ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THEIR BEHAVIOURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE OF POWER

Transcription

1 EUROPEAN POLITICAL PARTIES VS. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT POLITICAL GROUPS: THE ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THEIR BEHAVIOURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE OF POWER Enrico Calossi, Università di Pisa Lorenzo Cicchi, California State University Abstract. The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between the European Parliament Political Groups (EPGs) and the European Political Parties (EuPPs) in terms of their internal cohesion and in terms of their organizational strength. The European party system has been studied from a variety of point of views: from the seminal works on the cohesion of the EPGs (Attinà 1990; Hix and Lord 1997) and their degree of competitiveness (Kreppel and Hix 2003) to the representativeness of their members towards the European electorate (Mair and Thomassen 2010; Scully et al. 2012); from the first timid development of the supranational party federations (Bell and Lord 1998) to the development of a true transnational party system (Bardi et al. 2010) just to cite a few. Starting from the conceptualization of the theory of the three faces of party organization (Katz and Mair 1993), one can see that while the study of each face and the relationship between the Party on the Ground (the national parties) and the other two faces has received satisfactory scholarly attention (Ladrech 2007, Whitaker 2011), the relationship between the Party in Public Office (represented by the EPGs) and the Party in Central Office (the EuPPs) is still understudied. In particular, it is still unclear how the balance of power between the EPGs and the EuPPs is structured from an organizational point of view and what logics it follows. On this aspect, we argue that there is a strong correlation between the predominance of one actor over the other, both in terms of their internal ideological and behavioural unity and of their organizational strength. We employ a series of indicators to measure these aspects. The internal unity of the EPGs is measured by their voting cohesion, in line with the most diffused literature on the topic (Hix et al. 2006, 2007), while EuPPs internal unity is measured by their ideological consistency with the parties they are composed of, using Euromanifesto data (Braun et al. 2010, 2016). The comparison of these elements within each political family should show how the balance of power may be skewed more towards the EPG or the relevant EuPP. In a similar fashion, the indicators used to measure the organizational strength of the EPGs and the EuPPs are their financial resources and employed staff. Similarly, the comparison of these indicators reveals the balance of organizational power between the EPGs and the EuPPs. Our expectation is that the higher is the dominance of the EPG from the behavioural point of view over the ideological coherence of the corresponding EuPP, the strongest is the organization of the group over that of the party. We perform this analysis for the last two European Parliament s legislatures ( and available data for the current, ). *** Draft version. Wordcount: 8931 ***

2 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo 1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: THE PARTY SYSTEM AT EU LEVEL Political parties have been important actors of the European integration. With the passing years, political parties have increased their relations with similar parties notwithstanding the existence of political borders. As soon as these borders have become more porous the relations amongst parties have become stronger. This process has led to the creation of several organisations at the European level of which the most relevant are the Political Groups in the European Parliament and the Political Parties at the European Level. These structures have progressively increased their resources, becoming less dependent, functionally and politically, from the national parties. Most of the literature has concentred its efforts in analysing the Europeanisation of the national political parties, while few have been devoted to analyse the tensions between the national actors and the European actors and practically no effort has been done to study the relations between the two Euro-level party organisations. Richard Katz and Peter Mair (1993) asserted that political parties at the national level can be studied dividing their organisation in three different faces: the Party in Public Office, the Party in Central Office, the Party on the Ground. The first face represents party members which occupy positions in national institutions such as parliamentary assemblies, executive cabinets, etc.; the second face represents party members which seat in central bodies of the party such national assemblies, secretariats, etc.; finally, the third face is made up of ordinary members enrolled in the local branches of the party. Scholars generally agree on considering this division in three faces as a useful tool to analyse the organisation of political parties and their internal distribution of power. According to Bardi (2006), this division in three faces can be analytically applied to study party politics also at the European level, where the PPO is represented by European Parliament Political Groups and the PCO by the Political Parties at the European Level. The main difference is that at the European Level the PoG is not generally represented by individual members but by the national parties. The relations between these three faces then would be the Europarty 1, as expressed by Figure 1. 1 Other authors use the term Europarty as a shorter version, or a nickname, for what we call the EuPP, the Political Parties at the European Level (Bressanelli 2014). Here, however, it is used to indicate the comprehensive structure of the European party system. 2

