4
to internally produce consensual proposals and the aptitude to be carriers of legitimacy to the work
of the Convention. We will then turn to analyse independent variables, i.e. the structural setting in
which European parties have to operate, both in its formal and informal aspects. To this aim, we
will test a principal-agent model applied to the relation between the European Council and the
Convention, in order to ascertain whether empirical evidence supports this thesis. If this is the case,
Left-Right cleavages would be structurally inhibited by the preponderance of divisions along
national and institutional lines on the most salient issues regarding the institutional architecture of
the EU. The main argument of this work is that the formal and informal constraints posed by the
original mandate embodied in the Laeken Declaration and in the working method and practices are
the main explanatory factors of the degree of effectiveness of European parties in the Convention,
ultimately determining a set of constraints that impedes a full-fledged prevalence of party politics
dynamics.
5
2. THE ROLE OF EUROPEAN PARTIES IN THE PROCESS OF
INTEGRATION: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
What is the relevance of EU level party politics in the process of European integration? How
important were European parties in affecting structural changes on the path to integration? Different
theoretical perspectives assign different roles to parties in the evolutionary path of the EU. Some
recognise the potential for innovation implicit in the politicisation of the work of the EP and the
division of its membership along ideological lines, some others not only neglect the role of
European parties, but substantially ignore them. The following overview is not aimed at providing a
comprehensive framework on integration theories, but at discussing the relevance of party politics
at the EU level in the two main theoretical approaches to European integration. Alternative
approaches will be presented and assessed according to their explanatory value.
2.1. Neofunctionalism, supranational institutionalism and political parties
In order to clarify what role neofunctionalism assigns to political parties in the integration process,
we can start by defining political integration as
the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to
shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new centre, whose
institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the pre-existing national states (Haas, 1958:
16)
Thus, in the original formulation of Haas’ neofunctionalist theory, the development of supranational
institutions is pushed by influential political groups that expect tangible benefits from joint
governance in specific areas (Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 139). Integration is seen as a dynamic
process in which the establishment of a supranational level of government affects the interests of
groups. In turn, interest groups react by organizing their activities across national boundaries and
move forward the path of integration by spilling it from one sector to another. This dynamics leads
to a two-way process that may be fostered by the willingness of central institutions to follow
policies generating expectations for more integration.
According to Haas, political parties tend to go along the same pattern followed by industrial and
pressure groups, by adding over into the federal sphere and consolidating the integration impulse.
6
Political parties, as a component of a wider range of interest groups, are defined as “the significant
carriers of values and ideologies, whose opposition, identity or convergence determines the success
or failure of a transnational ideology” (Haas, 1958: 5). They will tend to integrate beyond national
borders if allowance is made for their varying ideologies and constituencies toward a condition of
convergence. Political parties - and, in particular, their tendency to transcend national confines - are
thus active agents in the dynamics of integration and are originally defined by Haas as essential
indicators of Community sentiment
1
, providing empirical data on whether and why developments
leading to the evolution of a community are taking place (Haas, 1958: 9).
In neofunctionalist terms, then, European parties can first be seen as a spill-over deriving from the
creation of supranational institutions. Once established a supranational dimension, transnational
party links become a further source of integration by shifting loyalties to the supranational level. In
fact, political parties will perceive a shift in the location of meaningful authority and they will
redirect their activities accordingly in order to most effectively achieve their objectives (Rosamond,
2000: 52). Moreover, as Hix and Lord point out, Haas’ analysis, further developed by Leon
Lindberg, suggests that “parties which failed to redirect some of their efforts to influencing the
institutions of the EC on behalf of their voters would lose out in the competition for political
support” (Hix and Lord, 1997: 12). The implication, it is argued, is that, regardless the pro- or anti-
integration attitude of the party, there would be a competitive pressure to adapt to the European
political arena and to integrate, through the mechanism of political socialisation, into more
permanent organisations at the European level. Thus, in this self-reinforcing two-way process of
interaction between supranational institutions and interest groups, European parties were predicted
to become both an effect and a further source (or “carriers”) of integration.
Despite the success of neofunctionalism as a regional integration theory and the important role
assigned to party politics in the development of the EC, the period of Euro-sclerosis seemed to
announce a drawback and a decline in its predictive potential, a disaffection towards European
integration studies in general and a stationary state of party integration at the European level, so that
in 1975 Haas declared regional integration theory “obsolescent” (Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 146).
