Party Systems and European Integration: How Much Europe Sets a Party System in Motion?

As the process of European integration ebbs and flows, political parties in both member and candidate countries face increasing challenges and opportunities brought about by that process. As noted by Hooghe and Marks (2009), and as we have seen in the most recent political debates, Europe has become a contentious issue, and the effects of this change ought to be seen in domestic politics. This paper aims to discern the type, mechanism, direction, and magnitude of party system change that we see as a result of existence and activity of EU actors, institutions, and policies. There are three aspects of party systems where change has occurred: voters have begun to pay attention to European integration, and this issue has become politically contested; new parties have sprung up in EU member states that directly respond to the influence and role of the EU; established parties are facing new pressures to respond to voters' increased interest in European integration and the challenges posed by the euroskeptic parties. All of these elements have the potential to affect the party system as a whole. Though the concept of a party system is complex and multifaceted, in this paper I focus on just one of its aspects: electoral successes and failures of political parties in European democracies over the 1979-2012 period. Electoral performance has an impact on a party's standing and reputation, coalition potential, and policy orientation and policy salience, which is why I consider fluctuations in electoral performance to be a proxy for fluctuations in the party system as a whole. Methodologically, the paper is a quantitative analysis of electoral results, with an innovation in the way the impact of Europe is measured: a composite measure of Europeanization is developed and used, and its performance is subsequently compared to that of Europeanization measurements used in the literature thus far.