Party systems politicization and citizens’ political awareness: assessing the relationship on conflict over EU integration

After 15 years of post-communist democratization, eight members of the former Soviet bloc in 2004 joined the European Union, with two, Romania and Bulgaria, remaining in the final stages of accession. But the process of European integration is not one of unproblematic transition. While there is widespread acknowledgement of the benefits of being a member of the club, there are few who deny the great costs it imposes on the societies of CEE states. Those in the region have to endure the numerous economic and social problems that are involved in the process of joining the EU. For these, and other reasons, the process of European integration may have a destabilizing effect on some sectors of society.KeywordsParty PoliticsSexual MinorityParty SystemParliamentary ElectionCoalition PartnerThese 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.

Using the Portuguese case, this chapter looks at how the process of European integration has affected both inter-party competition and voter-party alignments—two key dimensions of political representation and the performance of the political system. The chapter focuses on the position of political parties on the process of European integration, on the one hand, and on the evolution of public opinion, on the other. Analysing public opinion data and election manifestos, the main goal is twofold. Firstly, the author aims to explore the role played by Europe in shaping patterns of party competition before and after the crisis. Secondly, he seeks to investigate how citizens’ views of the EU have evolved over time. It will be argued that Portugal shows a combination of continuity and change, as some left-wing parties have strategically adapted their stances, whereas there has been an increase in citizens’ negative attitudes towards the EU. Moreover, party strategic goals have led to a depoliticisation of European integration. This is an important aspect that allows the understanding of why new parties have failed to politicise the European issue and to what extent the stances taken by party leadership have contributed to the resilience of the Portuguese party system.

Simon Hix accurately notes that ‘EU politics is party politics’, and party politicians are an important link between governments and parliaments, parliaments and voters and also the national and European scenes. Milada A. Vachudova also stresses that in the process of European integration, parties are the source of changes in national politics through their compliance or non-compliance with European Union’s (EU) requirements. Despite these voices, the influence of the process of Europeanisation on national parties has long been downplayed and authors usually explain that parties have no institutionalised channels of contact with the decision-making bodies in the EU.The purpose of this article is to present the current state of research into the process of the Europeanisation of parties and party systems, with particular emphasis on the specificity and diversity of responses to challenges related to Europeanisation formulated by parties from Central and Eastern Europe. Three aspects of the Europeanisation of parties can be distinguished: changes in the party environment resulting from the ongoing process of European integration; rare but direct interventions of EU actors into party politics; and the influence of the Transnational Party Cooperation (TPC). The author refers to the neo-institutional paradigm of research into Europeanisation to indicate its mechanisms, factors determining the responses of national parties and the possible dimensions of observing changes. Importantly, the article also describes the author’s model that can be applied to studies of the Europeanisation of national parties and party systems in post-communist countries, both those who joined the EU between 2004 and 2013 and those aspiring to EU membership. Extensive literature studies and field studies conducted by the author for nearly three years in the post-Yugoslavian countries prompts her to make a hypothesis that the impulses for change coming from the broadly understood European environment (including European institutions and Europarties) are modified by several groups of factors: external factors (the credibility of the integration offer and the advancement of this process); intrasystemic factors (primarily, the influence of the communist heritage, constellations of political parties in individual countries and change of public preferences regarding integration); and, finally, intraparty factors (the position of leaders, the faction that is currently dominant in the party and the role of electoral defeats).

Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties’ positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating whether political awareness mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment, evidence that partisan evolution is concentrated among more aware citizens is uncovered, and the implications are examined.

Is elite or mass polarization the driver of the democratic backsliding? A number of recent papers in the political economy of backsliding have developed theoretical predictions about the effects of polarization in the electorate as well as elite polarization on the process of democratic backsliding. However, when tested, these predictions focus on the polarization of political elites, typically within the same country. Cross-national data is ill-suited for the purpose of testing these predictions as we have no common yardstick against which to measure what is a “dangerous” level of polarization or how to compare countries that use different electoral systems and, subsequently, have different party systems and democratic institutions. Yet scholars for the most part have avoided even describing the emergence of mass polarization outside of the US. We offer a longitudinal analysis of Polish public opinion data that anticipates the country’s authoritarian turn to examine if polarization of the electorate preceded or followed the polarization of party elites. It focuses on a single, yet ultimately divisive issue — EU integration and national sovereignty. Specifically, it makes use of surveys conducted in regular intervals by CBOS, the Center for Public Opinion Research. These surveys offer evidence that polarization in attitudes to the EU followed, rather than preceded the polarization of parties on this issue over the last 20 years.

