changing policy, not structure: greek office-seekers ...!2!!! introduction!!...
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Changing Policy, not Structure? Greek Office-seekers Facing Voters & European
Partners Zoe Lefkofridi
Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna
Paper prepared for the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Münster 22-26.03.2010
Workshop 11: Europeanization of National Political Parties
Abstract:
Political party analysis only recently began to acknowledge the EU as an environment bearing consequences for political parties (Ladrech 2002). As a result, the impact of European integration on parties and party systems, “whether direct or indirect”, has not yet been adequately integrated into the more general theories of party change and development (Mair 2007a). On the one hand, making sense of whether and how observed patterns of Europeanization fit in more general theories helps evaluate older explanations of party behavior and change. On the other hand, extant theories can shed light on the complex ways in which the EU affects national parties. As Ladrech (2009: 14) points out, “the development of a more rigorous analytic Europeanization framework sensitive to causal links could emerge from attention by those who study, in the more ‘classical’ sense, party change”. The present paper constitutes a step in this direction by proposing a theoretical framework that links the concept of party Europeanization (Ladrech 2009; 2002; 1994) to theories of party behavior, change and development (e.g. Müller and Strøm 1999; Harmel and Janda 1994; Katz and Mair 1993; Strøm 1990; Downs 1957; Michels 1911). The aim of the paper is twofold: firstly, to synthesize theoretical arguments and research findings from within (e.g. Mair 2007a; 2007b; Poguntke et al. 2007; Ladrech 2007a; 2007b; 2007c; Raunio 2002; Raunio 2000) and outside (e.g. Müller 1997; Harmel et al. 1995; Katz and Mair 1993) the field of party Europeanization. Secondly, to put forward novel hypotheses about how Europe impacts parties, and explore them through a case-‐study analysis of two major Greek parties alternating in government (1974-‐2007). The empirical narrative draws on interview-‐, manifesto-‐ and archival data.
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Introduction
Supranational processes, namely policy and polity developments at the
European level, have caused gradual yet deep changes in the way national states
within the EU function. These developments have inspired a new research
agenda, “Europeanization”, consisting of scientific inquiries about “the impact of
the European Union (EU) on the domestic level, in terms of policies, institutional
change and party politics” (Exadaktylos & Radaelli 2009: 508). The initial
research focus of Europeanization was not on party politics but concentrated on
the policy and polity dimensions of political analysis (Hix and Goetz 2000).
Recently, party research also began to acknowledge the EU as an environment
bearing consequences for political parties (Ladrech 2002). However, the impact
of European integration on parties and party systems, “whether direct or
indirect”, has not yet been adequately integrated into the more general theories
of party change and development (Mair 2007a). Such theories of party behavior
and change can help identify causal links between Europe and parties (Ladrech
2009) so that the EU becomes a laboratory to study more general phenomena of
party behavior and change.
The present paper constitutes a step in this direction. It aims to facilitate
scholarly dialogue by constructing a theoretical bridge that links the concept of
party Europeanization (Ladrech 2009; 2002; 1994) to more general theoretical
concepts of party behavior, change and development (e.g. Müller and Strøm
1999; Harmel and Janda 1994; Katz and Mair 1993; Panebianco 1988; Strøm
1990; Downs 1957; Michels 1911). The theoretical arguments presented here
draw most heavily on the work of Harmel and Janda (1994), who posit that the
extent to which the environment may trigger party change as well as the kind of
the change induced are determined by the nature of the party’s primary goal
(votes, office, policy) and by intra-‐party factors (see also Harmel 2002; Harmel
and Tan 2003). Similarly, the present ‘integrated model of party response to
Europe’ pays close attention to how the (differential) EU pressure on party goals
is perceived by the party’s leading elite and theorizes party change as a multi-‐
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faced phenomenon (see also Lefkofridi 2009; 2008). The purpose of this paper is
to present and explore the latter framework’s core propositions via an empirical
analysis of political party change induced by the EU environment in the case of
Greece.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: in the first section, I
introduce the concept of ‘party Europeanization’ and briefly review relevant
empirical research. In the second section, I discuss the theoretical arguments of
the paper. In the third section, I elaborate on the methodology and data
employed to explore the hypotheses advanced in the present study. In the fourth
section I present the empirical findings. In the concluding section, I discuss these
findings in relation to the hypothesized party behavior and change, while
acknowledging the limitations of the present study.
Party Europeanization
Party Europeanization is an emerging sub-‐field of comparative politics aiming at
describing and explaining how and to what extent the process of European
integration impacts national political parties. As such, it makes part of a broader
research agenda exploring top-‐down1 effects directed at national polities,
policies, and politics. However, national political party organizations
“‘experience’ the influence and operation of EU policy and decision-‐making” in
more complex ways than national polities and policies do (Ladrech 2009: 6).
Parties are affected by the EU mainly indirectly (Ladrech 2009; Mair 2007a;
2000), e.g. via the EU influence on the national system, the electorate and/or
other parties in the system (see also: Lefkofridi 2009; 2008). As a result, the
1 Yet, as Ladrech (2002: 393) explains, the response of domestic actors to European integration may, in turn, influence the supranational level so that there is a reflexive relationship. In addition, EU policies are, in principle, the result of political action by domestic actors (e.g. parties in government),which shift issues to the European level (Vink 2003) through bottom-‐up processes. Other scholars (e.g. Carter et al. 2007: 5; Goetz and Dyson 2003: 20) also acknowledge that Europeanization is a two-‐way process and that ‘feedback loops’ between the supranational and the domestic level exist. Thus, when studying the Europeanization of political parties, we should be aware that parties as political actors both “adapt to, and seek to shape, the trajectory of European integration in general and of the EU policies in particular” (Bomberg and Peterson 2000: 7). Nonetheless, this paper focuses on the top-‐down arrow between the EU and the national level so as to preserve the distinction between the independent and dependent variables, thereby ensuring analytical clarity.
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party strand of Europeanization research is related to but distinct2 from the
literature studying the EU effect on national polities and policies (e.g. Raunio and
Wiberg 2009; Goetz and Meyer-‐Sahling 2008; Radaelli 2003).
What does the concept of Europeanization signify for political parties?
Originally, party Europeanization was conceived as “an incremental process re-‐
orienting the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EC political and
economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic3 of national politics
and policy-‐making” (Ladrech 1994: 69). Building on insights of other works (e.g.
Mair 2000; Radaelli 2000), Ladrech (2002: 393) understands party
Europeanization as a ‘response to a challenge’,
“whether of marginal degree such as developing or building relationships with recently introduced actors and institutions, or more significantly to the relevance of an existing organization and its ability to attain certain indispensable goals”.
What kind of change does this concept imply? Ladrech (2002)’s seminal
framework systematizes the inquiry about party Europeanization by proposing
five inextricable areas of investigation: programmatic change, patterns of party
competition, internal organizational change, party-‐government relations and
relations beyond the national party system. Pioneer works in the field sought to
discover whether and to what extent party Europeanization actually exists in the
empirical world, by collecting observations in one or more of the aforementioned
areas. These specific areas, in turn, relate to two broader dimensions of research,
namely policy and organization. As European integration provides national
parties with a new policy arena and a new institutional environment, we could
thus conceive domestic party change triggered by European integration
occurring along these two wide-‐ranging dimensions.
2Therefore, due to limited space, I consciously omit this broader conceptual debate on Europeanization (see for example: Bulmer 2007; Radaelli and Pasquier 2007; Vink and Graziano 2007; Vink 2003; Featherstone and Radaelli 2003; Olsen 2002; Radaelli 2000; Hix and Goetz 2000; Ladrech 1994) and concentrate on the application of the concept to research investigating parties, launched by the seminal work of Ladrech (2002). Since then, numerous works have been concerned only with the specific EU effects on parties (e.g. Ladrech 2009; 2008; 2007; Luther 2008; Lefkofridi and Kritzinger 2008; Carter et al. 2007; Kritzinger and Michalowitz 2005; Kritzinger et al. 2004; Mair 2007; 2005). 3Ladrech (2002: 392) explains that ‘organizational logic’ refers to the ‘adaptive processes of organizations to a changed or changing environment”.
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Ladrech (2009) provides an extensive discussion of the state of the art.
Therefore, in this section, I limit myself to a very brief (and by no means
exhaustive) summary of key findings in the field along the broad dimensions:
policy and organization.
Regarding the former dimension: first, there is evidence of policy
convergence (of both Eurofriendly and Eurosceptic parties) throughout time (e.g.
Dorussen and Nanou 2006). Second, Europe and its policies are not sufficiently
politicized in national party manifestos (e.g. Pennings 2006; Kritzinger et al.
2004). A comparative study relying on expert survey data (Steenbergen and
Scott 2004) suggests that salience of Europe increases in the post-‐Maastricht era
and varies across party families and countries: parties whose position on Europe
is closer to that of the mass public and of their core supporters tend to
emphasize Europe, and parties acquiring unpopular positions downplay Europe.
Third, European elections are ‘second order events’ dominated by issues of the
national electoral contest (Schmitt 2005; Reif and Schmitt 1980). Although the
salience of Europe in party Euromanifestos increases over time (e.g. Kritzinger
and Michalowitz 2005; Wüst and Schmitt 2007), politicization remains
problematic: policy areas that are transferred to the EU level and get
depoliticized at the national level, do not get sufficiently re-‐politicized in
European elections (e.g. Lefkofridi and Kritzinger 2008; Mair 2007b). Fourth,
there is a representation gap on the issue of European integration with parties
being more supportive than voters (Kritzinger et al. 2010; Mattila and Raunio
2006; Thomassen and Schmitt 1997). Fifth, although party systems have not
been affected by European integration (Mair 2000), attitudes towards the EU and
its policies among the European electorates constitute a ‘sleeping giant’ that, if
awakened, “could impel voters to political behavior that (because of its degree of
orthogonality with left/right orientations) undercuts the bases for contemporary
party mobilization” (Van der Eijk and Franklin 2004: 33). Sixth, some studies
show that the giant may be already waking up, as the EU issue seems to affect
vote choice in national (e.g. deVries 2007; Tillman 2004) and European (e.g.
Carrubba and Timpone 2005) elections.
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The latter dimension has received less scholarly attention and refers to
organizational aspects of party politics (e.g. Hines 2003; Burchell 2001). A major
work in the field (Poguntke et al. 2007) attests to limited organizational change
understood as EU-‐related institutional innovation at the party level. Parties have
invested few resources to the management of European affairs, which are still
viewed as part of foreign –as opposed to domestic-‐ policy; and the few EU-‐
related posts that have been created remain -‐along with Members of the
European Parliament (MEPs)-‐ by and large uninfluential (Ladrech 2007b;
2007c). Importantly, however, European integration bolsters leadership
autonomy (Raunio 2002); also, the party elite is empowered vis-‐à-‐vis the rank
and file, especially when the party is in government (Ladrech 2007b; 2007c).
While this is the picture painted by research that focuses on Western
Europe, things seem to be different in the East. Ladrech (2008) conducts a
comparison of Europeanization patterns in West and East and concludes that
although the EU is remote from Western domestic party politics, its impact is
greater in the Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004.
How can we synthesize the aforementioned findings to gain a deeper
understanding regarding the ways Europe impacts parties? Taking stock of the
literature, the process of party Europeanization seems to be neither linear nor
uniform (Carter et al. 2007). Therefore, the study of party Europeanization calls
for a theoretical framework with in-‐built variation across countries and parties,
as well as dimensions of change.
Regarding variation across countries, Goetz (2006) talks about ‘clustered
Europeanization’ and argues that commonalities with regard to domestic-‐ and
integration-‐related variables are structured along the dimensions of territoriality
(families of nations, center-‐periphery relations) and temporality (time of
accession in relation to: domestic development and phase of integration).
Ladrech’s (2008) East-‐West comparative analysis illustrates these arguments.
Regarding variation across parties and dimensions of change, we need a
more robust theoretical bridge between the growing research on the
Europeanization of political parties and the ‘classical’ theories of party change.