3 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups Figure 1: the Europarty structure as the three faces of party organization Source: Calossi (2011) This model is useful to study the level of integration of the three faces as such an integration could be considered as a long-term objective of all the European political families. Certainly, this can be clearly applied to those political families, as for example the Christian-Democrats/People s Party, the Socialists, the Liberals or the Greens which, even if at different degrees, consider the process of European integration as a long-term and notreversible process. In such cases this model is useful to understand at which degree the integration between the three faces has gone forward. According to this perspective the full integration between the three faces is an objective of political actors. In addition, for those political parties which advocate to the evolution of the European Union in a quasistatual entity the three-face scheme, useful to study the national parties, should be used simply to analyse at what extent European parties have become more similar to national parties. Another fundamental element of the integration of the three faces is the equilibrium of power between the two top faces, but this seems to be far to be reached in the EU level politics. This pro-integration perspective is not shared by all the political actors at the European level. On the contrary, for many political actors the European integration should be halted or slowed down (according to a Eurosceptical, Euro-Realist or Euro-Critical perspective) while for others it should be completely reversed (Anti-European perspective). Amongst this diverse congerie of parties, many seek however forms of cooperation at the European level. These alliances cannot be simply analysed through conceptual models which have been created in order to analyse national parties, such as the Katz&Mair s one. In reality the alliances of those parties do not function as and neither aim at functioning as national parties do. In these cases, it would be more usefully to interpret the European level of party activities as a European face (the fourth face ) of national party organisation (Sozzi 2011) rather than being conceptualised as an autonomous structure. Thus, the party scheme could be interpreted as Figure 2 does, showing how the party delegations in the Political Group and in the Party at European Level are under the direct control of the Central Office of Party. Thus, according to this model, national parties rather than being a face of the Europarty (the PoG) are still at the heart of political world in the EU; on the contrary, the European structures are merely a weak and dependent face of the national party. 3

4 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo Figure 2: the European dimension as the fourth face of party organization Source: Calossi (2014) 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EUROPARTY STRUCTURE If we assume an historical perspective, the extra-parliamentarian cooperation among political parties begun even before that in the European institutions. In fact, the first transnational associations of political parties were basically external to the institutions and were formed by left parties. The internationals how they were called - allowed socialist parties, which till the First World War were generally opposition parties, to coordinate their activities with sister parties, while the bourgeois exponents could do that through institutional and official diplomatic channels. Thus, the first partisan transnational association was the Second International (also known as Socialist International) in Communist parties established their own International in Later, other political movements, as a consequence of the more general organisational contagion from the left (Duverger 1953), formed their own political internationals. Among the most relevant there were the International Secretariat of Democratic Parties of Christian Inspiration (formed in in 1925 and become the Christian Democrat World Union in 1961), the Liberal International (in 1947), the International Democrat Union (in 1983), and finally in 2001 the Global Greens. So, also before the establishment of the European Community at least four political families had already their own International. However, even if the majority of the member parties of the Internationals were Europeans, the European integration and the shaping European Community s political space were not at the centre of their interests and activities. So, limiting our historical perspective to a pure European scenario, we have to notice that during the first phase of the integration the only supranational structures active in Europe were the party groups inside the Parliamentary assembly of the European Community. If we limit our study only to the political parties at European environment there is no any doubts that EP Political Groups are older, being they established in 1952 inside the first Common Assembly of ECSC. But outside the European Parliament, alliances of national 4

5 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups parties at the European level existed even before Regulation 2004/2003, which in 2003 clearly expressed the existence of the Political parties at European Level. Only the decision to introduce direct elections, however, caused the formation of extra-parliamentary party organizations. Although the concrete implementation of direct elections was delayed until 1979, in the seven years following 1972, the first Transnational Party Federations were formed in the expectation that direct elections would be required, encouraging the creation of real pan-european political parties. These party organizations corresponded to three party groups then existing in the European Parliament (the conservative European Progressive Democrats and the Communists and Allies did not create such extraparliamentary structures) and were: the Confederation of Socialist parties of the European Community, founded in April 1974, the Federation of Liberal and Democrat parties of the European Communities, established in March 1976 and the European People's Party - Federation of Christian-Democrat parties in the European Community, created in June 1976 (Hanley 2008). So, the perspective of electing directly the EP was at the base of the choice for the pro-european party families to establish supranational structures to deal primarily with the elections or, at least, the coordination of national parties electoral campaigns. Before the introduction of the funding of the PPELs only other two party families decided to establish their own extraparliamentary organisation: the Greens, which in 1984 established the European Green Coordination (EGC), and some regionalist progressive parties, which in October 1994 established the European Free Alliance (EFA). The federations seemed therefore to be born as "emanation of the political groups in the European Parliament who felt necessary to rely on party organizations present at the European level" (Coosemans 2000). In the same period, there were nominal changes that should prepare some federations to become closer to proper political parties. In the early nineties seemed normal to think the forthcoming adoption of a statute for European political parties, thus the main political families made their steps to be ready for such an improvement. In 1992, the Confederation of Socialist parties assumed the name of the Party of the European Socialists (PES); In 1993, the Green Coordination became the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) and also in 1993, the Federation of Liberal Democrat and Reform Parties took the name of European Liberal Democrats and Reformists (ELDR). 5