У представленій статті автор аналізує параметри європейської політичної свідомості– дослідницьке поле європейської політичної свідомості в якісно­кількісному вимірі, який може грунтуватися на різних показниках. Актуальності проблематика виникнення та розвитку європейської політичної свідомості набуває тому, що її формування, як суб’єктивного виміру євроінтеграційної політики, по­перше, не є спонтанним процесом. А по­друге, євроінтеграція відбувається не лише зверху, але і знизу, потребуючи свідомого втручання у цей процес громадськості, в якій сформована європейська політична свідомість. Оскільки остання є певним ментальним конструктом, автор пропонує застосовувати тріаду: критерії – параметри – індикатори. Критерієм європейської політичної свідомості вважає ознаку, що дає можливість оцінювати певні процеси або явища у системі європейськість/європеїзм та задає якість системі поглядів і думок, яка реалізується в європейській поведінці. Параметри європейської політичної свідомості зводяться ним до відповідної історичної пам’яті, трендів громадської думки та поінформованості відносно Європейського Союзу та місця його членів в євроінтеграційному процесі, зокрема оцінки існування й розвитку ЄС; поінформованість та думки щодо основних інститутів ЄС, оцінки важливості основних інститутів ЄС та довіра до них; позитивне бачення перспектив і майбутнього Європейського Союзу тощо. Індикаторами європейської політичної свідомості автор вважає її об’єктивні показники та виміри, зокрема позитивну кореляцію національного і європейського рівнів самоідентифікації (європейська ідентичність) та європейську поведінку. На основі цих індикаторів здійснюватиметься певний контроль за станом і тенденціями розвитку європейської політичної свідомості.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the party system of the Republic of Cyprus in the context of the country’s integration into the European Union. The purpose of the study is to clarify the role of political parties in the context of changing the vector of state development. Relevance stems from the possible use of the experience of the Cypriot parties for Ukraine during the European integration process. Based on the methodological foundations of institutional analysis, the hypothesis of European integration as a unifying factor for the Cypriot parties was put forward and confirmed. On the example of the party system in Cyprus, the process of adaptation of political parties, the legislative framework regulating the activities of associations of citizens, to European norms is disclosed. The process of еuropeanization of the parties of Cyprus in the formats of participation in the party groups of the European Parliament; сhange of electoral technologies; the process of party rhetoric transition to European themes. It focuses on the process of fragmentation of the party system based on the positions of the parties regarding the Cyprus problem. Attention is drawn to the gradual spread of radicalism and populism, the reduction of the strength of traditional parties, the gradual growth of absenteeism. The author has also researched the transformation of the Cypriot party system in the framework of the EU, determined the new features and phenomena in the functioning of the system during 2004–2016, defined the way the multi-party system was developing and the way the balance of forces was changing as a result of the national parliamentary and presidential elections and researched the election to the European Parliament in Republic of Cyprus as a factor of influence on the Cypriot party system.

The German party system has changed since the 1980s. The relatively stable ‘two-and-a-half party’ system of the 1960s and 1970s has become a fluid five-party system. This development can generally be attributed to changes on the demand and supply sides of party competition and to the changing institutional framework. The European integration process is part of this institutional framework and this chapter deals with the question of whether it has influenced the development of the party system at the national level. To systematically analyse the possible impact, eight party-system properties are distinguished: format, fragmentation, asymmetry, volatility, polarization, legitimacy, segmentation, and coalition stability. The analysis shows that one cannot speak of a Europeanization of the German party system in the sense of a considerable impact of the European integration process on its development. Up to now, the inclusion of Germany in the systemic context of the EU has not led to noticeable changes of party-system properties. On the demand side of party competition, this is due to the fact that the EU issue does not influence the citizens' electoral decisions. On the supply side, the lack of Europeanization can be explained mainly by the traditional, interest-based pro-European élite consensus, the low potential for political mobilization around European integration, and the marginal role of ethnocentrist–authoritarian parties.

