partner. Two of the younger or less experienced party families have discovered sound reasons for working together. Their long-term perspectives are somewhat different, it is true. With the possible exception of the SNP, it is difficult to imagine a time in the near future when any of these parties will have achieved substantial parts of their agenda. They will remain embattled opponents of states in which they are trapped. The Greens, by contrast, have in many cases already been part of state-wide coalitions, and this pattern seems to be continuing. The Czech case is just the latest, while the next socialist president of France will certainly need them in her majority – if elected in 2012. One cannot read off parties’ relationship to their TNP solely from this perspective, however. It may be true generally that EFA parties are more in favour of integrated action. Parties may have difficulties over certain dossiers (the SNP and fisheries policy is invariably quoted), but none are likely to denounce investment in a TNP as a waste of time. This is less true of the Greens. Small Green parties can be very lukewarm about TNP; bigger ones, especially with government experience, can change their attitude (cf. the German Greens’ heavy investment after 1998). The differing experience of these two families suggests once again that we should be wary of ascribing too much force to any single explanation of transnational behaviour.

Notes 1. Classifying such parties is delicate. They themselves would in many cases spurn the label regionalist, as they reckon to represent nations, not just territory. But if we use nationalist, the label can be taken pejoratively and in any case clearly does not apply to some of these parties, which do not claim to represent some ethnic group. Many of the centralising opponents of peripheral parties can of course accurately be referred to as nationalist.


2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

177

‘Micro-nationalist’ suffers from the above problems, in addition to sounding extremely condescending; how big does one have to be before attaining macro-national status? Terms such as ethno-regionalist bring in a potentially racist dimension, which can at best confuse the issue. We will follow most specialists and stick to regionalist, bearing in mind that what constitutes a region for the supporter of centralising nation states can be, for their opponents on the periphery, a national territory. An exception would be the Basque and Catalan nationalists, who have provided both socialist and PP governments with majorities in return for concessions. The courting of Fianna Fail by the regionalists may seem curious on the face of it. Seiler does classify it as a party of the periphery that defends rural Ireland against the Fine Gael centralisers of Dublin (1980: 388–9). This view may well shed light on the Civil War origins of the two forces, but tends to obscure the fact that FF has long outgrown its peripheral status, becoming if not a hegemonic party, then at least the party against which all the others have to define themselves. So far as collaboration with regionalists goes, one might conclude at the very least that FF’s long record as a party of government in one of the most unitary states in Europe gives it a vastly different perspective from that of the perpetual minorities and oppositionists who make up the EFA. Key EFA texts are reproduced in Vanhaelewyn and Dauwen, 2006: 114–52. Interview with Jill Evans MEP, May 2006. Since January 2007, they appear to have found a home with the UEN (see Chapter 8). Interview with Jill Evans, MEP, May 2006. For the debate on Green transational structures, see www.globalgreens.info This generalisation does not apply across every policy area, however; if one asks Green parties about integrationist measures that would favour the development of TNP, such as allowing them to choose even a proportion of the candidates for EP elections, responses vary from high enthusiasm (in the case of the Belgians) to cold scepticism from at least one German MEP (interview in Brussels, February 2006). Interview with Flemish Green official, November 2005. Our own interviews with UK Green spokespeople suggest a party with a strong sense of its own weakness in comparison to continental neighbours, which can be partly attributed to the electoral system, and also a sense of being misunderstood by sister parties. There is also mistrust of what is seen as the centralising tendencies of German Greens in particular (Interview with international spokesperson, London, May 2006). Interview with Les Verts official, Paris, December 2005. Interview with Ecolo official, Brussels, November 2005. Interview with Czech Green official, Prague, October 2005. Interviews with Belgian Green officials, Brussels, November 2005. For instance an Ecolo leader could sign a common text with an SPD MEP but would not dare in the current climate be seen with her socialist equivalent in Wallonia. (Interviews of November and December 2005, Brussels). Interview, May 2006. Interview with executive board member of die Grünen, Berlin, October 2005.

178 Beyond the Nation State 19. One Belgian official spoke of a tendency to avoid ‘les sujets qui fâchent’, probably out of fear of ‘breaking the new toy’ that EGP is (Interview, Brussels, November 2005). 20. Interview, May 2006. 21. Plaid Cymru constitutes one exception to this pattern; in 1997 one of its Westminster MPs was elected on a joint PC/Green label, though one must ask whether the absence of a Green endorsement would have stopped him from winning the seat. More recently, Czech Greens marked their entry into parliament by forming a majority with the Christian-democrats and ODS. 22. Interview with J.L. Linazosoro, co-ordinator of EFA MEPs, November 2003.

8 Sovereignists, Sceptics and Populists: As Transnational as the Rest?

In fact, there is nothing harder to set up than a ‘nationalists’ International. Michael Minkenberg and Pascal Perrineau, 2005. The parties studied thus far are approachable via the classic Rokkanian route, that is to say that they are best understood as expressions of the classic cleavages within their respective nation states. Rokkanian approaches are perhaps less comprehensive in dealing with the parties that Lord classified succinctly as the ‘untidy right’ (Bell and Lord, 1998: 117–33). These include eurosceptics of the hard and soft varieties (Taggart, 1998; Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2004), members of the radical or extreme right (Minkenberg 2000, 2001) and a cluster of what are often described as sovereignist or nationalist parties, some more outspokenly eurosceptic than others. If the hard right has had notorious difficulty in striking up any real transnational relationships (Fennema and Pollmann, 1998), the same is less true of the others. The ID group in the EP, previously known as EDD (Europe of Democracies and Diversities) and before that as EN (Europe of the Nations), has hosted eurosceptic parties on an organised basis since 1994 and has recently given birth to two TNP. The sovereignists, a label that is as good as any other to capture another subset of parties that derive from the sovereignty/integration cleavage, have been grouped in a fairly structured way for many years in the UEN and its various predecessors such as the Union for Europe (UE) or European Democratic Alliance (Corbett et al., 2005: 99). In 2004 the UEN duly sponsored its own TNP, the Alliance for a Europe of Nations (AEN). 179


The sovereignists: from group to party The origins of the UEN group go back in reality to the early 1970s and the first enlargement. The Irish FF (Fianna Fail) and French Gaullists found enough in common to form a joint group, UE, which would continue in one form or other for some 25 years (Corbett et al., 2005: 92). At times the original founders would be joined by others, including for a time the SNP. We will investigate below what these forces really had in common, but from the start it was clear that they all felt uncomfortable with both the CDs and conservatives (at this time essentially the UK Tories and Danes), as well as the free-market liberals. This would be enough of a basis for agreement. The 1994 elections brought into the EP a more openly eurosceptic group (it would be simplistic to cast the UE simply under this head). The Autre Europe list from France, opposed to Maastricht and led by James Goldsmith and Philippe de Villiers, joined up with Danish eurosceptics to form the Europe of Nations group. After 1999, this group, reinforced by the Gaullist dissidents of Charles Pasqua’s RPF (Rassemblement pour la France), linked up with the remains of the UE, including by now the Italian AN. This prompted the departure of the Danes, who found the newcomers insufficiently hostile to the EU, to form a more frankly eurosceptic group EDD, along with the UKIP and some others; soon most of the French contingent followed them. Some thought that the 2004 elections might see the demise of the group, especially as it returned no MEPs from France.1 The 2004 enlargement was, however, eagerly anticipated by the UEN as a source of new members and energies, and so it proved. Recruitment from ECE was impressive, as UEN’s profile clearly struck a chord with emergent parties there. UEN proved inventive at recruiting in Eastern Europe and remained viable with 27 MEPs from 6 states and 7 parties. One can even argue that the centre of gravity has begun to shift from Southern Europe to the East. Such was the vigour of the new intake that the group was able to launch its own TNP, the AEN, late in 2004. For a party that came relatively late on to the TNP scene, AEN could be said to have done well to assemble its 16 members (Table 8.1). The geographical spread of these is impressive, even if the quality is variable. AEN has members in 13 EU states, including Bulgaria, as well as in two neighbours, Albania and the Ukraine. It has a distinct regional profile, its strengths lying clearly on the periphery of the EU – Ireland, Denmark (Southern) Italy and, increasingly, Eastern Europe; the 2004 enlargement states provide it with no less than seven of its member parties. By the

Sovereignists, Sceptics and Populists 181 Table 8.1 Alliance for a Europe of Nations, 2007 Members Albania – Partia Republikane Bulgaria – National Ideal for Unity Party Cyprus – Agonistiko Demokratiko Kinema (ADIK) [Cyprus Democratic Movement] Denmark – Dansk Folkeparti Estonia – Eestimaa Rahvaliit (ERL) [Estonian People’s Party] France – Rassemblement pour la France (RPF) Hungary – Magyar Vidék és Polgári Párt (MVPP) [Hungarian Provincial Party] Ireland – Fianna Fail (FF) Italy – Alleanza Nazionale (AN) Latvia – Tevzemei un Brivibai (TB/LNNK) [For Fatherland and Freedom] Lithuania – Lietuvos Valstoieciu Liaudininku Sajunga (LVLS) [Peasants’ National Union] Tvarka ir Teisingumas – Liberalai Demokratai (TT) [Order and Justice, Liberal Democrats] Luxemburg – Action fir demokratie und socialer gerechtegret (ADR) Poland – Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (PiS) [Law and Justice] Romania – Partidul National Liberal (PNL) Slovakia – Hnutie za demokracia (HZD) [Movement for Democracy] Ukraine – Kongres Ukrajins’kych Natsionalistiv (KUN) [Ukraine Nationalist Congress]

same token, AEN is absent from ‘core Europe’; it has no German or British members, its only Benelux partner started life as a pensioners’ party in Luxembourg, and its French component is the eurosceptic rump of the old Gaullist Party. It should by rights have done better than it has in Scandinavia, a major EU periphery, where its cautiously sovereignist approach undoubtedly has echoes. Unlike most of the regionalist family encountered in the previous chapter, however, AEN does not merely bring together small parties of the periphery fighting to preserve a culture or way of life, though some of its members are probably nearer to this model, such as the Hungarian Provincial Party (MVPP, or Magyar Vidék és Polgári Part), or the now disappeared Greek partner. AEN may be peripheral in character, but some of its core parties are well used to governing that periphery. FF is the natural party of government in Dublin; the Polish PiS now heads the government in Warsaw and holds the state presidency; the Baltic members are all parties of government, and so now is the Danish People’s Party. Other than their obvious peripheral character, we need to ask what holds these parties together sufficiently to sustain a group and a TNP.


The nature of AEN AEN’s structures do not provide much of a clue, being typical of continental parties, in that they appear slightly top-heavy in their desire to give all members a voice in the nominally sovereign bodies such as the Council. It is clear, however, that the real power within the party is to reside with the Party Leaders’ Conference, described (AEN, 2006b) as ‘the organ of strategic planning and advice for other AEN organs’. This makes rather more curious the provision that it must meet at least once every 5 years, though in fairness the rules allow it to be summoned ‘as often as necessary’. AEN has also adopted a number of features common by now to most TNP. Thus membership is available to parties beyond the EU, including applicant states and third countries. There is also the possibility of individual membership, though given the strongly national stance of most of the member parties, there seems unlikely to be a huge take-up of this in fiefdoms such as the North side of Dublin or the suburbs of Naples. It is made very clear that the UEN group in the EP is the party’s representative in the hemicycle, and only MEPs from AEN parties are allowed to join it. One novel feature is the location of the party’s seat not in Brussels but Luxembourg. Beyond these largely standard features, AEN’s statutes and programmes provide a clear clue to its identity (AEN, 2006a and b). The party is seen as a partnership of parties representing sovereign equal nations. Nation states are seen as the key to ‘fighting the consequences of an overly bureaucratic and technocratic world’ and preserving democratic values and citizenship. Subsidiarity is stressed strongly, and the general tone is cool towards further integration; one interviewee spoke of ‘slowing integration down’.2 Within these parameters, the party will seek to develop common positions among members; a previous UEN document had actually called for ‘a strong Europe which would not allow itself to be submitted to any foreign power and which develops its own security and foreign policy’ (UEN, 2000). AEN is also pledged to defend, in language not unlike that of EFA, national languages and cultures. In the socio-economic paragraphs of its programme, the party refers to economic and social cohesion, as the best means of spreading the prosperity derived from European integration, and the concept of solidarity also features strongly here. The aforementioned UEN document had linked this desire for solidarity with the peripheral nature of the party, speaking of ‘a Europe which successfully protects the environment, protects the towns against overcrowding and urban decline and which allows the rural way of life and the peripheral regions to prosper

