Malta's political parties and their European Parliament political groups : a comparison of policy positions since 2004

Abstract

The primary aim of this dissertation is to analyse the level of alignment between Malta’s major political parties, the Nationalist Party (PN) and the Labour Party (PL), with their respective European Parliament Political Groups, the European People’s Party (EPP), and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) respectively. This is done through analysing Malta’s political landscape’s evolution since EU accession, discussion on the evolution of European Parliament political groups since 2004 enlargement, and by meticulously examining the electoral manifestos of the PN, PL, EPP and S&D for each electoral cycle. The first research question focuses on determining if Malta's primary political parties and their corresponding European Parliament groups share comparable policy stances and agendas in their electoral manifestos for European Parliament (EP) elections in each electoral cycle. This question will be tackled in Chapter 4, which will provide a comparative analysis of the electoral manifestos of Maltese political parties and their European Parliament political groups. The second research question aims to ascertain if major Maltese political parties have gradually aligned their policy positions and agenda with those of their European counterparts. Chapter 4 will examine electoral manifesto changes over multiple electoral cycles to answer this question. The research will determine if Maltese political parties and their European Parliament political groups are aligning more by tracking policy positions and agendas over time. The final research question explores the factors influencing the alignment or divergence between Malta's political parties and their corresponding European Parliament political groups regarding policy positions and agendas. This research aims to identify the main policy-related factors influencing the alignment or misalignment of Malta's major political parties with their corresponding European Parliament political groups. This will be examined in Chapter 5, which will involve an in-depth examination of main themes identified to be consistently tackled within each manifesto over each election cycle.