The purpose of this chapter is to overview how the existing literature analyses the impact of domestic party politics on European policy chosen by national governments and thus, indirectly, on the course of European integration. Our hypothesis is that divergence of policy between Britain and France on European monetary cooperation is best explained by whether coordination of European policy between the government and opposition was successful or not. Therefore, the main aim of this survey is to examine how the existing literature estimates the impact of either the relationships between government and opposition, or of the national party system, on the process of European integration. We begin our literature survey with (1) the theories of European integration such as neo-functionalism and intergovernmentalism, then move to (2) multilevel governance, and conclude with (3) British politics, French politics and comparative European politics. We exclude the numerous (and still increasing) works on Europeanisation of domestic policy, polity and politics from our investigation, because the direction of causality in these works is the reverse of ours.1

The chapters included in this volume have covered much ground, from the place of parties in the accession referendums to the strategies followed by parties in the 2004 EP elections. In this concluding chapter we return to the themes and questions raised in Chapter 1 and discuss those aspects of the parties and party systems on which the EU and processes of European integration, in the light of our theoretical expectations and the country chapters, have exercised or should have exercised, the most decisive impact. We then focus on four areas: changes in the fundamental characteristics of the party systems, the ideological transformation of parties and the role of European party federations in this process, the place of Euroscepticism in electoral competition and the degree to which EU-related attitudes have received effective representation.

The article is devoted to the deepening of the tendencies of Europeanization of the internal and foreign policy of the countries of Eastern Europe in the context of the European integration process. Significant differences in the approaches and concepts of Europeanization of the internal and foreign policy of the countries of Eastern Europe in the context of the European integration process are outlined. A promising research vector for the definition of Europeanization is presented. It is noted that the main task is changes, transformations, reforms that occur in the sphere of political life under the influence of European integration. It is substantiated that the activity has the character of socio-economic and political transformation, the search for a new center of economic and political gravity after the collapse of the USSR and the world socialist system, the globalization of world economic relations. The peculiarities of the policy of candidate countries for accession to the organization are studied. It is argued that, in the internal process of Europeanization in the process of European integration, the civilizational affiliation of countries is determined; in the foreign policy process, Europeanization began with the political elite's awareness of the process of harmonizing the interests of countries.

The legal status and binding nature of various international governance and guidance instruments to foster and support quality strategies in European countries differs substantially. This presentation introduces and discusses the four main elements of an integrated international governance framework for quality in health care: i) raising political awareness of the relevance of health care quality and creating a common vision on how to improve it; ii) implementing this vision into actual policy frameworks by sharing experience and practice between countries; iii) developing and providing standards and models (voluntary or mandatory) that can be transposed into national policy; iv) measuring, assessing and comparing quality by developing better information, better indicators and methodologies as well as dissemination strategies. The presentation will also focus on how quality in health care is addressed through EU policy, first through EU provisions and policies that are meant to ensure free movement of citizens and goods and establish an internal market, and by means of more horizontal and generic EU policies on quality and safety that stem from the mandate to support, coordinate or supplement national policies. It will further highlight how EU integration and policy touch upon quality in health care and how the approach has evolved over time.

The aim of this chapter is to explore, on the basis of an analysis of the country’s party system and the changes it has undergone during the accession process, how closer relations with the EU have influenced Bulgarian party politics. We consider the influence the EU has had on the format and mechanics (Mair, 2000) of the Bulgarian party system during the post-communist transition period (1989–2005). The first section outlines the three phases of development the Bulgarian party system has passed through. It appears that EU integration has not influenced the format of the party system but has had an impact on its mechanics. The second section directs attention to transnational party cooperation and its influence on the composition of the country’s party system. The third section focuses on EU issues as they are presented in party programmes and the emergence of Eurosceptic political forces that have succeeded in gaining parliamentary representation.KeywordsParty SystemEuropean ParliamentMajor PartyParliamentary ElectionParty CompetitionThese 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.

Transformation processes at both the political and societal level are decisive factors for the future integration process of the European Union. Among the member states, highly variable causes for change are evident and particularly the inclusion-exclusion cleavage stands out. In addition, the pan-European crises of recent years have proved to be catalysts for the transformation of European societies and party systems, which is also being driven forward by new communication structures. Although the European elections themselves did not turn out to be an “earthquake” for the European integration process, they do make it more difficult to find a majority and form a government. The campaign themes that shaped the 2019 European elections have proved to be diverse. Environmental and climate policy does not count among the crucial issues for the elections across Europe.

Is the EU party system a reflection of national electorates or a distinct arena based on specific alignments arising from the European integration process? The main indicators used to test for distinctive dimensions in European Parliament elections are indices of electoral volatility comparing national and European elections. Data include national elections over the last 30 years and European elections from 1979 until 2004 for all member states. Evidence shows persistently overlapping electoral behaviour due to the predominance in the two ‘orders’ of elections of the left–right dimension. The article argues that this similarity reveals a multi-level European party system. In historical comparison, it is shown that, despite different conditions of social and political mobilisation, the left–right alignment plays a similarly important integrating role in the ‘Europeanisation’ of electorates today as it played in earlier processes of ‘nationalisation’.