Sovereignists, Sceptics and Populists 183

and develop’. There is, interestingly, no specific reference to markets or indeed to any form of economic organisation.3 The UEN group charter speaks of a ‘Europe which considers the family as the basic unit of our society, which recognises the sanctity of life and which is opposed to an exclusively materialistic concept of society’ (UEN, 2004). The programmatic document ends with an allusion to the ‘great causes’ which the party is supposed to further, plus a reference, somewhat tagged on to what has preceded, to the ‘humanist principles’ of Western civilisation. This rather gnomic statement gives us a hint of the party’s real origins. It is clearly not a liberal, pro-market federalist organisation. On the contrary, the absence of praise for markets, the vague fear of modernity, the refusal of materialism, the attachment to the family, the stressing of solidarity and cohesion (including Third World development, which figures prominently in AEN discourse) and, last but not least, the recourse to subsidiarity suggest that AEN ideology owes as much to catholic social teaching as to any other value system. This is borne out when we look at its membership, the core of which comes from states where catholicism still retains a strong hold (Ireland, Italy, Poland, the Baltic states). The references to humanism appear to have been added so as to keep on board those few, such as the Danish populists, who do not share these traditions. This catholic set of roots, plus the distinctly peripheral and rural strengths of the party, is what gives AEN a specific identity within the broader centre-right. Even if this is so, one might ask why the AEN members have not been able to join with the EPP, given the latter’s elasticity. Explanations for this failure to seize an apparent opportunity (the EPP is after all the biggest, so why not join?) tend to focus on fairly specific features attaching to various member parties, which, taken together, are seen as generating sufficient momentum to stop a drift towards the EPP. Thus FF would be kept out because of the presence of Fine Gael (FG) within EPP; in addition to the usual practice of giving established members of a TNP an effective veto on new applicants from their country, FF membership would not be credible anyway, given that it and FG are perennial opponents in Dublin and have never thus far governed together. By the same logic, the AN has nowhere else to go. Despite its successful reconfiguration as a post-fascist party, with strong representation in Southern Italy, it could not be let into the EPP, either because its democratic credentials were still in doubt or, more likely, because the major Italian player in EPP, Forza Italia, would use its veto.4 Similarly, the French Gaullists were long seen as being too suspicious


of EPP federalism, as well as being opposed in domestic politics to what remained of French Christian democracy, for them to step into the EPP. A final important case is that of the Polish PiS; here the explanation is that the fundamental euroscepticism of the party, added to the notoriously difficult negotiating style of its leaders, the Kaczynski twins, again made rapprochement with the major force on the centre-right difficult. The net result of these explanations is that the members of AEN are pinned into their place by the force of political gravity, rather than by any choice on their part; the underlying logic of these claims is completely negative, denying the AEN parties any real independent motivation or even identity. They are just seen as responding passively to forces too great to resist. It is assumed that they really want/ought to be in the EPP, thus tidying up some of the rough edges of the right and making for a clean party-theoretical outcome. In fact, most of the assumptions outlined above about AEN parties are subject to qualification. The points about FF are generally well taken, but one should not forget that it has to be careful not to be seen as weak on Irish sovereignty; its raison d’être was to combat what it saw as a dilution of sovereignty (in favour not of the EU, of course, but of the British state) by Collins and the founders of Cumann na nGeadheal (the forerunner of FG) in 1921, when they signed the Treaty that accepted the physical division of Ireland. Moreover, from an Irish nationalist viewpoint, EPP, for all its dilution of its federalist ambition, is still seen as too federalist, not least because of the weight of the CDU/CSU within it.5 Moving on to the AN, it is by no means certain, either, that the AN is necessarily unacceptable to the EPP. FI might not object to its joining, as there are already five parties from Italy within its walls, some of which have opposed FI in domestic politics (unlike the AN, which has actually partnered it in government). There is a further rider to this question. Rumours persisted during 2006 that AN and the EPP were on the verge of a rapprochement; it may well happen, but it has not yet done so. The point is that there is nothing foreordained about outcomes such as these; they do depend on the choices of protagonists. Hitherto AN has been perfectly comfortable inside AEN. As for the PiS, its main stumbling block vis-à-vis the EPP is probably not so much federalism (which has in any case been watered down, as we saw in Chapter 4) as social and economic policy. PiS, with its generous welfare aspirations, mistrust of unbridled capitalism, corporatism and conservative moral stances, is much more like the older type of CD party that has been losing ground in the EPP for years. It could well be that PiS finds a much


greater identity with parties like FF or even the remains of Gaullism, which have always stressed their popular electorates and strong social policies, than it does with the likes of FI or the PP, who nowadays set much of EPP’s tone. Certainly its major rival on the Polish centre-right, the Civic Platform (PO – Platforma Obywatelska), which has achieved membership of EPP, is much more comfortable with the latter’s liberal drift. PO and PiS were incapable of concluding a governing alliance in Poland, despite the parliamentary arithmetic being favourable, so there is no reason why they should do so in a transnational organisation. As for Gaullism, one can concede that historically it has given up most of its opposition to integration under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, at least to the point where joining the EPP makes sense for a party that expects to be in government most of the time. But this was not always the case, as for many years the party was identified with defence of a certain notion of French sovereignty, which it always tried to meld with an anti-market, welfarist economic discourse. Even today the rump of true believer Gaullists under Charles Pasqua continue to defend this vision through their RPF party, which remains a member of AEN. In short, all these parties have sound reasons for not being in the EPP. These are to do with their identity as parties with a strong national profile, linked to defence of a more solidaristic economy and a rural periphery, rooted, we would argue, in their distant catholic origins. To these structural reasons for maintaining a separate party, we can add short-term ones. Often a small pivot party can be a useful makeweight in deals with the big players, and UEN has usually played this game well. It can use its weight in the Presidents’ Conference to help set agendas, securing debates on issues vital to it such as fisheries. It can sometimes be more useful to be a big fish in a smaller pond. On the whole, then, it is not surprising that an organised subset of the right persists in this way, and we can expect it to continue. This is not to imply that AEN is totally homogeneous. Differences exist within AEN for all its members’ common origins. Defence and security policy provides one obvious area. Some of the newer members are strongly Atlanticist, which contrasts with the careful neutrality of others, such as the Irish. This clearly casts a shadow on the party’s proclaimed wish for a European defence and security policy. One official contrasted positions on the Middle East, where FF generally takes a pro-Palestinian line while some partners lean towards Israel. Even the question of reference to God in the draft Constitution showed up differences among these mainly Christian parties, the Danes being against.


It is generally felt that AEN tends more towards the EPP on many votes in the EP. The party denies any unconditional support but cites its willingness to do trade-offs, such as getting the EPP not to vote in favour of maintaining the so-called ‘Spanish box’ (a fishing area claimed by Ireland to which Spanish boats wanted access), in return for help on other issues. Clearly this upset the big Spanish delegation in the EPP, but that party as a whole felt it a price worth paying. In this way, a smaller pivot party like AEN can sometimes punch above its weight. The halfway stage of any EP often sees some of the smaller parties moving house, and this occurred at the beginning of 2007 in a way that benefited UEN hugely. The group now numbers 44, including 13 Poles; among the newcomers are the members of Samoobrona or SelfDefence party. Its Poujadism and eurosceptic posturing apart, this is fundamentally a peasant party; it arose because the old PSL (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, or Polish People’s Party), which goes back through the Stalinist era to the interwar period, was found inadequate by Polish farmers about to feel the heat of the EU market. PSL has two MEPs, who were with the EPP but have now followed their more vocal brethren into UEN. There are also one or two dissidents from the fissiparous Polish Families League (LPR, or Liga Polskisch Rodin), whose traditional catholic nationalism at first found a home in the ID group. Perhaps the biggest coup is to have pulled in the Lega Nord (LN), though given that party’s past record of group membership, it may prove a short-lived guest. Far from declining tidily, then, UEN has shown that it remains a viable locus of activity for a number of right-wing sensibilities.

The eurosceptics MEPs of this tendency have been represented in the EP since it began, across many party families, but it is only latterly that they have moved towards forming their own group and TNP.6 The arrival of a vocal and explicit eurosceptic delegation, l’Autre Europe, led by James Goldsmith and Philippe de Villiers in 1994, gave visibility and confidence to this tendency. After the 1999 elections, the EDD group was set up on an explicitly sceptical basis and drew in members from a variety of different types of party. The moving spirit was J. P. Bonde, whose June Movement stood for a left-wing variant of euroscepticism; Bonde himself has had spells in the Danish Communist party and the left-liberal party Radikale Venstre (RV), today a member of ALDE.7 The group also included the French ruralists CPNT (Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Tradition), a pure instance of a party deriving from the urban/rural cleavage, two small Dutch


Calvinist parties SGP and CU, again products of the church/state clash by origin, as well as two more clearly sovereignist groups, the French RPF of Charles Pasqua, who claimed to carry the mantle of Gaullism, and the UKIP, perhaps the clearest sceptics of all with their bottom line of straight exit from the EU. Despite their different origins in cleavage terms, these groups had sufficient in common to unite for EP purposes on a generally eurosceptic line, though some are clearly more thoroughgoing than others in their critiques.8 The group functioned effectively and made an impact, growing in the confidence that the 2004 intake would bring it fresh blood. So it proved, with the huge rise in UKIP seats,9 a Swedish intake from the Junilistan, the Polish Families League LKR, known for its catholic conservatism and vigorous nationalism, plus independents from Greece, Ireland and the Czech Republic. France continued to be represented by Philippe de Villiers’ Mouvement pour la France (MPF) (though the CPNT and neo-Gaullists lost their seats).10 Perhaps the surest sign of the group’s viability was its embrace of the LN, which had had more than one home in the past; unfortunately the seven LN members were soon back among the non-attached. Thus the group ended with 29 MEPs from 9 states and was revamped as ID, a title that translated simply into all its members’ languages. Despite some minor convulsions on the right as the EP approached mid-term, ID still claimed some 23 members at the start of 2007.

The sceptics and the problem of a TNP It seems only logical that this group of parties hostile to the EU should object to the very idea of a TNP; the stated purpose of these is after all to develop European awareness among citizens. When we spoke to EDD officials late in 2003, they were firm in their denunciation of the very idea of a TNP; parties were national organisms and should find their funding at home. As the party Regulation wound its way through EU procedures, Bonde duly submitted a series of objections and called on his 101 colleagues (from a range of parties) who had voted against the final text to take common action. He argued that the proposed TNP were not parties, because they did not rest on individual membership (an argument that would find favour with more than one political scientist), and that their creation would in fact remove citizens yet further from participation in European decision-making, by creating one more supranational instance. He also complained that the Regulation was designed to punish smaller groups; that it contradicted some national regulations on party finance by allowing private contributions; and that EU monies


could probably be recycled to national parties, in contradiction with the Regulation’s rationale. He also objected that there would be inequality between parties represented in the EP and those not represented, given that 85 percent of the monies allocated are based on the number of MEPs.11 In January 2004, Bonde and 22 other MEPs (mainly from the EDD group, but including some of the fiercer individual eurosceptics such as British Conservatives Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer) asked the ECJ to declare the Regulation null and void. The EU Council and EP duly lodged a plea of inadmissibility, and the ECJ eventually rejected the request. The sceptic family accepted the inevitable and joined the movement towards TNP, in a classic example of mimesis; common sense overrode scruples, as they sought to compete on a newly levelled playing field. Our discussions with EDD officials suggested a reluctant approach; they envisaged a fairly skeletal TNP, which would mainly be used for negative campaigning within member states.12 Nevertheless, the principle of a TNP was accepted and, not totally surprisingly, the ID group has spawned not one but two. The EUDemocrats – Alliance for a Europe of Democracies – is very much associated with Bonde, while the Alliance des Démocrates Indépendants en Europe (ADIE) seems more rooted in the French group of Philippe de Villiers. Observers see the first of these as being left-wing in flavour, whereas the second is clearly identified with the right, proving once more that euroscepticism can transcend one of the classic ideological barriers.