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To this aim, Lefkofridi (2008; 2009) adapts the ‘integrated theory of party
change and party goals’ developed by Harmel and Janda (1994) to the study of
party Europeanization. Precisely because this model integrates arguments
advanced in interrelated but distinct lines of research4, it facilitates cumulative
knowledge. As such, it is particularly useful for the field of party
Europeanization.
The most fundamental assumption underlying the Harmel and Janda
(1994) model is that parties are conservative organizations, which avert change
(see also: Müller 1997; Panebianco 1988; Wilson 1980). They only change under
pressure. Yet, changes will not “‘just happen’ randomly or in automatic response
to external stimuli”; while the reason for change may be externally induced, the
design and implementation of the responsive change will depend upon internal
factors (e.g. Harmel et al. 1995: 2). The leading elite only will pursue change only
if it estimates that benefits exceed costs (Harmel and Janda 1994: 272). In sum,
three main concepts constitute the fabric of the ‘integrated’ theory: party
environment, intra-party power relations and party goals. Thus, apart from
environmental pressures, this theory specifically takes into account challenges to
the internal distribution of power and the party’s ‘primary goal’. The following
section presents the adapted framework (Lefkofridi 2009; 2008) and discusses
its core propositions.
Party Behavior & Change In Response to Europe
At the outset, the present analysis adopts Ladrech’s (2002) definition of party
Europeanization. Firstly, this definition hints to the possibility that individual
parties are challenged by European integration in varied degrees and,
consequently, party ‘response to Europe’ will be differential. Secondly, it
introduces the concepts ‘relevance’ and ‘party goals’ in the discussion about the
potential impact of Europe. Based on this definition, I build on extant theoretical
4 This approach focuses on the level of individual parties and builds on insights gained from both ‘life-‐cycle’ (e.g. Harmel and Svåsand 1993; Whetten 1987; Michels 1911) and ‘system-‐level’ (e.g. Katz and Mair 1995; Kirchheimer 1966; Duverger 1951) scholarship of party change. Moreover, it bridges the literature on party change with that of rational choice theories of party behavior and party goals (e.g. Mueller 2003; Strøm 1990; Müller and Strøm 1999; deSwaan 1973; Axelrod 1970; Downs 1957).
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and empirical works to theorize party Europeanization as a response to the EU
environmental challenge. Firmly grounded in the original ‘integrated theory of
party change and party goals’ (Harmel and Janda 1994), the adapted framework
builds on three concepts: the EU environment (which consists of a supranational
institutional and policy framework), intra-party power relations of national
parties, national parties’ goals.
The first argument advanced here is that any explanation of whether, how
and to what extent Europe impacts on political parties should take intra-‐party
factors into account. Given that European integration has undoubtedly been ‘a
source of intra-‐party conflict’ (see, for example: Ladrech 2007a; Sowenimo
1996), looking inside the ‘black box’ becomes inevitable.
The party elite (leadership and dominant coalition) is responsible for
designing party strategy and assessing party performance with regard to its
goals. For this reason, it matters how this elite ‘perceives’ (Deschouwer 1992)
the EU environment. Therefore, changes at the level of the party elite5 are
expected to affect the way the EU is perceived (e.g. Margaret Thatcher’s succession
of Sir Edward Heath in 1975 at the Head of the British Tories). If, in turn, the
perception of the EU changes (e.g. opportunity/constrain, problem/solution, see
Mair 2009; 2007a), EU related-‐change is more likely to occur. However, the elite
is functioning in a specific power structure. As Michels (1911: 128) observed
almost a century ago,
“he who has acquired power will almost always endeavour to consolidate it and to extend it, to multiply the ramparts which defend his position, and to withdraw himself from the control of the masses”.
Therefore, if the party elite deems change due to the EU as necessary, it will
avoid changing the structural arrangement that grants it significant privileges.
We can support this argument through findings across different strands of party
research. Inquiries about parties in the EP portray national party leaderships as
having (retained) exclusive rights in selecting and appointing politicians at the 5 This expectation would translate into variables such as leadership change, change in the conformation and composition of the dominant coalition (see Panebianco 1988).
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EU level (Hix 1997). To illustrate, national party leadership controls candidate
selection in EP elections
“either via the national party executive determining the list of candidates (as in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Austria), or via the national party executive approving candidates selected by regional organs (as in Britain, Germany, Italy, or Ireland)” (Hix 2002: 691).
Furthermore, research investigating change in internal national party dynamics
empirically demonstrates that European integration has not led to the
weakening but to the empowerment of party elites (e.g. Poguntke et al. 2007;
Raunio 2002).
Moreover, contrary to some expectations (e.g. Carter et al. 2007), and in
spite of their expertise, actors such as MEPs and EU specialists remain marginal
figures with little autonomy (Ladrech 2007b). In applying the ‘integrated theory’
(Harmel and Janda 1994), ‘balance of power’ type of changes triggered by the EU
(e.g. EU-related intra-party institutional innovation and/or empowerment of MEPs
and EU specialists) are expected to occur if the latter actors eventually prevail (i.e.
become part of the party’s power center) and push for organizational change that
consolidates their power. Theoretically, the predominance of MEPs vis-‐à-‐vis
national parliamentarians in the party’s dominant coalition is most likely in the
(atypical) case that a party wins more seats in the EP than in the national
parliament. In the empirical world, despite having gained representation at the
party’s decision-‐making organs, members of the European Parliament (MEPs)
are usually neither party leaders nor in control of the party’s dominant coalition;
some Eastern European parties and few small parties in the West constitute
exceptions in this regard (see: Ladrech 2008; Scully 2001; Raunio 2000).
To sum up, EU environmental pressure for change is expected to be
tempered ‘from inside’, as elite party actors avert disturbing the party’s
distribution of power. In this respect, the party’s age6 is likely to inversely affect
6 Age is understood as an indicator of the party’s institutionalization. Institutionalization, in turn, refers to the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability (Janda 1980; Huntington 1965). The older (and thus more institutionalized) parties are, the more resistant they are to change.
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its propensity to change (Harmel and Janda 1994). Keeping in mind the
importance of the party elite, in what follows, I elaborate on how the EU
environment may impact each of parties’ goals.
EU environment and party goals
In the real world, parties pursue multiple goals at the same time: votes, office,
and policy7. Vote maximization is an intrinsic goal (i.e. a prerequisite for both
office and policy), while office can have an intrinsic or an instrumental, electoral,
or policy value (e.g. Müller 2002; Müller and Strøm 1999; Budge and Laver
1986). As there is often tension between two or three different goals (such that
parties face trade-‐offs regarding the pursuit of these goals), parties need to
prioritize (Müller and Strøm, 1999), i.e. identify a ‘primary goal’ (Harmel and
Janda 1994). Drawing on works that examine how the institutional framework in
which parties operate affects their goal pursuit (Müller 2002; Müller and Strøm
1999; Strøm 1990), the second argument advanced in this paper is that the EU
environment impacts the trade-‐offs party leaderships face in their simultaneous
pursuit of votes, office, and policy. To understand the trade-‐offs faced by parties,
we first need to comprehend the differential impact of the EU on each party goal
separately, in terms of what kind of change the EU motivates and via which
mechanism.
The EU impact when prioritizing votes
The EU environment impinges on parties’ vote seeking via the electorate. To the
extent there is a potential for electoral mobilization on the EU issue (see: deVries
2007; Kriesi 2006), vote-seeking prompts parties to ‘use’ Europe instrumentally in
their discourse. This indirect effect of Europe on parties entails two aspects: the
role played by Europe in parties’ electoral discourse and their relevant policy
positions, i.e. on European integration and/or specific European policies. 7 At this point, I depart from the original theory developed by Harmel and Janda (1994), in that I do not treat intra-‐party democracy-‐seeking as a goal in itself. Instead, following (Strøm 1990), I consider intra-‐party democracy as an intra-‐party organizational property that promotes policy-‐seeking behavior and, as such, conditions the party’s capacity to switch to another goal (see below).
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Firstly, the instrumental use of Europe in parties’ discourse has a
quantitative (to what extent do parties refer to Europe) and a qualitative (how
do parties refer to Europe) dimension. With regard to the integration of Europe
into party discourse understood quantitatively (salience), if the electoral costs of
mentioning Europe exceed the benefits, strategic parties are likely to
ignore/deemphasize Europe in their discourse, be it in parliamentary debates or
electoral campaigns for the national and EP elections. On the one hand, like
battalions, if divided, parties can hardly win battles. In this respect, parties
divided on European integration are more likely to lose votes (Hix and Marsh
2007; Ferrara and Weisshaupt 2004). As parties have incentives to cultivate and
preserve the image of a united political actor, we should expect that the more
division European integration generates inside the party, the more parties will
deemphasize the issue (Netjes and Binnema 2007). On the other hand, parties
have incentives to avoid Europe if their position on Europe diverges from that of
the median voter (Downs 1967; Enelow and Hinich 1984). So, some parties
attempt to minimize costs by downplaying Europe, while others aim at
maximizing their electoral appeal by rendering it more salient (see: Steenbergen
and Scott 2004).
To sum up, it is precisely those parties that could lose votes by integrating
Europe in their discourse that profit from keeping Europe outside the national
electoral agenda and from contesting EP elections on a non-‐European agenda.
Furthermore, to the extent parties do mention Europe, vote-‐seeking affects
qualitative aspects of party discourse, such as the way Europe is presented to the
electorate and how European issues are framed (constraint/opportunity,
problem/solution, etc.): parties are likely to portray Europe in ways that give
them (electoral) advantages vis-‐à-‐vis their competitors (see deWilde 2008).
Secondly, following Downs (1957), vote-‐seeking motivates parties to
change policy positions in the direction of the public opinion. Given some
evidence about Europe’s increasing salience (e.g. Netjes and Binnema 2007),
vote-‐seeking as a goal should eventually push parties to follow trends of the
public opinion on European integration. For instance, a Eurosceptic party is likely
to moderate its stance faced with a wide public endorsement of EU membership.
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Alternatively, when a considerable share of the social base is (or becomes)
Eurosceptic, parties prioritizing votes would profit from engaging in a campaign
opposing Europe in general (or specific European policies). As public opinion on
the EU varies across member states (e.g. Kritzinger 2003; Anderson 1998), vote-
seekers across the EU face different electoral incentives with regard to Europe.
Finally, vote-‐seeking would be under pressure by European integration if EP
elections would be fought on a common pan-‐European ballot; this scenario
would require organizational change. Importantly, however, as EP elections are
(still) organized at the national level, seeking votes is not likely to induce any EU-
related organizational change.
The EU impact when prioritizing office
Europe affects ‘office’ as a goal in a number of ways. Firstly, Europe impacts
office-‐seeking parties via their potential allies at national and EU levels. As
Harmel and Janda (1994: 264) put it: “if you are going to be invited to join them
in government, you ’d better not only look and act like them, but even think like
them to be considered acceptable”. In multiparty systems with coalition
governments, office-‐seeking parties should not diverge significantly from the
policy positions of potential coalition partners; consequently, among office-‐
seekers, potential allies’ policy positions on Europe and European are likely to
approach each other. The same logic, however, holds for potential partners at the
EU level and this applies to systems with coalition government as well as to
those with single-‐party cabinets. Top-‐ranking representatives from both left and
right incumbent parties decide together within the EU executive organs (Council
of Ministers and Commission). Due to the consensual style of EU politics, office-‐
seeking in the EU brings pressure for policy change in the direction of conformity
with the ‘EU norm’, namely the status quo established at the EU level, or else the
‘EU mainstream’ (Mair 2007b). When national parties in government participate
in EU-‐level decisions to harmonize policies across Europe, subsequent
government alternation at the national level cannot cancel these decisions (due
to primacy of EU law). In other words, incumbent parties in the EU member
states may be able to “un-‐do” or reform national legislation and/or policies
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decided by previous governments at the national level, but they can hardly
change laws and policies decided by previous governments at the EU level. So,
office as a goal puts pressure on parties to adapt their policy goals to the EU
reality, i.e. compromise their ideology; in other words, office-seeking in the EU is
likely to induce policy convergence among governing parties.
Secondly, by empowering national governments vis-‐à-‐vis national
parliaments and the Council of Ministers vis-‐à-‐vis the European Parliament (e.g.
