Party System change and European integration:

conceptual conundrums and cross-national evidence

Sanja Badanjak∗†

April 11, 2014

Abstract

The concept of party system is a classical one in political science, but its development andoperationalization (especially for the purpose of creating indicators that may be used in large-Ncomparative studies) have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, I am considering four relevantelements of party systems: party weights, polarization, fractionalization, and voter turnout. Thepaper is aimed at achieving two aims: first, to assess the usefulness of using these indicators asoperationalizations of the concept of party system; second, to assess the empirical question ofEuropeanization as determinant of party system change in European democracies. The problemof operationalizing the concept of party system for use in large-N comparative studies is that ofdisaggregation and aggregation. While disaggregating the concept of party system is somewhateasy, re-aggregating the findings to provide insight into party systems and party system changeis proven to be a more challenging task. On the empirical front, the major party systems-relatedindicators examined here are found to be significantly affected by the extent and intensity ofthe process of European integration, thus pointing to a resolution of the debate in the literatureconcerning the Europeanization of party systems. 1

∗PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Department of Political Science†Paper prepared for the Political Studies Association Meeting in Manchester, April 14-16 2014; Work in progress,

please do not cite without author’s approval1Arguably, the paper topic ended up rather different than was planned in the originally submitted conference ab-

stract - I hope the panelists, the discussant, and the panel chair can look past this and offer advice and guidance forimprovement nonetheless.

1

1 Introduction

For many among Europe’s political elites, the European Union (EU) has become a thorny issue. We

have seen governments fall over issues related to it, as in Italy, Greece, Slovakia, to name but a few; we

have seen protests over EU’s influence on member states’ economic policy, as in Greece, Portugal, and

Spain. Additionally, new contenders have appeared on the political scene, explicitly challenging the

mainstream parties’ support of the European project. Related to these events, and to the deepening

and widening of the EU’s authority, the way in which European integration affects democracy in

the EU member states and the democratic status of the EU as a polity has become a matter of

debate among academics. As a system of multilevel governance (Hooghe and Marks 2001), the EU is

necessarily provoking shifts in domestic politics: what happens at the national level is no longer purely

national and isolated from the events, actors, and interactions at the EU level. One might therefore

reasonably expect that the party systems of the member states, as vital parts of democratic polities,

would be affected in some way. The process of integration places numerous demands on member states

and candidates for accession, and shifts decision-making power away from the domestic institutions,

thereby altering the conditions under which political competition takes place.

In this paper, I argue that the increase in depth and breadth of European integration has had a

notable impact on the party systems of the EU’s member states and provide evidence for this claim.

I argue that the rise in prominence of the European Union is bound to change the conditions under

which parties compete in its member states, and that this change of conditions has had an impact

on party systems in these countries. I demonstrate this impact in a series of statistical analyses of

electoral results and party system characteristics in European democracies from 1979 to 2012.2 I

focus on four key elements of party systems: party success, polarization of competition, electoral

turnout, and overall party system fractionalization. The main independent variable, embeddedness in

European integration, is measured by an index composed of weighed individual measures of European

integration.

My main aim in this paper is to look at Europeanization of party systems as part of a broader

picture of the state of party systems in Europe, but I also contribute to a reassessment of the concept

of party system, one that goes beyond counting relevant parties, and gives us a wider view of party

competition and requirements for success, of both individual parties and the party system as a whole.

The issue of conceptualizing and operationalizing party systems is an important one, both as a theo-

2To the extent that the availability of data allows.

2

retical matter, and as a crucial part of the research design and empirical assessment of the problem

of Europeanization.

Empirical findings of the paper pose some problems for the current literature on Europeanization

of party systems, as I find that the effect of integration may be subtle, but it is substantial. When it

comes to party success, those parties with the pro-integrationist stances are found to be losing support

as integration intensifies. The same process is highly correlated with an increase in fractionalization

and a decline in polarization. The ideological distance on the left-right scale is decreasing with more

integration, but this does not mean that competition disappears, or is confined to centrist parties.

In fact, the findings show that party system fractionalization increases in countries that are taking

part in ever more elements of European integration. Finally, the expectation of a depressing effect of

integration on electoral turnout is not confirmed, indicating that the downward trend noted by Mair

(2013) might have its sources in some of the other relevant societal processes, such as modernization,

breakdown of traditional groups, and decline in religiosity. When considered as a whole, these results

suggest that there is indeed an ongoing process of party system change in Europe, which is in part

driven by an increase in the breadth and depth of European integration.

The scholarly literature on Europeanization has covered much ground, ranging from works on

the bureaucracy, individual parties and party groups, to work on particular policy areas and policy

outcomes(Featherstone and Kazamias 2001; Featherstone and Papdimitriou 2008; Grabbe 2001; Knill

and Lehmkuhl 2002; Natalini 2010). This research agenda includes investigations of the impact of

EU membership on national party systems, but empirical findings have been mixed, partly due to

a lack on consensus regarding the definition and scope of a party system(). Furthermore, this lack

of consensus has also translated into a lack of accepted measures of party systems characteristics

that can be used in quantitative analyses. This paper proposes a set of measures of party systems

and provides an assessment of the magnitude and direction of the effect European integration has

had on key elements of party systems in European democracies. Its contribution is thus threefold.

First, it adds to our knowledge about the way that European integration affects domestic politics.

Second, it tackles the issue of quantitative analysis of party systems in consolidated democracies by

modeling four indicators of the state of a party system: party success, party system polarization,

electoral turnout, and party system fractionalization. Third, it provides a solution for the problem of

measuring ”Europe”, the main independent variable in the study of Europeanization, by constructing

an index measure of embeddedness in European integration.

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The first motivation for this paper lies in day-to-day events across the continent, where news

stories describing the politicization of Europe in the member states abound, especially in the context

of the Euro crisis. They range from a breakdown of the party system in Greece, to issues such

as the downfall of governments and rise of euroskeptic and far-right political forces, especially in

light of the 2014 European Parliament elections.3 In Italy, for example, the fall of Silvio Berlusconi

was closely intertwined with the crisis of the common currency. The UK has been rocked by a

rise in popularity of UKIP (UK Independence Party), which seeks the country’s withdrawal from

the EU and has replaced the Liberal-democrats as the third most popular party. 4 In Germany,

typically a mainstay of European integration, the 2013 elections saw the appearance of Alternative

fuer Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), a party whose main campaign promise was disbanding

of the Eurozone as it now exists.

My second motivation follows from the scholarly literature on the Europeanization of party sys-

tems. Two issues in particular stand out. First, existing research on the impact of Europe has largely

focused on very direct effects of European integration, such as the appearance of new parties, EU

issue-voting, European integration as a distinct new societal cleavage, and changes in party organiza-

tion(MAIR 2008; Mair 1998, 2007; de Vries and Tillman 2011; LADRECH 1994; Ladrech 2002a, 1997).

It has largely neglected the possibility much of the effect of Europeanization may be less dramatic and

more subtle. Second, as Peter Mair (2007) observed, aAIJit may be possible to trace a link, however

indirect, between Europeanization and the more widespread malaise that increasingly tends to char-

acterize much of democratic life in modern Europe.” (pp. 49) In other words, the impact of Europe

on party systems may be part of a bigger story: that of decline of partisanship, party dealignment

and a ”hollowing out” of choice. Situating the impact of European integration in this bigger story of

democratic ”malaise” (Mair 2007, 2013) and isolating its effect is a key contribution of this paper.

2 How to conceptualize and measure party systems?

There is a fundamental problem in the party systems literature: there is much talk about elements

and features, types and changes, but a clear answer to the question of what is a party system a case

of is lacking. The literature itself has seen much debate since its early days, though there has been a

profound decline in the attention given to the topic by political scientists since the 1980s. Caramani

3For a view contradicting this common presumption of a right-wing rise in Europe, see Cas Mudde’s blog post4The Guardian, December 2013

4

and Hug’s (1998) quantitative analysis of all scholarly work on party systems indicates that the area

of study had seen the most of attention in the 1970s and the 1980s, with the number of published

books and journal articles dropping precipitously after that.

There are good reasons why the literature on party systems is still relevant and why studying

party systems in Europe can provide relevant insights. First, party systems are crucial elements of

democracies, and their study allows us to understand the ability of democracies to survive and thrive.