Membership The list of EUDemocrats members is eloquent by omission. The most significant party is clearly the Polish Samoobrona, though the populist followers of A. Lepper never bothered to join the ID group within the EP and, as recounted above, have recently found a home in the UEN. If their motive for joining EUDemocrats was to gain some domestic credibility by showing international links, then this seems a curious move. In terms of other national parties, Bonde’s own June Movement has an EP presence but does not compete in Danish elections. France is represented only by Debout la République, which is merely a faction within the conservative UMP. Some of the smaller states are only represented by individuals or anti-EU movements without serious representative status; in other cases, national MPs have either lost their seats and seen their party disappear from parliament or at best represent a split from a bigger party, probably not destined to last. The UK is not present in party


form, because UKIP has stuck to its refusal of the idea of a TNP,13 but thanks to a provision allowing for nationally elected officials to count as members, David Heathcoat-Amory MP, a classic eurosceptic, appears as the UK member. Even making generous allowances, the party has members from only 11 EU states, being absent from major states such as Italy, Spain or Germany (Table 8.2). The overall impression is thus that the new party has been stuck together hastily by Bonde and that it is very much his own vehicle. One interviewee cited Bonde’s desire to equip the sceptics with their own think-tank; the EUDemocrats might be an attempt to plug this gap, and the suspicion remains that Bonde finds his intergroup SOS Democracy as much, if not more, useful as a campaigning vehicle.14 But the party now exists and can claim its share of resources. EUDemocrats’ political platform sets the party’s aims out clearly.15 Integration is bringing Europe towards ‘a centralised unitary state’; the initial impulse was economic, but the spillover effect has long set in, with inevitable political consequences. Integration is presented as a vast historic movement, echoing Tocqueville’s somewhat apocalyptic evocation of the spread of democracy in the early nineteenth

Table 8.2 EUDemocrats, Alliance for a Europe of Democrats, 2007 Member organisations and parliamentarian members∗ Denmark –JuniBevaegelsen [June Movement] Estonia – Igor Grazin, MP [RE -Reform Party] Movement ‘No to EU’ France – Debout la République† – Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, MP Hungary – Sandor Leszák, MP (FIDESZ-MDF) Andras Püski, MP (FIDESZ) Ireland – National Platform – People’s Movement – Kathy Sinnott, MEP (Independent, sits with ID) Latvia – Jaunie Demokrati [New Democrats] Eiroskeptiki par neatkaribu [Eurosceptic Political Organisation] Poland – Samoobrona RP Portugal – Partido da Nova Democracia Slovakia –Priama Demokratia–Hnutie Domova [Direct Democracy Movement] Slovenia – EUDemocrats Slovenia United Kingdom – David Heathcoat-Amory MP (Conservative) ∗ Includes parties, NGOs and individual office-holders. Individual MP members only listed for a country where no party given as member. † Debout la République is a faction within the UMP, not a full party.


century. Most mainstream parties of left and right have gone along with the process, colluding in what contemporary language describes as policy convergence and thereby confusing their voters. In short, the permissive consensus of furtive elites has once again pulled the wool over citizens’ eyes. In reaction to this, EUDemocrats seek to restore the principle of subsidiarity, making it clear that far too much has been ceded to European level already and that it must be clawed back. They recommend ‘flexible integration’, which would allow states to make use of enhanced co-operation procedures if they wish. Only ‘truly cross-border issues’ should, however, be decided at EU level. These are defined as guaranteeing of the four fundamental freedoms (persons, goods, property and capital), plus, interestingly, environmental policy. There is also a rather unspecific reference to the possibility of an EU trade policy. EUDemocrats exclude specifically a number of policy areas from Union competence, notably criminal justice (though the document is equivocal about just how much and what type of police collaboration is necessary), education, health, cultural policy and the CFSP. A strong theme running through the text is criticism of bureaucracy and waste, hence the need for more transparent procedures and checks on officials. The document ends with a list of seven priorities: a co-operation agreement between states instead of a Constitution, with the possibility for states to choose a simple free-trade agreement; open access to documents; election of Commissioners by national electorates; a 75 percent threshold for such QMV as would remain, plus a veto if requested by a national parliament; subsidiarity; a set of minimum standards in security, health, consumer and workplace protection and environment; and enhanced co-operation (but not allowable on defence). This is a reasoned and clear statement of a minimalist Eurorealist position. It is a text of politicians who would have preferred the EU not to exist but who sense that some minimal form of integration has now become unavoidable and that one must try and constrain it as far as possible. It therefore seeks a free-trade zone with a few minimum supranational competences and would get rid of much of the acquis. The platform is underwritten by a very Scandinavian concern with parliamentary scrutiny, the environment and minimum social standards, not to mention a view of international relations strongly mistrustful of any European military role; Sweden or Denmark, rather than France or the UK, is the reference here. It can fairly be seen as a basic statement of left euroscepticism.


The rival sceptics The ADIE appears a less solid vehicle than EUDemocrats. Despite claiming the existence of seven national delegations (the bare minimum to qualify for TNP status), composed of ‘national parliamentarians and political movements’, the party seems very much dominated by the French MPF.16 This doubtless explains the style of the party’s utterances, which are couched in a combative language characteristic of what René Rémond called the ‘legitimist’ right in France, that is the oldest and most unforgiving type of conservatism that at heart has never really accepted 1789 and its consequences, and of which Philippe de Villiers, political boss of the Vendée (scene of the fiercest counter-revolutionary activity in the 1790s), is seen by some as a contemporary icon. This family of the French right no longer argues in favour of the monarchy, but it does stand for a very exclusive idea of French nationhood, opposed to multiculturalism and strongly rooted in the preservation of French language and culture and a centralised state. Rejection of European integration must logically stem from this, and the Villieristes argue passionately against it through the medium of ADIE.17 The euro and the proposed Constitution are particular targets, and the prospect of Turkish entry is viewed with particular dread by these enemies of multiculturalism. In a very Gaullian twist, European integration is seen as an American conspiracy to create a pliable partner, with familiar reminders of US support for integration, from the 1950s to Bill Clinton (this does not, however, stop the ADIE from citing Leon Trotsky as one of the other ancestors of the European project). Mainstream French parties and leaders, especially Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, standard-bearers for right and left in the 2007 presidential contest, are equally damned for their pro-European and Atlanticist sympathies. The logical upshot of this should really be an unequivocal call for withdrawal from the EU, but ADIE does not go so far, at least explicitly. It calls for ‘co-operation of variable geometry and geography between sovereign peoples’ within Europe. ADIE sees itself as a ‘structure for co-operation and exchange’ built along similar lines. In short, the party is a very loose grouping of strongly nationalist and conservative eurosceptics. Its tone is much angrier than the often deadpan argument of the Bonde group. Its main role must be as a loose forum for co-ordination of campaigns in Brussels and possibly within its different member states. It can be understood as a minimal response to a new opportunity, in the shape of the party Regulation.


Towards a truly eurosceptic party: visions and realities Midway through the last EP, a group of young eurosceptic advisers set out a scheme for a genuinely sceptical parliamentary group within the hemicycle (Towler et al., 2001). Their argument revolved around what they saw as the irreversible federalist tendency of the EP as a whole and the EPP group in particular; EP elites mostly colluded across left/right boundaries in pushing integration against the wishes of growing numbers of their voters. Given the internal dynamics of the EPP, the voice of true eurosceptics within its ranks (especially, but by no means exclusively, the UK Conservatives) was always likely to be stifled. As a result, there was no real voice for the mass of voters who sought a political vehicle that respected the traditional values of the right – primacy of the nation state, the free market and opposition to the postwar social consensus, seen by the authors as being ingrained in the EPP as much as in the socialist parties. In other words, there was no EP group that embodied both the sovereignist side of the sovereignist/integration cleavage and the right side of the classic left/right split. The UK Conservatives were seen as the natural foundation of such a group, and the authors provided extensive documentation on their various rebellions against the EPP line, amounting to nearly a third of RCVs (Towler et al., 2001: 25–30). In the authors’ view, the conservatives should realise that even their past bargains with the EPP leadership (cf. Chapter 4) would never allow them proper freedom, simply leave the EPP and set up a new group. The advantages of this would be considerable. The Tories would boss a group that might be third biggest, with consequent claims to a seat in the Conference of Presidents, speaking time, posts of responsibility and own resources; not least, they would gain the ability to appoint and control their own staff (the authors hint at the excessive federalism of some of the staff assigned to Tory MEPs). Such an arrangement would still leave them free to vote with the EPP on routine left/right matters such as trade, environment, etc., while allowing them to state their eurosceptic position much more strongly on issues with clear integrationist implications. Perhaps the most interesting part of the argument is when the authors attempt to identify who might come into the new group. Their estimates ranged from 61 to 69; allowing for a few pro-integration Tories, who would probably refuse to quit the EPP, this still left over 30 of them, who would be partnered by the French and Italian sovereignists from the UEN, the Dutch Calvinists from EDD, Bonde and FF. The UEN


group would effectively be eviscerated by such a manoeuvre; any of its members who did have doubts would find themselves with nowhere else to go. In this way a stronger, more sceptical version of the old EDG would again see the light of day, wiping out the error of 1992 when Patten and Major took the Tories into the EPP. The 2004 enlargement could be expected to bring new recruits, and, in some of the authors’ more optimistic musings, established parties from EPP such as the German CSU might be won over. The new force would be free-market, socially minimalist, intergovernmentalist and Atlanticist in foreign policy. Clearly such a gambit would have shaken up the politics of the EP quite brutally and could easily have led to the creation of a more sharply focused TNP than the two that have since emerged out of the ID group. This scenario was sketched out in advance of enlargement and the 2004 elections. It also preceded the internal convulsions within UK conservatism following the Cameron leadership campaign and promise to pull out of the EPP. We need therefore to ask how relevant the ‘bloc tory’ scenario is today. A number of changes have occurred since 2001 which affect but do not necessarily totally disqualify the bloc scenario. In UK politics, the major surprise was the UKIP breakthrough in 2004, with a dozen seats and a hegemonic position within the ID group. This alone would render the creation of a new, parallel sceptic group problematical; obviously UKIP could not be included within it, as this would suggest that UKIP had read the mood of conservative voters in the UK much better than the Tories. Yet equally its absence from such a group would leave a large hole, and the public would see two quite similar groups competing for the same space, seldom a recipe for success. From a Tory point of view, the hope must be that in the 2009 elections, a more sceptical sounding Conservative Party under Cameron can win back much of UKIP’s vote. This would be more likely to happen if the UK elections were held before or at the same time as the EP poll, and the Tories performed well or even victoriously; but the Labour leadership is unlikely to offer them such a present, as the current House of Commons can run till 2010. In short, all depends on the electoral prospects and these are very fluid. One could imagine for instance a strong UKIP performance for the EP in 2009, followed by a Tory victory at Westminster a few months afterwards. In this case, there is an added rider in the equation. A Cameron government might not want to go to the trouble of setting up a whole new group, especially if UKIP was still in business. It might therefore


prefer to stage yet another round of public haggling with the EPP, so as to reassure its sceptical voters, while at the same time hanging in with the principal network of centre-right parties in the EU, which is where most of its fellow governments are likely to be. No doubt some further compromise could be worked out about monies and staff, which could then be sold as a victory against the federalists, while retaining influence where it matters. We feel it unlikely that any Cameron leadership would adopt the strategy suggested in Chapter 4, that is a move into the EPP with a view to becoming a major player within it, as a gamble worth taking. These are the main problems with the ‘bloc tory’ scenario and they revolve around the UK Conservative Party. There are also questions, however, about parties such as FF, which would have huge difficulty in joining a group led by its historic adversaries, not least in a domestic context where Sinn Fein is on the rise. The Alleanza may also be less than keen if, as rumour suggests, it sees its ultimate goal as joining the EPP and thereby completing its symbolic rehabilitation in the eyes of Italian voters. None of these problems is of course insuperable. Political discourse is infinitely elastic, and if parties really want to change course, they can find words to convince their followers (either that the change is necessary or, more likely these days, that it has not really happened). At present, though, the scenario looks relatively unlikely, which means that the non-EPP right within the EP will remain divided, both in its parliamentary groups and in its TNP.

