Framing the Impact of Enlargement

Abstract

Drawing on the classic literature on party organization and ideology, Chapter 2 presents a theoretical framework to understand the impact of enlargement on the Europarties. It is here suggested that enlargement has a differentiated impact on the dimension of institutionalization: largely positive for their organizational development, but largely negative for their ideological cohesion and for party competition. It is further argued — on the basis of an analogy with national parties — that if the enlarged Europarties are now more similar to catch-all or cartel parties, then the pursuit of a ‘representative’ function in the EU political system, pace the Treaty of Lisbon, would be more difficult.