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Atransnational political party is a singlepolitical party with members or representatives in more than one country.
A well-known example is theArab Socialist Ba'ath Party, established as anArab nationalist andsocialist party aspiring topan-Arab political union. The party's central governing body, theNational Command, included representatives from its organisations in all the Arab countries where Ba'athists had a significant presence. Each branch of the party, in turn, had a local governing body, the Regional Command, and although practical power became centred in theSyrian andIraqi Regional Commands and the National Command of each faction assumed an essentially symbolic role, the partysplit in 1966, with different factions taking control inSyria andIraq, each faction retained a pan-Arab structure.
Another example of a transnational political party isSinn Féin, which has 7Members of Parliament in theUnited KingdomParliament, and 37Teachtaí Dála in theIrishDáil Éireann. Sinn Féin also has 26MLAs in theNorthern Ireland Assembly.
Some transnational organisations also have a party-political dimension. The best example of this is theEuropean Union, in which groups of national political parties operate together when participating in EU institutions, especially theEuropean Parliament, asEuropean political parties, or "Europarties". However, European political parties are distinct from transnational political parties in that they do not operate at the national level.
In a broad sense, global movements such ascommunism,socialism, andIslamism have transnational qualities, but in most such cases the party organization is separate in each country, with the transnational aspect being one more of consultatation and coordination, often throughpolitical internationals. One notable exception to this rule is theProgressive Labor Party (United States), which viewsproletarian internationalism as requiring that they set up partycollectives all over the globe. SomeTrotskyist parties behave similarly.
AEuropean political party is an organisation constituted by multiple national political parties which operates as a single party at theEuropean Union level.