The far right: inching towards a transnational structure? The rise of far-right parties has become a fact of life in national political systems within Europe; indeed, according to Camus (1998), only Iceland and micro-states such as Monaco are exempt from this phenomenon. Debate on the nature of the far right is extensive, and we cannot enter too far into technical detail here.18 Camus’ distinction between what English-speaking analysts often call the radical right and the far right is worth bearing in mind. The former is fundamentally unsympathetic to liberal individualism, seeing politics in terms of organic wholes (particularly the nation) rather than as an interaction of free individuals. As such, these radicals are distinct from the liberals or conservatives who are held to make up the traditional right and who, in Rokkanian analysis, would stem from the owner/propertyless cleavage. The broader far right, however, which includes parties such as the Scandinavian populists,


who voice the fears and protests of disadvantaged groups, Camus sees as being nearer to the traditional right. In practice of course it is often difficult to make nice distinctions between such groups, and we will use the term far right in an inclusive sense. Analysts such as Minkenberg stress the danger of reducing such movements to replays of fascist movements from the past, however much some of today’s radicals might refuse to deny such movements or seek to revise their historical record. The radical right may not even announce itself as anti-democratic; it can certainly operate easily enough in Europe’s democracies (though it occasionally gives glimpses of hidden agendas, and its actual output in those instances where it has been able to influence policy is not wholly encouraging: see Minkenberg, 2001). Radical right movements have been shaped by the rapid socio-economic and cultural change which contemporary societies have undergone under ‘late capitalism’, with its consequent disorientation of large segments of the population. Such groups are not necessarily empoverished or proletarianised, but they feel that they are exposed to risk and that they have lost some of their cultural and social landmarks. They are thus ripe for a discourse axed on purported moral certainties, such as the existence of a distinct national (in practice, ethnic) community, in which they have a status, an identity and some entitlements; foreigners do not. Minkenberg sees this as a manifestation of a new, value-based cleavage between such people and those who are comfortable with modernity, its mobility and its challenges. The radical right is best summed up in his phrase (2001: 3) as ‘an ideological core of ultranationalism derived from an anti-universal, antidemocratic myth of the national community, in combination with an authoritarian understanding of politics and a pronounced populist style’. Clearly this basis allows for some flexibility in the type of party that will be based on it, but there is always this common nationalistic core. Radical right parties can thus be seen as primarily manifestations of the sovereignty/integration cleavage, albeit in a sharp form, while also in their way embodying a contemporary version of the cleavage between possessors and non-possessors (possession, that is, as much of an identity, status and a future as of material assets). Such radical right groups have long enjoyed representation in the EP, where they have mostly languished among the non-attached members. This may be partly due to their contempt for that institution in general, but it also owes something to their chronic inability to combine in any meaningful way. The story of their failed attempts at co-operation


is instructive. As early as 1984 the French FN tried to co-ordinate a ‘fraction of the European right’, which included the Italian Movimento Sociale Italiano or MSI (forerunner of today’s Alleanza), a Greek MEP and the leader and sole representative of the Democratic Unionist Party (Fennema and Pollmann, 1998). The 1989 election brought reinforcements in the shape of the LN, German Republikaner and Belgian VB (Vlaams Blok, now Vlaams Belang), but despite this the far right never had enough cohesion to form a proper group and could not go beyond the stage of a Technical Group of the Right. This soon fell apart in any case, as a result of dissensions within the German delegation and political differences between parties. The VB stands for a pure ethnic nationalism, whereas the French FN espouses a Jacobin, centralised definition of the nation; anyone born within the territory is a national. This was problematic, because the actual territory was disputed; the VB lays claim to those parts of French Flanders where Dutch is spoken, whereas the FN has no intention of hiving off parts of the Republic on ethnic or any other grounds. Territorial issues thus melded with philosophical to drive a wedge between notional members of the same family. In similar vein, the Italian MSI quarrelled with the Germans about the status of German-speaking Südtirol, assigned to Italy by victorious allies in 1919 in an action that pan-German nationalists have never accepted: Le Pen took the side of the Germans against the Italians. Such disputes were long believed to be insurmountable for this type of party, which continued to do well in national and EP elections without developing any transnational dimension to their activity. Cynics could take refuge in the simplistic belief that extreme nationalists cannot collaborate with anyone else simply because angry, inward-looking behaviour is a sine qua non of extreme nationalism; ‘we’ only exist because ‘they’ are threatening us. Collaboration was not in any case made easier by the structure of these parties, which are inevitably vertical organisations dominated by a historic leader possessed of a sizeable ego and not used to dialogue with equals. Recent developments suggest a willingness to learn on the part of the hard right, however. If movement within the EP had appeared stalled, the entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU on 1 January 2007 removed some inhibitions. One Bulgarian MEP and five Romanians belonged to parties of indubitably nationalist, racist and authoritarian credentials. The hard right was now able to convene a new EP group ITS (Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty), which mustered 20 MEPs from 7 states; the French, Belgian and Italian radicals joined the Balkan newcomers, while a UKIP dissident provided the extra body needed to


nudge the new formation over the legal threshold. It was chaired by the FN’s Bruno Gollnisch, currently suspended from his university post while under investigation for Holocaust denial, as the UK press pointed out with some emphasis. Parallel to this development, far-right parties have actually moved some way towards creating a transnational structure of more traditional kind. The FN’s annual festival in October 2005 had also seen the birth of Euronat, towards which the FN, and in particular its youth wing, had been striving for some time; all commentators agree that this party has usually been the hardest- working in both Paris and Brussels and the keenest on developing links. Parties from seven states signed a common declaration (Table 8.3).19 The text stressed ‘all the Nationalist peoples in Europe must learn to look far beyond their borders’, that countries ‘with a strong Nationalist profile’ cannot afford to stay isolated and that co-operation was essential to achieve common goals. Euronat was seen as ‘a communication platform to all its members’; there was reference to ‘a sound structure of co-ordinated activities and working groups to increase knowledge, quality exchange’. Euronat was to ‘provide a working tool to establish a common objective for the definition of Nationalist strategy across Europe’. The document ends with a resume of nationalist goals; among anodyne platitudes to which anyone could sign up, one may note ‘the respect of our heritage, the Western civilisation and its identity’; ‘no Third World immigration’; the family unit as cornerstone of society, and zero tolerance for violence. The document ends by seeing Euronat as the only nationalist platform ‘to counter the creation and establishment of the dreaded new world order’ (this latter phrase is radical right code for US domination of the international system with the help of Israel). The essentials of hard-right ideology are encapsulated here. Euronat brings together forces concerned to defend national identity against ‘the other’; such identity is seen in traditional terms and increasingly as a shared European asset in a dangerous world. Table 8.3 Euronat, 2007 Member parties France – Front National (FN) Italy – Fiamma Tricolore Netherlands – Nieuw Rechts Spain – Democracia Nacional Sweden – Nationaldemokraterna UK – British National Party (BNP)


Given that they now have an EP group and an embryonic International, it would seem that the far-right parties are shedding some of their inhibitions about transnational links. Minkenberg and Perrineau believe (2005: 103) that nothing is harder to set up than a ‘nationalists’ International’. We need, however, to avoid falling into the trap of seeing this family as somehow ontologically incapable of any sort of transnational action. The fascists of previous eras had never managed to create a ‘Brown International’, usually preferring to deal with each other on a bilateral, state-to-state basis. At the start of the twenty-first century, their political descendants (albeit not always direct) looked at least to have made a start on the creation of a transnational organisation. Questions could be asked about the viability of the new structure, Euronat, however. It has not hitherto managed to bring in the VB and the LN, two of the more successful radical right movements. Walloon movements such as the FN are also missing. Another absentee is the Austrian FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), widely seen as having reinforced its hard-right character after the departure of Jörg Haider. Eastern and Central Europe have no representatives. There may be reasons for some of the gaps. Walloon radicals may be angry at Le Pen’s visible preference for the VB over themselves (size counts). The picture in enlargement states is still fluid, with some of the hard right’s themes being taken up increasingly by parties considered to be or claiming to be on the centre-right. But clearly there is a considerable shortfall of potential members. In addition, there are bound to be disagreements as to how the radicals co-ordinate their action at European level, given that there are considerable differences between them; some are pure nationalists, for whom exit from the EU is the only logical outcome, while others increasingly see Europe as a means of protecting their values in a dangerous, globalised universe. None of these difficulties is insurmountable, and it should certainly be possible for the radicals to function more effectively as an EP group. Yet they have hitherto been unable to do so, and it is highly significant that the attempt to give them effective transnational structures has been initiated outside the framework of EU institutions. Like the older families before them, the radicals have sought to build a sort of International on the basis of agreement between sovereign parties, rather than working upwards, so to speak, from the EU institution that already offers a convenient framework for co-operation. Even if Euronat were to consolidate and expand its membership, there would still be a number of hurdles to be overcome. The creation of a TNP, for instance (supposing the radicals decided that such a venture were worthwhile), would have


to be approved by the EP, in which case the democratic credentials of some member parties could expect to be challenged; in true gatekeeper fashion, established TNP are unlikely to do any favours to a newcomer. It is early days yet, however, and only time will tell how far a viable transnational vehicle for this family can be developed.

Conclusion While there is some structuring of the non-EPP sector of the right, this subset of the right is likely to remain ‘untidy’. The sovereignists or ‘soft’ sceptics have acquired a structure that, although the most modest of all the families, nevertheless seems viable; scenarios that postulate their demise and the unification of sceptics of all shades into one group or TNP seem at present unlikely. The hard sceptics seem to prefer minimal TNP, which they see mainly as sources of funds for propaganda campaigns; in the case of EUDemocrats, other forms of non-partisan action like the intergroup may be seen to be just as effective. These factors, as much as any fundamental left/right split, may explain the reluctance of this subset to combine their efforts into one TNP. The radicals seem to have realised the necessity for some sort of transnational structure, but there is a very long way to go in comparison with other families. This particular type of party is in any case, we should remember, in some sense a new species, not organically connected with the older conservative right. While it is possible that the EPP might in the course of time absorb a small number of elements from the ‘untidy right’, the most likely scenario remains that of continuing diversity.

Notes 1. EDD had also included six French MEPs from the Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Tradition party led by J. Saint-Josse. Defining itself as a defender of rural interests (and thus fitting into the urban/rural cleavage as defined by Rokkan), the party’s opposition to regulation and defence of ‘les petits’ rendered it strongly eurosceptic. 2. Interview with UEN official, Brussels, November 2003. 3. The UEN charter for the 2004–9 EP does, however, stress the need for the Single Market as a driver of competitiveness, and it also wants particular attention for small- and medium-sized enterprises (UEN website). 4. Whatever outsiders may think of AN, AEN insiders are in no doubt as to the soundness of its democratic credentials or the political talents of its leader G. Fini, in bringing about its transformation (Interview with AEN official, Brussels, November 2003).

200 Beyond the Nation State 5. Ibid. It is worth recalling in the context of this debate on federalism that Ireland is one of the most centralised states in Europe. To its natural ruling party, alliance with Gaullist Jacobins seems quite logical. German federalists are a different proposition. 6. We follow Taggart’s division of euroscepticism into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ varieties. The latter consists of unflinching opposition to the EU per se and demands withdrawal from it. The ‘soft’ variety is more flexible and involves criticism either of the pace of integration or various aspects of it; it is a movable feast and can be used instrumentally in many ways by parties for domestic purposes. 7. See his website http://www.bonde.com 8. EDD and its successors do not always use the word sceptic. Bonde likes to speak of ‘eurorealism’, while EDD spokespeople have described themselves as ‘eurocritical’ (interviews of November 2003, Brussels). The nuances may be important, hinting (UKIP apart) at limits to how far the EU should be rejected. 9. UKIP was hoping for 6 or 7 seats according to one official (interview November 2003, Brussels) but ended up with 12. 10. For the splits within Gaullism, see Alexandre-Collier and Jardin (2004: 220– 28). 11. For an account of the challenge, see Bonde’s website. 12. Discussion with ID officials, February 2006, Brussels. 13. Unless one counts the individual membership of Jim Allister MEP of the Democratic Unionist Party, whose presence does not of course engage Dr Paisley’s party per se (however eurosceptic it might be in practice). 14. See Bonde’s website. On the role and limits of intergroups in general, see Dutoit (2003). 15. Political Platform at http://eudemocrats.org. 16. ADIE’s website lists seven ‘national delegations’, from France, UK, Czech republic, Italy, Ireland, Poland and Greece. By autumn 2006 none of these, except for the French, had been able to fill their allotted slots, however, and there seems no list of parties/members for public scrutiny. 17. See the editorial by Patrick Louis MEP at http://www.adieurope.org. 18. For an excellent review of the literature, see Minkenberg (2000). 19. http://wwwnd.se/euronat.

