Governing the European Union, by Michele Boselli

2. The European families of political parties

Although embedded in political parties which organize on a national basis, it makes sense to speak of a European family of party traditions. David Scott Bell argues that, since the Roman Empire, European states have intensely interacted and political developments such as those on human rights have been contagious, so that “none of the great contemporary political traditions […] can be said to be the exclusive development of one society”. Political parties were established to embody the divisions generated in society by revolutions. In the order they developed according to Von Beyme and based on the social cleveages analysed by Lipset and Rokkan, we can identify eight major political traditions: liberal, conservative, socialist, regional, Christian, communist, fascist and ecologist.

Liberalism was the reformist engine of the nineteenth century, to the point that its main principles have later been shared by other political parties, thus leaving liberals in a crisis of identity reflected in poor electoral performance in most of the twentieth century. Today European liberals are united on a pro-European stance, but divided on economic matters (Lord); therefore not all of the national parties of liberal tradition are part of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR), which is however the European Parliament’s (EP) third parliamentarygroup with 52 members. They were 42 in the 1994-99 legislature.

Conservatism is the important right-of-centre political tradition that distinguishes itself from Christian-democrats for its secular character: it doesn’t refer to Church doctrine. The pest known conservative party is the British one, which is very Euro-sceptical: for example it wants to keep (conserve) the British currency, fearing loss of sovereignty for the UK. However, in the EP they form a single parliamentary group with the Christian-democrats: the European People’s Party – European Democrats (EPP-ED) and provide 36 of the 232-strong group (17 out of 202 in i994-99).

Socialism and social democracy find their roots in the industrial revolution and their definition of the Second International, while the Third one defines the Communist ideology. Differently from the latter, the socialist policies were well rooted in the Western camp during the Cold war, supporting the Atlantic alliance and European integration. However successful their policies were during the booming 1950s and 1960s, they proved inadequate to tackle inflation and unemployment in the 1970s, and the Second International parties began to seek a “third way” to save the welfare state.

Christian-democracy is, together with socialism, one of the two major political forces in Europe, as it is reflected in the composition of the EP, where they currently hold 232 and 181 seats respectively (they were 202 and 214 in 1994-99). Christian-democracy finds its roots in the Christian faith and played an important role in the building of the EU as three of the founding fathers were Christian-democrats in office: German chancellor Adenauer, French foreign minister Shuman, anf Italian premier Alcide De Gasperi. The three other founding members states of the Communities, Benelux, also had (and still have) “catch all” Christian-democratic parties.

Communism has fallen in popularity among the European electorate with its failure in the Eastern half of the continent. I halved its percentage from 7-8% in the decades 1950s-1970s, to just 3.5% in the 1990%. Communists opposed European integration since the beginning and they still “stand somewhere outside it”; unable to impose their own view they “press for changes and act as a pressure group on the main parties on the left” (Lord, Gaffney).

The extreme right party are essentially nationalist parties that oppose European integration and can hardly co-operate among themselves. As Union of Europe of the Nations (UEN), they conquered 23 seats in the 1999 EP election against the 15 they had in 1994-99 as IEN, but the appeal of their demagogic position against immigration seems to have weakened recently with poor electoral performance in France, Germany, and Austria.

Some Greens have opposed integration, too, depending on the pro- or anti-European “mood” of their national electorates, but the transnational implication of problems such as pollution should lead them to a more transnational attitude. The ecological movement is relatively recent and is focused on post-material values which do not sit easily in the Left/Right divide (Ingelhart). Their electoral performance in the current EP improved to 46 seats against 27 in the previous one.

Finally, regional parties in favour of a “Europe of the Regions” diverge in their demands, collocation in the Left or the Right, and attitude towards European integration. It is therefore difficult to analyse them in the context of the European family of party traditions. In conclusion, as Bell writes: “Europe has not eclipsed the nation state as the principal focus of political community, but […] there are multiple loyalties in politics [and] it is possible […] to live with a series of identities”, Europe being one of them.