Moravcsik 1999; 1998), the structure of the EU polity significantly strengthens
incumbent national parties versus national parties in the opposition. The actual
exercise of power in the EU system, however, pushes the party organization to
act more as a manager of the state (negotiating with other states to achieve
policy deals) than as an agent of the electorate, of party members, of party’s
policy clientele, etc. This, in turn, has important interrelated side effects: First,
the party is likely to increasingly define itself through the institutions of the state
(Katz and Mair 2006; 2002; 1993; 1990). Second, since holding office gives
parties the opportunity to deal with Europe via the institutions of the state
(ministries, committees, etc.), the pressure to adapt the organization to the
changing EU environment decreases significantly. Thus, EU-related institutional
innovation at the party level (e.g. creation new posts, empowerment of MEP) is less
likely to be pursued by parties having ‘governing potential’ (Sartori 1976) and
prioritizing office. Third, it is more likely that the party in public office is
empowered versus the party in central office and the party on the ground (Katz
and Mair 2006; 2002; 1993; 1990; see also Luther 2008). Due to the consensual
style of EU decision-‐making, holding office in the EU requires acting in alliance
with other actors. The ability of the ‘party in public office’ to negotiate
simultaneously a vast number of issues with numerous other actors presupposes
high degrees of centralization (see Poguntke and Webb 2002). As frequent
consultation with the rank and file would decrease the party’s ‘political elasticity’
(Michels 1911) within the EU, it is in the interest of an office-‐seeking party elite
to centralize power. Empirical evidence so far supports some of these claims
(Poguntke et al. 2007; Raunio 2002). However, these phenomena contribute to
14
lack of awareness of Europe by the organization (in comparison to the leading
elite; for a discussion of normative implications, see Ladrech 2007c).
Last but not least, as parties achieve participation in government at the EU
level (i.e. Council of Ministers, Commission) through their participation in
government at the national level, office-‐seeking behavior in the EU requires a
strong focus on national elections. So, executive office as a goal motivates parties
to fight EP elections as if it were national ones, e.g. shift the focus from European
issues to issues that are decisive in the national contest thus resulting in a
malfunctioning of the representation channels available to citizens (for a
discussion of the normative implications for representation and democracy, see
Mair 2009). As they are in essence inconsequential (no government alternation),
for office-holders and their challengers, EP elections are likely to serve as ‘beauty
contests’, or national polls regarding public opinion on government performance.
The EU impact when prioritizing policy
European integration impacts policy-‐seeking via its effect on the national system.
To begin with, the creation of the Single Market and especially the Treaty of
Maastricht fundamentally changed national political parties’ policy arena (for
discussions see: Mair 2009; 2007b; 2000; Hix and Goetz 2000;). Most
importantly, European integration dampened important policy conflicts between
left and right with regard to the management of the national economy. Following
Mair (2009; 2007a; 2007b; 2005; 2000) EU law, policies and institutions limit
the policy space, the policy instruments and the policy repertoire at parties’
disposal. Before the launch of the Single Market in the 1990s, policy-‐seeking
parties may not have perceived European integration as impacting on their
policy goals to the extent that they would today. As more and more policy
competences get transferred to the EU level, the policy alternatives to be
pursued at the national level are increasingly constrained and policy-‐seeking as a
goal is progressively under pressure. This pressure is particularly strong for
parties whose policy goals are not in agreement with the status quo established
at the EU level. If parties do not adapt to the policy reality of the EU, they
endanger their ‘relevance’ as an organization (Ladrech 2002). To avert
15
‘irrelevance’, policy-‐seeking encourages intra-‐party reflection on ‘how to
respond’ to the policy challenges. In this way, however, the EU environment may
cause internal divisions and factionalism, e.g. between traditionalists (no
change) and reformists (e.g. identity change, voicing new concerns, emphasis on
formerly less salient issues, etc.). The way to go in such a scenario (change/no
change) is likely to be decided by the dominant coalition of factions/dominant
faction.
Besides, at the EU level it is impossible for a party to unilaterally fight
against/in favor of a policy goal. EU membership brings national parties in a
multilevel policy arena with numerous other actors (EU institutions, interest
groups etc) pursuing policy objectives, thus increasing the uncertainty of
succeeding in shifting policy outcomes in the desired directions. In the EU-‐27
polity, no single party can affect any policy outcome, irrespective of the size and
power of the member state –unless it creates alliances with other actors. Thus,
policy-‐seeking gives parties incentives to adapt their organizational structure so
as to be more effective in their policy pursuit at the EU level, i.e. “do better”
regarding their policy goal. Given the multitude of actors involved in EU policy-‐
making, policy-seeking parties are likely to cooperate with other actors at the EU
level, forge trans-national links with parties in other member states and create
“common fronts”. Since more and more policy areas are transferred to the
European level, parties aspiring at specific policy outcomes will be increasingly
under pressure to coordinate activity at both levels and develop expertise on
European issues. In this vein, to the extent the EP is involved in decision-‐making,
policy- seeking parties are likely to experience EU-related change, such as to
upgrade the MEPs’ status within the party (as important agents of the party at the
EU level), create mechanisms to coordinate between MEP and MP teams (e.g. with
regard to the European dimensions of national policies) and invest resources in
developing EU expertise.
Furthermore, policy-‐seeking is enhanced by specific party organizational
properties: intra-‐party democracy (diffusion of power and decentralization of
policy decisions), impermeable recruitment structures and personnel
accountability (Strøm, 1990: 577-‐9). Thus, parties that preserve policy as their
16
primary goal (i.e. do not switch to votes/office) and value the participation of their
members into intra-party decision-making, are likely to adapt their internal rules
and structures (e.g. establishment of primaries for the selection of MEPs, creation
of channels/fora to involve the party base in the formulation of their
Euromanifesto, etc.).
Finally, EP elections give parties the opportunity to debate European
policies and to gain representation at the EU level (which facilitates cooperation
via the Europarties). Thus, the more policies are transferred at the EU level and
the more the EP is empowered, policy-‐seeking as a goal is likely to induce
concerns regarding outcomes of European elections, as this would affect
majorities created in the EP; in other words, policy-seeking parties are likely to
treat EP elections as important events in the party’s life (as opposed to
inconsequential ‘beauty contests’).
In the remaining of the theoretical discussion, I identify the specific trade-‐
offs faced by party elites in their simultaneous pursuit of votes, office, and policy
and formulate specific hypotheses regarding how, given these trade-‐offs, parties
are expected to behave and what kind of change they are expected to pursue.
Trade-offs faced by party elites & intra-party power relations
The work of Müller and Strøm (1999) demonstrates how institutional and party-‐
organizational factors shape the trade-‐offs faced by political parties’ leaders
regarding their choices between votes, office and policy. Having established how
the EU environment impacts each party goal separately, and drawing on the
original theories (Müller and Strøm 1999; Strøm 1990), I argue that the EU
environment pushes parties towards specific types of behavior, which in turn,
induce different types of party change. Firstly, by generating tensions among
party goals, the EU affects their capacity to pursue votes, office and policy
simultaneously. In other words, the EU environment impacts parties by
conditioning the trade-offs they face with regard to votes, office, policy. Yet,
precisely because the EU effect on each of the party goals is uneven, the EU
environment alters the ‘structure of political opportunities’ (Schlessinger 1985),
with policy being the goal least likely to be prioritized, i.e. the first to be
17
compromised in favor of votes/office. Secondly, as these tensions between goals
may spillover onto the party organization (i.e. internal division regarding party
priorities), they bring party leadership under pressure. The optimal intra-‐party
strategy for leadership is to “unchain” itself, as strong controls by members
would lead to the least optimal strategy (prioritizing policy). Through this
second mechanism, I argue that the EU indirectly reinforces an extant party
tendency towards oligarchy (Michels 1911).
To understand the mechanisms at work, let’s look more closely at the
tensions between different party goals. Based on the above, prioritizing policy
within the EU seems to be the riskiest and costliest strategy in comparison to
votes/office. On the one hand, on top of being mostly under strain due increased
uncertainty, policy-‐seeking additionally pushes for EU-‐related institutional
innovation organizational change (e.g. MEP primaries, coordination mechanisms
across levels, etc). On the other hand, prioritizing votes/office in the EU pushes
for EU-‐related policy change. Yet, this EU pressure to compromise policy goals
has two important side-‐effects, which are produced through the interaction of
systemic (EU system) and party-‐organizational properties:
Firstly, following Strøm (1990), intra-‐party democracy, impermeable
recruitment structures and personnel accountability are organizational
properties enhancing policy-‐seeking at the expense of votes and office. Hence, I
argue that, by switching to another goal, i.e. prioritizing office/votes over policy,
the party elite is under increasing pressure to adapt the party’s internal
structures, so that policy-‐seeking constraints on party leadership decrease. Thus,
within the EU, although parties prioritizing votes/office over policy are not likely
to experience EU-related institutional innovation, they are likely to display
organizational change with regard to intra-party democracy, recruitment
structures, and personnel accountability. The reason is that these organizational
properties restrict the capacity of leaders to switch priorities.
Take for example, the case where vote-‐ and policy-‐seeking are in conflict:
the leadership may want to engage in swift ideological moves to attract more
votes or minimize electoral costs (e.g. by voicing EU criticism faced with a
18
Eurosceptic electorate/turning Euro-‐friendly faced with a Europhile electorate).
Yet, the vote-‐seeking leadership would be under pressure if party members
disapprove such an ideological change.
Another case of potential tension is when office-‐ and policy-‐seeking are in
conflict. If a party switches from policy to office (e.g. German Greens),
participation in government (and hence also in the Council of Ministers) makes it
more difficult to achieve policy deals that keep party members and activists
entirely satisfied. Thus, dissonance (Festinger 1957)8 may arise between prior
ideology and electoral rhetoric at national level and behavior at the EU level. For
instance, based on its ideology and electoral promises a party in government
may be expected to oppose a specific policy x at the EU level. Negotiations at the
EU level and in particular, possible trade-‐offs between different policy deals may
provide cognitions consonant with supporting policy x and serve as a
justification for leadership behavior. Adapting party ideology and rhetoric at the
national level to behavior at the EU level can reduce dissonance9, so office-‐
seeking parties are likely to change positions to match what they acted out, as a
way of resolving the (policy vs. office) conflict. Yet, ideological compromise is
likely to upset the base (i.e. members and especially activists) that is inclined
towards policy-‐seeking (Strøm 1990).
Therefore, though indirectly, the EU environment puts pressure on the
party elite: to render the party structure more hierarchical and centralized
towards more ‘elasticity’ (see Poguntke and Webb 2002); to control recruitment
and weaken intra-‐party democracy. Yet, how can party leadership legitimize this
turn towards more monarchic/oligarchic structures? One possible method of
doing so is via candidate selection (see Scarrow 2005; Katz 2001). Given extant
trends in declining party membership (e.g. Katz et al. 1992; Mair and Van Biezen
2001), an optimal solution is the introduction of selection procedures that appeal
to the wider party membership or even the electorate at large, i.e. a type of
democratization strengthening the top party elite at the expense of the 8 According to a theory in social psychology, dissonance results when an individual must choose between attitudes and behaviors that are contradictory (Festinger 1957). 9 See: “Induced-‐Compliance Paradigm”, Harmon-‐Jones and Mills (1999: 8).
19
grassroots. According to Katz (2001), although those elected by thousands of
poorly informed or little engaged members, may appear as acquiring high levels
of input legitimacy, this democracy lacks substance (ibid). In fact, plebiscitary
techniques for candidate selection effectively bypass middle-‐level party elites,
party congresses as well as party activists (Katz and Mair 1994). Interestingly,
then, by putting pressure on party policy goals, Europe becomes a factor pushing
towards less intra-‐party democracy, i.e. the decrease of party members’ and
activists’ say in leadership selection and policy formulation (Krouwel 2004; see
also Scarrow 2005).
