Search

Survey research and relatively low voting turnout in the European Parliamentary elections indicate that Europeans are not as enthusiastic about EU democracy as they are with their national governments. One possible bridge to the “distant” European Union and national government is political parties. Many political parties did bridge the gaps between the EU, the national governments and citizens. However, not all political parties have equal representation in the EU nor do they all express the same opinions about the EU. Anderson and Iverdova (2002) find that citizens have positive attitudes toward government if they belong to the majority party (or coalition). For political elites, there is evidence that affiliation with a governing party correlates to dislike for changing political institutions (Bowler, Donovan and Karp 2002). Do political party winners support democracy at the EU level more than political losers do? Alternatively, is it more important what kind of position a political party takes on the EU? What kinds of messages political parties might be transmitting or reinforcing might be just as important as representation. Using survey data from the 1994 Eurobarometer and the 2004 European Election Study, I use logistic regression to investigate how the influence of political parties may affect feelings about the democratic deficit. I create EU-wide models based off the work of Rohrschneider (2002), along with country-wide models to determine any differences between countries in the EU. Results from my 1994 models indicate that respondents who are political winners, particularly in the EP elections are generally more likely to be satisfied with the representation they are getting at the EU level. However, I find that from the models broken down by country, it seems that a party’s attitude about the EU is driving the results. In countries where the best represented political party is skeptical about the European Union, respondents who support that party are likely to worry more about the democratic deficit, not less as the winners and losers theory suggests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of calls for new modes of governance this paper will explore the extent to which the transnational European Political Parties (Euro-parties) have sought to enhance their role and significance within the EU’s governance architecture. It will look at their structure; role and responsibilities; response to changing institutional environments. In so doing it will highlight an interaction between path-dependent legacies and individual agency. The paper argues that the Euro-parties have had to deal with three path-dependent deficits:.x000d..x000d.Genetic deficit: to what extent is it possible to develop political parties beyond the nation state?.x000d..x000d.Functional Deficit: despite Article 191 (EC Treaty) their role within the EU institutional architecture remained undefined .x000d..x000d.Linkage Deficit: Euro-parties lack a structured linkage platform with Europe’s citizens/national party members.x000d..x000d.Taken together, such deficits clearly constrain their capacity to deliver. This paper will show that by pursuing a process of institutionalisation the Euro-parties have sought to overcome those obstacles in the run-up to the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]