Ideological Cohesion and Differences after Enlargement

Abstract

Based on the data introduced in the previous chapter, Chapter 5 provides a first assessment of the ideological (lack of) fit of the parties entering the political groups with the 2004/07 enlargement and the resulting dilution of ideological differences between the parties at the core of the EP party system. Methodologically, it uses simple statistical measures of central tendency and dispersion to study the distribution of West and East European parties within the political groups. Operationally, measures of dispersion are used to capture Europarty cohesion (rectius: heterogeneity), while distances between the political group positions capture the ideological differences among them.KeywordsPolitical GroupTraditional MoralityPolicy CategorySocial LiberalMember PartiThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.