1
Political parties contribute to the creation of Community sentiment if the following conditions are met (Haas, 1958: 9-
10):
1. Political parties at the national level endorse supranational action in preference to action by their national
government
2. Political parties organise beyond the national level in order to be more effective decision-makers and define
their interests in terms larger than the single national states
3. Political parties coalesce on the basis of a common ideology
4. Political parties, in confronting at the supranational level, evolve a body of doctrine common to all
5. Political parties accept the rule of law emanating at the supranational level
7
The end of the period of stagnation came with the signing of the Single European Act, which
revitalised the studies on European integration and provided for a re-emergence of
neofunctionalism.
An example of this revival of old paradigms was the approach adopted by Sandholtz and Zysman in
order to explain the 1992 process. By recognizing the merits and the weaknesses of both
neofunctionalist integration theories and domestic politics approaches and by focusing on elite
bargains in response to challenges and opportunities in the international and domestic settings,
Sandholtz and Zysman (1989, in Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 195-216) coined a so called
supranational institutionalist approach. This was primarily focused on the role of supranational
institutions, in particular the Commission, as the main supranational political entrepreneur leading
the process of integration. There is little role, indeed, for European parties in the theoretical
framework built by Sandholtz and Zysman in order to explain the 1992 process, since they identify
its main initiators in the Commission, national governments and the business community. These
actors – the Commission as a self-interested advocate of integration, governments and
multinationals as players constrained by new domestic and international challenges in their
respective fields of actions - could find a convergence of interests in the completion of the 1992
project. The politicisation of the process was nested and confined inside national arenas, where, it
was argued, the defeat of the left in some countries and its evolution to a more market-oriented
approach in some others paved the way to an otherwise unlikely set of elite alliances (Sandholtz &
Zysman, 1989, in Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 215). The supranational level, thus, is not a party politics
space. The main actors operating at this level do not align along party politics cleavages, but
compete for achieving control over the bargaining process according to their relative powers. The
main difference from the intergovernmentalist basic assumptions is that the competition, instead of
being restricted to nation-states, is between supranational institutions, interest groups and members
states.
2.2. Realism and its heritage: a predominance of nation-states?
The biggest challenge to neofunctionalism as a regional integration theory derived from the
application of realism to European integration, the so called intergovernmentalist approach. Stanley
Hoffmann laid the theoretical foundations of this alternative to neofunctionalism in 1966, by
asserting, supported by the 1965 empty chair crisis, that the nation-state, both as a form of social
organization and a factor of international non-integration, was still the main actor in controlling
8
whether and how to proceed toward integration. Nevertheless, Hoffmann’s approach was far from
being a backward looking state-centrism, since it aimed at emphasizing the importance of national
interest in the post-war international politics of Europe (Rosamond, 2000: 76). European integration
is seen as a limited bargaining away control over economic aspects of national sovereignty, in
exchange of material benefits (Nelsen & Stubb, 1998: 157). Hoffmann opposes the logic of
diversity to the logic of integration set up by Monnet and analyzed by Haas. The logic of diversity
suggests that, “in areas of key importance to the national interest, nations prefer the self-controlled
uncertainty of national self-reliance, to the uncontrolled uncertainty of the blending process”
(Hoffmann, 1995: 84). Such an approach, by denying a causal, autonomous function to the
supranational level of government in the process of integration, leaves no ground for a role played
by the development of transnational party links in influencing the path of integration.
