Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper applies categories developed in the classic literature on political opposition to the developing European Union. It is clear that the EU has never developed the third great milestone identified by Dahl in his analysis of the path to democratic institutions. That is, we still lack the capacity to organize opposition within the European polity. This failure to allow for opposition within the polity is likely to lead either (a) to the elimination of opposition altogether, or (b) to the mobilization of an opposition of principle against the EU polity. This problem is also beginning to reach down into the domestic sphere, in that the growing weight of the EU, through its indirect impact on national politics, helps to encourage domestic democratic deficits, hence limiting the scope for classical opposition at the national level. Here too, then, we might expect to see either the elimination of opposition or the mobilization of a new – perhaps populist – opposition of principle.

At a time when the literature on political parties is brimming with health and vitality, the parties themselves seem to be experiencing potentially severe legitimacy problems and to be suffering from a quite massive withdrawal of popular support and affection. This paper addresses one key aspect of the problems facing contemporary parties in Europe, which is the challenge to party government. I begin by reviewing the changing pattern of party competition, in which I discuss the decline of partisanship in policymaking and the convergence of parties into a mainstream consensus. I then look again at the familiar 'parties-do-matter' thesis and at the evidence for declining partisanship within the electorate. In the third section of the paper I explore the various attempts to specify the conditions for party government, before going on in the final section to argue that these conditions have been undermined in such a way that it is now almost impossible to imagine party government in contemporary Europe either functioning effectively or sustaining complete legitimacy.