9 National Parties, Party Families and Their Roads to Transnationalism: A Comparative Conclusion

European parties and their evolution are in the frontline of a phenomenon which, I believe, may one day become an example for global political development. Wilfried Martens, 2006. There seems little doubt that powerful pressures are pushing party families towards developing transnational structures. No one is exempt. If the socialists and Christian democrats have a long track record in this area, other families have had to follow suit. The conservatives, by definition cautious and sceptical about taking new initiatives, have long since taken the transnational road. The ex-communists never wanted to revive the Comintern but have had to invent new forms. Even the moderate nationalists have moved, minimally, towards structures beyond their own states. Finally, the hard populist right, long believed to be so nationcentred and so dominated by huge egos as to exclude any meaningful collaboration outside the frontiers, now finds itself with an EP group and a mini-International that both seem to have some mileage in them. Yet if the general direction of travel has been the same for all, it is clear from the previous pages that transnationalism can mean different things to different families and indeed to different members of the latter. We attempt cautiously to summarise what is common about the transnational experience and to lay down some bases for understanding experiences that are obviously very different within and across families. It seems clear at this stage that much more ‘bottom-up’ work is required on national parties and their links across frontiers, including bi- and multi-lateral ties. 201


The common core of transnationalism There clearly exists a sort of transnational acquis for parties. They practically all accept that the best way of conducting transnational operations is to create relatively weak agents on to which a number of clearly defined – and supervised – functions can be devolved. P/A theory can be used, we suggested, to understand this approach. The transnational agent brings a number of advantages. It saves on transaction costs, in terms of exchange of information, meeting of elites, elaboration of possible policy options and concertation of action, where necessary, in European or international fora. Beyond these more measurable benefits, it serves a number of more abstract, identity-related functions. National parties belonging to a TNP are inducted into a family, with all the appropriate rites of passage and processes of legitimation; they can take comfort in this identity and present it to their members, voters and the outside world in general. One could easily say that this deliberately anthropomorphic approach runs counter to much of the argument in this book; parties are not persons, but apparatus run by teams of elites seeking satisfactions for themselves and their supporters. This is perfectly correct, but we should remember that the type of identity-satisfaction described here is also a political good, as much as an elected office or a piece of policy output. Belonging counts in politics, and voters may not always like those who do not belong to a wider family. It is valued by party professionals as well as their supporters; invariably when asked what benefits their party derives from TNP membership, national party officials will start with this one. Inseparable from this function is what we have called decantation, that is sorting out who is allowed to belong. The TNP have clearly become instances where clarification of identity can be carried out with the confidence of all; family identity has thus been tightened up, and this is clearly accepted as a benefit. This acquis has a number of riders, the first being its historical nature. The first transnational experiences, lived out by the socialist family, tested some of the limits of this mode of action. It was learned, very decisively, that no transnational agent could be created strong enough to direct actively the behaviour of those who had created it in the first place. Broad ideological similarity between members was no guarantee that their actual political behaviour could be made to transcend the very powerful pressures at work on them within their own nationstates. Since 1914, national political parties, starting with the socialists

Parties, Families and Roads to Transnationalism 203

but soon extending to others, have invested very low expectations in transnational structures; this mindset has accompanied all involvement in transnational collaboration ever since. The one exception to this rule, the Comintern, was an abnormal organism, created in circumstances that are probably unrepeatable; it only worked, moreover, because its leadership organs were coterminous with those of a very powerful state, masquerading as a transnational actor. To that extent, today’s parties could be described, in the language of historical institutionalists, as ‘path-dependent’. A second factor that neatly complements the path-dependent theory is the essentially reactive nature of much party transnationalism. Retrospectively, the actions of the nineteenth-century socialists in setting up an institution of a new kind, with the aim of playing a decisive role in international affairs, seem hugely entrepreneurial and proactive. Since 1919, however, national parties have shown a much lower-key response. Before the 1950s, parties were content with very undemanding membership of Internationals, which did little more than confirm their identity and allow for the occasional very general exchange of ideas or contact between major leaders outside normal government circles. The continuing existence of the Internationals reflects the fact that these functions can still be discharged effectively at this level. Since the advent of the EEC, however, the parties have had to react to the emergence of new opportunity structures, which their leaders may or may not have had a hand in creating, as members of national governments involved in European integration. Thus it is that national parties began reacting to the setting up of the ECSC by forming the first transnational groups in the Common Assembly; since then, the parties have simply followed the new structures created by the onward move of integration as shown in Chapter 2. There has been little attempt to anticipate or force the pace. Probably the biggest single pressure towards having more efficient and slightly stronger TNP has been the collapse of Stalinism and the democratisation of Eastern and Central Europe, and later its integration into the EU. This certainly opened up a big space for TNP activity, particularly in decanting postulants for membership and helping them mature into modern parties. National members of various families have put varying degrees of effort into this process, as has been seen; but here again, the parties were mainly reacting to events and taking up opportunities created for them, in an essentially passive process. Overall, it would seem that for decades national parties have generally been content with this reactive mode of conducting transnational relations.


Yet our examination of different parties across the families suggests some nuances to this picture.

Families and transnationalism It seems clear that no major family is spontaneously predisposed towards the creation of strong transnational structures implying the emergence of an integrated TNP, in Niedermayer’s terms. Even those whose ideology implies a certain transcending of the nation state (particularly the Christian democrats and socialists) have settled for broad-based groupings, which operate on a basis of internal compromise and whose functions are in any case clearly defined and supervised by members. When one looks at the positions of party families on the various issues that are usually taken as tests of their attitudes towards TNP integration, the picture is at best patchy. Few if any individual parties are willing to sign up to the whole integrationist package, that is a TNP of individual as well as party membership, to whom member parties would have made over such powers as: deciding main policy orientations, writing the manifesto and picking the candidates for EP elections,1 running a candidate for Commission president and taking these decisions mostly by QMV. As our studies of different national parties show, some parties may be keener on one or two of these options, but in quite an ad hoc way. One is left to conclude that the model of a weak agent, supervised by strong principals, suits most parties most of the time. Within this very general framework of accommodation, however, it is surprising how differently some national parties can use their TNP and what ambitions they may have for it. This seems to be the case across every family, and we offer the following explanatory schema as a first, tentative step to understanding what is clearly a very wide range of national approaches. Every TNP contains a majority of members who are content with the current role of their TNP and who seek no real change in its operations. Among these members may well be one or more forceful parties who have largely contributed to setting the current status quo. Besides this hard core, however, one can usually distinguish two poles; some will seek to develop a further agenda for the TNP (probably a more integrated functioning, but perhaps not exclusively). Others will seek to halt or even reverse trends of which they disapprove. We could call these group consolidators, entrepreneurs and resisters, and they are, as we have stated, more or less present in all TNP.2 To give some very obvious examples, the consolidators in the EPP are clearly led by the CDU/CSU, which was a major force in moving that party towards its current profile


of a broad centre-right and not specifically CD party; we could say that at this stage, the CDU/CSU was acting out the entrepreneurial role just described before settling back as a consolidator. The resisters in EPP are those smaller parties, associated with the Athens or Schuman groups, who have tried to maintain as much of the EPP’s CD tradition as possible. Some of these could also be classified as entrepreneurs, in that they stand for a more integrated EPP, but that title really belonged to the Bayrou/Prodi group, who left EPP over its failings in this respect. In the PES, a number of significant parties have defined the current line, SPD and Scandinavians most prominent among them; but these parties are flanked by a more radical group, essentially the francophones, who seek both further integration and a bolder, more statist social and economic policy. On their other flank is a more cautious tendency, led by the BLP and including parties from the last enlargement, which resists any attempt to increase the statist or dirigiste elements of policy and strives for more deregulation and open markets; but this group does not want any greater integration of the PES, any more than it does of the EU at large. We consider therefore that they can be called resisters in our terminology. To consider a family that has more recently adopted the TNP mode, namely the radical ex-communist left, it seems clear that perhaps the German and Italian elements want a more developed, campaigning party, while members such as the Czech KSCM are determined to keep any transnational involvement to a minimum, certainly so long as some of their conditions are not met. In the middle are the other parties such as the French, who have conceded the necessity for an effective group and a party that they see operating on a fairly modest level. The Green family also shows tensions between, say, the more integrationist Belgians and the frankly eurosceptical English or Swedes. One could multiply such examples. These examples are couched in highly general terms, and in most cases, the elements of agreement among family members far outweigh the tendency to diverge. Nevertheless, some of these oppositions do have weighty implications; market liberals and social Catholics tend instinctively towards different goals and are always likely to clash, even if they are within the same organisation, on basic issues such as the nature and extent of welfare provision. Similarly, among the socialists, there must come a point when the advocates of private financing of public services and minimal labour regulation must confront the defenders of le tout-état and job protection. Within each TNP, these divisions can be brokered to a large extent; at EP group level, amendments can be agreed


to legislation, and national parties can drop out on sensitive issues if they wish. At TNP level, it has usually proved possible to find unity on a text, if only by making it very general and anodyne in scope. Yet the existence of such divisions shows that national parties are coming to their TNP often with quite varied agendas; they are seeking different directions for their TNP. We have never departed from the fundamental proposition of this book, namely that national parties seek first and foremost their own interests, whatever the level at which they operate. Yet the transnational arena throws up some quite different perceptions of this interest, not always along the lines that one might expect. Amid the wide variety of situations that pertains across each family, it seems to us that there are a number of variables that contribute to define the transnational stances of national parties, hence their strategy within and their expectations of their respective TNP. It is the way in which these variables combine that determines whether a party is a consolidator, an entrepreneur or a resister. We stress that these are a very preliminary set of hypotheses, based on case studies that were of necessity limited in number. Nevertheless it seems to us that even this work can open up some lines for detailed enquiry in the future. One major variable seems to be the size of a party. We have in mind the relative size of a party within its own family, rather than in comparison with rival parties in its own polity, though clearly the usual caveats about thresholds of significance apply; it is not the same thing to be, say, an important member of EFA, while having comparatively little weight within one’s own polity, as it is to be a major party with over 30 % of the vote and a consequent presence at transnational level. That said, we might by and large expect the bigger members of a family to be consolidators or in some cases the progressive entrepreneurs who might lead their TNP to shift its ground. A first glance at our evidence would seem to confirm this hypothesis. Within the big families, the German parties are usually admitted to be heavily influential, a fact often resented by their colleagues. This seems true not just of the CDU/CSU for the EPP and the SPD for the PES, but it also seemed very clear within the Greens and even, despite their recent absence from the EP, for the FDP within the liberal family. Even within the new PEL, it seems clear that the PDS was perhaps the main driver of the TNP in the first place. Another example of strong influence is that of the Spanish parties; PSOE (Partido socialista obrero español) has had major posts in the PES, such as group leader, and indeed latterly took the presidency of the EP itself. The EPP has had PP nominees as its last two secretaries-general. In both cases, Spanish and German parties were numerically very strong within


their TNP and, just as significantly, very closely identified with the main policy orientations of their TNP and group. CDU/CSU played a major role in driving the neo-liberal and expansionist strategy of the EPP, while PSOE has helped define for the PES a strategy similar to what it has pursued in Spain, that is essentially a modernising and market-friendly rather than a transforming social democracy. Closely related to size is the question of bi- or multi-lateralism. Whatever a party’s position on our scale – consolidator, entrepreneur or resister – it will always look for allies close to its positions, in order to impose a line or resist another. Over time, some of these partnerships become established facts, and other members of the TNP have to reckon with them when devising their own strategy. TNP instances are very prone to this type of collusion, and in our view, it needs to be investigated far more thoroughly. Even the anecdotal evidence that we gathered across different families is eloquent, however. The progressive pole in the PES rests mainly on the francophone PS of France and Wallonia. We saw the deep interpenetration of Green parties in Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic; the Benelux Greens also have very close ties. The German-speaking socialists and the Czechs work very closely. Among the liberals, the Libdems and the D66 are known for their closeness. These ties are often quite deep and historic; they may well reflect a shared past, as in the case of the German/Austrian/Czech relationship. They may reflect linguistic or cultural proximity, as in some Benelux examples; as well as being able to communicate in Dutch, parties from these countries are also used to working in multi-party consociational systems, with their inbuilt bias towards alliance-building and compromise. Yet bi- or multi-lateral ties may just as well reflect much shorter-term alliances, which may be quite effective in intraTNP terms. The alliance between the BLP and a number of Eastern and Central European parties in the name of deregulation and flexibility has become a fact of life in the PES; these parties have no cultural or historic ties, but their current political and economic interests coincide heavily, so they are able to act as an effective bloc. It seems to us therefore that strong parties, able to exert some magnetism on others close to them, are capable of changing the dynamics of a TNP. Future research might well try and explore bi- and multi-lateral contacts more fully and indeed relate them to possibly similar partnerships in other instances, such as the European Council. Size does not always guarantee comfort, however. Within the EPP family, we have highlighted the difficult position of the Czech and British conservatives, who have not of course joined the party per se


