European Integration and an Alternative Party Family

Abstract

In the past decade, the pro-Europeanness of the regionalist party family was taken for granted in academic writing. 1 The earliest study on party families and European integration (EI) discovered a Europeanist vanguard, since the regionalist party family was ‘unambiguously and unanimously’ pro-European (Hix and Lord 1997: 27). The position of the regionalist party family as pro-European has been empirically demonstrated by several quantitative and qualitative studies (De Winter and G o mez-Reino Cachafeiro 2002; Lynch 1996; Marks, Wilson and Ray 2002). More recent studies coni rmed the pro-European position of the regionalist party family and the continuity of its support over time (Jolly 2007: 121). However, the consideration of regionalist parties as natural supporters of European integration has been recently and increasingly questioned (Hepburn 2008). The support for European integration is more conditional and ambiguous than unqualii ed (Elias 2008; Hepburn 2008). Not only are some regionalist parties Eurosceptical and critical of European integration, but also they lack consistent positions on Europe (Hepburn 2008). Finally, rather than a continuous support over time, pro-Europeanist positions are cyclical or evolving towards critical views (Elias 2008; Hepburn 2008).