TY - JOUR
T1 - `Seven Year Itch?' The European Left Party
T2 - Struggling to Transform the European Union
AU - Dunphy, Richard
AU - March, Luke
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - It's an apposite moment to analyze the European Left Party (EL), one of the newest transnational parties (TNPs) founded in 2004, which gathers a large number of radical left parties situating themselves to the left of social democracy. Despite the ostensibly beneficial crisis environment across the EU, radical left parties as a whole have so far failed to make significant gains. The EL's third congress in Paris in 2010 recognized significant future challenges in order to react to the adoption of the Lisbon treaty and to ‘build a Europe of social change’. In this paper we examine this relatively under-analyzed TNP's organizational development and cohesiveness by focussing on the interaction between national parties, the party at European level and the GUE/NGL (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) European parliamentary group. The EL's 2010 congress showed it struggling to combine the ‘deepening’ of its organizational cohesion with the ‘widening’ of its political representation. Although the EL's development to date marks a significant intensification of radical left European co-operation in historical terms, it remains ill-equipped to become an organizationally and strategically effective organization.
AB - It's an apposite moment to analyze the European Left Party (EL), one of the newest transnational parties (TNPs) founded in 2004, which gathers a large number of radical left parties situating themselves to the left of social democracy. Despite the ostensibly beneficial crisis environment across the EU, radical left parties as a whole have so far failed to make significant gains. The EL's third congress in Paris in 2010 recognized significant future challenges in order to react to the adoption of the Lisbon treaty and to ‘build a Europe of social change’. In this paper we examine this relatively under-analyzed TNP's organizational development and cohesiveness by focussing on the interaction between national parties, the party at European level and the GUE/NGL (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) European parliamentary group. The EL's 2010 congress showed it struggling to combine the ‘deepening’ of its organizational cohesion with the ‘widening’ of its political representation. Although the EL's development to date marks a significant intensification of radical left European co-operation in historical terms, it remains ill-equipped to become an organizationally and strategically effective organization.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890021260&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15705854.2013.773653
DO - 10.1080/15705854.2013.773653
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84890021260
SN - 1570-5854
VL - 14
SP - 520
EP - 537
JO - Perspectives on European Politics and Society
JF - Perspectives on European Politics and Society
IS - 4
ER -