A TOUCHSTONE OF DISSENT - EUROSCEPTICISM IN CONTEMPORARY WESTERN-EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS

With the recent acceleration of the integration process of the Europea n Union there has been a rise in political parties expressing either s cepticism or outright criticism of the nature of the integration proce ss. Using a four-fold differentiation between single issue, protest, e stablished parties and factions within parties, the first part of the article presents an overview of Euroscepticism within EU member states and Norway. This reveals the diversity of sources of Euroscepticism b oth in ideology and in the types of parties that are Eurosceptical but with a preponderance of protest parties taking Eurosceptical position s. The second part of the article is an attempt to map Euroscepticism in West European party systems through a consideration of ideology and party position in the party system. The conclusions are that Euroscep ticism is mainly limited to parties on the periphery of their party sy stem and is often there used as an issue that differentiates those par ties from the more established parties which are only likely to expres s Euroscepticism through factions. Party based Euroscepticism is there fore both largely dependent on domestic contextual factors and a usefu l issue to map emergent domestic political constellations.