Atlantic Council FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY CENTER
ISSUE BRIEF AU G U S T 2024
Unloved but Indispensable: Political Parties in Europe PAUL MCCARTHY, THIBAULT MUZERGUES, AND PATRICK QUIRK
P
olitical parties have been at the center of European politics for decades, if not centuries. The oldest political party still active, the United Kingdom (UK) Conservative Party, was officially founded in 1834, and many other European parties trace their origins back to the second half of the nineteenth century, with Romania’s National Liberal Party officially founded in 1875—the oldest party still active in continental Europe. The rise of political parties in their modern form in Europe has historically been associated with1 the coming of age of mass politics, and the subsequent need for representation of sectional interests (in other words, the interests of specific social classes). Following the end of World War II in Western Europe, and the end of the Cold War in Central and Eastern Europe, political parties became a central component of European democracies. Scholars often describe the 1960s and 1970s as the golden age of (Western) European democratic parties. However, the honeymoon did not last beyond this period. A long decline has made political parties much less relevant to modern politics, as they were often replaced by personalized politics2 and the politicization3 of one-issue social movements throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The State of Political Parties in Europe: A Long Decline Political parties today are generally unpopular and distrusted by the wider public. In the latest global survey4 of public attitudes toward democracy from the Foundation for Political Innovation (Fondapol) together with the International Republican Institute The Freedom and Prosperity Center aims to increase the wellbeing of people everywhere and especially that of the poor and marginalized in developing countries through unbiased, data-based research on the relationship between prosperity and economic, political, and legal freedoms, in support of sound policy choices.
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
1
Thibault Muzergues, The Great Class Shift: How New Social Class Structures Are Redefining Western Politics (Routledge, 2021), https://www.routledge.com/The-Great-Class-Shift-How-NewSocial-Class-Structures-are-Redefining-Western-Politics/Muzergues/p/book/9780367342104.
2
Federico Fabbrini, ed., The Law and Politics of Brexit: Volume II: The Withdrawal Agreement (Springer, 2020), https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5.
3
Donatella della Porta, Movement Parties against Austerity (Polity, 2017), https://www.politybooks. com/bookdetail?book_slug=movement-parties-against-austerity--9781509511457.
4
Fondation pour l’innovation politique, Freedoms at Risk: The Challenge of the Century (January 2022), https://www.fondapol.org/app/uploads/2022/01/fondapol-iri-cod-kas-genron-fng-rda-surveyfreedoms-at-risk-the-challenge-of-the-century-01-2022-2.pdf.
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