Transnational Parties in the European Union

What can political parties contribute to the democratisation of the European Union? To help answer this question, this book brings together some of the most recent research into the role of transnational parties in the EUs representative politics. Case studies cover both the transnational party federations of national political parties and the various party groups in ten European Parliament (EP): the Party of European Socialists, the European People's Party, the groups of the right and the far left are all surveyed in detail. Other chapters examine various modes of party political behaviour at Union level: collaboration between national party leaderships; the process of forming a transnational political party; voting cohesion in the European Parliament; the interaction between the partisan and committee politics of the EP; the relationship between interest groups and party groups in the EP; and approaches to candidate selection. The overall effect is to illuminate what has so far been one of the less visible corners of the EUs political system: that in which political parties are already collaborating at transnational level to make decisions of considerable importance to the public.