“The Europeanisation of Political Parties: The Case of the Irish Labour Party”

Abstract

This paper considers the “Europeanisation” of the Irish Labour Party between Ireland’s entry into the European Community in 1973 and the early months of 1999. After a short discussion of the meaning of the term “Europeanisation” we place the Labour Party in the context of the Irish party system: the party’s origins, and the nature of its support base, make it distinctive within Ireland, and within the broader family of social democratic parties to which it belongs. The main corpus of the paper examines the Labour Party as an actor in the process of Europeanisation: here the argument is that participation in government compelled the party leadership to realign itself more closely to European policies and assumptions. A discussion of rank and file opinion serves to illustrate the convergence between elite and mass opinion in the party, as well as between Labour and the other parties. Finally, some conclusions are drawn which may have implications for Europeanisation in other party systems as in Ireland.