but who pursue an active and strong role within the group. Both these parties are clearly resisters in our terminology, seeking to contain any further impulse towards integration. Yet both are major parties within their states and potentially capable of bigger influence within their TNP; clearly other factors than size are at work here. The situation of the BLP is analogous in some ways to that of its conservative rival. Labour has had huge delegations within the PES group and held the presidency of the party; yet it seems clearly to belong to the resisters, reluctant to concede any further role to the PES and resorting to bilateralism on a very structured basis (Chapter 3). Looking at the PES, one might expect the French party, usually one of the biggest, to be more at the centre of gravity; but it seems clear that it is positioned on the radical progressive margin of the party, in contrast to members of broadly similar size such as PSOE or the Italian DS (Democratici de Sinistra). If size tends on the whole to put national parties among the consolidators, can one infer a contrario that small parties are likely to take up positions of resistance or avant garde? It does not seem to work out that way. Small- or medium-sized parties are as likely to follow the direction set by the major consolidators as to strike up distinct positions, be they radical or reactionary. This would certainly seem to be true of the big families; indeed, very small parties such as the Czech liberals will invariably go with the majority simply because they see the TNP as a major source of help in their attempts to become viable. They are unlikely therefore to be strong resisters or change-seekers. One can, however, notice some sharp positioning by small members of other families; the biggest resister in the Green family, the English and Welsh party, is also one of its smallest members. Perhaps there comes a point below which circumspection can be abandoned and a party can pursue a very ideological line; if it does not really hope for very much from its TNP or cannot see any way of influencing it, then it might as well push a maximalist line. Size does not therefore seem to be totally determinant of a party’s attitude to its TNP. Size is, however, frequently inseparable from another attribute, namely proximity to government or membership of the regular pool of governing parties within a polity. The great majority of such parties are to be found within the big three families, and they are almost always among the consolidators; this applies particularly to the mid- to large-sized socialist parties and their counterparts in the EPP, who have regularly alternated in government in most EU states. It is logical that such parties should seek to keep the status quo for the TNP that they have created; an effective intergovernmental vehicle


for the basic tasks of concertation and information-sharing that are the core of TNP business is what these ruling parties require at the present time. They have no interest for the present in developing more integrated forms of TNP, and it will be interesting to see if even some of the tentative powers recommended for the TNP by the Leinen report, as approved by the EP, will ever see the light of day, once the governing parties have their say in the European Council. It is one thing for a delegation of MEPs to endorse a proposal, but entirely another for it to receive the unequivocal backing of a national party back home. Even if this is forthcoming in theory, it may well be the case that the national party expects colleagues (or adversaries) in the European Council to sabotage the proposal anyway. Governmental capacity may well be the best clue to a party’s attitude to its TNP, and this even applies to those relatively few members of families who have expressed interest in slightly higher degrees of integration for their TNP. These measures are of course very relative; there are few if any of the parties to whom we spoke who evinced real enthusiasm for a degree of integration that might qualify for Niedermayer’s highest stage. Mostly it is a question of being for, in a rather ad hoc way, one or more of a number of possible measures that might be seen as furthering TNP integration (e.g., individual membership, transnational election lists, an agreed candidate for Commission president picked by the TNP and running on its programme). If for instance a party such as SP.A is ready to back a modest dose of transnational lists for EP elections, this is probably because it is used to working in a federal system that rests on permanent compromises and trade-offs between different language groups and party families. Flanders is the priority territory for this party, and it strives to act on behalf of its Flemish voters, but it does that in a culture of permanent bargaining at different levels. Hence, the idea of sharing some sacred piece of sovereignty (in this case the power to choose candidates) is much less shocking than it would be to a party used to ruling on its own for prolonged spells in a majoritarian system which allowed that. The BLP, in contrast, has no sympathy for this idea, any more than its conservative rival/alternate. These parties are used to governing in a winner-takes-all system, where no one gives up any powers in the name of compromise. An interesting slant on this dimension of parties of government is provided by the German Greens, who went quite rapidly from the status of a new, radical type of party, oppositionist by nature, to that of a party of government. The status-change produced effects that the party is still digesting, and they were very visible in its transnational relationships.


We saw in Chapter 7 how, once in office, die Grünen invested much more heavily in the EGP, but very much in an attempt to steer it towards German government priorities. Middle Eastern policy was one striking area where the Germans worked to tone down anti-Israel resolutions in particular, as their leader Fischer was Foreign Minister at the time and seeking to play a more balanced role in the region. This attempt actively to steer the TNP, instead of merely consolidating it, aroused the ire of some members. Driving the German party’s new attitude was the Green presence in government; this meant that any potentially awkward radicalism within EGP had to be kept in check, lest it harm the governing party in Berlin by association. Such behaviour is commonplace in families full of established members of governments; that it surfaces so quickly and visibly in a ‘new’ family illustrates clearly the importance of the governing party variable. If proximity to office clearly seems to be important, not every party enjoys this. Distance from power characterises most of the subfamilies of the right discussed in Chapter 8. They are all located on the sovereignist side of the sovereignty/integration cleavage, so are by definition unlikely to be interested in any structured type of TNP. They have nevertheless made full use of the Regulation to set up, in the aftermath of their EP groups, embryonic TNP. In theory, such groupings could be the site of sharp conflict, as, free from any prospects of responsibility at home, member parties could campaign stridently and maximally; some of their complaints might be directed at other nation states as well as at the organs of ‘Brussels’. In practice, there seems to have been a division of labour among the sovereignists between those parties that do govern (UEN), those that seek to reform the EU from within (EUDems) and outright rejectionists (ADIE). The far right is also equipping itself with transnational machinery, though a TNP has not yet been set up. All these groups see the Regulation as providing a means to create transnational organisations, which can then be used minimally and negatively to try and propagate the aims of member parties (mainly by funding campaigns). The sovereignists can agree on a division of labour and a loose form of action precisely because they are sovereignists; they never asked for TNP in the first place, but if they are on offer, they might as well be used in defence of sovereignty.

Lesser variables If issues such as size and proximity to office seem important for determining national party attitudes to TNP, other factors can also play a role.


A smaller but significant variable is that of leadership, both of the TNP and of their member parties. A skilled leader can do much to keep a TNP at the forefront. He or she has a public face; TNP leaders are invariably asked to give the party’s reaction to current events. When they speak, they do so for all their members, to an extent; consequently, if members want to differ from the official TNP line, then they have to do so after the event, which can be a messy business. The leader therefore has undoubtedly some power of initiative. Authority and a clear capacity for communication are thus essential. The private role of the TNP leader demands different skills; here it is a question of brokering differences and endless patient diplomacy, which may on occasions have to turn into harsh words directed at awkward members. Judgement and experience are at a premium. Over the years, the quality of TNP leaders has undoubtedly risen, with notable exceptions. The ideal profile for a leader is, in addition to possessing the skills just outlined, high office and a track record in one’s own state, but achieved early enough to leave some time and energy for a new challenge. The EPP understood this long ago and has been served by two long-serving and highly successful leaders in Leo Tindemans and Wilfried Martens. The PES choice of P.N. Rasmussen, recent prime minister of Denmark, is of similar calibre, following some rather dull predecessors (Robin Cook was an exception to this, but was tightly constrained by BLP priorities). A competent leader can mange the tensions between different categories of members, knowing when to push forward with change as opposed to remaining immobile. Yet this leader heads an organisation of national parties, whose own leaders will have strongly marked them. It is difficult to weigh the influence of a powerful national figure on a TNP. All our EPP interlocutors agreed unsolicited, however, that Helmut Kohl’s influence in driving through both the expansionary strategy and the neo-liberal turn of the party had been crucial; it seems also that he enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Wilfried Martens. This axis of powerful President and key national leader is perhaps an optimal combination. Even a bold national leader who invests seriously in a TNP cannot always get positive results, however. Edward Heath made a major shift in the transnational relationships of his party when he tried to have the conservatives accepted by the CD movement at the same time as he was preparing another UK bid for entry to the EEC. The rapport de forces inside the CD movement was such, however, as to ensure rejection of Heath’s bid (and thereby change the dynamics of the Conservative party and the later EPP in ways that few could have guessed). It seems therefore that if a national leader seeks to inflect the


course of a TNP, he or she must have a very clear strategy, which obviously is part of their own governmental strategy at home. In Kohl’s case, enlargement was a top priority; integration was Heath’s major goal. Both saw TNP involvement as a useful part of their game plan. Kohl was able to mobilise majority support within EPP with the help of Martens; Heath had no such relays inside the CD movement. Decisive leadership can therefore only accomplish so much if it cannot build support. For national leaders without any real strategy for Europe, it is tempting to go with the drift of their TNP or, if even that causes too many problems with supporters, to disengage or even quit. Two final variables also need to be considered, both of them diachronic. It might be thought that the age dimension is important in determining attitudes to TNP. In particular, does the fact of being a relatively new force affect behaviour? The Greens come with little historical baggage by way of transnationalism, unlike some of the other parties. Part of their ideology is willingness to be open to new perceptions and ways of working; they are potentially the most lukewarm nationalists of all, given the fact that their fundamental problem, the management of the environment, is of necessity transnational. They might therefore be expected to find the whole business of transnational collaboration easier. Despite all this, it is hard to see any major trait of green transnationalism that distinguishes it from other families, unless it be the gradual build-up from regional instances towards an International, as opposed to creating a world-wide instance in the first place. Even this could easily be ascribed to a learning process, whereby the Greens have avoided some of their predecessors’ mistakes. In fact, the EGP shows the same tensions as other TNP, being prey to questions of size, proximity to government, the integration versus sovereignty polarity, and so on. Youth is no guarantee of difference; all national parties, whatever their family, seem to have to follow the same path. Age may not be among the key factors in determining national parties’ positioning with regard to their TNP, but one cannot wholly dismiss temporality. The moment when a party chooses to invest in a TNP, or not, is decisive. If it has correctly calculated the rapports de force and the possibility of building alliances, its intervention can succeed, and it can pull the TNP its way. Kohl’s timing in the 1990s shows this perfectly. On a much smaller scale, the decision of the Flemish VU to make a major commitment to the fledgling EFA in the 1980s was also successful; for a decade or more, VU enjoyed political and moral leadership of the movement. If it has since lost this, that is down to changing circumstances


in Flanders, rather than to any internal developments within EFA. One can reason a contrario on this question also. Arguably the Conservative decision to invest EPP after 1990 was mistaken and wrongly timed. Either the party should have gone for strengthening the conservative group, of which it would have been de facto leader and able to treat with EPP on an equal footing, or else it should have gone for full membership from the start. Obviously that would have involved an internal battle within the conservative party, but Major, as a new and not universally accepted leader, was always going to have that anyway. In the event, he emerged from it much weaker, and at the same time, the Tory transnational position was left ambiguous, annoying to sceptics and Europhiles alike. Some have suggested that the timing of his initiative was in fact quite clever, in the aftermath of Thatcher’s overthrow; but that would only have been true if, having taken the decision on a new TNP strategy, he had executed it strongly and swiftly. What these examples show is the need for a national party to time its investments in a TNP and to be clear about them, both to its own supporters and colleagues in the TNP alike.

Party at home and abroad Our basic understanding of party relies heavily on the national dimension, understandably so. All family members have followed the same track, from their birth via fundamental cleavages through their massand catch-all party phases to their latest incarnation as cartel parties (Mair, 2006). The nation state has been the arena in which they have worked to establish credibility, win a following, gain resources and find power, in short institutionalise themselves. The transnational dimension of their activity developed very much as a secondary concern; one would be tempted to say that it came about by accident, were it not for the voluntarism with which the nineteenth-century socialists invested in the International. Yet retrospectively, even this endeavour was really an extension of national politics; parties that were shut out of their own domestic systems and governments sought leverage on the latter through transnational collaboration. After the failure of this gambit, socialist parties mostly became governing parties anyway, leaving them even less incentive to invest in transnational structures. Since then, expectations of these latter have been kept low, and in many cases, bi- or multi-lateral ties have been found to be as useful. Other families that followed the socialists into transnationalism had the same experiences.


