Continuity and change in party positions towards Europe in Italian parties: an examination of parties' manifestos (original) (raw)
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Journal of Language and Politics, 2004
Research on party attitudes towards European integration has concentrated on the relationship between party ideology and positions related to European integration as an economic and/or political process, ignoring the representational aspect of party discourse. This study aims to contribute towards filling this gap by examining how Italian parties represent the European Union, the nation(-state) and the relationship between the two in their electoral platforms and parliamentary debates. We shall therefore analyse critically how parties use specific representations of Europe, the EU and the nation to frame and support their ideologies and positions and how they shape these representations in different ways depending on the challenge they are confronted with. We shall also look beyond presumed clear-cut relationships between party ideology and party attitudes towards European integration, exploring the complexities and ambiguities of party discourse and highlighting how specific EU or ...
The Europeanisation of national party organisations: A conceptual analysis
European Journal of Political Research, 2007
The likely effects of the ongoing process of European integration on the internal workings of national political parties have hitherto attracted surprisingly little attention in comparative research. This conceptual article discusses how the increasing relevance of European-level decision making may have changed the balance of power within national political parties. It identifies two groups of party actors who are most likely to benefit from the process of Europeanisation of national political parties. First, the 'executive bias' of European Union (EU) decision making is likely to work in favour of party elites in general. However, while they may gain power in intra-party decision making, their control over the national policy agenda is likely to become increasingly eroded through a general shift of policy control to the European level. Second, EU specialists (i.e., those who specialise in EU affairs) are likely to have more access to resources and more control over policy decisions within national parties because of the growing importance of European integration. These propositions are discussed in detail and are then assessed with reference to the main findings from a major empirical study of the topic.
Italian Journal of Electoral Studies (IJES), 2021
This article empirically revisits and tests the effect of individual distance from parties on the EU integration dimension and on the left–right dimension for vote choice in both national and European elections. This analysis is based on the unique European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey panel data from seven EU countries. Our findings show that in most countries the effect of individual distance on the EU integration dimension is positive and significant for both European and national elections. Yet the effect of this dimension is not uniform across all seven countries, revealing two scenarios: one in which it is only relevant for Eurosceptic voters and the other in which it is significant for voters of most parties in the system. The first is mainly related to the presence of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the party supply, but the second, which indicates a more advanced level of Europeanisation of party systems, is not explained by most current theoretical and empirical contribu...
Zooming in on the ‘Europeanisation’ of national politics: A comparative analysis of six EU countries
Quaderni dell Osservatorio elettorale QOE - IJES, 2021
This article empirically revisits and tests the effect of individual distance from parties on the EU integration dimension and on the left–right dimension for vote choice in both national and European elections. This analysis is based on the unique European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey panel data from seven EU countries. Our findings show that in most countries the effect of individual distance on the EU integration dimension is positive and significant for both European and national elections. Yet the effect of this dimension is not uniform across all seven countries, revealing two scenarios: one in which it is only relevant for Eurosceptic voters and the other in which it is significant for voters of most parties in the system. The first is mainly related to the presence of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the party supply, but the second, which indicates a more advanced level of Europeanisation of party systems, is not explained by most current theoretical and empirical contribu...
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2016
Through a textual analysis of national election manifestos, this paper critically discusses political parties' discourses towards Europe and European integration in three European Union (EU) member states: Germany, which has always promoted further integration; the United Kingdom, which has consistently been a keen supporter of intergovernmentalism; and finally the Netherlands, one of the original six and a willing, yet cautious, supporter of supranational cooperation. By analysing how political parties frame European integration in their discourses, we aim to investigate the variance in national political cultures with respect to identity and self-identification with Europe as a determining factor of support for the process. This paper concludes that although European integration is structured around a framework of interests in all the six party discourses under analysis, the construction of national identities and hence the articulation of national interest in EU membership as well as the visions for the political structure of the union varies significantly.
How political parties frame European integration
European Journal of Political Research, 2010
This article analyses how political parties frame European integration, and gauges the consistency of their argumentation. Over the course of investigation, one can see how actors' positions are justified, and how the European Union is perceived (i.e., what forces give rise to Euroscepticism and Europeanism). It is argued here that the parties' framing of issues depends on the interests they traditionally defend at the national level, their general positions on European integration, and whether or not they belong to the established political actors in their respective countries. The coding approach enables the relation of frames to actors and positions, moving beyond the techniques employed by existing studies that analyse the media presentation of European integration. Sophisticated frame categorisations are provided to capture the complex structure of argumentation, going beyond a simple dichotomy of economic and cultural frames. Relying on a large and original media dataset covering the period 2004–2006, six Western European countries are investigated.
Studies on the contribution national political parties and transnational federations have made to the process of European integration are a relatively recent field of research that still remains largely to be explored. John Gaffney, not without irony, claimed: "the literature on political parties in the Union, however, is minimal. We can say, therefore, that very little of the literature on integration is on political parties, and very little of the literature on political parties is on integration" 1 . There are numerous reasons for this, the main ones being: a) historiographical reasons: 1) for a considerable period of time European union was treated as an aspect of a country's foreign policy rather than as a new and specific phenomenon in its own right 2 ; 2) studies focused more on the contribution of individual politicians and intellectuals rather than on the political forces or movements they represented -with the exception of the federalist groups. b) reasons linked to the actual history of the integration process: 1) the intergovernmental profile attributed to European integration from its inception; 2) the difficulties involved in establishing a common platform for national parties from different backgrounds, which may well have shared common political ground, but were still mesmerised by the divisions created during the twentieth century; 3) the tendency parties had of including European integration under the more general heading of problems linked to the Cold War.
Contestation over European integration, pauses and crises, as well as growing evidence of its political and social implications, has drawn scholars’ attention to the question of the politicization of the European Union (EU) at the domestic level. This article argues in favour of complementing the existing literature on the spatial competition over EU-related issues with a study of the salience and diversity of these issues. We illustrate the potentialities of such an approach, drawing on the examples of French, British and German parliamentary parties between 1986 and 2009. Our study of electoral manifestos generates two main conclusions. First, as patterns of attention to Europe fluctuate considerably over time and tend to follow systemic dynamics, the resonance and political consequences of party discourses over integration will depend on the presence of political parties able and willing to push the EU onto the electoral agenda. Second, the EU gives rise to distinct issue emphases in each country and in each party, resulting from the ‘domestication’ of European debates by parties. This observation suggests that we should be cautious with regard to the location of domestic parties along a single, transnational dimension that opposes Europhiles and Eurosceptics, as the EU does not enter domestic agendas in the same form everywhere.