Centre-left parties and the European Union

Power, accountability, and democracy

Isabelle Hertner

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781526120335
• eBook ISBN: 9781526120366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Does European integration contribute to, or even accelerate, the erosion of intra-party democracy? This book analyses the impact of European Union (EU) membership on power dynamics, focusing on the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party (PS), and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Utilising a principal-agent framework, it investigates who within the parties determines EU policies and selects EU specialists. Drawing on original interviews with EU experts from Labour, the PS, the SPD and the Party of European Socialists (PES), as well as an e-mail questionnaire, this book reveals that European policy has remained in the hands of the party leadership. The study also suggests that the party grassroots are interested in the EU, but that interest rarely translates into influence. As regards the selection of EU specialists, this book highlights that the parties' processes are highly political, often informal, and in some cases, undemocratic.

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Centre-left parties and the European Union

Does European integration contribute to, or even accelerate, the erosion of intra-party democracy? This book is about improving our understanding of political parties as democratic organisations in the context of multi-level governance. More specifically, it analyses the impact of European Union (EU) membership on intra-party power dynamics. The book takes as its focus the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS), and the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD). These are three major centre-left parties of government, operating in the three biggest member states of the EU.

Studying centre-left, or social democratic, parties is particularly interesting because the process of European integration places particular policy constraints on them. As part of the social democratic/socialist/labourite party family, they seek to reconcile market capitalism with social responsibility. In its different forms, social democracy is ‘a set of intuitive ideas about fairness and equality and a moral economy that refuses to accept the automatic primacy of markets or the need for inequality’ (Keating and McCrone, 2013: 2–3). However, the EU, in recent decades, has arguably done more to promote market capitalism and economic competitiveness than to enhance social responsibility and address increasing levels of social inequality. Thus, when they are in government, the EU’s centre-left parties have to respond to the challenges created by the European Single Market, which demands the reduction of state subsidies to struggling industries, and by the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which sets limits to public debt. The 19 member states in the Eurozone, including France and Germany, have committed themselves permanently to limiting their budget deficits to 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and their national debt to 60 per cent of GDP. This ‘conservative straitjacket’ (Wall, 2014: 73) has been particularly challenging for centre-left parties in government. The SPD and PS, both of which were in office during the peak of the Greek debt crisis, struggled to formulate and implement a social democratic strategy at the European level. Yet, a European crisis can only be solved by a European response.

Indeed, many important decisions relating to policy areas such as international trade, environmental protection, health, and consumer protection are now taken at the European level by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament. Next, national parliaments get to transpose EU legislation into national laws. Hence, an increasing amount of legislation has become ‘Europeanised’ over the past decades. We still lack a systematic, pan-European study of legislative Europeanisation, but we have some estimates of the effects EU membership has had on formerly national legislation. For example, in the United Kingdom, between 1997 and 2009, about 6.8 per cent of primary legislation (statutes) and 14.1 per cent of secondary legislation (statutory instruments) had EU origins (Miller, 2010). Yet, the degree of legislative Europeanisation varied significantly between sectors, with agriculture and the environment being highly Europeanised, and education and health policy showing very little EU input. Meanwhile, in France, the yearly share of Europeanised laws has increased from less than 3 per cent in 1986 to 13.3 per cent in 2006. The highest shares of Europeanised legislation can be identified in the fields of space, science, and technology (39 per cent), as well as banking, finance, and domestic commerce (28 per cent; see Brouard et al., 2007: 19, quoted by Töller, 2010: 423). According to an official report by the German parliament, the Bundestag, 31.5 per cent of all legislation pronounced and ratified by the German parliament between 2005 and 2009 had EU origins (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2009, 3 September). Again, there were significant differences between policy areas, as 23 per cent of laws in the area of justice and home affairs emanated from the EU, whilst in agriculture, 52 per cent were of EU origin.

The focus of this study is contemporary and embraces the period since the early 2000s when all three parties have been both in government and in opposition. This allows us to investigate power dynamics inside parties that were at times constrained by being in government, and at other times were in opposition and could take time to develop new policies and strategies. Through the use of a principal–agent framework, this book studies the delegation of the power to formulate European policy and select candidates for the European parliamentary elections and other EU specialists within the Labour Party, the PS, and SPD. In short, this book connects to the broader debate in political science of how membership of the EU affects domestic political institutions.

The rise of anti-political sentiment across Europe over the past decades has focused the attention of journalists and scholars on voters’ mistrust of politicians and political institutions such as long-established parties. Indeed, electoral support for mainstream parties on the centre-left and centre-right of the political spectrum keeps shrinking, whilst anti-establishment parties such as the UK Independence Party, the Front National, and the Alternative für Deutschland are gaining support. Still, political parties remain fundamental to democratic governance in Europe (Dalton et al., 2011). They connect citizens with the institutions of the state and thereby represent ‘a central linkage between citizens’ preferences and actions of democratic governments’ (Poguntke, 2005: 43). Thus, understanding the internal workings of parties is crucial because of the importance of parties to the realisation of democracy (Cross and Katz, 2013: 5). Indeed, studying intra-party power dynamics in the European context is particularly interesting because in the EU, political parties operate in a challenging system of multi-level governance: an ever-increasing amount of policy is made at the European level, whilst party politics takes place primarily at the national level of governance (Schmidt, 2006). This situation creates problems of democratic representation and accountability. Above all, this narrowing of the policy space can lead to a ‘hollowing out’ of policy competition between political parties at the national level (Mair, 2000, 2007). It results in the convergence of mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties on economic issues (Ladrech, 2010: 137). Ultimately, this dampening down of differences between parties in government has led to an increasing de-politicisation of political competition at the national level (Mair, 2007: 160) and has opened up the space for more extremist parties on the left and the right.

