Institutionalization of Movements: New Political Class and Political Elites in Europe and the EU

Abstract

The electoral success of new parties in recent national and European elections has fostered the emergence of new movements’ demands, especially those with anti-system features. In the 2014 European elections and in recent general elections in many European countries new parties, possibly in connection with social movements, have obtained noticeable percentages of either seats or votes, thus becoming relevant components of the party system both at European level and the national level. Apart from the changes in the political system, this institutionalisation process has brought about the emergence of a new political and parliamentary elite both at the EU level and the national level. Can these parties become stable and predictable actors of European and national systems, thus institutionalising the movements from which such parties have emerged? A very interesting point is understanding why such parties have institutionalised and which consequences can be derived from such process, especially from the elites’ features viewpoint. This panel invites contributions that analyse the formation of a new political and parliamentary elite both in the European Parliament and in the national parliaments from several viewpoints: - analysis of the political class thanks to an analysis of individual careers, with particular attention to individual trajectories both inside and outside the political sphere. - analysis of the consequences of the movements’ institutionalisation and of the inception of the new political and parliamentary class on the legislative behaviour and on the more general political system’s functioning. - analysis of the mechanisms that have led movements to institutionalise in the political or in the narrower parliamentary arena. This panel welcomes papers based on both quantitative and qualitative methods that aim at using comparative cross-country strategies or single case-studies.