Eurowhat? An Exploratory Analysis of the Europeanisation of Flemish Political Parties

European integration poses national political parties with quite a challenge. As the European integration project advances, ever more competences are transferred from the national political level to the European Union (EU) institutions. This means that much of the policy-making in Europe "now lay outside the control of national governments, and thus outside the control of the parties that occupied those governments" (Katz & Mair, 2009, p. 754). Additionally, the crises that the EU has been entangled in over the past years put the EU at the centre of political attention, as many parties now put out clear EU positions and even claim ownership of the issue. Yet parties are faced with "a shrinking scope of issues for which resolution can be promised in election campaigns", but which are now decided by institutions at the EU level (Ladrech, 2002, p. 394). Consequently, parties are forced to interact with an unfamiliar level of governance that is growing in power and importance, not only on a technical/policy level but also on a political/electoral level. Little is known, however, about whether and how parties respond to these challenges. This paper intends to fill this void by performing a qualitative exploratory analysis of the europeanisation of Flemish political parties. To what extent have these parties adapted their organisation in response to European integration and which factors can explain variation? About two decades ago, Mair argued that, so far, there was little party europeanisation to speak of, claiming that "of the many areas of domestic politics that may have experienced an impact from Europe, party systems have perhaps proved to be most impervious to change" (Mair, 2000, p. 28) — a claim that was largely confirmed some years later by Poguntke et al. (2007). The main argument for explaining this non-europeanisation was a lack of incentives for parties to change. However, in the decade that passed since then, the EU has gone through fundamental transformation. The Lisbon Treaty entered into effect, further reinforcing the role of the European Parliament (EP). The 2014 elections also saw the first ever attempt to connect the composition of the European Commission to the outcome of EP elections through the so-called Spitzenkandidaten process. Additionally, in the wake of both the eurozone, Brexit and refugee crises, EU institutions were paralysed by growing euroscepticism. If a lack of incentives for parties to respond to Europe lie at the heart of their non-europeanisation in the past, then we might expect the situation today to differ quite profoundly. Indeed, not only does the growing number of competences that are transferred to EU institutions increase parties' policy incentives, the newborn political salience of Europe also poses parties with electoral incentives. An update of the literature on party organisational europeanisation is therefore in order. We argue that policy incentives have not been sufficient conditions for parties to undergo organisational change, but the more recent crisis-induced electoral incentives might just do the trick.