6 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo Table 1: Historical evolution of the first transnational party organizations Party Family nature s 80s 90s Socialists Parl. Socialist Group in ECSC Socialist Group in EP Group of the PES Extra Parl. 2nd Int.l Socialist Int.l CESP PES Christian Democrats / Populars Parl. Int.l secretariat of parties of Christian inspiration Christ. Democrat Group in ECSC Christ. Democrat Group in EP Group of EPP Extra Parl. EPP Liberals Parl. Liberal Group in ECSC Liberal Group in ECSC ELDR Extra Parl. Liberal Int.l Communists and left wings Parl. Several groups in EP GUE-NGL Extra Parl. 3rd Int.l / Komintern Kominform Greens Parl. Rainbow Group Extra Parl. EGC EFGP / EGP Regionalists Parl. Rainbow Group Extra Parl. EFA Source: authors re-elaboration from Hanley (2008) All the party families that established transnational party federations (the European People s Party, the Party of European Socialists, Party of European Liberals, Democrats and Reformists, European Green Party, European Free Alliance) before the introduction of the 6

7 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups public funding to PPELs were pro-european. Without any doubt the introduction of such monetary resource has become the stimulus for the establishment of all the other PPELs. Figure 4 shows us the high number of parties that applied for recognition (and funds) at the EP after Currently, of the 18 existing European Political Parties (EuPPs) the new denomination given by the EU regulations since 2014 the large majority are not prointegration parties. In particular, among the new born after 2004, with the exception of the EDP and, partially, of the EL, all the other EuPPs share a certain level of Euroscepticism or even Anti-Europeanism. Table 2: European Political Parties (EuPPs) established after 2004 Full name European Political Party (EuPP) Acronym Year of recognition (year of dissolution) Closest European Political Group (EPG) European Democratic Party EDP 2004 ALDE Party of the European Left EL 2004 GUE-NGL Alliance for Europe of the Nations AEN 2004 (2009) Europeans United for Democracy (formerly EUDemocrats) EUD 2006 GUE-NGL Alliance of Independent Democrats in Europe AIDE 2006 (2008) Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (formerly Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists) ACRE (AECR) 2010 ECR European Christian Political Movement ECPM 2010 ECR European Alliance for Freedom EAF 2011 ENF Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy MELD 2012 (2016) Alliance of European National Movements AENM 2012 ENF Alliance of Direct Democracy in Europe ADDE 2015 EFD 2 Mouvement pour une Europe des Nations et des Libertés MENL 2015 ENF Alliance for Peace and Freedom APF 2016 None Coalition pour la Vie et la Famille CVF 2017 None Source: Parties and groups websites 7

8 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo 3. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EPGS AND EUPPS Some authors emphasise the importance of groups by emphasizing their greater force than the EuPPs (Attiná 1990; Bardi 1994; Bowler, Carter, Farrell 1995; Attiná 1997; Hix and Lord 1997; Carrubba and Gabel 1999; Kreppel 2002; Noury 2002; Bardi and Ignazi 2004; Hix, Noury and Roland 2007; McElroy and Benoit 2010; Bressanelli 2014), others have focused rather on the latter (and previously on federations) emphasizing the progressive consolidation and their potential for further development (Bell and Lord 1996; Hix 1994; 1996; 2002; Ladrech 2000, 2007; Jansen 2001; Delwit, Külahci and van De Walle 2004; Johansson and Raunio 2005; Jansen 2006; Hanley 2008; Bardi, Calossi 2009; Gagatek 2009; Calossi 2011), but regarding the relation between the two Eurostructures, there is a general consensus among the same scholars in considering it as an unbalanced distribution of resources and responsibilities, with the groups in a dominant position with respect to the EuPPs. One of the crucial elements to consider if we look at the relationship between these two European structures is the degree of control of the EuPP over the EPG. This can be measured by the percentage of MEPs belonging to the EPGs who are also members of a national party that is officially registered as a member of the corresponding EuPP. For instance, for the current legislature, the control of the Party of European Socialists over the S&D group is measured by the percentage of S&D MEPs who are part of a national party that has membership in the Party of European Socialists. In fact, regardless of what conceptual model is considered more useful for analysing the party politics at EU level (the three-faces model or the model of the EU level as the fourth face of national parties) national parties represent the core membership of political groups and EuPPs 2. Between the two affiliations there is no relationship: a national party can be member of a EuPP without belonging to a Political Group or it can enrol its members to a group without being affiliated to any EuPP. Tables 3 and 4 show the degree of control of EuPPs over EPGs for the last two legislatures. For this calculation and for the rest of the analysis of this paper, the time span corresponds to the last two legislatures ( , from now on EP7 and 2009-today, from now on EP8), and all EPGs are taken in consideration. As for the sample selection of EuPPs, considering the high number of them (some of which are almost unknown, are not politically active and have no or very few elected MEPs), we have considered only those EuPPs that are composed of at least four relevant national political parties. The chosen criterion for considering a national party relevant corresponds to being included in the Euromanifesto dataset (Braun, Mikhaylov and Schmitt 2010; Schmitt, Braun, Popa, Mikhaylov and Dwinger 2016). 2 Some PPELs allow also the individual membership, but only the EAF is based only on individual membership. 8