Second, Europe is nowadays in many ways a laboratory for observing the ability of institutions to

withstand pressures, from both within and without. The unprecedented level of integration seen in

the European Union leads us to ask how has this advent of a system of multi-level governance (Hooghe

and Marks 2001) or a multi-layered political system (Deschouwer 2003) affected the democracies that

take part in integration. It is reasonable to expect that the pressures and opportunities provided

by European integration would have an impact on party systems in the member states. This issue

may have policy implications in the design of formal institutions that will be dealing with the further

democratization of the European project. Third, the study of party systems in democracies can provide

us with insights on broader issues of institutional stability and change. Here, I explore Europeanization

of party systems as part of a broader picture of the state of party systems in Europe, but make the

first move towards developing a more complex concept of party system, one that goes beyond counting

relevant parties, and gives us a comprehensive view of party competition and requirements for success.

My starting point is a consideration of party systems as institutions. Institutional nature of party

systems has been recognized, but has only rarely been discussed. I argue that explicitly conceptualizing

party systems as institutions allows us a better insight into the pace and consequences of party system

change. This line of thinking is especially useful in the European context, where the (relatively) long

lasting democracies have allowed party systems to institutionalize, to fall into repetitive patterns of

behavior, while simultaneously responding to both internal and external pressures.

There are certain features of party systems that allow us to think of them as institutions. First,

they are at their core a set of rules about the way parties behave. Political parties are defined by

their organization, their electorate, their ideological positions, their relationships to the other political

parties. Each and every one of these features places limits on what parties are able to do. While

they, as rational actors,5 can make decisions and change behaviors, the scope of these decisions and

behaviors is limited. A left-wing party can hardly join a coalition with a party on the opposite end

5It is understood that parties are not, in fact, unitary actors. For the purpose of parsimony in this section, however,the assumption of unity will be maintained.

5

of the spectrum without suffering costs, be they in the form of losing voter support, disenchanting

members, or alienating other potential coalition partners: ”The nature of the party system tends to

define the limits of behavior of the individual members of the system. For example, a political party in

an extreme multi-party system cannot act like vote-maximizing, centripetal party typical of two-party

systems if it hopes to survive. In addition, existing political parties and the structure of cleavages may

create niches for certain types of parties, but not others.” (Peters, Pierre and King 2005, pp. 115-116)

This issue is commonly seen in democratic practice in Europe. Most recently, there is the case

of the German elections in September 2013. Neither of the large centrist parties was able to form

a government on its own, or with traditional partners: CDU-CSU saw the FDP all but obliterated,

while both the SPD and the Greens suffered a decline that ruled them out of bidding for government

formation. However, a pure leftist coalition could have been created, that of SPD, the Greens, and

Die Linke, a successor to the East-German communists. Die Linke were shunned, however, by both

SPD and the Greens, in a clear case of taking the mores of a party system into account. Die Linke are

simply not seen as acceptable coalition partners, and the SPD preferred joining a grand coalition as a

junior partner to leading a leftist coalition with a party that is considered to have a radical position

and a problematic past. Another example is that of Italy’s pre-1992 party system, which contained

such a strong norm, tabboo even, against coalescing with the Communists and the post-Fascists,

that the country ended up in what must have seemed like an endless cycle of governments lead by

Democrazia Cristiana, the Italian christian-democrats. The patterns and rules of behavior in a party

system are in that sense normative and institutionalized. They are general rules that carry some type

of punishment in the case that an actor is found to be in breach. A potential example is that of the

British Liberal-Democrats, who have suffered in the opinion polls, and in by-elections, following a

hotly debated coalition with the Conservatives in the wake of the 2010 elections.6 As these examples

show, party systems provide boundaries for party actions, and deviations from the thus delimited

actions may bring about serious punishment.

Another typical institutional characteristic of party systems is their relative longevity. Among

advanced democracies, party systems have tended to have long duration, even in the face of change.

Change has tended to be incremental, while radical and sudden party system breakdown is a rare

6See, for example, (Adonis 2013), for a description and discussion of the failed negotiations for a Lib-Lab government,where the said coalition was described as natural on several occasions. Yet, it has failed to materialize, with potentialpunishments for at least the Liberal-Democrats. A 2012 survey indicated that the party might lose 50 of its 57seats, and that 57% of supporters think their coalition with the Conservatives was a betrayal of party principleshttp://www.standard.co.uk/panewsfeeds/lib-dem-poll-massacre-survey-shock-7646726.html

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exception. One of the features of institutions is their stickiness, their ability to survive under pressure

and to permanently structure actors’ decisions. Though it has only on rare occassions fit the strict

definition of a two-party system, the British party system is nevertheless a case in point. There, the

basic structure of the party system has been in place for over a century.7 Even in cases of seriously

dysfunctional party systems, we have witnessed incredible longevity. The essential competitiveness

and ability to change government had effectively been lacking in Italy in the 1948-1992 period, but the

patterns of behavior of political parties, cleavages, coalitions, numbers and organization of parties all

survived for much longer than many Italian voters hoped it would. This ability to perpetuate itself,

even in the face of pressures, and to moderate and mediate change makes party systems political

institutions par excellence.

Among European democracies, it is predominantly the Central and Eastern ones that see the

largest degree of party system instability. While the politicized cleavages remain more stable than

other parts of those party systems, the parties tend to come and go, and few stable coalition patterns

have emerged. In many of these countries, it is not so much party system change we are talking

about, as it is party system institutionalization. The issue of placing party systems in the study of

institutions is mentioned by Guy Peters (2005) in his review of the ”new institutionalisms.” He points

out that party systems do pose a problem for the study of institutions, as they raise questions of

how we define institutions, giving the example of situations where a party system may be stable as it

provides a certain set of ”niches”, but individual parties occupying these niches change. What is it that

constitutes the institution: the pattern that survives, or is it also the set of actors that may be more or

less stable? 8 It seems to me that both are true, and that institutional change need not be just change

on one dimension. As seen above, party systems are explicitly conceptualized as multidimensional

phenomena, and all of these dimensions may be institutionalized. Similarly, a change on one of the

dimensions constitutes party system and institutional change.

Party systems are odd institutions, and their stability in some crises is as puzzling as their fragility.

In a way, party system change is a matter of tipping points and critical junctures, but it is also a

matter of equilibria which collapse after the payoffs to the main actors have sufficiently changed. For

me, there is no other viable option but to think of the problem in terms of institutional theory. Party

7In this particular case, even a change as momentuous as the decline of the Liberals, and the surge of Labour hasnot managed to alter the basic tenets of the party system. Granted, some of these are direct functions of the electoralsystem, such as competition essentially occurring between the two largest parties. Others, however, are more particularto the party system itself, such as the taboo of republicanism, or the mores of campaigning.

8Adding to the complexity is the discussion by (Sanchez 2009), who proposes a category of party non-systems, forcases which are suffering an ”ever-changing constellation of parties.”

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systems are far too complex to be influenced by individuals, and far too compelling to be completely

dominated by concerns of individual voters.

European party systems have been seeing change, but this change has only rarely been sudden,

explosive, revolutionary. In line with the way that institutional change happens, we have seen fits and

starts, long processes, and uneven outcomes. As any institution, a party system is in an endogenous

relationship with the main actors, those whose actions are constrained by it, and whose continued

activity makes part of the institution itself. Just as institutions affect actors, these political actors,

both parties and individuals, are able to leave a mark on the institution, thus contributing to its

incremental, but no less certain change.

How do we know when a party system changes? What are its basic features? A review of literature

on party systems shows that there are numerous positions on what the elements of a party system

are. Bardi and Mair (2008) point out that party systems are multidimensional phenomena, which

appears to make conceptualization rather difficult. They also note that the concept has not seen

much attention since Sartori (1976). Party systems are complex, and typologizing based on absence

or presence of individual elements, as seen in Sartori’s classical works, is likely to become a difficult

endeavor.

The literature in comparative politics approaches the issue in numerous ways. Bardi and Mair

(2008) note the complexity of the concept of party system: it may be thought of according to vertical,

horizontal, and functional criteria; party may exist in the electoral arena, in the parliamentary arena

and the governmental arena; one polity may contain several party systems, and there may be parties

in the same country that do not belong to the same party system, or belong to it at different levels.