Secondly, I further argue that the EU environment may generate tensions
between office-‐ and vote-‐seeking. While vote-‐seeking motivates parties to adopt
positions closer to the public opinion, office-‐seeking pushes them in the direction
of the EU mainstream. It follows that parties prioritizing office will be under
pressure when faced with a Eurosceptic public. Indeed, an empirical study of EP
elections by Hobolt et al. (2008: 112) shows that “governing parties may lose
votes because of the disconnect between major governing parties and their
voters on the issue of EU integration”. And arguably, this type of tension (votes
vs. office) is most likely to be felt by parties in majoritarian systems, where the
trade-‐off between office and votes is, in principle, absent because under majority
rule, vote-‐maximizing and office-‐seeking motivations are identical10 (Mueller
2003). Consequently, I argue that the optimal strategy for parties with governing
potential is to deemphasize Europe and European issues. This line of reasoning
echoes an argument advanced by Peter Mair (2000; 2007): European
integration, and in particular the delegation of important policies to non-‐
majoritarian EU institutions (e.g. ECB) contribute to the ‘hollowing out’ of
political competition among political parties at the national level (Mair 2000). In
Mair’s (2007b) view, the giant is not sleeping but it has been ‘sedated’ by the
‘party cartel’.
Thus, office-‐seeking parties (and especially those in majoritarian systems)
are likely to avoid mingling Europe into the electoral competition, as its 10 That is to say, the more effective parties are in seeking votes, the more probable it is that they gain office.
20
politicization could jeopardize their strategies towards office. Based on the
present discussion, however, avoiding Europe is not a sustainable strategy in the
long term, as parties not prioritizing office/parties without ‘governing potential’
(Sartori 1976) have incentives to mobilize voters on Europe and European
issues. Empirical research has shown that Euroscepticism (e.g. Taggart 1998)
tends to be voiced by parties located away from the mainstream, albeit for
different reasons: the radical left opposition to the EU is motivated by
socioeconomic concerns, whereas the radical right opposition to the EU
capitalizes on sociocultural issues (immigration, erosion of national culture via
foreign influences, etc.) (Hooghe et al. 2002). Yet, I argue that these radical
parties can mobilize voters on the EU issue and reinforce their Eurosceptic policy
positions only so long they prioritize votes over office. Thus, European
integration traps party leaders in weird dilemmas: government (office) vs. intra-‐
party democracy and government (office) vs. responsiveness to the electorate
(representation) (see also Mair 2009).
If prioritizing votes fortifies centrifugal movements with regard to EU
issues, and office reinforces centripetal movements, how would office-‐seeking
parties (and especially those in majoritarian systems with Eurosceptic
electorates) resolve the (votes vs. office) conflict? Seeking to minimize electoral
costs, one way out of such a conflict is the blame-‐game strategy. Social
psychologists (e.g. Kelley 1967; Miller et al. 1975) developed a theory that
provides for a dichotomy regarding how human beings explain their own and
other people’s actions and behavior: they may assign causality to themselves
(internal attribution) and/or to an external agent or actor (external attribution).
Given that parties are not individual human beings but strategic organizations,
my use of the blame-‐game implies that parties are completely conscious of their
actions but nevertheless attribute the responsibility to an external actor to
minimize electoral costs11. In other words, instead of publicly admitting that they
indeed changed policy positions and taking responsibility for their actions at the
EU level, office-‐seeking parties in majoritarian systems are likely to put the 11 In this sense, I expect parties to consciously adopt a blame-‐game strategy, namely to blame not themselves (internal attribution) but to strategically assign causality to some other actor (external attribution).
21
blame on factors external to the party itself. In other words, faced with sceptic
voters, office-seekers are likely to attribute political responsibility for electorally
costly policy change to Brussels and/ or to the European strategy of their electoral
opponent.
Methodology & Data
To explore some of the above propositions, the present study conducts a case-‐
study analysis. This method enjoys a natural advantage (Gerring 2004; Eckstein
1975; Lijphart 1971), where hypotheses are developed and put to initial tests
because it enables the study of causal mechanisms through the intense study of
individual cases (e.g. through interviews, archival research and engagement in
secondary sources). Gerring (2004: 349) explains that: the in-‐depth analysis of a
single unit is useful in elucidating causal mechanisms because its characteristic
style of evidence-‐gathering— overtime
and within-‐unit variation—is likely to provide clues into what connects a purported X to a particular Y. Cross-‐unit variation, in contrast, is often mute with respect to causal mechanisms. The Xs and Ys may be at a considerable remove from one another; one does not know, or must simply intuit, what connects the dots.
Furthermore, following Pahre (2005: 114), the advantages of combining theory
and case studies “go well beyond the obsessions with case selection rules and
research design that have dominated the methodological discussion in political
science”. So, despite the fact that the case study -‐-‐almost per definition-‐-‐ offers a
weak basis for causal generalization, it is chosen here as having “the advantage of
providing the investigator intensive knowledge of a case and its history and thus
a more in-‐depth view of causation” (Ragin 2000: 90). In this vein, case-‐study
methodologists emphasize the temporal junctures or duration of variables
(Mahoney, 2007: 126): the unfolding of events over time matters. The specific
technique of “process tracing forces the investigator to take equifinality into
account, and it offers the possibility of mapping out one or more potential causal
paths that are consistent with the outcome and the process tracing evidence in a
single case” (Bennett and George 1997; see also George and Bennett 2005).
22
Indeed, any study of party change due to European integration faces the problem
of equifinality simply because party change may be the ultimate destination of
causal paths unrelated to European integration. By paying attention to the
sequence of events (see also: Müller 1997), we can examine the plausibility of
the causal mechanisms proposed here, by exploring whether (and which kind of)
change was induced by Europe.
Hence, I focus on a single EU member state and analyze its major parties in
an effort to better comprehend the challenges faced by national parties and the
causal mechanisms at work in an ever-‐changing EU policy and institutional
environment. The study of different parties within a single system has the
advantage that the units under investigation share the same (national) system as
well as the same (national) electorate. Thus, in attempt to isolate the EU effect, a
single-‐country study allows holding important parameters constant12. Also, the
Greek case displays within unit-‐variation (PASOK’s move from fervently
Eurosceptic to passionately Eurofriendly). More importantly, Greek EU
membership is long enough (since 1981) to allow tracing the EU effect
throughout time. As a majoritarian democracy, the case of Greece gives the
opportunity to explore the specific proposition about the EU creating a conflict
office vs. votes. For this reason, I focus on Greek parties with governing potential:
PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) and ND (New Democracy). These
parties were ‘young’ when Greece entered the EC, and hence should be less
resistant to environmental pressures than parties in other European countries
with longer democratic traditions.
As under two-‐party competition vote-‐ and office-‐seeking considerations
are otherwise identical, we need to consider the attitude of public opinion
towards the EU. The stance of the Greek public opinion vis-‐à-‐vis the project of
European unification changed from negative (1974-‐1986) to positive (1986-‐
2004). More specifically, the fall of the dictatorship saw the emergence of anti-‐
Western and anti-‐business values amongst the Greek electorate (Dimitras 1990).
However, the initial Euroskeptic public stance changed during the decade 1980-‐
12 Müller and Strøm (1999) recognize that specific situations may enable or constrain party leaders’ decisions regarding goal maximization; along with intra-‐party organizational properties, they principally stress the importance of systemic institutional variables (e.g. electoral systems).
23
1990 to become supportive of European unification (Dimitras 1992). In detail,
the Greek public belonged to the Euroskeptics until 1986, whereas from 1989
onwards it expresses a consistently positive attitude towards European
integration13 (Deflem and Pampel 1996). The majority of the Greek public was
supportive of the EU throughout the period 1995-‐2004 and perceived Greek EU
membership as beneficial for Greece14 (Vernardakis 2007).
To trace the process of Greek party response to the EU, we need to
structure the data chronologically so that we can explore the interaction
between the independent variable (European integration), the intervening
variables (party elite, party goals) and the dependent variable (party change). As
the model seeks to explain party response to the EU environment, it applies to
studies interested in response to multiple stimuli (e.g. EU institutional reform
and expansion of EU policy scope occurring jointly) or a single stimulus (e.g. a
new European Directive)15. As mentioned earlier, we are specifically interested
in the difference that varied degrees of European integration may make to elite
perception of EU and to goal pursuit, and consequently, to Europeanization as
change in response to Europe. To facilitate a longitudinal measurement of party
Europeanization, I adopt a rather holistic approach, which ensures that the
analytical (i.e. theory) and empirical (i.e. data) parts of the present inquiry share
conceptual and definitional bases. European integration is understood here as
“the delegation of policy competences to the supranational level to achieve particular policy outcomes; and the establishment of a new set of political institutions with executive, legislative and judicial powers”(Hix and Goetz 2000: 3).
13 Deflem and Pampel (1996) investigated Greek public opinion in the years 1982, 1986, 1989 and 1992 based on Eurobarometer Surveys 18, 25, 31a, and 37.
14 Vernardakis (2007) explored the Greek public’s support for the European Union based on VRPC surveys conducted in 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2004 as well as Eurobarometer Surveys conducted in the period 1995-‐2004. 15 As this is the virgin test of the model, the study of a single European directive would be too limited to indicate (not to mention guarantee) how the model performs in the empirical world. As Trochim (2000) explains, ‘mono-‐operation bias’ is a threat to ‘construct validity’that does not pertain to measures or outcomes but relates to the independent variable or assumed cause in a study. To clarify, the operationalization of the independent variable as a single stimulus at a single point in time would be flawed because it would not fully capture the concept ‘EU environment’.
24
Thus, powerful stimuli emanating from the EU environment may be understood
as moments of EU policy extension and/or of EU institutions’ empowerment.
Such an understanding of the independent variable takes in policy and polity
dimensions of European integration. EU treaties constitute compound European
stimuli, as they bring about changes in both the aforementioned dimensions.
Therefore, I disaggregate the cumulative process of European integration into
treaty revisions16, which signify specific time points when expansion of EU policy
scope and EU institutional reforms occur, and new constraints are posed on the
national system. The choice of this strategy allows a focus on party behavior and
change preceding/coinciding/following specific points in time.
In applying the present framework, we need to consider important events
occurring at the party level, e.g. changes in the leadership and/or the dominant
faction. Such events usually come about following electoral failure. It should be
noted that even if there are members with leadership ambitions or non-‐
dominant factions disagreeing with the official party line, when a party does well,
the power of the leadership and the dominance of a faction or coalition of
factions are usually not challenged. On the contrary, an electoral failure
questions the ability of the leadership and the power center of the party to steer
the party organization. For the present analysis, when leadership change occurs
we should identify whether and to what extent the new leadership has a
different approach to European integration. In addition, we should consider
whether leadership change was accompanied with a change in the conformation
and/or the composition of the party’s dominant faction. In detail, we should
figure out whether there is intra-‐party conflict regarding the EU and how intra-‐
16 Treaty of Greek Accession (1979), Treaty of Spanish and Portuguese Accession (1985), Single European Act (1986), Treaty of Maastricht (1992), Treaty of Austrian, Finnish and Swedish Accession (1994), Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), Treaty of Nice (2001), Treaty of Accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia (2003), Draft Constitutional Treaty (2004), Treaty of Bulgarian and Romanian Accession (2005), and the Lisbon Treaty (2007), which was a revision of the Draft Constitutional Treaty. These were major EU events that culminated in the form of treaties, which were negotiated and signed by the respective parties in government and later ratified by both governing and opposition parties composing the Greek parliament. Among these EU events, the most powerful stimulus was the Maastricht Treaty, which stands out as a crucial step of radical deepening of the European project. The Maastricht treaty was a key step in the history of European integration because European leaderships proceeded to the full realization of a single European market, despite the major implications that this entailed for the exercise of economic policy at the national level.
25
party power is distributed among factions; moreover, what is the conflict about?
Milestone events in party life (e.g. electoral failure/success, leadership change,
congresses) are events that can chronologically structure the analysis of the
intervening variable (changes at the level of party elite, goal switch).
With regard to the operationalization of the dependent variable, the set of
research hypotheses to be explored relates to the different aspects (qualitative
indicators) of party change as a ‘response’ to the challenge of European
integration:
1. Change in perception of the EU: Perception of the EU by PASOK and ND are
likely to be affected by changes at the level of party elite (Hypothesis 1).
2. Europe & Change in policy positions: PASOK and ND are likely to experience
EU-‐related policy change (Hypothesis 2a); eventually their positions on
Europe and European policies are likely to converge (Hypothesis 2b).