9 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups Table 3: EuPPs control over EPGs, Seventh legislature EuPP MEPs from NPs affiliated to EuPP EPG MEPs belonging to EPG Ratio EPP 263 EPP % PSE 161 S&D % ELDR % ALDE 84 EDP % EGP % G-EFA 55 EFA % EL 24 GUE-NGL % AECR 54 ECR % n/a 0 EFD % Source: authors own calculation Table 3 shows that in the seventh legislature the four historical political families had a high level of identification between their EuPP and their own group. With the partial exception of the already mentioned PES that due to the presence of the Italian PD, at that time not affiliated to the PES 3 - controls only the 88% of MEPs of the S&D group, the People s Party, the Liberals and the alliance between Greens and Regionalists controlled more than 90% of their respective groups. Similarly, the ECR group presented a high degree of identification with the European party AECR. In this case, however, by studying the genesis of the party, it seems very clear that the EuPP under scrutiny was an emanation of the EPG, rather than being two structures with different backgrounds who seek to coordinate in order to resist the pressures of the national parties. On the extreme left the levels of Europeanisation were rather weak, while on the Eurosceptic right they equalled to zero, as there was not a corresponding EuPP to the group Europe of Freedom and Democracy. 3 notwithstanding the great Europeanization of the dyad S&D/PES, the percentage is relatively low for the EP7 because of the conspicuous Italian delegation of MEPs who are members of the Italian Partito Democratico, member of the S&D group and politically close to the European Socialist family but not a member of the corresponding EuPP. In 2014, finally, theitalian PD officially entered the Party of European Socialists and is today an affiliated member of it. 9

10 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo Table 4: EuPPs control over EPGs, Eighth legislature EuPP MEPs from NPs affiliated to EuPP EPG MEPs belonging to EPG Ratio EPP 206 EPP % PSE 181 S&D % AECR 55 ECR % ALDE % ALDE 68 EDP % EGP % G-EFA 50 EFA % EL 29 GUE-NGL % MENL 28 ENF % ADDE 27 EFDD % Source: authors own calculation It is interesting to notice that in the subsequent and current legislature, as shown by table 4, most of EuPPS reduce their control over their respective EPGs. In the case of EPP, this is a marginal decrease (from 99% to 96%), in all other cases the reduction is more considerable. The Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, or instance, reduces its control over the ECR group from 98% to 75%, due to the entrance at the beginning of the 8 th legislature of independent MEPs and others linked to different EuPPs (European Christian Political Movement and European Free Alliance). 4 The two exceptions from this trend are the already mentioned PES and the Eurosceptic EFDD, which finally witnesses the creation of a corresponding, full-fledged European political party to match the pre-existing parliamentary group. Therefore, similarly to what happened in the previous legislature with the Conservatives and Reformists, from the genetic point of view the EPG precedes the EuPP, which is an emanation of it rather than an independent structure BEHAVIOURAL COHESION AND IDEOLOGICAL COHERENCE In this paragraph, we turn our attention to measuring the strength of EPGs and EuPPs, in terms of their voting cohesion and internal ideological coherence. For the first element, we rely on the most diffused indicator of group cohesion, namely the Agreement Index (AI), calculated for the roll-call votes (RCVs) cast in the European Parliament. This index, introduced by Hix, Noury and Roland (2005) ranges from 1 (all members of a group voting in the same way) to 0 (members of a group equally divided between the three voting options: vote in favour, vote against, and abstain). It has to be noted that some scholars suggest that RCVs-based analysis may be misleading, because rollcall votes are only a (non-representative) portion of the whole universe of votes cast: RCVs account for roughly ⅓ of the actual votes that take place in the European Parliament. Therefore, inferences drawn from this sample may actually be biased (Carrubba and Gabel 1999; Clinton, Jackman and Rivers, 2004; Carrubba, Gabel and Hug 2008; Hug 2010). 4 Despite being a member of the European political party EFA, the Flemish conservative N-VA preferred to join the ECR group rather than the G-EFA group. 10