One might wonder, then, what further light is shed on party development by studying their transnational links; perhaps it is enough to note that transnationalism has never been at the forefront of their existence and then return to business as usual, concentrating on studying their life-cycles within the known terrain of the nation state? To do so would be to miss out on one key dimension of party development, however, namely their adaptability to new situations. Parties, or at any rate, successful ones, have always been quick to pick up changes in economy and society and to position themselves in such a way as to gain most advantage from them. Increasingly, however, these changes have come – and are likely to come in future – from beyond the nation states. The whole story of the formation of groups in the EEC/EU institutions, then the slow move to TNP, is simply an instance of national parties adapting to changing circumstances, which are usually summated under the broad heading of integration. At different times in the integration process, some of these parties will, through their role in government, have contributed actively to it; at others, they will have been out of power, possibly for long periods, knowing that when they did return to office they would be dealing with a new set of political and economic relationships not of their creation. No single party has ever been able to shape integration to the extent that it could control decision-making within its own state; the fact that parties have found themselves in this situation shows how powerful are the forces at work in the international economy. The pressures towards integration are probably irreversible, whatever sovereignists of left or right might proclaim; if governing parties are to gain some more leverage over global processes then this is more likely to happen at EU level than nationally. The answer to the loss of policy instruments engendered by the euro (an increasing complaint of governing and opposition parties alike) does not lie in a return to the franc or the peseta, as these politicians know perfectly well. A more plausible strategy might be to develop the Eurogroup in such a way as to give it more leverage over the European Central Bank or possibly to redraw – by the agreement of notionally sovereign nations – the latter’s charter. In short, parties are roped into transnational collaboration whether they like it or not, and this pressure is unlikely to ease. The only question is, how do they best deal with this fact? What structures can they best adopt to ensure maximum influence? Hitherto, parties have conceded limited autonomy to a transnational agent in order to facilitate some information-sharing and strategic concertation. If the agent is to become any stronger, then its national principals have to decide to entrust it with some further functions. For


this to happen, national parties and governments have to consent to a further measure of integration. Only if this happens will the TNP see their role strengthened. If, say, the EU Council was to agree on significant harmonisation in one or more domains (say tax or energy policy), then the TNP might find themselves much more intensely invested by national parties, anxious to ensure that all members of the family played by the same rules and more ready to commit themselves and their partners to a common programme. It is easy to object that the present climate of institutional drift following the latest enlargements and the breakdown of the constitutional project renders such a scenario unlikely. This may be true across the board, but threats of multilateral action via enhanced co-operations are being heard more frequently. Even if some initiatives of this nature were to emerge, then that would have similar effects on how the parties saw TNP; they would become a useful vehicle for further co-ordination. Even parties not involved in the enhanced co-operation would feel drawn into the new closer structure. The life of national parties is increasingly likely to be shaped by external pressures of this kind. We are not about to see a return to the mass-parties of yesteryear, manned by enthusiastic activists who provided resources and an endless supply of candidates. Parties will become more professional, run by and for a certain elite, capable of self-reproduction; these cadres, who may well have started their careers in ministerial offices, will form the governments. Funding will increasingly come from the public purse; militant activity, when it has not been displaced to other forms of action such as NGOs, will continue on a more modest and symbolic scale, without much real effect on party dynamics. The governments that these parties provide will make their policies in an increasingly global environment with less elbow room to accommodate to national circumstances. The pattern for general party development seems set quite firmly. Insofar as these parties really change in character, it is more likely to be in terms of their transnational involvements than in response to any endogenous factors. This is why it is important to keep the transnational level in mind. We are still at the beginning of processes that might be far-reaching. Yet enough has been accomplished so far in terms of transnational party development to suggest that sound structures have been laid for the future. Whether, or when, these are taken further depends on national party leaders and ultimately on factors beyond their control. Perhaps in a generation, scholars might find these judgements to have erred on


the side of caution; but it seems certain that in future the life of parties beyond the frontiers will be as important as what happens at home.

Notes 1. Andeweg (1995) recommends for instance a strict division of labour between national parties and TNP over national and EP elections. While such a formula appears to have worked partially and provisionally in Denmark, it is extremely doubtful if it could ever be generalised at this point in time. 2. It is not easy to find a term that captures the leadership or pace-forcing role. ‘Progressive’ has leftish overtones, while ‘reformer’ has become so abused, especially in British political discourse, as to lose all meaning. ‘Entrepreneurs’ is a term from business, but this is what parties, along with their many other functions, actually do.

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TNP and group websites ADIE – http://adieurope.org ∗

I am grateful to Mr J.L. Linazosoro for a sight of this document. 217

218 Beyond the Nation State ALDE – http://www.alde.eu EDP – http://www.pde-edp.net EFA – www.e-f-a.org EGP – http://europeangreens.org ____ – http://greens-efa.org ELDR – www.eldr.org EPP – http://www.epp.eu ____ – http://www.epp-ed.org EU Democrats – http://eudemocrats.org GUE – http://www.guengl.org ID – http://indemgroup.org PEL – http://euroleft.org PES – http://pes.org ____ – http://www.socialistgroup.eu UEN – http://www.uengroup.org

International websites CDI – http://www.idc-cdi.org Euronat – http://nd.se/euronat Greens – www.globalgreens.info IDU – http://www.idu.org LI – http://www.liberal-international.org SI – http://www.socialistinternational.org

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Index

acid rain, 54, 171 AEN, 182, 184 members, 183 nature of, 182 ageing leaderships, 96 Alexandre-Collier, A., 200 Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), 121–2, 125, 131–2, 134–7, 166, 186 anarchists, 34 Anderson, P., 9, 31 Angenot, M., 4 Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, 8 anti-Castillian ethos, 166 anti-clerical liberalism, 125 anti-communist front, 89 anti-European drift, 95 party, 127 anti-Green, 173 anti-liberal positions, 82 Asia-Pacific Green Network, 170 Athens programme, 99, 108 Atlanticist, 104–6, 142, 185, 191, 193 Attina, F., 44 Augusta arms scandal, 79 Australian liberals, 99 Aznar, José Maria, 51 Bale, T., 111–13, 116 Balfour, S., 95 Baltic members, 181 Bardi, L., 19 Bartolini, S., 12 Belgian Greens, 172 parties, 78, 130, 168 socialist, 62, 78 Bell, D. S., 2, 143–4, 179 Benelux Catholic, 113 Greens, 207

Benoit, K., 46 Berlusconi government, 165 bilateralism, 53–4, 57, 74, 208 Billiet, J., 106 Blair, Tony, 80 Blairite leadership, 51 New labour, 73 blame-shifting function, 28 Bolshevik model of a party, 37 ‘Bolshevisation’ of national parties, 39 Bolshevism, international dynamic of, 38 Bonde group, 191 Bonn congress of, 1973, 63 Boy, D., 175 Brauntal, J., 3 Breton decentralisation, 158 British Conservatives, 109 British Labour Party (BLP), 41, 51, 53, 60, 63, 70, 72 Brown, Gordon, 71 Brown International, 198 Brussels conference, 159 hemicycle, 161 Brzinski, J., 44 Buchanan, T., 1 Bureau of Unrepresented European Nations, 158 Buttigieg, J., 1 Cameron government, 193 leadership campaign, 193 Cameron, David, 110 Campbell, Menzies, 132 Camus, J.-Y., 194–5 capitalism, 37, 138–9, 172, 184, 195 Caramani, D., 14 Cassola, A., 2, 168, 170 228

Index Catholic Church, 85 conservatism and vigorous nationalism, 187 groups, 22 organisations, 101 Catholicism, 105, 111 Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS), 59 Centrist Democrat International, 50–1 Chadel, F., 95 Charismatic leaders, 134 Chevènement, J.P., 145 Chiche, J., 175 Chirac, Jacques, 185 Christian Democracy, 1, 55, 85, 92–5, 97–8, 102, 126, 184: crisis of, 92; nature of, 85 democrat, 1, 59, 65, 89, 121, 129, 202, 204: family, 166; parties, 26; union, 102 values, 101–2 Christlich Demokratische Union, (CDU), 52 Civic Democratic Party, 102, 129 Civic Platform, 185 clash of federalism and nationalism, 105 Claudin, F., 2 Clinton, Bill, 51, 191 Coalition governments, 106, 139 Cold war, 2, 88, 170 Collette, C., 4 Committee of the Regions, 160, 163–4 Common Assembly, 62, 203 common European programme, 63 Commonwealth parties, 73 communism, 52 communist International, 36, 38 leaderships, 142 movement, 143 parties, 12, 18, 38–9, 74, 135, 138–9, 142–3, 145–6, 149, 151, 154–5: origins of, 138 party of: Bohemia, 141; Great Britain, 38; Soviet Union, 38

229

Community Mediterranean policy, 144 concept of indirect party, 22 loose association, 11 multi-level governance, 14 social justice, 86 Confederation of the Socialist Parties of the Europe, 63 Congress of European Communities, 158 conservative group, 94, 97, 105, 109–10, 112, 213 party, 113–14 consociational democracies, 49 Continental socialism, 73 Conway, M., 1, 87–8, 92–3 Coosemans, T., 118 Corijn, Lex, 117, 119, 137 cosmopolitanism vs. communitarianism, 9 Costa, O., 44 Council of Economic and Finance Ministers, 71 Europe, 15, 61–62 Cultural liberalism, 117 Czech communists, 150 Greens, 53–4 liberalism, 129–30 liberals, 134, 208 nationalist point of view, 105 Republic, 135 society, 149 Czech and Moravian Communist Party, 58 Dakowska, D., 55 Danish Eurosceptics, 159 People’s Party, 181 Socialist People’s Party, 144 Dauwen, G., 158–9, 162, 165 Davies, David, 111 Day, S., 3, 16, 21 Debunne, Oscar, 79 decantation, 202 decentralisation, 157 Dehaene, Jean-Luc, 107

230 Beyond the Nation State Dehousse, R., 27 Delbreil, J.-C., 87 delegation of authority, 11, 23–4, 32–3, 40 functions, 24–5 Delsoldato, G., 52 Delwit, P., 2, 52, 89, 94, 106 Democratic centralism, doctrine of, 37 Civic Alliance, 129 Party of the Peoples of Europe, 160 revolution, 139 socialism, 150 values, 86 Devin, G., 32–3, 35, 41 Dewaele, J.-M., 12 DeWaele, J.M., 2, 52 Dierickx, G., 86 Donneur, A., 41 Dowling, A., 166 Drachkovic, M., 2 dual membership, 50, 99 Dunphy, R., 141, 143–4 Dutch Greens, 53 society, pillarisation of, 93 Dutoit, L., 200 Duverger, M., 14, 22 early warning system, 75 Eastern and Central Europe, 51, 61, 77, 80, 129, 134–5, 203, 207 Economic and Monetary Union(EMU), 64 economic theory, 49 ELDR, 117, 119, 121–6, 129–37, 163, 171 e-membership, 122 enthusiasm, 123 future of, 133 ideology, 123 parliamentary group, 119 political appeal of, 136 president, 131 secretary, 119 structures of, 122 summits, 131 values, 124 Employment Chapter, 110

English Greens, 172 Esquerra Republicana Catalana (ERC), 160 Ettinger, H., 146 EUDemocrats, 188–91, 199 Euro-parties, 15 ‘eurocommunist’ phase, 140 Eurogroup, 214 Europe of democracies, 179, 188 nations, 104, 179–81 European Affairs Committees of national parliaments, 163 European Alliance, 160, 164 European Anticapitalist Left (EACL), 146 European Central Bank, 123, 214 European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), 100–1 European Coal and Steel Community, 15 European Commission, 20 European Conservative Group, 109 European Council, 20, 207 European Court of Justice, 24 European Democratic Alliance, 179 Group, 90, 109 Party, 121–122, 166 Union, 99 European Democrats, 104 European Economic Community, 15, 42, 68 European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP), 168 European Free Alliance (EFA), 159–67, 171, 174–6, 182, 206, 212–13 parties, 167, 175–6 European Free Trade Association (EFTA), 51 European Green Coordination, 168 Party, 51, 168–70 European integration discussions of, 10 rejection of, 191 European Left, 138, 145 European level of Christian democracy, 93

Index European Liberal Democrats, 118 European liberalism, 123 European Movement, 158 European New Left Forum, 145 European Parliament Research Group, 44 European Parliament, 2, 12 European Parliamentary Labour Party, 75 European Party Regulation, 19, 48, 121, 170 European Peoples’ Party, 1, 33 European Political Party, 162 European social Forum, 174 model, 70, 98 European Socialists, 70 European trade unions, 144 European Union, 1, 3, 6, 17, 19–27, 47–8, 50–1, 57–8, 64–7, 70–1, 73, 79–82, 90, 97, 100, 104, 108, 113–14, 123, 126, 128, 131–3, 136–7, 142, 146–7, 149–150, 153, 160, 162–13, 172–4, 180–2, 184, 186–91, 194, 196, 198, 200, 203, 205, 208, 210, 214–5 of Christian Democrats, 41 Council, 67, 81, 188 governments, 27 membership, 104 Europeanisation, 41–2, 75, 96 euroscepticism, 96, 124, 149, 184, 186, 188–190, 200 Eurosecptic group, 165 Ex-communist parties, 155 Faas, T., 44 fascism, advent of, 118 FDP, 55, 117, 121, 130–1, 135, 137, 206 federalism, 20, 23, 63, 87, 95, 100, 105, 112, 121, 123, 132, 136–7, 157, 184, 192, 200 federalist model, 20 feminist movements, 10 Fennema, M., 179, 196 Fine Gael (FG), 183 fisheries policy, 176