Andrew Moravcsik, a former student of Stanley Hoffmann’s, later developed the
intergovernmentalist approach by proposing his liberal intergovernmentalist alternative to the
Sandholtz and Zysman’s explanation of the 1992 process (Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 217). By
considering the case of the negotiations of the Single European Act, Moravcsik constructs an
alternative explanation of systemic change. This approach is based on three principles (Moravcsik,
1989: 10):
1. the main actors responsible for the conclusion of the SEA were the three largest states,
whose negotiating positions, reflecting their international competitive advantage, allowed
them to exercise a predominant influence
2. the three largest states enjoyed a veto power in the bargaining process over regime change,
unless threatened of exclusion from a coalition between the other two
3. the final agreements will leave narrower possibilities for future transfers of sovereignty
In assessing the application of neofunctionalism to the case of the SEA, Moravcsik explicitly denies
any causal function to the supranational level of government. In his own words, “the evidence
suggests that the SEA did not result from the pressure or momentum generated in Community
institutions” (Moravcsik, 1989: 37). The European Parliament in particular, it is argued, had no say
and was deliberately and systematically excluded from the preliminary phase of the negotiating
process and from the IGC. The case of the SEA is taken by Moravcsik as a piece of evidence for
9
more generally calling into doubt the neofunctionalist assumptions that the political processes of
integration be favoured by changes in the roles of actors and organizations. On the contrary,
Moravcsik asserts that systemic changes will not occur as direct results of functional spill-over or
institutional accretion, but as the outcome of extended negotiations leading to sovereign decisions
by member states. Party politics is relevant at the national level in defining positions, setting
conditions, constraints and margins of leverage for international bargaining. The fact that in this
approach European political parties are not even mentioned as a source or a causal factor of
integration is thus no wonder, but a logical consequence of the theoretical premises from which it
moves.
2.3. European parties become an object of analysis
The first European direct elections, held in 1979, provided an important structural change in the
political context and an incentive for scholars to take into consideration the actual and potential role
of party federations. As argued by Bardi,
the years immediately surrounding the first direct election of the European Parliament (EP),
when trends towards the transnationalization of European political parties were predicted by
many experts, witnessed a widespread feeling that direct elections might provide the
equivalent stimulus at the European level that during the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth centuries had fostered the birth of political parties at the national level (Bardi,
1994, in Katz and Mair, 1994: 357)
Studies regarding the role of a European party system in the European Community did not have the
formal elegance of a grand theory of integration, but they did not even aim at that. Given the lack of
literature on the subject and the period of Euro-sclerosis and institutional stagnation in which
integration studies had to develop, attempts to include an analysis of transnational party
coordination in the broader framework of European integration had a more empirical and pragmatic
approach, from which they derived some normative conditions on the parallel development of both
European parties and the context - i.e. the European political system - in which they had to operate.
Their actual and potential role and importance was pointed out by various authors and has been
increasingly remarked since 1979. In this year, on the eve of the first European direct elections,
David Marquand examined and criticised the role of parties in the European Parliament by asserting
10
that it was “decorative rather than functional” and that the “Parliament would look different if the
groups ceased to exist, but it is doubtful if it would behave differently” (Marquand, 1979: 114). His
critic was not sterile, but aimed at underlying that a strong European party system was an essential
precondition for accountability in the Community system. In his own words, “a central weakness in
the Community system is that no one can be held unambiguously to account for decisions taken at
the Community level” (Marquand, 1979: 115). The only remedy to this accountability gap, it was
argued, was a proper channel between the electorate and decision-makers, a function that is
provided by political parties in every parliamentary model. The conclusion is that, “if the
Community system of government is to be based […] on the parliamentary model, a Community
party system will be needed too”. Marquand’s pioneering analysis, though not aiming at creating a
comprehensive explanatory theoretical framework for the process of integration, poses the creation
of a true and genuine European party system as a central normative condition for the consolidation
of a parliamentary model at the Community level, thus laying the foundations for considering the
EC as a political system on its own.
The lack of political impact of transnational party cooperation
2
was addressed also by Pridham and
Pridham and indicated as one of the main reasons for the limited attention given to the subject by
the literature (Pridham and Pridham, 1981: 4), a shortage of analytical coverage that was considered
entangled with the specific path of integration of Europe itself, to the extent that “party-political
integration as well as political parties and European integration has been something of a ‘forgotten’
aspect of Community studies” (Pridham and Pridham, 1981: 5). Nevertheless, observing the latest
development of the EC during the 1970s, these authors conclude that European integration and the
creation of a European party system are two intertwined processes:
The general development of the European Community in the 1970s has promoted and
conditioned the politicisation of transnational party cooperation (Pridham and Pridham, 1981:
8)
2
Defined as the “institutionalised coordination and promotion of common policy positions and other forms of European
activity by political parties of the same ideological tendency from different member countries within the broad
framework of the European Community” (Pridham and Pridham, 1981: 1-2)