11 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups However, the usefulness and flexibility of roll-call datasets is undoubtable. Their popularity has increased over time, and in recent years, statistical analysis of roll call votes (RCVs) has become the bread and butter of empirical research on legislative behaviour in democracies (Hix, Noury and Roland 2013, p. 2). Table 5 shows EPGs voting cohesion since Table 5: Voting cohesion of EPGs (EP7 and EP8) Group EP1 EP2 EP3 EP4 EP5 EP6 EP7 EP8 Socialists People's party Liberals Left Nationalists Greens Conservatives Extreme right Eurosceptics Regionalists Independents NA no. EPGs Labels. Socialists: Party of European Socialists (SOC, PES), then Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D, after 2009 elections to include the Italian PD, Partito Democratico). People's party: European People s party (EPP), Christian Democrats & Conservatives (EPP-ED), then again EPP alone (after 2009 elections). Liberals: European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELD, ELDR groups), then Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE, after 2004 elections). Left: Radical Left (COM, LU, EUL/NGL) and Italian Communists & allies (EUL). Nationalists: Gaullists and nationalists (EPD, EDA, UFE, UEN), Italian conservatives (FE, : EDA + FE = UEN). Greens: Greens & allies (RBW(84), G, G/EFA)- Conservatives: British Conservatives & allies (ED), then European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, after 2009 elections). Extreme right: Extreme Right (ER), then Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) after 2014 elections (2015). Eurosceptics: Anti-Europeans (EN, I-EN, EDD, IND/DEM after 2004 elections, then EFD after 2009 elections and EFDD after 2014 elections). Regionalists: Regionalists & allies, European Radical Alliance (RBW(89), ERA). Independents: Technical groups of heterogeneous Independents (TCDI, TGI; group dismantled in October 2001). NA: Non-attached members. Source: authors re-elaboration from Cicchi (2016) and data from Focusing on the latest two legislatures, we see that most of the groups (Socialists, People s Party, Liberals and Greens/EFA) have extremely high level of party cohesion (around o.9 or higher). The extreme left, with no fluctuation in time, scores slightly lower (0.83). The extreme right group ENF in EP8 is less cohesive (0.7), while the Eurosceptic EFD and later EFDD is pretty much a divided group, scoring less than 0.5. From a diachronic perspective the only relevant change between EP7 and EP8 is represented by the Conservatives, whose cohesion falls from 0.88 to Interestingly, this same group has witnessed a particularly high drop in terms of EuPP control over the EPG, discussed in the 11

12 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo previous paragraph. Finally, the behaviour of non-attached members, lacking a corresponding EuPP, is out of the scope of our research 5. As for the European Political Parties, we look at their ideological coherence as the indicator to measure the strength of EuPPs. Differently from EPGs voting cohesion, we do not rely on existing indexes, but we build an original index from Euromanifesto data (Braun, Mikhaylov and Schmitt 2010; Schmitt, Braun, Popa, Mikhaylov and Dwinger 2016). Scholars have analysed extensively the ideological coherence of groups (Hix, Noury and Roland 2007; McElroy and Benoit 2010, 2012; Bressanelli 2014), while ideological coherence of European political parties remains indeed understudied. Our index is calculated in the following way: an EuPP s ideological coherence corresponds to the mean variance of the values that capture the position towards policy conflicts 6 of each of the national parties that compose the EuPP. Since the Euromanifesto coding for each of these policy conflicts ranges from 1 to 7, the values of our index have then been normalized in order to range from 0 (complete ideological division) to 1 (complete ideological coherence) 7. Figure 3 below shows EuPPs ideological coherence and its change over the time span considered. Figure 3: Ideological coherence of EuPPs (EP7 and EP8) 0,90 0,80 0,70 0,60 0,50 0,40 EDP EL EFA PES MENF EGP ELDR/ALDE EPP AECR/ACRE ADDE EP7 EP8 Source: authors own calculation 5 It has to be noted, however, that the group of non-attached MEPs cohesion fell drastically over time. This is consistent with the fact that since the 1990s, the non-attached group has constantly grown bigger and politically more heterogeneous, even though it has been dominated numerically by far-right wing members (Cicchi 2016). 6 These policy conflicts are: left versus right politics, environmental protection versus economic growth, libertarian versus authoritarian politics, religious versus secular positions, state interventionism versus free market economy, multiculturalism versus ethnocentrism, and pro EU-versus contra EU-integration. For EP8, additional items were added: that the party prefers raising taxes to increase public services over cutting public services to cut taxes, that the party prefers redistribution from the rich to the poor, that the party prefers promotion civil liberties over tough actions to fight crime, that the party supports or opposes liberal policies and that the party favours or opposes restrictive policy on immigration (Schmitt, Braun, Popa, Mikhaylov and Dwinger 2016, p. 42). 7 For instance, a hypothetical EuPP where all its national parties have the same value for every policy conflict would correspond to Ideological Coherence equalling 1. By contrast, a EuPP composed by two national parties that have opposing position (one 1, the other 7) on every policy conflict would score zero. 12

