Political Parties at the European Level: Do They Satisfy the Condition of Programmatic Convergence?

Abstract

EU democracy cannot work without an element of representation, because ‘no system can accommodate the participation of all relevant stakeholders’ (Eriksen and Fossum 2007: 9). Parliamentary representation is a key mode of representation (Pollak et al. 2009) and is particularly relevant for the EU. As Article 8A of the Lisbon Treaty states, ‘the functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy’ (European Union 2007: 14).KeywordsPolitical PartyEuropean LevelEuropean ParliamentRepresentative DemocracyIssue SalienceThese 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.