Further issues arise with measuring party systems for the purposes of quantitative analysis. As

Sartori (1976) noted, the mere number of parties may be a misguiding indicator for characteristics of

a party system, as the competition patterns and issue dimensions may provide for radically different

outcomes in cases where the number of relevant parties is the same.9 Even defining the elements

of party systems is not a wholly resolved matter. Della Porta (2001, 143) states that when we talk

about party systems, we talk about several things: the number of parties, dimensions of competition,

distances among parties, parties’ mutual relationships of competition or coalition, the level of electoral

volatility, and electoral participation. For Laver (1989, p. 304), crucial elements of a party system are

identity of parties in the system, their weights, their position on salient policy dimensions, saliency

9On the issue of counting parties for the purpose of defining the characteristics of a party system, see Laakso andTaagepera (1979)

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of these policy dimensions. Party systems are about competition of political parties, so everything

that changes the circumstances of competition changes the party system. The elements discussed by

both Mair (2007) and by Laver (1989) include the number and type of political parties, dimensions of

competition, coalition potential, party organization, voter allegiances, party success in various types

of elections, and party weights.

This diversity, coupled with the institutional perspective, leads the researchers into a conundrum.

The difficulty is not only in defining party systems, but also in the measures that stem from the

definitions. Furthermore, as it is clear that the concept must be defined in a multi-dimensional

manner, the measure(s) must follow the same lead.

Any measure must take into account the basic features of a party system, without neglecting

those subtle elements that change slowly over time, in small increments. It is apparent that merely

counting the number of political parties will not result in a good measure of party system. While

necessary, this measure alone does not provide enough of detail and does not reflect the considerations

of competition that parties need to take into account.

In this paper, I have chosen a set of measures that capture some of the most important elements

and features of party systems and party system change. First, the electoral weight of parties and

their ability to maintain or even increase the appeal to voters is accounted for in the ”party success”

variable, which is a simple measure of whether the party has increased its share of the vote or not.

Second, fractionalization accounts for the number of parties that successfully compete in elections, as

it measures the probability that two randomly selected members of the legislature would be from the

same political party. Third, polarization accounts for the ideological difference between the relevant

parties, thus giving an indication of whether a party system is dealing with a centripetal or centrifugal

type of competition. Finally, I am looking at voter turnout, as an indicator of the connection that the

citizens have with the party system, and legitimacy accorded to it.

Each of these elements on its own is not enough to characterize a party system. When examined

collectively, however, these indicators can provide a good general overview of the state of a party

system. Large losses and gains may speak to overall lack of stability in the party system, while

the remaining variables reflect the issues most commonly discussed in the party systems literature:

circumstances of competition and relation to voters.

Similarly, a change of just one of these indicators does not signal party system change. For a

phenomenon to have an effect on party systems, it needs to move several of its elements simultaneously.

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I argue that the process of European integration is precisely that sort of phenomenon.

3 Literature

Two problems stand out in the literatures on Europeanization and party systems. First, while studies

of Europeanization now form a veritable subfield of European Union studies, the literature on party

systems in this context has not been expanding at the same pace. Second, this inability to keep

up with the pace of other strands of literature in social science largely stems from the difficulty in

connecting the concept of a party system with reliable measures, especially those that may be used in

quantitative analyses.

When it comes to Europeanization of party systems, the findings in the political science literature

have thus far been inconclusive. Some broad assessments of this process have concluded that there has

not yet been a substantial impact of the EU on domestic politics, party systems included, (Anderson

2002; Mair, Peter. Political Parties and Party Systems 2007; Hlousek and Pseja 2009), but the studies

limited to small samples of countries and particular elements of party systems indicate that there is

a subtle though pervasive impact of the EU(Back et al. 2009; Borzel 1999; Baun et al. 2006; von dem

Berge and Poguntke 2013; De Winter and Cachafeiro 2002; Goucha Soares 2010). There is much we

do not yet know, which is not surprising given the relative novelty of the process, and the fact that

European integration may be an example of slow-moving institutional change(Pierson 2003), the sort

of process which may have effects that appear slowly over a longer period of time. While the area

of Europeanization studies has been flourishing, its comparative party systems component has seen

relatively little attention.

Historically, party systems research has been related to the domestic context of democratic states.

In the European case, we had seen the advancement of a hypothesis of ”freezing party systems,” where

Rokkan and LipsetRokkan and Lipset (1967) argued that party systems have remained stable after

their initial formation in early 20th century. However, the changes in European party systems have

made this theory somewhat obsolete.10 Numerous authors have noted the rise of fringe parties (Betz

1994; Mudde 2007; Meguid 2010; Art 2007, 2011; McGann and Kitschelt 2005), and recent events

surrounding the crisis of the common currency suggest that success of governments and outcomes of

elections depend more and more on the way European integration is perceived by voters and addressed

10Though the ’freezing’ hypothesis is for the most part not supported, their discussion of the way that Europeanparty systems came into being is still a compelling classic.

10

by politicians and political parties (de Vries and Tillman 2011; De Vries and Edwards 2009; Schoen

2008; Jolly 2007). This literature has been rather successful at showing that there is in fact a large

degree of connectedness between the European and the domestic levels. Thus Schoen (2008) shows

that the decisions voters made in German elections had been influenced by their views on Turkey’s

accession to the EU, and Tillman (2004) finds that the decisions in national elections in Finland,

Sweden and Austria at the time of their EU accession had been affected by the accession process. The

article by de Vries (2010) is perhaps the most interesting in this area of research. She investigates

whether there had been an impact of European matters in national elections in a subset of four EU

member states and finds that voters and parties take cues from each other on European matters.

One of the questions asked in this article, ’Which parties are profiting from European integration?’

is of my interest here as well. However, unlike de Vries, who focuses on the relationship between the

parties and voters in a subset of countries and a short period, my aim is to provide an overview of

changes, challenges and opportunities that the parties have had to deal with over a longer period of

time, across all of Europe.

Not observing European integration as a fairly slow-moving process with many diversions, stops

and gaps may be one source of concern. With many studies setting narrow geographic or temporal

boundaries, it is even less clear which processes are common to all European countries and which

elements of European integration are most relevant for these processes. The examples of (Jolly 2007)

and (Meguid 2005) are a case in point: these studies of regional parties and niche parties, respectively,

include European integration among the independent variables, but only do so by measuring integra-

tion by only the number of signed treaties, ignoring the need to include other elements of integration,

such as Eurozone or Schengen Agreement memberships. Furthermore, not all of these elements are

equally relevant or carry equal weight when it comes to a country’s participation in integration.

As noted above, the literature on party systems in general did not follow the pace of development

of the Europeanization literature. Though we have a fairly good idea of the influence of the EU

on most areas of political life, we still know little about the impact on party systems. The issue of

competition, a vital but not sole element of a party system, has seen some attention. Here, Nanou and

Dorussen (2013) find that integration has indeed acted to decrease competition in domestic politics.

They examine nine policy domains in eighteen Western European countries and find that there has

indeed been a decrease in divergence in the policy distances between parties in the examined countries.

However, this divergence is not surveyed as part of a nexus of party system elements, and it does not

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take into account the potential for interaction between the independent variables.

One of the major issues in the literature on Europeanization of parties and party systems is the lack

of large-N comparative analyses. With the exception of Nanou and Dorussen’s large-N quantitative

study (2006; 2013), and several other pieces that take a qualitative and/or more theory-oriented stance

(Poguntke 2007; De Winter and Cachafeiro 2002; Ladrech 2002a,b), most of the literature focuses on

small-N(Bachelot 2007; von dem Berge and Poguntke 2013; Fink-Hafner 2008; Hanley 2002; Hayward

and Murphy 2010) or country-case analyses(Baun et al. 2006; Hanley 2006). As noted above, much of

what we know about Europeanization comes from small-N and country-case studies, and this paper

aims to address this gap by providing a large-N quantitative analysis of select elements of party

systems.

One of the reasons for this lack of comparative studies of party system Europeanization, I assert,

is that the literature on party systems was not able to provide a standard and shared idea of what

exactly makes up a party system and how this could be measured. This lack of consensus makes it

difficult to assess the impact of the EU on party systems - to be able to do that, we first need to know

what we are looking at. Without attempting a broad reassessment of the concept of party system in

this paper, my aim is to single out several party-system-related outcomes and estimate the impact that

the EU has had on them. This might then be a fruitful starting point for a more comprehensive and

systematic comparative study of party systems, and the way they have been affected by the process

of Europeanization.