13 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups The small, centrist European Party EDP (European Democratic Party) is not surprisingly the most coherent EuPP in EP7. It has to be noted that for the subsequent legislature this EuPP has been excluded from the analysis as it fell out of our selection criteria (see previous paragraph). The other liberal EuPP ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party), that changed its name in 2012 into ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe), as well as the European People s Party have similar and constant ideological coherence. Other EuPPs on the left side of the political spectrum (Socialists, European Free Alliance and European Left) have even higher, and growing, ideological coherence. The European Green Party has also high values, but together with the Conservatives, a much less coherent EuPP, witness a substantial decrease between the two legislatures. Finally, the Eurosceptic ADDE is particularly heterogeneous from the ideological point of view. Figure 4 below shows how the elements that we have considered so far to measure the strength of EuPPs and EPGs (and the control of the former over the latter) interact with each other. The unit of observation here is the dyad EuPP-EPG, and all dyads from both the legislatures taken into consideration are plotted together. Figure 4: Ideological coherence of EuPPs and behavioural cohesion of their corresponding EPGs The X-axis measures EuPP s Ideological Coherence, weighted by EuPP s control over the corresponding EPG. The Y-Axis measures the corresponding EPG s voting cohesion. Source: authors own calculation As it can be seen, if we weigh EuPPs ideological coherence by its control over the corresponding EPG, there is a strong, positive correlation between ideological coherence and voting cohesion. In other words, the more a EuPP is composed by national parties that are politically alike, and the more the EuPP has affiliated national parties that provide member of the corresponding EPG, then the more the EPG s voting behaviour will be 13

14 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo cohesive, and vice-versa. The only observations that fall outside the 95% confidence interval come from EP8 and are the dyads ADDE/EFDD and MENF/ENF, whose voting cohesion is even lower than the low ideological coherence would indicate, and conversely the dyads Greens/G-EFA and ALDE/ALDE, whose voting cohesion is higher that their ideological cohesion would indicate. This is indeed a noteworthy result, yet outside of the main scope of our research 8 : a conspicuous stream of the literature on the European Parliament s legislative dynamics (Hix, Noury and Roland 2007; Bressanelli 2014; Bressanelli and Cicchi 2014) has debated over the relationship between ideology and voting behaviour. Our findings reinforce the claim according to which ideology, not only of MEPs but also of EuPPs, matters THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRENGTH OF EPGS AND EUPPS As experts in organization studies maintain, two significant indicators of the strength of organizations are represented by economic and personnel s resources of the organization (Scott 2013). Political parties, seen as organizations, are not alien to this perspective, even if also the membership plays an important role (Katz, Mair 1992; Webb, Farrell, Holliday 2004). The case of the party politics at the EU level is, however, different from the national level, as there is not any direct affiliation of ordinary members to groups or EuPPs. Therefore, the availability of funds and staff are the best indicators to make comparison between the two kinds of EU actors. Figure 5: Aggregate trends in EP funding to EuPPs, EPGs and foundations at European level ( ) 87% 86% 84% 85% 76% 73% 68% 66% 65% 61% 60% 13% 14% 16% 15% 15% 18% 20% 21% 22% 27% 25% 9% 9% 11% 12% 13% 13% 15% EPGS EuPPs Foundations Source: authors own calculation on the basis of data from As for the funding, a valid indicator to measure the balance of powers between groups and parties is by comparing the financial resources that come from the European 8 Our focus is on the organizational balance between European political parties and EP political groups, and those element that explain the presence of a particularly high imbalance towards the EPG; this result attains only to those indicators that we employ to measure the strength and the relationship between EuPPs and EPGs. 14

15 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups Parliament. These resources are not the only ones political parties collect the EP funds up to 85% of EuPPs expenses: this means EuPPs need to find other 15% of their total expenditures, which is usually represented by member parties fees - but certainly represent a significant proportion of total revenue. In addition, as the two Eurostructures are funded by the same institution this allows us to understand which of the two is considered by the European institutions as the most important. Figure 5 above also includes the funds which since 2009 have been received also by the political foundations at European level (Bardi et al. 2014; Gagatek and Van Hecke 2011). As it can be seen, in 2005 political groups were receiving the large majority (86%) of funds the EP devolves to partisan activity at the European level. At that time the groups funds were more than six times higher than those of parties. This amount has decreased significantly in the years due to increase share of funds given to the parties (up to 25%) and to the beginning of funding in 2009 for the political foundations. However, the latest figures show that still the 60% of the funds allocated by the EP are devoted to the political groups. Nowadays these resources are still around two times and half bigger than those received by political parties. Table 5 below shows the disaggregated data and the ratio between EuPPs and EPGs in terms of economic resources for the two legislatures taken into consideration 9. As it can be seen, the group always has more economic resources than the party. Not surprisingly, those small European political parties (EPD, EFA) that share the same group with a bigger EuPP have a particularly high ratio. In line with the trend highlighted by previous figure, it can be noted that all the ratios decrease between the 7 th and the 8 th legislature. Finally, the Conservative dyad shows a particularly skewed trend (from 11.2 to 3.0). Table 5: Economic resources of EPGs and EuPPs and ratio, expressed in thousands of European Political Parties European Parliament Groups Ratio EPG/EuPP EP7 EP8 EP7 EP8 EP7 EP8 PES S&D EPP EPP ALDE ALDE EPD AECR/ACRE ECR EGP G-EFA EFA EL GUE-NGL ADDE. 820 EFDD MENF. 400 ENF Source: authors elaboration from budget data available on 9 For the economic resources, figures have been taken from the 2010 and 2015 official budget, as published by the European Parliament website. 15