But what impact does the EU have on the internal workings of political parties? Recent studies found that European integration has generally empowered party elites in government (Raunio, 2002; Poguntke et al., 2007; Carter and Poguntke, 2010). But there is still much we do not know, especially in terms of the impact, if any, of EU membership on the power dynamics within parties from the grassroots to the EU level. The distribution of power is crucial for understanding intra-party democracy. The latter concept lacks a single, agreed-upon definition, but ultimately goes back to the question of who determines party policy (Katz, 1997). Hence, this book investigates who within the three social democratic parties is involved in the formulation of EU policy. Another important aspect of intra-party democracy is related to the selection of candidates, as the ways in which a party selects its candidates for public office reflects its internal democracy (Bille, 2001). This book therefore investigates who within the Labour Party, the PS, and the SPD selects the candidates for the European parliamentary elections and other EU specialists in parliament and inside the party bureaucracy.¹ Hence, the two main research questions that will guide this study are as follows: (1) To what extent has European integration impacted upon the power dynamics within centre-left parties? In particular, which level(s) and which face(s) of the party organisation have been empowered as a consequence of European integration, and who has lost out in the process? (2) How inclusive/exclusive are the Labour Party, the PS, and the SPD in the selection processes of European parliamentary candidates and other EU specialists, and what does this tell us about the state of intra-party democracy? Of course, the question is not only one of selection procedures; it is also closely linked to the power remit of these EU specialists. Do they hold much influence? More broadly, by focusing on EU specialists we also understand how widely spread EU expertise is within the three parties across the different levels and faces.

Most national parties in Europe, and in particular centre-left parties – the majority of which have their historical origins in the labour movement – claim to be internally democratic organisations. Many of these parties refer to intra-party democracy in their constitutions. For instance, the SPD declares itself a ‘demokratische Volkspartei’, a ‘democratic catch-all party’, in its statutes (SPD, 2014, 26 January). The Labour Party, on its website, describes itself as a ‘democratic, socialist party’ (Labour Party, 2014a), whilst the PS refers to itself as a ‘democratic and decentralised’ party that ‘allows everyone to be active and express herself within the party’ (PS, 2015a).

But what is it that makes a party internally democratic? Political parties across Europe organise differently and, if asked, would give different answers to this question. Some would argue that a model of power delegation from the bottom to the top is the most democratic form of organisation, as it resembles representative democracy. This type of democracy has also been described as ‘assembly-based’ as it allows party delegates at different levels to deliberate, amend policy proposals, and take repeated rounds of voting (Poguntke et al., 2016). Others would view direct or plebiscitary democracy as most democratic. This type of intra-party democracy typically involves membership consultations (referendums) as a means to formulate policy. In reality, many national parties combine the two types of democracy with each other, although it must be stressed that overall, social democratic parties favour assembly-based, delegative democracy (Poguntke et al., 2016: 672). Hence, what makes a party internally democratic is contested, and the concept of intra-party democracy still lacks a single, authoritative definition. As Cross and Katz (2013: 2) point out: ‘Like democracy itself, the definition of [intra-party democracy] is essentially contestable. Is it primarily about participation, inclusiveness, centralization, accountability, or something else altogether? Should the emphasis be on outcomes or on process?’ If the definition of intra-party democracy is contestable, so is its measurement. Intra-party democracy cannot be measured quantitatively. However, a comparison of parties that are (roughly) similar in size, have similar historical origins, and have recently been in government and opposition allows us to determine how democratic they are in relation to each other. Broadly speaking, a highly democratic party is understood as one that is inclusive in its decision-making processes.

This study thus draws on the concept of the ‘party family’, which is a very useful analytical tool for the comparison of parties with similar historical and ideological roots (Mair and Mudde, 1998). To be sure, parties belonging to the social democratic family come in many shapes and sizes and use different and changing labels. The Parti Socialiste, for instance, has long treated the term social democrats with disdain, preferring its socialist label, as it sounded more leftist. Meanwhile, Labour Party elites at the end of the 19...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Centre-left parties and the European Union
• 2 Labour, the PS, and the SPD: organising for multi-level governance
• 3 The European policies of the Labour Party, the PS, and the SPD
• 4 Principals, agents, and the delegation of power inside political parties
• 5 Cheerleaders or players? Centre-left parties on the ground and the EU
• 6 Lions or toothless tigers? The parties in central office and the EU
• 7 Winners or losers? The parties in public office and the EU
• 8 Centre-left parties and the European Union: what next?
• References
• Index