3. Europe & Structural Change: PASOK and ND are not likely to experience EU-‐
related structural change, such as to upgrade the MEPs’ status within the
party (as important agents of the party at the EU level), create mechanisms
to coordinate between MEP and MP teams (e.g. with regard to the European
dimensions of national policies), invest resources in developing EU expertise
(Hypothesis 3a). They are likely to experience organizational change with
regard to intra-‐party democracy, recruitment procedures and leadership
accountability (Hypothesis 3b).
4. Europe & Electoral tactics and discourse: if costs of reference to Europe
exceed benefits, ND and PASOK are likely to avoid mingling Europe into the
electoral competition. Thus, for these parties EP elections are likely to serve
as ‘beauty contests’, or national polls regarding public opinion on
government performance rather than an arena debating European policies
(Hypothesis 4a). When they mention Europe, PASOK and ND are likely to
attribute responsibility for electorally costly policy change to Brussels and/
or to the European strategy of their electoral opponent (Hypothesis 4b).
These hypotheses are explored through triangulation of “different kinds of
evidence from a variety of different sources” in an attempt “to construct full and
compelling representations of causation” (Yin 2003: 10). The subsequent
26
empirical narrative thus draws on data from semi-‐structured interviews17 with
party politicians (conducted in 2006) and parties’ national and European
manifestos18 (1974-‐2007). Information provided by these two sources is
crosschecked based on archival material (party statutes, party publications on
Europe and European issues, parliamentary debates; see: list of references).
Findings: Changing Policy, not Structure?
Based on interview, manifesto and archival data, in this section I present the
findings with regard to the hypothesized types of party behavior and change
through the narratives of PASOK and ND, two parties born with the
establishment of liberal democracy in Greece (1974). To set the stage, a few
words about the parties’ primary goals, leadership change and factions:
First, while ND was born “to govern” (Karamanlis 1974), PASOK in the
beginning presented itself as a revolutionary policy-‐seeking movement (PASOK
1974). Initially being the third party under two-‐party competition, PASOK had no
governing potential. PASOK switched to prioritizing office during the period
1977-‐1981. At that time, it absorbed parts of the collapsing Center Union, the
second Greek major party. PASOK was in office during 1981-‐1989 and 1993-‐
2004, while ND governed during 1974-‐1981, 1990-‐1993 and 2004-‐2009. Second,
PASOK experienced three19 leadership changes, whereas ND, due to successive
17 The material collected through interviews helps identify associations ““that occur in people’’s thinking or acting ––and the meaning these have for people”” (Ritchie, 2003: 28). Thus, these data make it possible ““to identify the factors, or influences that underlie an attitude, belief or perception, the motivations that lead to decisions, actions or non-‐actions, the origins of formation of events, experiences or occurrences, and the context in which phenomena occur (ibid.). To evaluate whether party change occurs in response to the EU challenge on the party’s primary goal the questionnaire used in the interviews inquires about three different aspects of party change (perception, policy, structure). 18 Manifestos are election programs, namely key central statements of party positions. More specifically, a party manifesto is the final version of a document composed through a series of formal processes (as specified by party rules) and thus constitutes an authoritative statement of policy proposals, whose character is collective, i.e. they represent the whole party (Volkens, 2001). No other source represents views of the party as an organization (Budge, 2001). More importantly, as they are published before each election, their use allows for a study of the relationship between parties and Europe over time. Thus, party manifestos are important data sources for the present study of party Europeanization, especially with regard to the following aspects of EU-‐related change: perception, policy positions, electoral discourse and tactics. 19 Andreas Papandreou (1974-‐1996), Kostas Simitis (1996-‐2004) and George Papandreou (2004-‐today).
27
electoral failures, experienced six20 leadership changes during the period of
inquiry (1974-‐2007). Third, the founders’ personalities served as glue for
competing intra-‐party factions. PASOK comprises mainly of Socialists, Social
Democrats/Modernizers and Centrists; ND embraces the following factions:
Center right/Neoliberals, Moderate Conservatives, Ultra-‐nationalists/Extreme
right21 as well as Monarchists. Leadership changes were accompanied by
changes in the power constellation between different factions within the party.
Importantly, however, both PASOK and ND founders were haunted by
organizational experiences (e.g. factionalism, defection), which had led to great
political instability in the pre-‐junta era. As such, they contributed to the
development of leader-‐dominated and quasi-‐authoritarian party structures.
Thanks to punishment tactics (e.g. expulsion), the parties’ founders secured
permanent support by the party’s divergent factions; subsequent leaders of both
PASOK and ND followed this paradigm, though at a lesser extent than the
founders. In essence, PASOK and ND leaders used tough whips and control
mechanisms as means of consolidating their power and forbidding divergence of
opinion. Thus, throughout the decades, the party leaders in both ND and PASOK
enjoyed quasi-‐boundless powers.
Change in perception of the EU
The perception of and relationship with the EC/EU by Greek parties has been
influenced by the priorities set by their presidents. PASOK’s switch to office was
not motivated by the EC, but by the domestic opportunity structure (gap in the
party system, absorption of top centrist politicians); importantly, the switch to
office did alter the party’s relationship to Europe. In the period 1974-‐1981 the
founder of PASOK opposed the EU as being “a club of monopolies”, and as an
impediment to its economic policy goals (Papandreou 1978; 1981). Though
20 Competition for the post of ND’s Head followed electoral defeats in the 1981 national election, the 1984 European election, and the national elections of 1985, 1993 and 1996. The leaders of ND: Kostantinos Karamanlis (1974-‐1980), George Rallis (1980-‐1981), Evangelos Averoff (1981-‐1984), Konstantinos Mitsotakis (1984-‐1993), Miltiades Evert (1993-‐1997), Kostas Karamanlis JR (1997-‐2009).
21 The Extreme Right faction of the party broke away to found LAOS in 2000.
28
having won the national contest on a fervently anti-‐EC agenda in 1981, A.
Papandreou soon made an U-‐turn vis-‐à-‐vis Europe and argued that Greece’s
relationship with the EC “had to be dealt with from within the EC system”
(Interviews PASOK 1,2,6). Despite softening its hard Euroscepticism, PASOK
preserved a critical, ethnocentric and defensive stance towards EC partners.
Under A. Papandreou leadership, Greece became the “annoying member”,
making strategic use of its veto power to secure EC funding (e.g. Memorandum,
Mediterranean programs, Community Support Frameworks), while excluding
itself from statements of political commitment via the famous “asterisks”
(Interviews PASOK 1, 2, 3, 7). PASOK’s perception of the EC further changed after
the Single European Act (SEA), when European policies were perceived as a
“one-‐way street” and “a necessary evil” (ibid.). This perception was intensified by
global developments, and particularly by the collapse of extant socialism (see
Papandreou 1990). These developments brought PASOK closer to the European
model of Social Democracy, towards which it had been initially hostile. Faced
with the Maastricht Treaty and the road to EMU, PASOK was becoming more and
more pro-‐European. Tough whips22 ensured the party’s disciplined stance along
the leaders’ line and swifts. Leadership change and changes in the conformation
and composition of PASOK’s dominant coalition of factions in 1996 further
changed the party’s perception and approach to Europe and European policies.
The most pro-‐European faction of the party (Modernizers/Social Democrats)
took over. Under Simitis’ government, the EU became the “central strategic
vehicle” (Interviews PASOK 4, 7) for Greece. Since then, the EU is positively
perceived as providing for a “common locus” (ibid.) –even in areas, where the EC
has limited competences (e.g. migration). The subsequent Papandreou
leadership (2004-‐) continues on the same pace. The case of PASOK clearly
displays a change of perception during the process of European integration and
throughout presidential terms: having started by being Greek EC Accession’s
most vocal opponent, now PASOK is the most pro-‐European Greek party.
The founder of ND fought zealously (against domestic opposition and
22 Through massive expulsions, he silenced all divergent voices already in 1975, so that he faced no intra-‐party opposition regarding the party’s relationship with the EC.
29
international reluctance) for Greek EC membership, which he perceived as a
“guarantee” for Greece’s political stability and national security (Manifesto ND
1974). ND lacked a coherent ideology (Interviews ND 2, 3, 4; Karamanlis 1974)
and was composed of various office-‐seeking factions that either had an
ethnocentric perception of Greek foreign policy, or wanted a strong paternalistic
state, or both; the only faction having a clear (and EC compatible) ideology was
the neoliberal/center-‐right faction led by K. Mitsotakis (Mitsotakis 1985). So,
although ND has always been expressing a generally pro-‐EU stance and has been
underlining its Europeanism, most factions within it did not become conscious of
the policy limitations posed by European developments until the party gained
power (for the first time after Greek accession) in 1990. To illustrate, Mitsotakis’
government (1990-‐1993) viewed European policies as an opportunity to
radically reform the Greek economy (Greek Parliament 1990; Mitsotakis 1990);
yet, not everyone in the party was on board due to fears of disappointing specific
groups of the electorate (e.g. farmers). Even worse, the Balkan crisis brought
about crucial times for the EU as well as for Greece in the EU. Differences of
opinion between Greece and the EC but also within the ND party itself (i.e.
between neoliberals and the rest) arose about the name of the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). As some factions mobilized the citizenry, the
conflict within the party escalated and the government eventually fell. Electoral
failure and change of leadership in 1993 brought about a more
ethnocentric/nationalist attitude; the overall stance was pro-‐European, but more
defensive of national sovereignty. A new electoral failure in 1996 brought about
leadership change in 1997 and EU-‐criticism (which was directed more towards
PASOK government rather than the EU) got intensified. A blurry and slightly
Eurosceptic stance is evident in manifestos for national and European elections
until ND assumed power (1993-‐2004), when it was forced to perceive European
policies as a “one-‐way street” and present them as such to the electorate
(Interviews ND 1,2,3).
Change in policy positions
Both parties changed policy positions because of the EU. In the case of PASOK,
however, the change is more dramatic, due to its greater divergence with the EU
30
mainstream. PASOK’s foreign policy, model of development as well its models of
production and economy were mostly affected. In this regard, the EC presented
PASOK with “a big problem” and brought about policy and programmatic
changes that enfeebled and desiccated its original ideology (Interviews PASOK
1,3,6). According to most interviewees, incumbency determined all party’s
policies and strategies during 1981-‐1989 and 1993-‐2004. Perhaps PASOK
“would have remained faithful to many of its original positions had it not won
the 1985 election” (Interview PASOK 2), which resulted in PASOK being the
government to negotiate the SEA. After 1985, PASOK travels direction right and
towards the social democratic economic model, which it had been opposing
during 1974-‐1985. To illustrate, approximately three decades after its
foundation, PASOK advocates in favor of mixed (i.e. public and private)
enterprises and mixed capital. As a party in executive office within the EU,
PASOK was deprived from tools of macroeconomic policy; therefore, after 1993
it came closer and closer to the rest social democratic parties in Europe.
However, this ideological change also brought PASOK closer to ND’s policy,
because the tools PASOK “borrowed from the EC were common for PASOK and
ND” so that the difference between them does not consist in different policies but
in different management (i.e. “which party can better manage a specific system”)
(Interview PASOK 2).
The question “whether things could have been done otherwise” remains
unanswered (Interviews PASOK 1,2,3); to be sure, the duties of governing at the
EU level forced PASOK to discard its original ideology. But while abandoning that
ideology, it did not substitute it with a new one that clearly differentiates it from
that of ND; also, it failed in designing new policies within the EC/EU framework.
Some interviewees23 particularly lament the fact that Greece, under PASOK
government, failed to promote its own policy packages. Similar dilemmas were
facing all socialist and social democratic parties in Europe but Greece under
PASOK government was sluggish in taking the chance towards adaptation to the
new realities of the Common Market. Despite the fact that there were many
23 The interviewees that expressed such views have had experience in the Council of Ministers (i.e. PASOK interviews 1, 2 and 8).
