"Europarty politics": The consolidation of a transnational and multilevel party system in relation with EU elections and legislative politics

Abstract

Europarties, political groups in the European parliament and national parties form what could be named a European transnational and multilevel party system, characterized by a growing (yet asymmetric) degree of interdependence between types of party structures and levels of activity. This panel aims at providing new empirical and theoretical insights to better understand how these party structures and levels may be linked, and how they influence each other. It also aims at studying the degree and reasons of variation between party families, for instance between GAL and TAN parties, but also within each of these categories. To that end, it gathers scholars at different stages of their career, that use mixed approaches to try to make sense of the ongoing evolutions of "Europarty politics", whether within the European parliament (by focusing on the formation and micropolitics of its political groups), or outside the EP (by looking at the institutionalization of extraparliamentary organizations that try to (re)shape transnational cleavages in Europe, in close cooperation – and often in competition – with their national counterparts. On the occasion of the 10th direct election to the EP, this panel would be an opportunity to look in a comprehensive way and with mixed approaches into the evolutions of "Europarty politics" since 1979, notably the emergence of new issues (like gender politics), new groups (like the different versions of a Green group in the EP, or the Eurosceptic intra-TAN competition of ECR and ID groups). It will also address theoretically the complexification of the links between the EP political groups, the Europarties and the national parties, in an enlarged (and certainly soon an even larger) European Union. This should contribute to the study of legislative politics in the EP, as well as to the analysis of transnational cleavage formation in a comparative perspective.

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