4 Issue statement and hypotheses

Most of what we know about Europeanization of party systems concerns what Mair (2007) refers to as

direct impact of European integration. There, the focus of Mair’s work is on two issues: format of the

party system (number of parties), and mechanics of the party system (ideological distance between

parties and the relevant dimensions of competition). When answering the question of whether the

EU has had an impact on party systems, Mair looks at whether new parties dealing with the EU

have emerged, and answers (rightly) with a clear ”no.” This is a very tough standard, a criterion

that is nearly impossible to satisfy, for two reasons. New and successful political parties are rather

rare in established democracies, and most of those that succeed do not achieve large and sustainable

gains over night. Regarding the matter of the format of the party system, it is clear that Europe

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has become a salient issue in at least some of the EU’s member states: in the UK, the referendum

on leaving the EU has become an issue that both the Conservatives and Labour are discussing,11

Portuguese citizens were protesting the austerity measures their government is enforcing to stay within

the boundaries of its bailout agreement,12 and national elections are having ripple effects across the

continent, as a news item headline suggests that ”Italy election triggers EU identity crisis”.13 However,

these developments have not appeared quickly, nor have these sorts of changes become widespread

and general. Furthermore, it is far from certain that salience of the EU as a political issue can be

translated into the existence of a political cleavage. By definition, political cleavages stem from deeply

held divisions in the electorate, and not every salient issue can claim to be reflection of a cleavage.14

Similarly to the development of cleavages, party system change is not going to appear from one

day to the next. We know from the institutionalist literature15 that institutions are sticky, slow to

change. In many ways party systems are institutions. They are modes of competition in which players,

moves and potential strategies remain largely stable over time. Party systems provide boundaries on

actions of political parties and individual politicians. In the language of March and Olsen (1996), there

is a logic of appropriateness at work within a party system. Change is incremental, does not happen

from one electoral cycle to the next, and parties consider their moves with the memory of previous

successes, or previous failures.16 Change that requires a response is often something only grasped after

the fact. The literature on Europeanization may be expecting too much, and may be dismissing the

impact of Europe on parties a bit too soon. If we are going to see Europeanization of party systems,

we are going to see incremental change, indirect change, failures and successes. Caramani (2004)

devotes his book to the nationalization of party systems, the process which he notes lasted up to two

centuries in some cases. We may live in a world that sped up a couple of notches compared to the

early democracies Caramani is discussing, but there is a a useful lesson here: we could be expecting

too much when we expect direct and quick impact of Europe. The first EP elections took place in

1979, which is a useful benchmark, but the hypothesized moment of politicization of Europe (Hooghe

11BBC on domestic debates regarding the EU12Deutsche Welle on protests in Portugal13Deutsche Welle on Italian elections14See Mair(2013) for the claim that the issue of the EU may fit the old center v. periphery cleavage as discussed by

Rokkan and Lipset(1967).15(Thelen 1999; Pierson 2000b, 2003, 2000a; Thelen 2003)16Andrew Marr’s A History of Modern Britain (2009) provides some insight into the way that various sets of political

elites failed to perceive numerous social changes that were happening around them. Some met the end of their careersbecause they were not able to perceive the context properly, and it would likely be a tall order to expect their successorsand colleagues in other countries to be more perceptive and willing to act on what is, arguably, a deeply changingenvironment.

13

and Marks 2009) does not happen until 1992 and the process of the Maastricht Treaty coming into

force.

One way to think about party systems is to take into account the fact that they are essentially

institutions embedded in a broader institutional setting: national party systems are now nested within

the broader institutional setup of the European Union. As the European Union and the member

states share and distribute competences, the institutional setting that party systems are entrenched

in changes as well. Slow change of the broad institutional structure is bound to affect the national

units, resistant though they may be. In order to detect this type of process, we might need to look

for it in phenomena that are more subtle than the broad ideas typically discussed in the literature on

party system Europeanization.

Much of what used to be part of the strategic reasoning of actors within a party system is now

out of reach, with the decisions being moved to the supranational level, or at best to a position

where competences are shared between the supranational and domestic actors. By shifting policy

competences, the process of European integration has shifted the possibility for competition over

a range of issues from the national to the supranational level. Furthermore, some issues, such as

monetary policy and trade negotiations, have been taken over by independent institutions. As Jolly

(2007) points out, European integration has made it more likely that a subnational unit may be

feasible outside its state, thus changing the balance between the center and periphery, one of the core

cleavages described by Lipset and Rokkan. The move towards the common currency brought about

an increased concern with the health of public finances, prompting in some cases tightening of the

budget and introduction of new taxes. Hooghe and Marks(2009) added the issue of identity to the

debate - European integration is a process that has the potential of striking voters in a very personal

way, by challenging their ideas of identity, belonging, nation and community.

The argument put forward by Hooghe and Marks (2009) suggests that the period after the Maas-

tricht Treaty came into effect witnessed a change in the way citizens perceive the European Union.

Before the 1990s citizens had the attitude of ”permissive consensus” (Hooghe and Marks 2009) re-

garding European integration, but that had changed into an attitude of ”constraining dissensus.” This

means that European integration can no longer proceed without consideration of citizens’ demands:

politicians are now forced to ”look over their shoulders” when making decisions that have to do with

the type and extent of integration. One of the most established assertions that European scholars

have made concerns the separation of the European and the domestic political sphere (Mair 2000;

14

Ladrech 2007).

Seen with these findings in mind, European party systems are expected to respond to challenges

and opportunities provided by European integration. We ought to be able to see that some of the

basic indicators of party systems covary with the changes in the levels of European integration. In this

paper, I am focusing on party success, voter turnout, party system polarization and fractionalization.

Party success is, of course, not a direct consequence of European integration. It is the case, how-

ever, that European integration creates part of the backdrop for the decisions political parties make in

order to maximize votes, for policy or office-seeking purposes. As rational actors, we expect political

parties to adapt to a changing environment. However, parties also need to be on the lookout for their

voters’ opinions. If Hooghe and Marks (2009) are correct, and voters are becoming more worried about

the pace and direction of European integration, then the parties that take on strong pro-integrationist

positions ought to be losing more or gaining fewer votes than average (H1). Typically, the most enthu-

siastic supporters of the integration process have been the large parties of the political mainstream.

Additionally, this ought to be more visible in the post-Maastricht period, when integration becomes

more visible to the voters, and their diffuse support turns into concern about more specific issues

(H2), such as the advent of the common currency, potential increases in immigration, and a shift of

sovereignty towards the European level.

With all of these shifts, it is reasonable to expect that the complexities of a multi-level polity

might alienate some voters. If so much is being decided at the EU level, is there much use in voting?

A rational voter may well decide that turning out to vote is not as important as it used to be, and

turnout rates ought to drop as integration advances (H3). We have learned from the literature on

European parliament elections that they function as second order national elections (Reif and Schmitt

1980; Koepke and Ringe 2006; de Vries et al. 2011; Weber 2007), thus making it clear that the voters

still give national elections most of their attention. However, the trend is at best stagnating, and the

drop in turnout may be related to the increased complexity of the political system(s) in Europe.

With Mair (2007) warning of the possibility of hollowing out of choice, it may be the case that the

EU, by shifting competences, reduces the viable policy options, especially in the area of classical left-

right politics. Therefore, the expectation is that the increase of intensity of European integration will

lead to a shrinking of viable policy options that parties present to voters, and a parallel reluctance of

voters to cast votes for those offering non-viable solution. Both of these mechanisms ought to lead to a

shrinking of the political space where traditional competition happens, and a decrease in polarization

15

in party systems, at least on the left-right scale (H4). This expectation partly draws from (Caramani

2012) who takes 1970 as the starting year in his analysis of vote distributions across Europe, and

concludes that there has been a trend towards more homogeneity. The voting patterns are especially

alike for parties that compete mainly on the left-right dimension, which includes the major political

parties in European democracies.

Finally, with Jolly(2007) and Meguid(2005; 2011) arguing in favor of an increase in popularity of

regionalist parties, and a now commonplace assertion that far-right parties are on the rise in Europe,

the question of whether these new additions have had a substantive impact on party systems arises.

If both these claims are correct, we ought to see an increase in fractionalization of party systems:

there ought to be more parties gaining parliamentary seats as European integration progresses (H5).

It ought to be noted that H4 and H5 are not necessarily in contradiction: if there are new parties

competing in elections, but they choose to focus their programs on valence issues, such as immigration,

status and state of the nation, membership in the EU or some element of it, the overall polarization

on the classical left-right issues may decrease nevertheless.

