Europe as an Issue of Party Management before 'Times of Crisis': The Cases of Blair's Labour Party and Schröder's SPD
University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Virtual Annual Conference, 09 Eylül 2024, ss.1-2, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-2
- Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
The EU faced several crises in recent decades, leading to the identification of European integration with 'crisis'. This also put the European project as a potential threat to the unity of political parties in Member States. In a bid to understand how Europe was managed as an internal issue by parties before 'times of crisis', this paper focuses on the British Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership (1994-2007) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) during Gerhard Schröder's chancellery (1998-2005). Using Katz and Mair's 'three faces of party organisation' model, this study drew on 32 semi-structured elite interviews with senior Labour and the SPD politicians and archival research. Based on the findings, this paper mainly argues that even before the 'negativities' affiliated with the EU-level crises, Europe marked a divisive issue for parties despite the progress of integration with some 'positive' steps. This was rooted in a mix of internal and external factors, namely the greater domestic salience of the EU, the EU-originated 'executive bias' and the governmental position of parties.
Keywords: political parties, intra-party politics, European integration, Labour Party, SPD.