Europeanisation, Transnational Politics, and the Dilemma of Political Parties in the EU

European integration has transformed the political opportunity structure for parties and civil society actors, yet this transformation is marked by asymmetries and functional fragmentation. This paper theorises the interplay between two dynamics: the Europeanisation of party politics and the European Multilevel Party Field (EMPF) approach. First, we argue that Europeanisation has generated a structural decoupling of parties’ policy-making and electoral roles. While policy coordination increasingly occurs at the EU level through Europarties and intergovernmental networks, electoral competition remains nationally bounded, reinforcing trends such as personalisation and weakening programmatic linkages. Second, drawing on the EMPF perspective, we conceptualise parties as actors embedded in a structured but constantly renegotiated field of cross-level and cross-border relations, where positions and strategies are shaped by relative power and field norms. To capture the broader implications of these dynamics, we introduce the transnational politics thesis, which highlights how uneven capacities to operate in this field constrain the democratising potential of European integration and reproduce skewed patterns within party systems and civil society. Together, these insights address how fragmented integration shapes both elite coordination and mass representation, raising critical questions about legitimacy and democratic responsiveness in a multilevel polity.