One of the most important questions Mair (in Paolo Graziano and Vink (2007)) asks is a simple

counterfactual: what would happen if Europe were to disappear as an issue? Mair’s answer is ”Not

much.” With the benefit of a several additional years, the spectrum of political parties that have

appeared, disappeared or nearly disappeared, were challenged on the issue, has significantly broadened.

While there were few prominent cases of domestic political turmoil caused by European integration

in 2007,17 things look rather different in 2013, with Europe causing the fall of several European

governments in a relatively short period of time, and Europe-related issues affecting entire economies.

The argument behind the four hypotheses suggested above is the same: the advancement of European

integration has had an impact on domestic politics in general, and on party systems in particular.

5 Research Design

In order to test these hypotheses, I have estimated a series of statistical models, in two groups. The

first two hypotheses are tested in models of party success, with the political party/election as the

basic unit. The remaining two hypotheses are tested in models with country/election as basic unit.

Prior to estimating the models of party success, the data were subject to a process of multiple

17At that time, the downfall of Margaret Thatcher in the run up to the Maastricht Treaty may have been the mostserious warning of Europe-related clashes to come

16

imputation using Amelia (King et al. 2001) in R. This procedure was used to fill in the missing

data, so that loss of cases would be avoided. The initial dataset contained 1712 cases. There were

20 missing data rows for the variables from the Manifesto Project data, and up to several hundred

from the DPI data. Multiple imputation was only performed on the variables that had less than 15

percent (no more than 250 instances) of missing data. Variables that had more than 15 percent of

missing data were not used. Since the DPI data are recorded at country level, the missing data also

appeared at country level, which means that institutional data was missing for 14 country-years. Once

the process of multiple imputation was complete, the data were checked for duplicates and different

coding of the same political party. In this process, 17 duplicates were found and removed, resulting in

a party-level dataset with an N of 1695. The country-year dataset used for analyses of polarization,

fractionalization and turnout was extracted from the party-level dataset by selecting a single year for

every country that appears in the data and removing party-level variables. This resulted in a dataset

with an N of 192. The analyses were conducted on five imputed datasets, and the original dataset,

with no substantial difference in results. Here, the results are reported for one of the datasets created

by Amelia.

Electoral weight of individual parties is one element of a party system that can be observed

quantitatively, and over time. For analyzing it, I propose a statistical model that estimates party

gains or losses based on factors such as party type, status of country in European integration, party

strategy, with control variables for institutional structure and other country-level features. Models

of party success are based on a simple measures of the dependent variable, where party success is

measured as change in vote proportion in comparison to the preceding national elections. The models

that use the former variable are linear mixed effects regressions. Mixed effects regression is a very

useful tool for dealing with time-series cross-sectional data as is the case here. This group of models

provides the regression coefficients as averages across groups, and takes into account the fact that

some unobserved group-level factors may be influencing the results. The model provides the results

for both fixed and random effects, though these are not reported on in detail.

Data have been gathered for all European democracies (see full list in Appendix II), EU mem-

bers and non-members alike, so that variation exists on the most important independent variables,

those related to EU membership and participation in parts of European integration projects, such as

the Schengen agreement and the common currency. Remaining independent variables are related to

party type and characteristics, and characteristics of the country. Another independent variable of

17

theoretical interest accounts for the fact that not all parties are in the same position going into an

election. This is the ’mainstream’ dummy variable, which is meant to isolate the effects that being

characterized as mainstream, as opposed to niche and/or extreme may have on electoral success.

The unit of analysis for the party success models is a political party in a given national election

year, and the cases are selected from the universe of political parties in European democracies in

the period from 1979 to 2011. The first cases to be used in the dataset are those of political parties

competing in the domestic elections after the first direct election of the European Parliament. The

closing year is chosen so that the most recent available data may be part of analysis. Countries that

are included in the analysis are all EU member states, EFTA states, EU candidate countries, and

those countries that are taking part in the Schengen Agreement. Since the dataset consists only of

multi-party democracies, instances of parties competing in elections in authoritarian countries are, of

course, excluded. The Polity IV scores 18 are used to determine a country’s eligibility for any given

election year, and only those countries with scores between +6 and +10 will be included.

The turnout, fractionalization and polarization models are robust linear regression models. In

these models, the unit of analysis is European country in a given election year, with the same time

frame and same selection procedure as was described for the party success models.

The most relevant variables for testing the hypotheses are those that directly account for type of

association with the European Union at country level and position towards the EU at party level. At

the country level, I am using two ways of accounting for the role of European integration. The first is

an index measure of embeddedness in the EU, which combines the measures of EU membership, length

of membership in the EU, Eurozone membership, Schengen participation, and ability to implement

EU law, measured by the number of infringement procedures started against a country in a given

election year. The second way to take these matters into account is to include them in statistical

models as individual variables.

In the policy world, indexes and composite measures in general are fairly common tools. They are

simple to use, they convey a lot of information in a single piece of data, and they allow for rankings

of units. In political science, we often encounter index or composite measures. Polity IV, Freedom

House, UN’s Human Development Index, and many other composite measures are regular parts of

our discussions. Their main purpose it to aggregate and combine data that are not expressed in

the same unit, but all relate to a broader concept: democracy, development, performance, quality of

18Polity IV website

18

government/democracy, to mention but a few. For quantitative research, they may be useful as they

reduce the number of independent variables and thus help solving the problem of degrees of freedom

that often plagues comparative cross-country research. Though they carry these benefits, valid and

reliable indexes are difficult to construct. The aggregation criteria tend to be the source of much

debate, as is the issue of weighing different elements of the index.19

For the purposes of this paper, I have created an index measure of embeddedness in European

integration of individual European countries, trying to capture more than the mere fact of membership.

Not all EU member states are the same - some take part in the Eurozone, some do not; some are very

diligent in implementing EU law, while others are more likely to face warnings from the Commission

or legal action for failure to implement EU law. Furthermore, even non-members can take part in

some elements of European integration, such as countries that take part in the Schengen agreement,

which are not EU members. There has been some debate on the best way to capture this issue.

For example, Meguid (2011) follows Jolly’s (2010) measurement which is based on participation in

different treaties, and it ranges from 0 (participation in no treaties) and 3 (participation in all treaties

up to Maastricht). In a European Union of 27 member states that have been joining at various times,

and considering the fact that every new treaty builds on the previous one, this measurement provides

little information on timing and sequencing of European integration.

I have constructed an index based on measures of EU membership, length of membership in the

EU, Eurozone membership, Schengen participation, and ability to implement EU law. In order for

the index to be balanced, I have used a simple aggregation method with differing weights for some

elements of the index. Even though Munda and Nardo (2009) state that simple linear aggregation

is not suitable for this task because the assumption of preferential independence is not satisfied, the

preferred method of multi-criteria decision analysis proved to be very complex in a large dataset. All

but two measures were added up as raw data to make up the index. Membership length and number of

infringement cases needed to be rescaled and weighed so that they do become the dominant elements

of the index. For that purpose, I have used the proportion of EU’s existence the country has been a

member (taking 1951 as the starting point; e.g. in 2005 Austria had been a member for 10 years, which

is a proportion 10/59) and the relation of number of infringement cases started against a country in

a year to the maximum of that variable. This way, I got figures that could be added to the remaining

19For excellent discussions of constructing composite measures, see Freudenberg (2003); Grupp and Mogee (2004);Hoskins and Mascherini (2009); Jacobs and Goddard (2007); Munda and Nardo (2009); Saisana, Saltelli and Tarantola(2005)

19

variables without dominating the final result.

As an alternative to the index, all of its elements were used in some of the models. EU membership,

participation of each country in the Eurozone and in the Schengen agreement at the time of the election

are dummy variables, where parties/countries score 1 if their country is part of one of these institutions,

and 0 if it is not. It is important to note that these variables capture variation both among member

states and non-member states. For example, not all EU members are part of the Eurozone or the

Schengen agreement, but it is also the case that some Schengen countries are not EU members (e.g.

Switzerland).

In order to test H1, I am using the data provided by the Manifesto Project,20 which includes vari-

ables (per 108 and per 110) that measure positive and negative mentions of European Union/European

Community in party manifestos. These two were combined by subtracting the negative positions on

EU from the positive, creating the variable of ”position towards the EU”. Along with these, variables

that measure party positions on the overall right-left scale, on matters concerning multiculturalism,

citizenship, trade protectionism, and overall left-right party position were added as controls.

