Abstract
The European Union has long been suffering from a democratic deficit. Such a diagnosis has been put forward by many scholars and practitioners. The development of European political parties is considered as an important element to improve democracy at European level. For this purpose, these Europarties and their corresponding political foundations have been granted over €500 million since 2004. The aim of this book is to understand and explain why such substantial amounts of public money have been made available, why the Europarty finance regime has been plagued by numerous cases of financial misconduct, and how the EU subsidies have influenced European political parties and the Europarty system. This introductory chapter goes into the sui generis nature of European political parties and clarifies the use of the main concepts. It also sets out the analytical framework and data that the findings of the book are based on.
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Wolfs, W. (2022). Introduction. In: European Political Parties and Party Finance Reform. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95175-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95175-7_1
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