Political Parties and Party Systems in Multi-Level Settings

Political parties have in general been studied at the national level. The increasing and varying processes of regionalization in European countries has opened up a totally new domain of interesting and very relevant research. Indeed, party systems in autonomous regions can be very different from systems in other regions and from the national party system. For the parties themselves - nationwide parties and regional parties or regional sections of parties this creates a new and complex environment in which they have to make their organizational and strategic choices (candidate selection, electoral strategy, coalition formation). We do not yet have a fully-fledged body of comparative theory to analyse and understand these new developments in and for political parties. The papers presented in this section could be both theoretical and empirical (case studies and comparative) and add to both our knowledge and analytical strength in studying parties in multi-level settings. There will be three panels in this section. The first one will deal with the Europeanization of national political parties, i.e. with the impact of European integration on the internal organization of national parties. The second panel will examine the organization and strategy of state-wide parties that operate in multi-level settings. Taking a top-down approach, this second panel investigates the modes, casues and consequences of strategic coordination and party organizational linkage across levels of a party system. The third panel will adopot a bottom-up approach and welcomes papers dealing with regional parties or party sections.