The previous chapters described how opposition parties operate in the specifc contexts of 11 selected European countries.1 The introduction outlined
what was expected to affect the opposition parties’ behaviour and questioned
whether we were witnessing the development of general patterns or new
trends, or rather extreme variation was still the main characteristic of opposition in European democracies in terms of conflict or consensus, but also of
general strategies adopted in parliament. In fact, while opposition parties in
parliament may vote for or against the government’s legislative proposals,
they can also propose their own legislation and/or focus on the government’s
scrutiny. In doing so, they can adopt behaviour that is more or less consensual and decide to be particularly active or quite inactive, respectively. These
strategic choices will be influenced by both their goals, i.e. votes, offce,
policy and several concomitant factors that are related, internally, to the party
context and the institutional setting and, externally, the onset of the economic
crisis and the consequent increasing intervention of the EU in the national
legislative process.
The conclusions will make a detailed reassessment of these expectations.