Though manifestos are usually not relevant for individual vote choice, I argue that their use for

this sort of analysis is defensible because one cannot think of them as absolutely true accounts of

party positions, but as sources of signals for other political parties, relevant journalists, and very

interested voters. When a party issues a manifesto, it does so not to present its positions to the

general public, but to other actors that directly take part in the political process: adversaries and

potential partners alike. Admittedly, data from the Chapel Hill expert survey (Hooghe et al. 2010;

Marks et al. 2007; Steenbergen and MARKS 2007), could have been used, but it is this strategic

element about manifestos that makes them more appropriate for this purpose. If parties are reacting

to their changed environment, their manifesto may be the first place where this reaction may be seen.

While experts on political parties certainly can give good assessments of overall party positions, for

most parties, most of the time examined in this paper, European integration may not have been on

the experts’ ”radars.” This is likely not the case for the most recent expert surveys, but utilizing those

data would not allow a long enough period of analysis. Similarly, though Benoit and Laver (2007)

show that their expert survey (Benoit and Laver 2006) is in some ways superior to the data extracted

from party manifestos, their data do not extend far back enough into the past to be considered for

this analysis. For these reasons, the use of the Manifesto Project data remains the best choice.

20https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/

20

The H2 is tested utilizing an interaction term: if it is the case that the post-Maastricht period is a

time when voters care more about Europe, then surely we should see a difference in the level of success

of parties that have positive attitudes towards European integration in the pre- and post-Maastricht

periods.

The remaining variables are controls, both institutional and structural. All of these are part of

the World Bank’s Database of Political Institutions (DPI)21 (Beck et al. 2001). It is established22

that institutions, especially electoral institutions, have an impact on outcomes of elections, and on

electoral results of individual parties. To account for this relationship, I am including average electoral

district size in the country in question, at the time of the elections, a variable that controls for relative

ease of election. Plurality systems with single member districts score 1 on this variable, which is the

minimum. The variable is not bounded at the other end. Similarly, variables measuring mean district

size, plurality rule (first-past-the-post) and electoral threshold are included.

The political structure of countries is controlled for by using a further set of variables from the

DPI: Herfindahl Index for both the government and opposition23, party system fractionalization, and

electoral system variables (plurality, PR, closed lists, mean district magnitude). In order to show the

relevance of country-level institutional factors, I estimate two models, one with and one without these

variables.

The same set of country-level controls is used in the models testing H3, H4, and H5. Here, I am

estimating three robust linear regression models for each of the dependent variables, one using the

embeddedness index (Models 1), and one using variables that the index is made up of (Models 2). The

data here are similar to the data used above, with the addition of the dependent variables (turnout,

polarization) and a dummy variable for countries where voting is mandatory. The data on turnout were

gathered using the IDEA website.24 The models otherwise include comparable independent variables,

with the exception of fractionalization models, which exclude the Herfindahl index for parties in

government because the variable is correlated with the dependent variable, and prevents the models

from converging.

The dependent variable in the polarization model is based on the assumption that the viable

21http://go.worldbank.org/2EAGGLRZ4022See (Neto and Cox 1997; Carroll, Cox and PachACAsn 2006; Cox 1997; Hix 2004); for a discussion of endogeneity

of electoral institutions see Benoit (2007)23Measures the size of party in relation to the group it belongs to - this is one potential measure of competitiveness

of the party system. In economics, this measure is used in a similar manner, measuring the competitiveness within abranch of industry.

24www.idea.int

21

and relevant political parties are covered by the Manifesto Project data. By measuring the distance

between the furthest left party and the furthest right party on the Manifesto Project’s ”right-left”

variable, we should have an idea of how the countries differ in terms of polarization. This measure

is truly relative, as it only has meaning when values for various countries are compared. The choice

of the dependent variable in the polarization model is somewhat controversial, with the alternative

provided by Dalton (2008) being the most likely contender to replace the used measure. This measure

is based on the right-left measure provided in the Manifesto Project dataset (Budge and Laver 1992).

Huber and Gabel (2000) noted that pooling left-right data by country is problematic when calculating

and correcting individual party scores - since the Dalton (2008) measure of polarization does the same

by adding up the thus corrected party scores, this issue may appear in his measure. Furthermore, by

taking into account the party vote shares, it also introduces an element of the other measures used in

the model, those of fractionalization and Herfindahl indexes, thus increasing collinearity of the left and

right hand sides of the regression equations. For these reasons, I am choosing the simplest measure

of polarization in a party system, that of distance between the left- and rightmost relevant parties in

election-year.

The third models, those of fractionalization, are intended to test whether it is indeed the case

that new parties arise as a result of European integration (H5). Fractionalization of party system is

a simple measure: it indicates what the probability is that two randomly picked members of parlia-

ment will be from the same party. The measure is conceptually specific, as it takes into account the

parliamentary party system, rather than the party system overall. It ought to be noted that frac-

tionalization and polarization do not necessarily go hand in hand: a party system may exhibit high

polarization even when the number of parties (fractionalization) is low. Dalton (2008) points out that

”correlating polarization with the Herfindahl index of party fractionalization shows that these two

party systems characteristics are unrelated (r =.067, N = 33)”. In the models below, fractionalization

and polarization are disparate enough to allow the robust linear regression models to converge.

The unit of analysis in both sets of models is country-election year. As is the case with similar

models, the problem of a relatively small number of observations is present, with N=192. 25

The same analysis was repeated in simple OLS models, showing similar results, but allowing for

easier plotting of predicted results. The plots are all designed using OLS results.

25The use of OLS is also problematic, as the dependent variable is not truly continuous, but is theoretically andpractically bounded at both the minimum and the maximum.

22

6 Results

The results of the first models are somewhat unusual, as very few of the variables that are used to assess

the extent to which parties succeed to gain votes achieve statistical significance. Substantively and

statistically, the most significant variable is that of total legislative fractionalization, and it indicates

that party gains will be below expected average if the legislative fractionalization is high. Along with

this variable, only two others gain statistical significance in the full model: competitiveness among

government parties and the index measure of embeddedness in European integration. The integration

measure has a statistically significant negative impact, but this is a difficult result to assess outside

context. Figure 4 provides a graphical presentation of expected vote gains for a party that is at the

mean of the ideological left-right scale as the embeddedness index increases. The negative trend is

obvious: when all other variables are held at typical values, a centrist party will be likely to lose more

and more votes as integration deepens. In this sense, H1 is supported, even though this is not easily

discernible from the regression table.

The second hypothesis, that of an increased importance of the EU in the post-Maastricht period,

is more difficult to assess directly, as it depends on an interaction term. Since interaction terms cannot

be directly interpreted from the regression table, Figures 1 and 2 allow for visual inspection of results.

In these figures the change in vote level for a party is presented as their position towards the EU

grows more positive. The panel on the left shows what the situation was prior to the Maastricht

Treaty, while the panel on the right shows the outcomes in the post-Maastricht period. Even though

the interaction term is not statistically significant, the two panels are strikingly different. Before

Maastricht, support for integration was likely to bring in some votes, at least 1%. After Maastricht,

the slope disappears, and there is even a slight negative trend. The confidence intervals grow really

wide towards the far ends of the position towards Europe scale, suggesting that a healthy dose of

skepticism may be required. This is also a consequence of the fact that positions towards European

integration do not take up much space in the party manifestos. The measure is based on proportions

of manifesto that a particular party designates for a Europe-related topic. As a consequence, there are

few cases of parties that discuss integration a lot, making for a dearth of cases on the extremes of the

measure of position towards the EU. In conclusion, H2 (change in conditions of competition after the

Maastricht Treaty) is supported, as Figures 1 and 2 point to a disappearance of a pro-integrationist

bonus for political parties’ success after 1992.

H3 finds some support in the robust linear regression models (Table 2): polarization does become

23

lower in countries that are more embedded in the EU (though this finding is only statistically significant

at .1 level). Figure 3 shows the effect of this variable on polarization when all other variables are held

constant. However, it should be noted that polarization may still grow (or remain stable) on valence

issues or dimensions other than left-right. One potential criticism, which may put this result into

doubt, is that the results are showing the effects of a simple time trend. In this situation, there are

two reasons why the criticism does not stand. First, the measure of European integration is not a

simple trend, it does not linearly increase with the passage of time. Some of its elements do have this

characteristic (e.g. duration of membership), but others do not (e.g. Euro or Schengen membership,

infringements of EU law). The measure varies over member states, and is not a linear function of the

passage of time. Second, European integration provides a solid account of the reason why polarization

would be decreasing, something that a time trend cannot offer.