31
European policies that could prove beneficial for Greece, some interviewees self-‐
critically comment that PASOK lacked these policies and/or fell short of creating
them. For example, in the post-‐Maastricht era, the EU did not hinder the member
states from following a developmental policy, e.g. by investing resources in
education and training -‐-‐“like the Dutch did” (Interview PASOK 2). PASOK
government did not do so because, as a party, it lacked this policy. Though
Greece was obliged to shift away from its main products (i.e. cotton and tobacco),
it was not hindered by the EU to shift towards cultivation of alternative
agricultural products. A significant related change in the positions of PASOK is
that now it advocates that farmers should concentrate on products that “the
European market needs” (Interview PASOK 1). Yet, while in government, PASOK
did not create markets for the Greek products and it was slow in promoting
alternative solutions as to what kind of products should Greece produce given
the European context. As a result, Greece experienced some unfavorable effects
of European economic integration, e.g. whereas being self-‐sufficient in animal
husbandry back in 1992, in 2006 Greece faced a deficit concerning trade balance
in the respective field of production.
Moreover, interviewees report that neither PASOK nor ND governments
wanted to impose environmental24rules because the country lacks relevant
infrastructure; nor did they want to create this infrastructure because it would
not be electorally beneficial: “waste banks are oeuvres without visibility”
(Interview PASOK 1). Greece thus collected a lot of fines for not abiding with
European environmental law. In general, policy choices were determined by
short-‐term vote-‐maximizing strategies and there was no policy action in areas
where there was limited visibility and/or considerable resistance25. Relatedly,
both ND and PASOK governments avoided disappointing powerful groups
24 In this regard, it should be highlighted that in Greece environmental concerns are underdeveloped and until 2009 there was no Ministry of Environment; two years before its creation a parliamentary committee dealing with the environmental dimension of several policies come to existence. The decision to found this committee was taken by the Greek parliament on February 17, 2005 (under ND government) and the Committee started functioning on October 15, 2007 (Special Permanent Parliamentary Committee for the Environment, 2008).
25 Another example is tax evasion: any government that touches this issue “gets burned” (ibid.).
32
amongst the electorate, such as farmers, owners of oil refineries and ship-‐
owners. For instance, when faced with the dissatisfaction of the electorate with
its tough economic policies in 1985 (which sought to bring Greece closer to the
European economic mainstream), PASOK temporarily abandoned them in fear of
losing votes.
While PASOK was conforming to the EU mainstream, its positions
underwent severe changes: in the post-‐Maastricht era, PASOK government
proceeded to privatizations and liberalizations, thus being in complete
opposition to the socialist policy goals that it was advocating until the mid-‐
1980s. It became completely EU compatible in the years between Maastricht and
EMU under the Simitis’ leadership, and since then its positions are distinguished
by stability. Simitis also brought a different approach to Greek foreign policy;
while A. Papandreou was interested in alliances with Third-‐World countries and
distrusted EC partners, his successor focused exclusively on the European family
and sought the solution of most foreign policy problems (e.g. Cyprus,
relationship with Turkey, FYROM) via the EU framework.
The case of ND is slightly different. As mentioned earlier, except for
neoliberal Mitsotakis, all ND leaders subscribed to a blurry ideological profile
that could unite the various office-‐seeking factions within the party’s gulfs. Yet,
the ideology that stood under the nebulous label ‘radical liberalism’ supported
high degrees of state intervention in the economy, which contradicted
developments at the EU level. Mitsotakis leadership (1985-‐1993) brought ND
closer to the EU mainstream. ND took office in 1990 and negotiated the
Maastricht Treaty; consequently, its positions regarding the economy and
foreign affairs became entirely EU-‐compatible. At the same time, however,
PASOK was also much closer to the European mainstream; as a result, since the
Maastricht Treaty the two parties have been converging. It should be underlined
that the commitment of Mitsotakis and the neoliberal faction to make policy “the
European way” led ND to internal crisis about both foreign policy and economic
affairs. The centrist/neoliberal faction was too small to dominate over the rest
that attempted to stop the ‘wind of change’ from blowing –at least temporarily.
This resistance to policy change was due to the fact that most ND members were
33
used to “a clientelistic system, a system of exchange, where the state has a
paternalistic role, to take care of everyone” (Interview ND 2). The subsequent
changes of leadership brought the party’s rhetoric back to its fuzzy ideological
foundations and for electoral purposes ND tried to get rid off the neoliberal label.
However, a closer look at the actual policy positions advocated in ND’s
manifestos after 1993 suggests that this constituted a communication strategy
rather than a substantive change: the policy positions of the party expressed in
its manifestos diverged neither from previously articulated positions nor from
the EU mainstream.
Finally, it should be noted that PASOK and ND governments expressed
their willingness to EU partners regarding the materialization of changes, while
asking for more time because Greece was a “special case” (Interview ND 4;
Interview PASOK 3). Then, transposition was often delayed, postponed, or failed,
not only “due the Greek dysfunctional bureaucracy”, but also “due to the lack of
political will” (Interview ND 3). Examples of such cases are the liberalization of
the energy sector, telecommunications and the environment.
Structural Change
Complementing previous findings (e.g. Poguntke et al. 2007; Raunio 2002), the
analysis with regard to organizational changes at the party level show: first, that
neither case experienced substantive EU-‐related changes and second, in both
cases the leadership dominated the party structure.
The years between PASOK’s two electoral successes (in the 1981 and
1985 elections) made “all party ranks realize that the role of the party’s
organization changed”: the formerly active organization moved towards
professionalization and away from deliberative processes (e.g. regional/local
meetings) (Interviews PASOK 1, 5). In general, the leader of PASOK was above
any other party organ and the term of the presidency knew no “expiry date”. As
PASOK was in office for a long time (1981-‐1989 and 1993-‐2004) the
coordination of its European strategies and policies was mainly pursued through
the state structures and in a “highly centralized manner, with the prime role
played by the Bureau of the Prime Minister and the ministries of Foreign Affairs
34
and Economy” (Interviews PASOK 1, 4, 7). Within the party, an important role
was played by the Foreign Affairs Sector, which assisted the governmental
oeuvre. In general, in the period 1981-‐2004 the party as a political organization
“took a back seat” (Interviews PASOK 1, 3, 5, 7) as PASOK in office was
representing the state rather than the society of Greece. All policies were decided
by governmental elites, while there was ever less involvement of the middle-‐
level party ranks and hardly any involvement of the party’s base.
The first party regular congress was held a decade after the foundation of
the party and three years after the party took governmental office. PASOK’s
successive electoral successes helped the leadership (and those supporting him)
consolidate power within the party, to the extent that nobody dared to appear as
a challenger for the party’s presidency. As luck would have it, electoral success
deprived PASOK from internal democracy. The first leadership change occurred
twenty-‐two years after the party’s birth and only due to the lethal sickness of the
founder; it was confined to the premiership (presidency of the cabinet) and not
to the party’s leadership (party presidency) until Simitis would be re-‐elected by
the party congress. The change of leadership from Simitis to G. Papandreou was
a decision taken at the leadership level, without involving the rest of the party at
all. After having been ‘selected’ by his predecessor, G. Papandreou set up a
referendum type of ballot, where all Greek citizens were invited to
support/oppose his presidency of PASOK.
After electoral failure in 2004, new leader George Papandreou engaged in
organizational restructuring. Electoral loss was bitterer after decades in power.
It thus led to self-‐criticism and brought the party organization back to forefront.
The congress of the national council of reconstitution (2004) deliberated on the
majority of changes that were then formalized in the form of a new statute. In the
two last statutes (PASOK, 2005; 2008b) the size of the congress26 was modified -‐-‐
26 Traditionally the party members who participated in the congress were: representatives of the local and regional organizations of the party, the party organizations abroad, members of the central committee elected by the last congress, the president and the parliamentary representatives. Nowadays, the congress includes: members of all former central committees, founding members, all former parliamentary and Europarliamentary representatives, members of NGOs, PASOK members who are presiding specific organizations (e.g. trade unions, the Union of Prefectural Self-‐Organization), PASOK members who are serving as mayors or prefectural
35
towards a greater degree of inclusiveness. In addition, based on the maxim of
“participatory democracy”, G. Papandreou tried to transform PASOK into an
‘open party’, i.e. not only to its members but also to its “friends” as well as all
Greek citizens via the Greek Civil Society (Papandreou 2004). In this context, the
leader tried to revive the enthusiasm of the popular forces for self-‐organization
by utilizing information technology, i.e. by renovating the party’s official website
(where most activities of the party are posted on a daily basis) and by creating
several innovative e-‐fora (e.g. Dialogue with the citizen27, Re-‐public28, Self-‐
Organization/Aυτοοργάνωση29), where citizens can participate in discussions
regarding the structure and ideological orientation of PASOK, make policy
proposals, etc.
Moreover, PASOK’s opposition status strengthened the role of the party’s
policy sectors30, which had been enfeebled during the party’s long stay in
government. The formulation of policy proposals started taking into account best
practices in other EU member states: party officials conduct research regarding
legislation across Europe and organize workshops to study whether, how and to
what extent these practices fit the domestic context. Moreover, since 2004 MEPs’
have specific portfolios and are members of all party sectors (e.g. agriculture,
economy, etc.). However, it remains to be seen whether the party’s policy sectors
will continue to play such a prominent role now that PASOK in office.
Importantly, PASOK’s structure does not posses a separate sector for European
policy.
Although the organizational changes that PASOK experienced were not
motivated by European developments (but by simultaneous electoral failure and
governors, the members of the national council of PASOK’s youth, the members of PASOK’s national council and representatives of local organizations of the party. The number of the latter participants shall also be double the size of those members who are entitled to participate due to their position or status (Article 33, PASOK, 2005). 27 For more information, see: http://dialogos.pasok.gr 28 For more information, see: http://www.re-‐public.gr 29 For more information, see: http://autoorganosi.wordpress.com 30 And though based on manifesto data it seems that the party gradually realized the importance of environmental protection, its structure acquired an environmental sector to formulate environmental policy and process the environmental dimension of other policies only in 2005.
36
change of leadership), the new leadership worked closely with a team that
included young MEPs31. The general goal of the reform was to cultivate the image
of a modern European party (e.g. party Ombudsman, gender quotas). Most
importantly, MEPs (who had not been utilized as important party agents at the
EU level) did become more important within the party structure after 2004: new
rules were established regarding their participation in the party’s central
organs32 as well as their coordination with MPs. According to interviewees, the
status of MEPs within the party did not change over night: as more and more
issues were transferred to the European level, the party mentality regarding
MEPs’ role was also changing (though at a snail's pace). Yet, MEP selection
continues to be in the hands of the party’s leadership, which makes it difficult for
PASOK MEPs to connect to the party’s base and the broader electorate. For the
2004 EP election, PASOK conducted an online-‐poll, whereby PASOK members
and friends could express their view regarding the qualifications an MEP should
have and propose specific candidacies. This was an experimental step towards
participatory e-‐democracy. Nonetheless, in the end, the list of candidates for the
EP battle was composed, like it has always been, by the leader.
Despite G. Papandreou’s alleged intentions to change the party in the
direction of democratization and decentralization, the leader remained the most
powerful party figure. Although the term of the party’s presidency is nowadays
(finally) specified (i.e. his/her (re)election is supposed to take place every four
years and not to exceed three terms), the leader is the only organ directly elected
by the party on the ground. The increase of the leader’s legitimacy consequently
gave him an even bigger say within the party. In a symbolic move, Papandreou
dissolved PASP, the party’s organized youth (03.09.2005) because it had lost its
political orientation and its role was reduced to a mechanism for climbing up the
party ladder, by serving the interests and ambitions of established office-‐seeking
31 In general, due to the resistance of the formerly governing old-‐guard, during the period of preparation for the party congress in 2005, the president avoided the circle of top-‐ranking party members and organized meetings with middle-‐level officials as well as members that were not part of PASOK’s ‘star-‐system’. 32 MEPs participate ex oficio in PASOK’s National Council as well as in the specific party policy sector meetings. One MEP is a member of the executive organ of the party, the Political Council, which comprises in total 14 members.
37
party elites of competing factions. In its place, he established a new party
institution, the Youth Movement/Κίνημα Νέων. And in spite of new article 49
(PASOK, 2005; PASOK, 2008), which requires democratic primaries for the
selection of candidates at various levels of governance, many PASOK candidacies
for the 2006 prefectural election were the personal decision of the leader;
sometimes, they came as a surprise to the rest of the party, which was informed
about the candidacies through the press.
