ABSTRACT
There are many good reasons to focus on political parties in the analysis of the connections between European integration and the evolution of consensus politics in the Low Countries. This chapter presents the earlier context characterized by broader consociational democratic arrangements, and also by inclusive within-party arrangements. It derives four propositions with regard to the evolution of consensual practices across parties and across countries as a result of further European integration. The chapter provides series of empirical analyses, exploiting data from the Comparative Party Manifesto project and responses to a survey on the Europeanization of party organizations. It demonstrates that European integration has generated a broader diversity of within-party players who have greater access to resources, but at the same time core decision-making processes have become more centralized and thus less inclusive. The party manifesto data also allow us to observe the evolution of saliency of European integration, by summing up the number of positive and negative statements.