231

Fitzmaurice, J., 2, 97 Flemish Christian democrats, 167 Flemish party, 107 Flora, P., 11, 26 Fogarty, M., 97 ‘fordist’ phase of high employment, 68 Franco-Italian bilateralism, 54 francophonie, 79 free-market economics, 111 free-trade agreement, 190 zone, 190 French Christian democracy, 126, 184 Flanders, 196 Gaullists, 180, 183 Greens, 171 Mouvement, 145 party, 150 Radical party, 125 ruralists, 186 socialism, 35 socialists, 78, 135 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), 52 Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, 55, 119 Gabel, M., 45 Gahrton, P., 2, 168, 170 Gauche Unitaire Européenne (GUE), 45 Gaullism, 126 Gaullists, 63, 185 Gaxie, D., 13 Gehler, M., 1, 41, 89 Geneva meetings, 89 Genscher, Hans Dietrich, 131 German communist party, 152 electoral systems, 135 Greens, 59, 168, 172–6, 209 politics, 35: speaking parties, 72; speaking socialists, 207 yearbooks, 3 Giner, S., 125, 137 Girvin, B., 98 global democracy, development of a, 9 Goldman, R., 2 Goldsmith, James, 186

232 Beyond the Nation State Greek communism, 154 Nea Demokratia, 90 party, 144 and Portuguese communist parties, 149 Green family in Belgium, 53 family, 208 governments, 149 group, 168, 171 ideology, 171 international, 170 members, 54 officials, 175 organisations, 154 parties, 58–9, 151, 170, 173–6, 207 transnationalism, 2, 168, 171: nature of, 171 Grunberg, G., 52 Hague Congress, 158 Haider, Jörg, 106 Hanley, D., 1, 36, 52, 73, 91, 93, 97 Healey, D., 62, 73 Heath, Edward, 95, 114 Herriot, Edouard, 118 Hix, S., 2, 19, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 62, 63, 64, 163 House of Commons, 193 Hrbek, R., 20 Human Rights in a United Latvia, 160 humanitarian interventions, 172 Hungarian Provincial Party, 181 Hussite Protestantism, 105 Huysmans, C., 32 ‘imperialist’ national governments, 138 Independence and Democracy, 19 Independent Groupings and Members, 159 Independent Labour Party, 72 independent regulatory authorities, 24 information-sharing function, 40, 130 integrationist, 109

international communist organisations, 143 International Democratic Union, 99 International Labour Office, 107 International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), 15, 31–2 Internationalism, 8–9, 57 notion, of, 4 Ishay, M., 4, 9 Italian liberalism, 124 Radicals, 159, 168 umbrella party, 121 Janda, K., 11 Jansen, T., 1, 2, 20, 31, 48, 49, 85, 94, 99, 109 Jardin, X., 200 Johansson, K.M., 1, 2, 20, 96, 109 Joll, J., 3 June Movement, 188 Kaczinski brothers, 111, 184 Kaiser, W., 1, 41, 88, 89 Kalyvas, S., 85, 86 Kassim, H., 24 Katz, R., 5, 14 Kazamias, G., 41 Keynesianism, 68 Kirby, D., 4 Klaus, Vaclav, 104 Kohler-Koch, B., 18 Kok report, 64 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), 38 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), 55, 61, 96, 103–4 Kreppel, A., 2, 15, 44, 46, 48, 49 Kriegel, A., 3, 33, 34 Kselman, T., 1 Kulachi, E., 21, 71, 72 Labour party, 36, 65–6, 72–3, 148 Ladrech, R., 1, 2, 3, 70, 71 Lamberts, E., 1 Latin American CD movement, 89 Laurent, Raymond, 87 Left Bloc, 154 Lega Nord (LN), 165, 186

Index Leinen, Jo., 123 Leninism, 37, 174 Leninist arguments, acceptance of, 40 Leninist parties, 139–140 Lesse, U., 2, 62, 63, 64 Liberal Democrats, 50, 121 ideology, 123 intergovernmentalists, 42 international, 19 transnationalism, 126 Liberalism, 117, 134 institutionalisation of, 125 Liga Polskisch Rodin, 186 Lightfoot, S., 2, 21, 71 Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR), 145 Lipset, S., 11, 26 Lopez-Isturiz, A., 108 Lord, C., 2, 48, 143, 179 Loughlin, J., 69, 164 Lutheran solution, 93 Maastricht Treaty, 64, 144 McElroy, G., 46 macro-economic policy, 68 MacShane, Denis, 74 Mair, P., 5, 14, 41, 48, 49, 213 Majone, G., 27 Major, John., 109 Malaga summit, 110 Maritain, Jacques, 86 market liberals, 205 Marlière, P., 1 Martens, Wilfried, 109, 133, 211 Marxist concepts of class-conflict, 86 socialism, 149 mass and class, 5 Mayer, H., 113 Mayeur, J.M., 1 Mediterranean conservatives, 112 Menon, A., 24 Messmer, W., 75 Miert, Karel van, 79 Militant-run city council, 76 Minkenberg, M., 179, 195, 198, 200 Mitterrand governments, 69 Mollet, Guy, 62

233

monetary union, 110 Moravcik, A., 42 Mounier, Emmanuel, 86 Mouvement pour l’Organisation de la Bretagne (MOB), 158 Mouvement pour la France (MPF), 187 Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP), 59 multi-layered processes of government, 18 Murray, P., 15

National communist parties, 18 national front electoral pacts, 102 nationalism versus internationalism, 9 NATO, 97, 143 Navarri, C., 4 ‘negative’ integration, first phase of, 43 negative transnationalism, 152 neo-liberal economics, 98 globalism, 97 logic, 76 market culture, 80 paradigms, 72 shift, 97 neo-liberalism, 70, 81, 98 tenets of, 98 network governance, 122 new European economy, 70 new social movements, 157 Niedermayer, O., 3, 20, 47, 48, 123, 204, 209 Nieuwe Vlaamse Alliantie (NV-A), 167 non-EPP Christian parties, 100 non-socialist parties, 68 Nordic Council to the Parliamentary Assembly, 149 Nordic Green Left, 144, 153 Nordic Protestants, 105 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 104 North Atlantic Free Trade Area, 113 Noury, A., 44 Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), 41

234 Beyond the Nation State October Revolution, 138 Offerlé, M., 13 oil crises of the 1970s, 68 one member one vote (OMOV), 76 Orange Book, 124 Organisación Cristiana Democráta de America (OCDA), 41, 129–30, 133, 137 Oudenhove, G., 2 Oxford Declaration, 118 P/A analysis, 35 P/A relationship, 47 P/A theory, 24–26, 36, 202 Contemporary use of, 27 Palmer, J., 31 Panebianco, A., 13, 23, 25, 140 Pan-German nationalists, 196 Parti Républicain 125 partisan systems, 49 Party of Democratic Socialism, 150 Party of European Democrats, 54 Party of European Socialists, 21, 43, 64–5 Party of the European Left (PEL), 138 Patten, Chris, 95, 109, 127 Pedersen, M., 13, 21, 23, 44, 47 Perotino, M., 102 Perrineau, P., 43, 179, 198 personal libertarianism, culture of, 171 Petersen, M., 10, 11 ‘pillarised’ system of the Benelux countries, 106 Polish Families League, 186–7 Polish People’s Party, 186 political ideologies, 28 Pollack, M., 24, 25, 27 Pollmann, C., 179, 196 Popular Party of Switzerland, 89 Portelli, H., 2, 52 post-Cold War Europe, 170 post-communist party, 148 post-fascist party, 165 post-war social democracy, 68 Poujadism, 186 pre-Council leaders’ summits, 21 pro-business party, 95 pro-European Atlanticists, 76

pro-federal sympathies, 48 pro-market approach, 77 rhetoric of deregulation and privatisation, 129 progressive nationalism, 162 workers, 145, 148 Protestantism, 101 Qualified Majority Voting, 64 Quinn, R., 71 radical nationalists, 145 Radical right movements, 195 radicalism, 28 Rafter, K., 167 Rainbow Group, 43, 159 Rasmussen, P.N., 74, 77, 211 Raunio, T., 19, 44 Red Army, 140 regionalists, 78, 157 Republican Left party, 160 republicanism, 28 revolutionary party, 37 vote, 142 Rhenish model, 106 rise of working-class movements, 117 Rocard, Michel, 135 Rokkan, S., 11, 26 roll-call votes (RCVs), 44–5, 192 Romantic intelligentsia, 31 Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 55, 149 Russian Bolsheviks, 139 Russian-speaking minority, 160 Sartori, G., 11 Scandinavians, 72, 112, 144–5, 153, 172, 205 Scharpf, F., 70 Schmidt, J., 16 Schoettli, U., 19, 118 Schroeder, Gerhard, 131 Schuman group, 98, 107–8, 205 plan, 62 Scottish National Party, 158 Scottish Nationalists, 160

Index Second Cold War, 2, 52 secular conservatives, 102 Security Council, 132 Seiler, D.L., 1, 11, 12, 13, 85, 93, 94, 95, 117, 158, 164 Shaw, J., 2, 3, 16, 21 Sinn Feín, 167 Social Catholics, 88, 205 social democracy, crisis of, 67 social democratic, 34, 135, 155 social dumping, 82 socialisation, 33 Socialism bottom-up approach to, 73 Leninist version of, 138 socialist commonwealth, 9 international, 3, 15, 32 journalists, 33 movement, 33, 144 parties, 15, 28, 34–6, 62, 80, 82, 138–9, 192, 208, 213: self-proclaimed, 34 secularism, 106 socio-economic issues, 107 South Bohemian Greens, 54 Southern European socialism, 81 sovereignist organisation, 19 sovereignists, 179–80 Soviet foreign policy, 140 leadership, 142 Republic, 138 Spanish box, 186 Spanish Partido Popular (PP), 95 Stalin, Josef, 150 Stalinism, 12, 96, 129, 134, 150, 168, 203 collapse of, 12, 168 Stalinist, 18, 96, 102, 140, 143, 146, 148, 186 Stehling, T., 113 Stone Sweet, A., 24 Stöss, R., 3 structural reforms, 68 supranational, 10 Swedish Moderates, 99 social democracy, 69

235

syndicalists, 34 Szczerbiak, A., 179 Tallberg, J., 24, 25, 27 Thatcher, Margaret, 69, 95, 104, 109, 213 Thatcher, Mark, 24, 27, 29 Third world, 162, 175 democratic movements from, 118 development, 183 immigration, 197 Tindemans, Leo, 107, 211 Tory party, 110 Towler, G., 192 trade-union delegates, influence of, 76 traditional management tools, 69 traditional welfare, advantages of, 82 transnational activity, evolution of, 6 transnational Agents, 23 transnational credentials, 58 transnational infrastructure, 55 transnational movements, 32, 72 transnational organisations, 11 transnational parties (TNP), 1, 3, 6, 13, 17–24, 26, 28, 40, 43, 46–53, 55–6, 75, 77, 96–7, 112, 130, 147, 152, 164–5, 172, 179, 182–3, 187, 194, 199, 202, 208 federations, 2 integration, 204, 209 interaction, 48 juridical foundations of, 3 leaders, 47, 211 politics, 54 regime, 16 transnational socialism, 78 transnationalism, 1–3, 5–6, 8, 10, 15–6, 18, 31, 36, 40–1, 56, 60, 74, 79, 87, 89, 98, 108, 126, 130, 136, 142–3, 152, 157, 168, 172–3, 201–4, 212–14 common core of, 202 different levels of, 56 investment in, 136 overview of, 15 Trojan horse, 105 Trotsky, Leon, 191 Trotskyist organisations, 154–5 Turkish membership, 105

236 Beyond the Nation State U-turn of the Mitterrand governments, 69 UK Conservatives, 45, 95, 99, 106, 127, 192 UK Ecology Party, 168 UK Libdems, 124 United Kingdom Independence Party, 111 United Nations, 132 United States of Europe, 90 US Democratic Party, 51 Usti exchange, 54 value-based cleavage, 195 Vanhaelewyn, M., 158, 159, 162, 165 Villiers, P. de, 187 Vlaams Belang (VB), 107, 162, 165 Walloon attachment, 82 movements, 198 radicals, 198

Warner, C., 1 Watson, Graham, 121, 132 Weidenfeld, W., 3 Wessels, W., 3 Western civilisation, 183, 197 communists, 141 economies, 68–9 society, 141 Westlake, M., 3 Westminster Foundation, 55 ‘Westphalian’ nation, 12 White-collar sector, 69 White House, 51 Wilson, F., 98 Wolikow, S., 2, 3 World War I, 4, 38, 138 World War II, 40, 118 Wring, D., 75 Zahradil, Jan, 104 Zervakis, P., 2, 20 Zetkin, Clara, 33

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