11
2.4. Towards a “Europe des partis”?
These first attempts to consider the role of European parties in the process of integration lacked the
systematisation of grand integration theories, but they necessarily suffered the period of institutional
stagnation in which they were conceived and the lack of a consistent theoretical corpus on the
subject. Moreover, as pointed out by Bardi (1994, in Katz and Mair, 1994: 357), “since 1979 […]
no formal steps of any importance towards the transnationalization of European parties have been
taken”, thus failing to meet the expectations and the predictions of many scholars and analysts. An
impulse towards a revitalization of high theorizing, however, started in the mid 80s with the
conclusion of the SEA. As we have already seen in the case of the neofunctionalist-
intergovernmentalist dispute, this first set of major amendments to the founding treaties provided
the occasion for a revival of old paradigms (Rosamond, 2000: 99).
Nevertheless, apart from Haas’ analysis, which reserves a place in his theoretical framework for the
formation of transnational political links as a result of political spill-over, one may argue, from the
brief overview conducted in the previous sections, that in the old neofunctionalist-
intergovernmentalist dispute there is not a great emphasis placed on the role of a European party
system. This theoretical deficiency had some empirical roots in the institutional asset of the
European Community, characterised by a structural weakness of the European Parliament, and in
the lack of accountability of European institutions. In a few words, in the lack of politicisation of
the European Community, still perceived as a technocratic construction.
From a theoretical point of view, however, the two variants of the IR approach cannot go beyond a
“Europe des patries” because they share some basic assumptions limiting the scope of their
analysis. As argued by Hix and Lord (1997: 202), these theories maintain that, although the EU is a
hybrid form of international organisation, the central actors of integration are still the European
nation-states. According to these authors, the EU has developed into an object of observation that
cannot be analysed only within the IR framework:
As the EU develops beyond a pure Europe des patries, the ability of the IR paradigm to
explain how EU politics works is reduced (Hix and Lord, 1997: 202)
The underlying principle was that, given the inner complexity and specificity of the EU political
system, a reconceptualization of the subject was necessary in order to address it from the right
perspective, and not as a simple aggregate of rational actors maximising their utility functions by
12
reaching the lowest common denominator. The two mainstream theories of European integration
had focused on explaining the process of integration, while the subject of their predictions, it was
argued, had undergone such radical structural changes that new conceptual lenses were necessary in
order to understand its internal dynamics. As a consequence, not only old paradigms and the
predictive potential of grand theorising were to be reconsidered, but a new and ‘revolutionary’
approach to European integration was to be conceived as a reaction to the theoretical polarization
between the two extremes and a tentative to move beyond the established status quo. This
theoretical turn was aimed at providing more powerful analytical tools than those offered by
traditional International Relations approaches. The emphasis on the internal day-to-day nature of
the EU rather than on the more traditional international bargaining dimension was to suggest the
proper set of analytical tools to interpret the EU polity. Comparative politics, it is argued, has the
most explanatory power in order to fully grasp the internal nature of the EU political system.
Among the first scholars to develop this approach to EU studies, Simon Hix derived this conclusion
from the assumption that the political entity constituted by the EU had to be treated as a domestic
polity:
Although the political system of the European Community (EC) may only be ‘part-formed’
and largely sui generis, politics in the EC is not inherently different to the practice of
government in any democratic system (Hix, 1994, in Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 324)
The analytical tools of International Relations, according to Hix, could have a sufficient explanatory
power when the EU was an international organization. Since the EC is not a simple aggregate of
nation-states anymore, IR approaches have a limited explanatory value in order to analyse the
internal nature of the EU and its political dimension. The implications of this Copernican revolution
to EU studies in terms of the analysis of the European party system are evident. By changing the
perspective of the observer and considering the EU as a unit of analysis to be dissected into its
components and dimensions, it becomes theoretically relevant to take into consideration the
politicisation of the system:
As the political nature of the EC develops, […] there is also conflict over questions of
allocation and distribution of resources. On these socioeconomic issues, political
competition is along a fundamentally different dimension, which in comparative political
terms is classically referred to as the Left-Right (Hix, 1994, in Nelsen and Stubb, 1998: 324)
Ricevi informazioni sui nostri servizi, sulle offerte e non perdere news e consigli su università e lavoro.
