Europe house of representatives project
- Thread starter TimTurner
- Start date
Maybe something based off the EU parliamentary groups? You'll probably want at least a center-left, center-right, liberal, and far-right/regional party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2014
Social Democrats (mostly Eastern Europe left wing; ex-commies)
Labour (social liberal socialists especially in Western Europe)
Liberal Democrats (catch all liberal party; mostly urban based)
Center (agrarian populist party, akin to People's Party in Poland)
Civic Union (center-right conservatives, comparable to Venstre in Denmark)
Nationalist Bloc (UKIP-esque nativists and FN types in one party)
Does this look good?
Add in a Green party, and a smattering of hard-left and -right in there.
So a Communist Party, a Green party, and an Islamophobic far-right party?
More or less. Also, there should be regionalist and nationalist parties.
This page of Wikipedia should give you some ideas.
What would the most natural place for a regionalist party to be? Turkey? Catalonia? Far East Russia?
Depends on how strong they are locally. There are Basque, Galician and Valencian nationalist parties in Spain, there's the various Celtic nationalists in the UK, there's the Lega Nord in Italy, Flemish and Walloon nationalists in Belgium, ethnic Russians in Latvia and so on. There would totally be a Kurdish nationalist party in Turkey. Maybe a Turkish nationalist party in Cyprus. As for Russia, don't forget that most of the republics have a large Russian population, but there may be a handful of nationalists there.
Take a look at this page for ideas.
In fact, I would suggest you check out the various Wikipedia pages for political parties in Europe for ideas on how strong the different parties are IOTL, and then adapt them to your map.
At this point the best analogue might be Lok Sabha elections rather than European Parliament elections, especially since FPTP seems to be the electoral system used.
Is there going to be a single far-right party? Partially, it will depend on what type of far-right tradition.
Something like the "Law, Justice and Freedom Party", "Popular Democratic Front", "European Nationalist Alliance" or "European National Front" for something euphemistic.
I'm assuming that this Europe-Russia-Turkey-etc. is one single country in this scenario. Or is it more like the EU, with national parties campaigning, and joining together as parliamentary groupings?
Democratic Party is also a good possible euphemistic name. Shades of the Liberal Democrats in Russia.
I think that in this scenario we have a bigger, more integrated EU. Russia joins after the Soviet Union ends, and the Balkans join in after the Yugoslavia slugfest ends. There must also be a different method for joining the EU, one that does not require unanimity.
The EU is important enough that Europe-wide political parties are different than OTL (presumably we have a fiscal union, for example). But not enough that there actually is a fully federal Europe.
Ok, but is this a Pan-European Nationalist party, or is this just an alliance of convenience between the local far-right parties, which wouldn't get anywhere otherwise? Of course, you could have both.
I was thinking that the DP here is of very fringe far-right people completely unacceptable to the vast majority of the population.
The Nationalist Bloc is of relatively more mainstream folk, and an alliance of convenience between people more akin to UKIP and people more akin to the National Front.
Of course. I wonder what electoral system would be used. STV?
Given this is Europe, probably List-PR. Probably D'Hondt or Sainte-Laguë.