Lost in Translation? A Comparative Analysis of Multilevel Party Organisation in the EU Polity

European integration has not affected all political parties and their organisations in the same way. Yet, some of the most prominent theories of how national political parties engage the European level, such as Hix’s (2008) partisan theory of EU politics, do not seem to account for variation between parties, but rather focus on explaining general pan-European trends. Similarly, Europeanisation scholars (Poguntke et al., 2007; Ladrech, 2012) hardly theorise the various ways in which national parties can respond organisationally to European integration, or systematically address the question of how to explain this. For that reason, this papers is an attempt rekindling that debate. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of fifteen Dutch, Danish and Flemish political parties, this papers argues that there are in fact four different categories of multilevel organisation parties can pursue in an EU context (integrated, federated, insulated or separated), and identifies the main conditions under which parties are likely to pursue one or the other. In doing so, the study finds that parties’ multilevel organisation in the EU is predominantly conditioned by the interaction between national political context (and the EU’s importance therein) and a party’s historical traditions of promoting (cross-level) cohesion.