How political parties, rather than member states, are building the European Union

The evolution of the European Community (EC) and the European Union (EU) demonstrates that not only formal institutions but also organisations, such as political parties, can play an aggregating role, rendering institutional decisionmaking feasible in a pluralistic community. In the long run, political parties tend to adapt the institutional framework to their own ‘play’, in other words, to transform patterns of behavior into formal rules.