Europeanization and political parties: the Partido Popular and its transnational relations with the European People's Party

Despite some recent studies addressing the 'Europeanization' of political parties, we know very little about the relationship between national political parties and transnational party federations. By contrast, the framework for analysis developed in this article considers the active role of national parties in transnational politics and the specific nature of transnational party federations. This model is then applied to the Partido Popular and the European People's Party, of which the first has been a member since 1991. It shows that, between the foundation of the Partido Popular in 1989 and 2004, when it lost power at the national level, there have been mutual patterns of Europeanization but concrete indications of Europeanization in party-government relations are lacking. It is therefore still far from constituting a 'Europeanized' party.