The really interesting findings in terms of Peter Mair’s (2007) warnings regarding a hollowing out

of electoral choice come in the form of highly significant and substantively high negative coefficients on

Eurozone and ERM membership. Even when other elements of European integration are accounted

for, these two variables remain highly negatively correlated with polarization. It may well be the case

that the options become more narrow, and economic radicalism less viable, when a country is facing

the obligations stemming from deep economic integration. These same variables are also negatively

correlated with turnout, suggesting that it could be the case that voters too perceive a lack of choice,

as Mair had warned.

For both polarization and turnout, a communist past is a major depressant, with turnout being

approximately 16 percentage points lower in post-communist countries than in the rest of Europe.

In the case of turnout, the EU embeddedness index failed to even come close to reaching statistical

significance, thus prompting rejection of H4. The index performed well in the fractionalization model

(Fractionalization 1), where it was both positive and statistically significant. The coefficients in this

and the model that excludes the index are all very low, simply because the values of the fractional-

ization variable are all below 1, as they indicate probabilities. Thus the value of the EU index of .01

indicates that an increase in the index of 1 is associated with a .01 increase in probability that two

randomly picked members of the legislature are not from the same party. The substantive effect of the

increase of embeddedness in EU on fractionalization is shown in Figure 5, for a centrist party, with

all other variables held at typical values. The figure shows a clear increase in fractionalization, thus

providing support for H5: European integration is indeed associated with a growing number of parties.

24

This also lends support to findings in the literature that note that European integration is triggering

support for ethno-regionalist parties (Meguid, Jolly), and it lends credence to popular claims that

associate the new right-wing radicals with reactions to the EU and constraints of membership.

7 Conclusion

In a party system, not all is contained in cleavages and dimensions of competition, nor in the number

and type of parties. Party systems are more complex, as they are the results of what is essentially a

coordination game played by voters, parties, and individual politicians. In a situation with innumer-

able factors that guide these actors, an equilibrium is not an easy state to reach, and making it likely

that not all elements of the equilibrium are equally stable. Some of the more important elements, such

as dimensions of competition, or largest political parties, or coalition patterns, may be so important

that we can only rarely observe them change. Other parts of the system may be more conducive to

change - manifestos may be adjusted and changed, party organization may adapt, undecided voters

may choose particular new issues to vote on, thus bringing new parties into the legislature, and some

voters may choose not to turn out to vote at all. Facing the challenges and opportunities stemming

from the process of European integration, European democracies may not be exhibiting tectonic shifts

in their party systems. The argument of this paper was that European integration does, in fact, have

an effect on party systems, but that this effect will be found, if anywhere, in measures more subtle

than new cleavages and a swarm of identical parties that criticize the process of creation of an ever

closer union in Europe. The data do lend support to this claim.

In accordance with the expectations by Hooghe and Marks (2009), the issue of Europe has been

affecting the fortunes and circumstances of political parties. After 1992, they do find themselves in

a shrinking policy space, and facing more competition from new actors. This is particularly true for

parties located in the center of the traditional left-right divide (as indicated by figures 3-5). The

finding is relevant for the students of European politics, and for the way we think about the future of

integration in Europe. If it is indeed the case that the traditional supporters of integration are facing

pressures stemming from the process they supported over several decades, we could see a backlash,

not just in the form of new challengers on the political fringes, but also in the form of party splits and

internal conflicts. Europe matters - but the direction of change is still something that may change,

depending on the responses from the political mainstream.

25

Though the support for the hypotheses has been found, indicating an effect of European integration

on party systems, much uncertainty remains.

Party systems are multifaceted institutions, and their elements ought to be researched as a whole.

These results indicate that there is indeed some effect of Europe on parties, voters, and their interac-

tions. However, they also bring about further questions that need to be answered. First, the issue of

differential impact of Europe needs to be taken into account. Taking part in European integration does

not mean the same thing over time, and the results point to there being some difference between the

pre- and post-Maastricht period, and a difference across old” and ”new” democracies. These matters

ought to be elaborated.

Second, the issue of ’Europe’ might not the same for all political parties, and additional measures

of party type ought to be controlled for in models of party success.

Third, there is much room for improvement in the models, especially in the country-level models

that may better be estimated using a multi-level Bayesian framework.

Fourth, the impact of Europe on party systems is not limited to party success/performance and

voter turnout, as questions of individual voters’ preferences, dimensions of competition and party

structures and strategies need to be analyzed in conjunction with the matters discussed here. These

matters require more than statistical models, as we also need to be able to verify the results by utilizing

qualitative and historical data.

One of the challenges that remain is that of aggregating the results in a manner that would allow

for conclusions to be made about the ways in which party systems as institutions exhibit change

and reflect the broader processes, both those within the polity, and those that come from without.

Disaggregating the concept of party system has been easy - reconstituting it in a manner that is both

theoretically and empirically valid remains obstinately elusive.

Finally, these results beg further questions about the nature of institutions, and sources of institu-

tional change and endurance, as opposed to institutional breakdown. Study of Europe is still relevant,

as Europe is the most important laboratory in which we can observe the impact of international con-

straints and opportunities on consolidated democracies. Party systems are just one part of this larger

story of institutional endurance under external pressure. Studying institutional change and stability

may find its natural home in Europe, as we seek to learn what makes democracies last.

26

Model 1 Model 2(Intercept) 2.24∗∗ 11.25∗∗∗

(0.72) (1.85)Mainstream party 0.20 0.03

(0.54) (0.53)Right-left position 0.00 −0.01

(0.01) (0.01)Protectionism 0.59∗ 0.54

(0.30) (0.30)Position towards the EU 0.10 0.07

(0.17) (0.16)Post-Maastricht −0.76 0.22

(0.49) (0.54)Positive towards integration −0.15 −0.12

(0.09) (0.09)Negative towards integration −0.01 0.01

(0.15) (0.13)Negative towards multiculturalism 0.14 0.20

(0.15) (0.15)Restrictive view of citizenship 0.26 0.17

(0.48) (0.47)Position towards the EU*Post-Maastricht −0.11 −0.08

(0.15) (0.15)EU embeddedness index −0.37∗

(0.18)Polarization 0.00

(0.01)Proportional representation −0.35

(1.09)Fractionalization (government parties) 3.98∗∗∗

(1.18)Fractionalization (opposition) 1.49

(1.20)Total legislative fractionalization −16.27∗∗∗

(3.27)Plurality 0.74

(0.58)AIC 11954.78 11890.87BIC 12074.31 12048.41Log Likelihood -5955.39 -5916.44Deviance 11910.78 11832.87Num. obs. 1691 1690Num. groups: country 35 35Variance: country.(Intercept) 2.99 5.96Variance: country.totEUposition 0.09 0.06Variance: country.intpositive 0.01 0.02Variance: country.intnegative 0.08 0.03Variance: Residual 65.07 62.58***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05

Table 1: Mixed effects models of party success

27

Polarization 1 Polarization 2 Turnout 1 Turnout 2 Fractionalization 1 Fractionalization 2

(Intercept) 10.62 * 20.27 72.77 * 77.75 * 0.85 * 0.69 *

(20.12) (20.36) (10.23) (9.87) (0.02) (0.04)EU embeddedness index −2.24 * 0.84 0.01 *

(1.28) (0.65) (0.00)Mean district size −0.05 −0.05 0.03 0.04 0.00 0.00

(0.05) (0.05) (0.03) (0.03) (0.00) (0.00)Plurality 5.80 * 4.34 * −5.65 * −5.70 * −0.03 * −0.04 *

(2.95) (2.96) (1.51) (1.43) (0.01) (0.01)Proportional representation −18.36 * −15.09 * 12.28 * 14.40 * 0.06 * 0.10 *

(5.47) (5.53) (2.83) (2.70) (0.01) (0.03)Electoral threshold −0.60 −0.65 0.58 * 0.49 * 0.00 0.00

(0.46) (0.46) (0.24) (0.22) (0.00) (0.00)Closed lists −1.88 −5.52 1.22 −2.50 0.00 −0.05 *

