Suchergebnisse

"This chapter examines the evolution of Plaid Cymru (PC), from its creation in 1925 as a Welsh-language protest group with very little electoral appeal, to becoming a party of coalition government in Wales in 2007. This transition from protest to power has proceeded with different Speed at different times, as well as across different territorial levels. For most of PC's political life, achieving representation at the state-wide level was the party's main concern, even though it struggled with the programmatic, organisational and systemic challenges of passing the threshold of representation and sending representatives to the House of Commons. Upon finally achieving this goal in the mid 1960s, PC's ability to pass further thresholds was constrained by the short-term difficulties of organisational adaptation, and the longer-term constraints of the nature of the British political system and the limited opportunities for influencing the policy agenda within this political arena. Against this background, 1999 represented a turning-point in PC's evolution as a political party. As well as securing representation within the European Parliament for the first time ever, the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales (NAW) created a new opportunity structure for PC to seek political representation directly at the regional level. Whilst the former achievement was symbolically important for a party committed to a vision of Wales as part of a regional Europe, the latter provided a new political arena within which PC swiftly demonstrated its potential to be both a relevant political actor and a party of regional government. PC passed the threshold of government for the first time in its history when it agreed to a deal to govern with the Welsh Labour Party in July 2007. However, the chapter argues that despite the new opportunities for PC to evolve as a political organisation within postdevolution Wales, the party has also faced many of the same adaptational pressures that were experienced upon crossing the threshold of representation at the state level several decades previously. These pressures illustrate the challenges faced by many of the autonomist parties studied in this volume: internal tensions arising from changing power relations within the party, and the electoral and organisational recriminations of failing to meet stated party goals. These tensions have been exacerbated, whilst new trade-offs have also had to be confronted, as a consequence of becoming a party of regional government." (author's abstract)

ABSTRACT. This paper traces the evolution of Plaid Cymru's attitude towards Europe. It does so by focusing in turn on: the place of Europe in the ideas of Saunders Lewis, the dominant figure in the party between its foundation in 1924/25 and 1945; the more 'northern' or Nordic vision of Europe that gripped the party in the post‐World War II era; and the waxing and waning of the party's most EU‐enthusiastic phase between the mid‐1980s and the present day. By adopting a longer timeframe than is normally the case, the paper argues that Europe has played a wider role in the thinking of the party than is often conceded; a role that was not at all or only tangentially related to actually existing institutions. The paper goes on to argue that it was in part the chastening impact of Plaid Cymru's eventual exposure to actually existing European institutions that led the party in 2003 to abandon its utopian commitment to a post‐sovereign Europe in favour of an explicit commitment to 'independence' as its long‐term aim.

This paper traces the evolution of Plaid Cymru's attitude towards Europe. It does so by focusing in turn on: the place of Europe in the ideas of Saunders Lewis, the dominant figure in the party between its foundation in 1924/25 and 1945; the more 'northern' or Nordic vision of Europe that gripped the party in the post-World War II era; and the waxing and waning of the party's most EU-enthusiastic phase between the mid-1980s and the present day. By adopting a longer timeframe than is normally the case, the paper argues that Europe has played a wider role in the thinking of the party than is often conceded; a role that was not at all or only tangentially related to actually existing institutions. The paper goes on to argue that it was in part the chastening impact of Plaid Cymru's eventual exposure to actually existing European institutions that led the party in 2003 to abandon its utopian commitment to a post-sovereign Europe in favour of an explicit commitment to 'independence' as its long-term aim. Adapted from the source document.