When G. Papandreou’s leadership was publicly challenged by prominent
PASOK members after the party’s failure to achieve office in the 2007 election,
members and friends of PASOK were called to decide upon the leadership among
three candidates, including the president (see Rori 2008). Notwithstanding G.
Papandreou’s endorsement by the party on the ground, established party
members of competing factions did not stop challenging his leadership. Although
he had originally tried to deal with internal disagreements in a peaceful way, he
later turned more authoritarian.33
ND’s relationship with intra-‐party democracy was similarly awkward.
According to the statutes (ND, 1994; 1997; 2005; 2007), the superior party body
is the party congress, which elects the central committee, decides on the
statutory changes, ideological orientations etc. Yet, during the first twenty years
of its existence, ND conducted only three regular congresses (1st in 1979, 2nd in
1986 and 3rd in 1994), participation in which became more inclusive throughout
time. Moreover, although regular congresses were to be held every three years
(ND, 1994), they took place quite sporadically. In reality, the ultimate party
organ of ND was not the congress but the president-‐-‐a phenomenon lasting until
today.
Moreover, most changes that occurred at the level of party structure
intended to render the party more ‘presidential’. In the past, the leader of ND
was elected by a special body of electors, consisting of the entire parliamentary
33 When former PASOK president and Prime Minister K. Simitis publicly objected to Papandreou’s proposal regarding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, he was immediately expelled from PASOK’s parliamentary group (June 2008).
38
party as well as representatives of the peripheral organizations and of the Greek
Diaspora (ND, 1994). The 4th congress of the party especially convened to elect a
president, which made leadership selection more inclusive (ND, 1997; 2005;
2007); nevertheless, the post’s tenure remained unspecified and the powers of
the leader continued to be quasi-‐unlimited. The homonymous nephew of the
party’s founder was the first leader to be elected by a party congress. Soon after
he became president of ND, Kostas Karamanlis established his own version of
authoritarianism by expelling six important party members because they
deviated from the party line34 and objected to a piece of legislation that they
found too conservative in comparison to EU standards. Notably, when ND got the
power in 2004, the party president and prime-‐minister Karamanlis proposed to
increase the number of state deputies35 in the Greek parliament. If this proposal
would have passed36, the party leaders of both PASOK and ND would become
even more powerful, as more deputies would depend neither on their party
organization, nor on the electorate but solely and exclusively on the preferences
of party presidents.
ND’s EU-‐related change has been less momentous than that of PASOK:
ND’s secretariat for Foreign Affairs got renamed “secretariat for Foreign Affairs
and the EU” and started recruiting experts that specialized in EU issues. Also, the
status and role of MEPs within the party has been and remains problematic: they 34 This was the case of a parliamentary vote on the reform (privatization) of the Public Services of Common Good (Δημόσιες Επιχειρήσεις Κοινής Ωφέλειας-‐ ΔΕΚΟ), e.g. Olympic Airlines, the National Electricity Company, the National Post, etc. 35 These deputies are chosen exclusively by the party leader and are placed above the electoral list of the rest of candidates, to be elected through a nationwide constituency, based on the party’s overall electoral performance. As these candidates do not become deputies via the traditional route of campaigning in a constituency, they are called “state deputies (Βουλευτές Επικρατείας)”. The total number of these deputies is fixed to 12 (out of 300 parliamentary seats). So, Karamanlis proposed in 2006 that the number of the state deputies increases so that they become 30, namely 10% of seats in the Greek Parliament. 36 This proposal, which would lead to further presidentialization of Greek politics, met the resistance of many members of the Greek parliament, including a considerable number of ND office-‐seeking elites. The proposal would hurt the interests of some established political elites as the number of deputies that each party would elect at the level of regional constituencies would be reduced. Karamanlis submitted this proposal in the context of the constitutional reform in 2007 but the proposal was rejected, even by ND parliamentarians. To illustrate, whereas the entire parliamentary group of the party, namely 162 ND deputies, took part in the vote, only 107 deputies voted in favor of the proposal. Given the high prices paid by ND parliamentarians when they deviate from the party line, these ND deputies were quite bold in preventing further presidentialization of Greek party organizations and Greek politics in general.
39
are elected through a closed list designed by the leader. As such, they constitute
“in vitro politicians, like the state deputies37” (Interview ND 4). Moreover, the
party “has not yet sufficiently realized the importance of Brussels and the contact
between MEPs and the party is still deficient” (Interview ND 6). Firstly, apart
from their participation in the parliamentary committees, there is no
coordination whatsoever as MEPs do not participate in the party’s sectors.
Secondly and relatedly, the large size of the MP group renders actual
coordination “extremely difficult” (Interviews ND 4, 6). Thus, the connecting link
between the party and MEPs is the European People’s Party, where the entire
party belongs, rather than an intra-‐party mechanism connecting MEPs with MPs.
Coordination between Europe and domestic politics has been an issue dealt with
“at the highest party level, without going through the broader party procedures,
such as the congress, or the drafting of the electoral manifesto” (Interview ND 3).
MEPs have not been receiving instructions regarding their exact mission in the
EP but they “should not adopt any position that could back fire on a domestic
issue” (Interview ND 2). However, more optimistic views within ND hold that,
“since 2000, MEPs’ action has been more intense” and that “they participate also
in many of the party’s activities at the domestic level” (Interview ND 5). In this
view, the presence of MEPs in parliamentary committees “contributes to the
modernization of domestic perceptions and the change of mentalities, e.g. in
migration policy” (ibid.). So, for some ND deputies, the understanding of MEPs’
role as a “separate” entity within the party organization is going through change”
(Interview ND 1).
Electoral discourse and tactics: instrumental use of Europe
During the entire period 1974-‐2007 PASOK and ND used Europe instrumentally
in their electoral discourse. While ND government was negotiating Greek
accession, PASOK capitalized on the Europhobia of Greek citizens, who had been
disappointed in the stance of Europe towards the dictatorial regime and 37 The interviewee makes this comparison because the so-‐called “state deputies” are those who depend upon on neither their position in the party’s list nor the number of votes they themselves gather. They are completely dependent upon the leader, as they participate in the party’s list based on his proposal and their choice is –exclusively—dependent on his preferences.
40
generally derided the dependence of their country on foreign interests. Until
1981, PASOK opposed the EC and Greek EC membership based on the argument
that it hindered its basic policy goals for Greece. Yet, PASOK switched to office
with mastery: pre-‐electorally, it exploited the left-‐wing voters’ opposition to the
EC, “stole” the radical leftist anti-‐European slogans and consequently, a lot of
leftist votes that brought it to power. It won the 1981 election by competing on
the European issue both with the radical left and the conservatives: it adopted
more pronounced positions than the Euroskeptic Communist left and attacked
ND government’s handlings at the EU level as being subservient to Western
interests. Then, as an office-‐holder, it moderated its defensive stance towards
Europe and presented this moderation as a success of getting more favorable
conditions of membership (and funding) than ND had achieved. As expected,
PASOK attributed responsibility for electorally costly actions to the European
strategy of ND and claimed to have shielded the interests of the country vis-‐à-‐vis
the EC, which ND had not effectively protected. In this respect, PASOK used EC
funds to its electoral advantage. In general, during its time in office (1981-‐1989)
it downplayed its hostile stance towards European integration but maintained an
electorally induced Eurosceptic tone. Yet, the conflict between vote-‐maximizing
promises and the duties deriving from EC membership soon led PASOK
government to portray European integration as a ‘necessary evil’ and a ‘one-‐
way-‐street’. In the meantime, public opinion was shifting towards a more
positive perception of EC membership. From the mid-‐1990s onwards, PASOK’s
manifestos try to explain to the electorate that its governmental program was
constrained by agreements at the EU level (especially Maastricht and EMU) so as
to minimize electoral costs; at the same time, it underlined its own successes as
well as the failures of ND governments at the EU level.
ND generally presents itself as the most genuinely European party on the
grounds that its founder achieved Greek Accession to the EC. While in opposition
it used the European issue to condemn PASOK’s handlings at the EC/EU level
(1981-‐1989; 1993-‐2004). When in government, ND government blamed PASOK
for the state of affairs vis-‐à-‐vis Europe that it received from former PASOK
governments (in the beginning of the 1990s and again in 2004). The successive
41
electoral failures of ND in national and EP elections brought such bitterness, that
the party leadership employed a novel electoral strategy to differentiate it from
Simitis-‐led Euroenthusiastic PASOK: in the late 1990s it added negative
undertones to its rhetoric about Europe. ND even argued that the economic goals
were not as important as the political union. In fact, this critical position towards
European integration was just a temporary electoral façade for the 1999 EP
elections. ND’s Eurosceptic rhetoric intended to exploit the Greek electorate’s
disappointment with the EU’s stance vis-‐à-‐vis the war in Yugoslavia. To compete
with PASOK, ND attacked the kind of Europe in which PASOK was proud to have
succeeded (e.g. EMU). In 2004 and 2007, by accusing PASOK of ‘creative
accountancy’ (with regard to EMU) and general mismanagement, ND managed to
secure the trust of the electorate and to free itself from some important pre-‐
electoral promises that were not realistic given the state’s finances (see Gemenis
2008). Europe was used as it best fit ND’s vote-‐maximizing strategy.
According to interviewees, due to the convergence of their policy
platforms, the two opponents’ electoral battles since the 1990s started
concentrating on issues of state management (i.e. who is more capable to
manage the country). What is more, both PASOK and ND “lacked the courage” to
publicly accept that the deep changes induced by European integration had to be
implemented anyway; so, they “blamed it on Brussels” and “as a result, Brussels
was demonized”38. In this manner, the two governing parties prevented the
maturation of the Greek people and failed to educate them with regard to
Europe.
Complementing findings of quantitative research on EP elections (e.g.
Schmitt 2005), interview and manifesto data point to the dominance of the
national agenda in EP elections and to the fact that they have been by and large
38 To convince the electorate, both governing parties used the Community as a factor that “offers” but also “creates duties” (Interview ND 4). Politicians often “made deceitful pretenses”, by saying “Brussels forbids us this”, “Brussels says that”, instead of arguing in favor of their preferred way to proceed (Interview ND 1). In fact, although Brussels did provide for a framework, e.g. the goal was to reduce the public deficit but Brussels did not impose how a government would achieve this goal. But “ND and PASOK governments behaved in a tricky way, because they advocated that “Brussels forbids Greece to raise its expenses” (ibid.).
42
conducted in the shadows of national elections. No matter the timing39 of the EP
election, ND and PASOK clearly pictured it as a “tool for domestic politics”, “a
prova generale” for the national election” and as a poll, “a kind of indicator about
how well the party does” (Interviews PASOK 2, 7; ND 1, 2, 3). The change
throughout time is that in the past the EU dimension of the electoral debate was
about “whether we want Europe or not”, whereas nowadays the discussion is
shifted towards “what kind of Europe” (ibid.). Nonetheless, the EP election
continues until today to be related to the party’s impact in the domestic rather
than the European realm. Interviewees agree that despite the fact that the EU
and the EP should constitute the main group of issues for confrontations, PASOK
and ND do not compete on European issues.
The fact that the agenda of EP elections is “not yet European” is justified
on different grounds that relate to parties’ competition for votes. The first and
dominant explanation is that, on many EU polity issues such as the powers of the
EP, enlargement, etc there is convergence between the two national parties
(Interviews PASOK 6, 8, 9; ND 1, 2, 6). Moreover, policy convergence at the EU
level is the other side of the same coin: the two largest Euro-‐party groups are
perceived as too similar:
“one cannot say that the PES and the EPP have very differentiated platforms to be utilized in an electoral battle. Inevitably, national parties are influenced by the domestic affairs” (Interview ND 3).
According to a second (but related) explanation, Europe is “unattractive” for the
large majority of voters (Interview PASOK 7; Interview ND 4). According to this
view, the big majority of Greek society is interested in Europe to the extent that
Europe can solve national issues. So, the argument goes, the interest of voters is
attracted to the extent that you can link national issues with European policies.
Finally, some respondents attributed responsibility for the cultivation of the
Greek citizens’ interest in Europe not only to party politicians, but also to the
Greek press.
