‘European Political Parties’ as Multi-Level Organisations and their Relations with National Parties in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The processes of decentralization, devolution and regionalization taking place in many countries as well as the development of European integration have caused that political parties have gained new areas of activity. Creation and strengthening of regional assemblies on the one hand and the European Parliament on the other bring about new arenas for party competition, representation of interests and articulation of views. This makes a huge challenge for traditional party structures and opens up a new extensive research area. There is much analysis related to cooperation and possible tensions between the regional and central (national, state-wide) party structure (van Biezen & Hopkin 2006; Bradbury 2006, Detterbeck 2012; Fabre 2008, 2011; Hough & Jeffrey 2006; Schackel 2013; Swenden & Maddens 2009; Thorlakson 2009, 2013 etc.). Much less attention is paid to the relations between Europarties (and their political groups in the EP) and national parties (Deschouwer 2000; Kosowska-Gąstoł 2017; Thorlakson 2005), especially in Central and Eastern Europe. The panel is going to fulfil this gap, hence our aim is to present these relations using both – the concepts elaborated in order to research on relations between national and regional party structure (vertical integration, influence, autonomy) as well as the concepts of Europeanisation of political parties (top-down and bottom-up). Concerning the first area we focus on the questions whether the national parties are integrated with Europarties they belong to? what is the core level in their relations – European or national one (Deschouwer 2000)? what is influence exerted by national parties on their European counterparts? is the autonomy of national parties limited through their cooperation with Europarties? As far as the second area is concerned we are interested especially in addressing the question of Europeanization of political parties and non-Europeanisation of party systems. According to Ladrech (2002) we deal with Europeanization of parties in five areas: 1) policy/programmatic content, 2) organization, 3) patterns of party competition, 4) party-government relations, 5) relations beyond the national party system. In turn, according to Mair (2000), who focused on direct impact of Europe on national party systems, European integration had little (if any) influence on party systems. However, since the beginning of the 21st century party systems have undergone significant changes relating to both their format and mechanism (Sartori 2005). Therefore we think that the so-called Ladrech-Mair paradox (Külahci 2012) should be considered again in order to answer the question whether it is still in force.