16 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo As for the staff 10, even if EuPPs have progressively increased the number of their employees (in 1984 the People s, Liberal and Socialist parties had in total 14 employees; in the current legislature they have 77 employees out of a total of 98 for the EuPPs taken into consideration) these figures are still very far from those given by the Political Groups, as it can be seen in table 6. In addition, we have to consider that Political Groups can also exploit EP s staff resources for some functions. Table 6: Staff of EPGs and EuPPs and ratio European Political Parties European Parliament Groups Ratio EPG/EuPP EP7 EP8 EP7 EP8 EP7 EP8 PES S&D EPP EPP ALDE ALDE EPD AECR/ACRE 3 5 ECR EGP G-EFA EFA EL 4 5 GUE-NGL ADDE. 13 EFDD MENF. 2 ENF. n/a. n/a No information on ENF s staff could be retrieved for the current legislature, therefore it has been recorded as not available (n/a) and the ratio could not be calculated. Source: Political Groups and PPELs websites All EuPPs have staff resources many times less prominent than those of the correspondent political group. In the 7 th legislature, the range varied from the People s Party EPG which has a number of staff employed 4.6 times higher than that of the EPP party, to the Conservative group staff which was 24 times higher than that of AECR. However, at that time AECR was still quite young in comparison with the other parties. Four years later the figures have slightly changed, almost all in the direction of the moderate strengthening of the EuPP in comparison to the EPGs. The only exceptions to this are represented by the European Left and the European Green Party, that between EP7 and EP8 actually lost power in comparison to their corresponding EPG. In the current legislature, in the Popular/Christian Democratic family the equilibrium between the party and the group is the less unbalanced, while on the contrary in the Conservative family the group is still by far stronger than the correspondent party, as well as the small EFA party. This is not surprising, as for a small EuPP that shares the same EPG with a bigger EuPP, the unbalance is necessarily high. 10 For the staff, data for EP7 comes from Calossi (2014) and refers to 2013, while data for EP8 comes from the official websites of EuPPs and EPGs, accessed in

17 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups One final element making EPGs stronger than the EuPPs that needs to be considered is the presence of stricter requisites for their formation. In fact, one of the main interests of the already established political parties and political groups is to render difficult the recognition of new actors, because new actors would participate in the division of resources given by the Parliament; the fact that EPGs managed to do this in a more efficient way shows at what extent political parties are weaker than political groups in defending their main funding source, because they are unable to limit the accession of new competitors into the political scene of new recognized (and funded) political parties (Calossi 2014) RESEARCH HYPOTHESES AND METHODS Without any doubts, EPGs are by far stronger than their correspondent European Political Parties, both from an organizational point of view and from the point of view of the legal framework. In the previous paragraph we have analysed to what extent the balance of power between groups and parties is significant; now, we turn our attention now to what elements are related, and how, to the degree of this unbalance. In synthesis, our research question is: what ideological, political, behavioural and relational characteristics of the European Parliament Groups and the European Political Parties influence more the balance of organizational power between the two? We have a series of expectations on the relationship between the organizational balance of EuPPs and EPGs and other characteristics of the Europarty system. First of all, we expect that there is a correlation between the organizational balance and the ideological and behavioural balance. In other words, those cases in which the ideological coherence of the EuPP is closer to the corresponding behavioural cohesion of the EPG will also have a more balanced organizational structure, namely a lower EPG/EuPP organizational imbalance. Conversely, those EPGs disproportionally funded and staffed in respect to the EuPP will also have a coherence/behavioural imbalance. Secondly, and consistently with the theoretical framework that we sketched in paragraph one, we expect that those actors that look more favourably at the process of European Integration will have a more balanced organizational power between EuPPs and EPGs. Conversely, the more Eurosceptic EuPPs will also have a disproportional organizational balance in favour to the EPG. Thirdly, and as a 11 Both for parties and groups there are two qualitative criteria applicants need to match in order to be recognized by the EP. For the groups, MEPs who share the same political affiliation can form a group. To be recognised, EuPPs must observe the founding principles of the European Union, namely the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. In both cases, the control by the European Parliament is not ex-ante but only ex-post, on request of a certain number of other MEPs. Therefore, we can affirm that qualitative criteria are not relevant to limit the establishment of new groups or parties, and the difference between the two processes of recognition must be analysed through the quantitative criteria. For political groups, it is stated the need of at least 25 MEPs coming from at least one fourth of member states (i.e. seven). For parties the quantitative criteria is more easy to be match. It must have in at least one quarter of the Member States (i.e. seven), one or both of the following: (a) it must have received at least 3% of the votes cast in each of those Member States at the most recent European Parliament elections (b) or it must already be represented by Members, whether Members of the European Parliament for those states, or Members of the national Parliaments of those states, or Members of the regional Parliaments of those states, or Members of the regional Assemblies of those states. In practice, as minimum criterion, seven regional parliamentarians can form a EuPP. 17