(3.05) (3.29) (1.55) (1.60) (0.01) (0.01)Herf. government 10.07 * 11.12 * −0.24 1.79 * −0.18

(3.07) (3.16) (1.58) (1.57) (0.00)Herf. opposition −2.05 −2.38 6.88 5.95 −0.23 * −0.23*

(8.31) (8.34) (4.21) (4.02) (0.01) (0.02)Total legislative fractionalization 89.21 * 75.08 * −18.40 −20.92

(22.01) (22.54) (11.46) (11.09)Eurozone −9.53 * −12.70 * −6.08 * −6.18 * −0.01 0.00

(4.64) (4.60) (2.37) (2.26) (0.01) (0.02)Post-communist country −21.45 * −21.25* −16.05 * −16.89* 0.02 * 0.01

(3.87) (3.87) (2.10) (1.99) (0.01) (0.01)Post-Maastricht period −1.20 −1.26 −1.73 −1.51 0.01 0.02 *

(3.14) (3.34) (1.59) (1.61) (0.01) (0.01)EU member −5.10 −3.52 −0.01

(4.17) (2.02) (0.01)Time in EU 12.25* 14.10 * 0.09*

(5.54) (2.71) (0.02)Schengen −1.30 0.87 0.03

(4.32) (2.08) (0.02)Infringements −7.09 −1.67 0.08 *

(7.68) (3.72) (0.03)ERM membership −12.16 * −6.56 * −0.03

(4.57) (2.24) (0.02)Polarization 0.07 0.02 0.00 0.00

(0.04) (0.03) (0.00) (0.00)Num. obs. 191 191 191 191 192 192*p < 0.05

Table 2: Statistical models

28

Appendix I - summary statistics

29

Polarization Turnout PS Fractionalization(Intercept) −2.46 90.27∗∗∗ 0.79∗∗∗

(23.20) (13.81) (0.03)Embeddedness in EU −2.37 0.16 0.01∗

(1.27) (0.76) (0.00)Mean district magnitude −0.05 0.04 0.00

(0.05) (0.03) (0.00)Plurality 10.05∗∗ −7.09∗∗∗ −0.03∗∗∗

(3.09) (1.89) (0.01)Proportional representation −17.36∗ 1.76 0.03

(7.63) (4.61) (0.02)Threshold −0.53 0.14 0.00

(0.47) (0.28) (0.00)Closed lists 0.88 −0.32 −0.01

(3.01) (1.79) (0.01)Herf. governing 9.99∗∗ −0.36 −0.09∗∗∗

(3.20) (1.95) (0.01)Herf. opposition −2.57 8.73 −0.23∗∗∗

(9.10) (5.42) (0.02)Total legislative fractionalization 104.49∗∗∗ −20.15

(24.61) (15.37)Eurozone −7.26 −5.37 −0.01

(5.16) (3.09) (0.01)Post-communist −16.54∗∗∗ −15.31∗∗∗ 0.02

(4.11) (2.55) (0.01)Post-Maastricht −7.13∗ −0.33 0.02

(3.44) (2.07) (0.01)Polarization −0.03 0.00∗∗∗

(0.04) (0.00)R2 0.37 0.40 0.79Adj. R2 0.32 0.35 0.77Num. obs. 192 192 192***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05

Table 3: Country-level models (OLS)

30

Table 4: Summary statistics - Vote change / party success models

Statistic N Mean St. Dev. Min Max

rile 1,694 −0.487 20.464 −74.300 97.000mdmh 1,694 14.724 29.165 −110.039 150.000pluralty 1,694 0.385 0.526 −1.957 3.180pr 1,694 0.915 0.266 −0.139 1.703thresh 1,353 2.961 3.328 0.000 25.000cl 1,694 0.634 0.496 −1.240 4.000herfgov 1,694 0.636 0.364 −1.182 10.000herfopp 1,694 0.475 0.290 −1.335 2.744frac 1,694 0.701 0.152 0.000 1.653oppfrac 1,694 0.534 0.293 −1.770 2.391govfrac 1,694 0.374 0.288 −0.956 2.224maj 1,694 0.587 0.153 −0.115 1.475EU.member 1,694 0.528 0.499 0 1timeinEU 1,694 0.305 0.405 0.000 1.000membershiplength 1,694 13.669 18.593 0 59Schengen 1,694 0.245 0.430 0 1Eurozone 1,694 0.135 0.342 0 1infrscore 1,694 −0.147 0.231 −1.000 0.000infringmentN 1,694 −3.675 5.773 −25 0ERM 1,694 0.384 0.486 0 1mainstream 1,692 0.811 0.391 0 1Embeddedness in EU 1,694 1.451 1.567 −0.160 4.800turnout 1,615 74.460 13.860 39.200 97.163mandatoryvote 1,694 0.142 0.349 0 1polarization 1,693 49.702 22.586 0.414 124.055postcomm 1,694 0.288 0.453 0 1postmaastricht 1,694 0.655 0.476 0 1intpositive 1,694 4.241 3.545 −0.021 28.492intnegative 1,694 0.830 2.134 −2.088 38.889totEUposition 1,694 1.394 3.015 −32.500 25.698protectionism 1,694 0.273 0.727 −1.003 7.051antiprotectionism 1,694 0.213 0.653 −0.382 7.317negativemulti 1,694 0.361 1.454 −1.130 21.050restrictcit 1,694 0.032 0.426 −1.435 12.000

31

Table 5: Summary statistics - Country-level models

Statistic N Mean St. Dev. Min Max

execnat 244 0.078 0.266 −0.715 1.077execrel 244 0.171 0.411 −0.764 2.000gov1nat 244 0.066 0.262 −0.956 1.250gov1age 244 49.920 43.753 −61.065 147.000gov2age 152 50.000 40.265 1 155opp1age 244 40.641 42.509 −143.328 140.000mdmh 244 14.634 30.137 −81.061 150.000pluralty 244 0.390 0.565 −1.957 2.310pr 244 0.893 0.309 −0.139 1.580thresh 192 3.118 3.467 0.000 25.000cl 244 0.635 0.553 −0.720 4.000auton 244 0.222 0.452 −1.124 1.000author 103 0.689 0.465 0 1partyage 244 45.049 33.418 −28.115 125.000herfgov 244 0.673 0.675 −1.182 10.000herfopp 244 0.482 0.333 −1.335 1.726frac 244 0.698 0.173 0.000 1.653oppfrac 244 0.528 0.335 −0.693 2.391govfrac 244 0.373 0.315 0.000 2.224maj 244 0.582 0.166 −0.115 1.475EU.member 244 0.520 0.501 0 1timeinEU 244 0.292 0.399 0.000 1.000membershiplength 244 12.889 18.015 0 59Schengen 244 0.230 0.421 0 1Eurozone 244 0.123 0.329 0 1infrscore 244 −0.134 0.216 −1.000 0.000infringmentN 244 −3.357 5.407 −25 0ERM 244 0.381 0.487 0 1increase 241 0.510 0.501 0 1mainstream 244 0.824 0.382 0 1Embeddedness in EU 244 1.412 1.538 0.000 4.800turnout 233 75.053 13.494 39.200 97.163mandatoryvote 244 0.148 0.355 0 1distance 243 46.487 21.614 0.414 124.055postcomm 244 0.291 0.455 0 1postmaastricht 244 0.652 0.477 0 1

32

Appendix II: Countries included in quantitative analyses

• Austria

• Belgium

• Bulgaria (starting in 1990)26

• Croatia (starting in 2000)

• Cyprus

• Czech Republic (starting in 1993)

• Denmark

• Estonia (starting in 1991)

• Finland

• France

• Germany

• Greece

• Hungary (starting in 1990)

• Iceland

• Ireland

• Italy

• Latvia (starting in 1991)

• Lithuania (starting in 1991)

• Luxembourg

• Macedonia (starting in 1991)

• Malta

• Montenegro (starting in 2006)

• Norway

• Poland (starting in 1991)

• Portugal

• Romania (starting in 1996)

• Serbia (starting in 2007)

• Slovakia (starting in 1993)

• Slovenia (starting in 1991)

• Spain

• Sweden

• Turkey

• Switzerland

• The Netherlands

• United Kingdom

26for Bulgaria, and all subsequent countries that are not included from the beginning of the period of study (1979),the rule is that the first year in which they are classified as democracies according to Polity IV is the first year ofparticipation in this dataset.

33

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