In the previous chapter we argued that when there are transaction costs to policy-making it is better to have strong parties. The discussion was silent, however, about the dimensions along which these parties should form. In democratic systems we are used to thinking of parties as located along a left–right axis, though other dimensions sometimes play a minor role. But we did not discuss why parties should necessarily form along the left–right dimension.

Parties could conceivably form around any set of policy issues or societal interests. Parties could, for example, form along territorial lines instead of socio-economic lines. In the case of the European Parliament, parties based on the national/territorial divisions between the EU member states might even seem more natural than parties based on transnational ideological interests or values. Uninformed outsiders often assume that voting in the parliament follows national lines, for example with the French conservatives voting more with the French socialists than with the Scandinavian conservatives. Indeed, the dominant public perception is that EU politics is about conflicts between countries: for example, ‘Britain’ opposes qualified-majority voting on taxation, ‘France’ opposes further reductions in agricultural spending and ‘Denmark’ wants higher environmental standards. This perception is largely based on debates in the European Council, where only the heads of state and government are represented, which means that any differences of positions necessarily appear to be between member states rather than ideologies.