39 In Greece the time of EP election varied throughout time: it preceded (1984, 1999), coincided (1989) or followed (1994, 2004) the national election.
43
Discussion-Conclusion
The present paper undertook the tasks of proposing a novel theoretical
framework for the study of party response to an evolving European environment
and of employing this framework for empirical analysis. Due to this dual goal, the
research endeavor had to confine itself to the study of a single-‐country case and
we should acknowledge the limitations inherent in such a research design.
Without doubt, future research can reach more confident conclusions regarding
the applicability and the usefulness of the proposed model by employing a cross-‐
country comparative method (e.g. including both cases of majoritarian
democracies with single-‐party governments as well as cases of consensus
democracies with multi-‐party cabinets).
Despite these limitations, through the Greek case, we do witness that the
process of European integration reinforces existing trends with regard to power-‐
seeking parties: Firstly, these organizations move from away from the
representation of societal interests and identify themselves with the state (Katz
and Mair 1993). The EU system strengthens this tendency because governing
parties in the EU serve as representatives of their member state when
negotiating policy decisions within the steering EU institutions, namely the
Council of Ministers and the European Council. It should be noted here that the
Greek office-‐seekers’ identification with the state is even more intense, because
of the fact that the governing party controls employment in the national public
sector. And for this reason, office-‐seeking elites within both ND and PASOK were
reluctant with regard to the liberalization of the public enterprises. Also, Greek
office-‐seeking leaderships commonly opted for the free use of –and the
dominance over-‐ the state structures rather than the adaptation of their
organizations to a new institutional and policy reality (Hypothesis 3a).
Secondly, European integration led to the dominance of the party in
public office over other party facets (i.e. party in central office and party on the
ground, see: Katz and Mair 2002). Within office-‐seeking organizations, those that
acquired positions of authority consolidated it and extended it via centralization
44
of power (Michels 1911). Relatedly, the leadership of Greek office-‐seeking
parties did not invest in improving and updating their organizations but instead
strengthened their own position within the party in fear of losing control over
them (Hypothesis 3b). Leadership change affected the general approach of
PASOK (e.g. Simitis) and ND (e.g. Mitsotakis) to Europe (Hypothesis 1) but as
party organizations have been used as electoral machines in support of leading
elites, the party structures proved to be immune to the challenges of the EU
polity and policies. Crucially, office-‐seeking parties did not make use of the
(generous) state-‐funding they receive to train their members, expand the
expertise of their organizations in EU law and policies, so that they could
effectively process (and respond to) EU stimuli. The organizations’ reach did not
transcend the domestic sphere so as to enable the creation of a common front at
the EU level through the empowerment of transnational party federations.
Europe was only dealt with at the party leadership level.
Thirdly, the behavior of office-‐seeking parties promotes a process of
depoliticization of formerly contested issues (Mair, 2000; 2007). Throughout
time, both office-‐seekers’ (and in particular PASOK’s) positions gradually
changed and became compatible with the EU mainstream (Hypothesis 2a). Policy
position change was mostly felt in the salient areas of economy and foreign
policy, especially regarding the Cyprus issue and relationship with Turkey. As a
result, (especially in the period after Maastricht) the positions of PASOK and ND
in the two former areas of conflict converged (Hypothesis 2b). During their
terms in government, PASOK and ND used Brussels as an alibi for pursuing
electorally unpopular policies, by portraying decisions they themselves took in
Brussels as inevitable (Hypothesis 4b). They introduced the terms ‘necessary
evil’ and ‘one-‐way-‐street’ into their electoral jargon. However, they refrained
from revealing the extent of the limitations they face with regard to policy-‐
making, namely that their “hands are tied” (Mair 2000). The electoral battles
fought by PASOK and ND started resembling races between the most/least
competent managers of the state rather than contests between competing policy
packages. In this respect, PASOK and ND attacked each other’s performance in
45
relation to how the Greek state should be run so as to live up to the expectations
of European integration (Hypothesis 4b).
But Greek governing parties proved to be very shortsighted: as their main
concern was to win the next election, they were completely unprepared for the
task they asked the Greek electorate to entrust them with. Both parties lacked
policy proposals, in most cases they failed to create any and acted as ‘policy-‐
takers’ at the EU level. Often, they endorsed positions in exchange of EU funds.
What is more, during the Third Hellenic Republic’s life, lots of scandals and cases
of misconduct were revealed: these often involved corruption, mismanagement
of EU funds and deficient or false implementation of European policies by PASOK
or ND. The overall stance of the ruling parties towards European integration has
been at the expense of the Greek society as it has brought Greece to a state of
complete dependence on the EU (e.g. supervision, fines, subsidies).
To conclude, the European family provides national executives with
possibilities for common action, while cultivating trust and securing peace
among them. Nonetheless, most European solutions to national governments’
concerns delimit individual party organizations’ room for maneuver. Parties
aspiring to executive power have realized these constraints posed by European
integration but they have also become conscious of the fact that they are better
off within the European Union than without it, because the problems facing
countries and societies nowadays, ranging from economic to environmental, are
global. For example, the members of the Eurozone benefited from the strength of
their common currency during a severe global financial crisis. Yet, office-‐seekers
do not admit the extent of their incapability to promise their electorates anything
concrete regarding policies that are dealt with at the EU level (because they
cannot know in advance whether they will succeed to create a common front and
promote their desired policy outcomes). So, European integration contributes to
the “hollowing out of competition” and the deflation of “political conflict in
Europe, by Europe” (Mair 2007b: 15), which, in turn has serious implications for
party democracy. For instance, both PASOK and ND have been treating the EP
election more as a poll and less as an arena where to debate European policies
(Hypothesis 4a). Office-‐seekers confess to the electorate neither their
46
convergence with their opponents, not their powerlessness; if they do so, they
endanger their very purpose in the system: to rule.
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2. Data
Interviews40:
PASOK 1: party member, past and current member of parliament, participation in Council of Ministers. Athens, 4th May 2006.
PASOK 2: party member, past member of Greek parliament, participation in Council of Ministers, Athens, 9th May 2006.
PASOK 3: party member, past member of Greek parliament, participation in Council of Ministers, Athens, 9th May 2006.
PASOK 4: party member, counselor of third President since 1999, Athens, 10th May 2006.
PASOK 5: party member, General Secretariat of the party, 19th May 2006. PASOK 6: party member, past and current member of parliament, Athens 15th
May 2006. PASOK 7: party member, counselor of second President since 1996, Athens, 16th
May 2006. PASOK 8: party member, past and current member of Parliament, participation
in Council of Ministers, European Parliament, Athens, 27th May 2006. PASOK 9: party member, expert/scientific advisor of MEP team since 1981,
Athens, 30th June 2006. ND 1: party member, past and current member of parliament, participation in
Council of Ministers, Athens, 17th May 2006. ND 2: ex-‐party member, past and current member of parliament, participation in
Council of Ministers under ND government, Athens, 18th May 2006. ND 3: party member, past and current member of parliament, Athens, 23rd May
2006. ND 4: party member, past and current member of parliament, Athens, 27th May
2006. ND 5: party member, past and current member of parliament, participation in
Council of Ministers, Athens, 27th May 2006. ND 6: party member, participation in the Council of Ministers, European
Parliament, Athens, 29th June 2006. ND 7: party member, general secretariat for Women Issues, Athens, Athens 16th
May 2006.
Documents:
Greek Parliament, 1990: Parliamentary debate following the programmatic statements of ND government by Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, 24.04.1990. Minutes of the Greek Parliament (Πρακτικά Βουλής) Vol. 1/Congress A’/Plenary Δ’ (Tόμος Α’/Σύνοδος Α’/Συνεδρίαση Δ’). Athens, Greek Parliament (Βουλή των Ελλήνων): Archive National Newspaper (ΦΕΚ).
40 The party members targeted for interview were chosen according to the following criteria: experience at the party level (public office/public in central office/party on the ground); no/experience at the EU level (Council of Ministers/European Parliament/Commission); gender; age; responsiveness to the research project; availability during May-‐June 2006. I am grateful to the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna for funding this fieldwork (Doctoral Research Grant, 2004-‐7).
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Κaramanlis, K. 1974: ND Founding Manifesto (Ιδρυτική Διακήρυξη της ΝΔ). Athens: New Democracy. Retrieved October 23, 2008 from: http://www.nd.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=29
Mitsotakis, K. 1985: Speech at Conference of New Democracy’s Prefecture Administrative Committees (Συνέδριο των ΝΟ.Δ.Ε. της ΝΔ) (03.02.1985). Athens: Historical Archive of Mitsotakis Foundation.
Mitsotakis, K. 1990: Speech at European People’s Party Workshop (01.05.1990). Athens: Historical Archive of Mitsotakis Foundation.
ND (ΝΔ), 1994*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: New Democracy.
ND (ΝΔ), 1997*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: New Democracy.
ND (ΝΔ), 2004: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: New Democracy. Retrieved September 15, 2007 from: http://www.nd.gr/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=80&Itemid=241
ND (ΝΔ), 2007*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: New Democracy.
ND (ΝΔ), 2008: History of ND. Retrieved October 3, 2008 from: http://www.nd.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=31
Papandreou, A. 1978: Greece and the Common Market (Ελλάδα και Κοινή Αγορά), Interview to Economic Postman (Συνέντευξη στον Οικονομικό Ταχυδρόμο). In PASOK: Greece and the Common Market: Counterarguments (Ελλάδα και ΕΟΚ: ο αντίλογος) B2/1978. Athens: PASOK (KE.ME.DIA).
Papandreou, A. 1981: On the EC. Interviews and Statements of PASOK’s President (Για την ΕΟΚ. Συνεντεύξεις και Δηλώσεις του Προέδρου του ΠΑΣΟΚ) A 36/1981. Athens: PASOK (KE.ME.DIA).
Papandreou, A. 1990: What does Socialism mean today? PASOK Archive of Leaders’ Speeches. Retrieved March 31, 2004 from: http://www.pasok.gr/portal/gr/125/3914/3/7/1/showdoc.html
Papandreou, G. 2004: Speech at the Ionian Centre NGO conference 09/06/2004. Retrieved November 23, 2008 from: http://www.pasok.gr/portal/gr/23/11653/3/7/1/showdoc.html
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 1974: Founding Manifesto of Principles and Goals (Ιδρυτική Διακήρυξη Αρχών και Στόχων). Athens: Panhellenic Socialist Movement. Retrieved July 28, 2008 from: http://www.pasok.gr/portal/gr/134/8867/1/7/1/showdoc.html
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 1990*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 1999*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 2005*: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 2008a: History of PASOK. Retrieved October 4, 2008 from: http://www.pasok.gr/portal/gr/9/1/1/showlistdoc.html
56
PASOK (ΠΑΣΟΚ), 2008b: Statute (Καταστατικό). Athens: Panhellenic Socialist Movement. Retrieved May 28, 2008 from: http://www.pasok.gr/portal/gr/30/59149/3/7/1/showdoc.html
Special Permanent Parliamentary Committee for the Environment, 2008: Report of the Special Permanent Parliamentary Committee for the Environment for the Greek Parliament Period IB’/Congress A’ (Περίοδος ΙΒ’/Σύνοδος Α’). Retrieved November 25, 2008 from: http://www.kmitsotakis.gr/media/File/Ekthesi2008.pdf
* There is no single archive containing these documents. Copies have been retrieved from personal archives of party members as well as from the libraries of the two-‐party related institutes, namely: PASOK’s think tank “ISTAME” and former ND leader’s institute “Konstantinos Mitsotakis Foundation”.
Electoral Manifestos for the National Elections41
ND 1974, 1977, 1981, 1985, 1989 (June), 1990, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007 PASOK 1974, 1977, 1981, 1985, 1989 (November), 1990, 1993, 2000, 2004,
2007.
Electoral Manifestos for the European Elections42
ND 1999, 2004 PASOK 1994, 1999, 2004
41 The list refers to all manifestos used for the present analysis. I am in dept to Paul Pennings for providing me with some of these manifestos. 42 The list refers to all Euromanifestos used for the present analysis. I am thankful to the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung and in particular to Andreas Wüst for providing me most of these texts.