18 Paper presented at the ECPR 2017 General Conference, University of Oslo consequence of this, we expect the more transnational and bigger groups to be more balanced from the organizational point of view. Fourthly and finally, we expect that the degree of control of the EuPP over the group influences the organizational balance. In other words, the more a EuPP controls their correspond EPG, the more balanced the organizational structure between the two faces will be. These hypotheses are summarized below. H1: The higher is the balance between EPG s voting cohesion and EuPP s ideological coherence, the more balanced is the organizational relationship between EuPP and EPG. H2: The higher is the pro-eu attitude of the EuPP, the more balanced is the organizational relationship between EuPP and EPG. H3: The more control the EuPP has over the EPG, the more balanced is the organizational relationship between EuPP and EPG. H4: The bigger and more transnational is the EPG, the more balanced is the organizational relationship between EuPP and EPG We test these hypotheses through a OLS regression model with robustness check. Our dependent variable is the organizational balance, calculated as the mean of the two ratios between EPG and EuPP economic resources and staff, taken into consideration in the previous paragraph. In details, for the economic part, it is calculated as the ratio between the public resources given by the European Parliament to the EPG and those given to the correspondent EuPP. Similarly, for the staff, it is calculated the ratio between the staff of the EPG and that of the corresponding EuPP. Then, we calculated the mean between the two ratios; the result is the Organizational Balance Index (OBI) between the EPG and the EuPP. This index has been calculated for two periods in the last two legislatures of the EP, in 2013 and in The results are available in the table 6 below. Figure 6: Organizational Balance Index (OBI), EP7 and EP8 Source: authors own calculation. The higher this variable is, the more the organizational relationship is skewed towards the EPG; conversely, the lower it is, the more balance there is between EPG and EuPP (keeping in mind, though, that as discussed extensively in the previous paragraph, the EPG is always the stronger face, from an organizational point of view). 18

19 Calossi E. and Cicchi L. European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups The independent variables are the following. First of all, similarly to the organizational balance index, we employ an analogous index that measures the ratio between the EPGs voting cohesion and the EuPP s ideological coherence ( VI balance, voting/ideological balance). Secondly, we include in the model the variable control, the index discussed in paragraph three, that measures the percentage of MEPs in a given group that come from national parties affiliated to the corresponding EuPP. Thirdly, we use our original Ideological Coherence index ( IC ), created from the Euromanifesto data and discussed in paragraph 3.1., and the Voting Cohesion scores of the Agreement Index. We also include the voting cohesion scores ( VC ) obtained from the Agreement Index (Hix, Noury and Roland 2005). Fourthly, we include two variables obtained from the Euromanifesto data: the EuPP position on two crucial policy conflicts, namely the left-right cleavage and the pro-anti EU stance ( Pro anti EU and Left Right ). The position of the EuPP is calculated as the mean position of the national parties affiliated to that EuPP. The pro-anti EU variable is intended to test H2, while the left-right cleavage is included as a control variable. Finally, we include two variables ( trans and size ) that measure the number of MEPs that compose the EPG and the transnationality of it, namely the number of different nationalities present within that EPG RESULTS DISCUSSION Table 6 presents the result of the OLS regression, in which the DV is the OBI and the IVs are those described in the previous paragraph. Each unit of observation is the dyad EuPP/EPG in the last two legislatures, for a total N = We also employ robust estimators to correct for standard errors. Three separate regressions are run, to see if the results are consistent despite the changes of the different models. The first one includes those variables that pertain to EuPPs (ideological coherence, left-right position and pro/anti-eu stance); the second, conversely, only those IVs that refer to the EPGs (voting cohesion, transnationality and size); the third, comprehensive model includes all the variables. The EuPP/EPG relationship variables (Voting cohesion over ideological balance, and MEPs control) are tested in all models. First of all, we can see that our main hypothesis, concerning the ideological/voting and organizational balance, is confirmed only in the first model. There, the relevant variable is statistically significant at 99% c.i. with positive effect. This means that as the EPG becomes stronger (more cohesive) in respect to the EuPP (less coherent), the organizational balance gets more skewed towards the group. However, in the other models it loses its statistical significance, and in the comprehensive model it even changes the direction of its effect (from negative to positive). Therefore, this hypothesis is only partially confirmed and needs further elaboration. 12 The number of dyads is 8 for EP7 and 9 for EP8 (total: 17), as shown by previous analysis. However, the already mentioned impossibility to calculate the staff for the European political party ENF leads to a missing value, therefore this observation has been dropped by the regression. 19