Explaining the Attitudes of Parliamentarians towards European Integration in Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia: Party Affiliation, ‘Left–Right’ Self-placement or Country Origin?

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Notes

¹For each country all interviews were conducted from February to June 2007. In all cases quota sampling was applied based on the following quotas: age, gender, number of years in the parliament, political party affiliation, and MP's experience (back-benchers versus the rest of the MPs). For all participating countries face-to-face interviews were conducted. All interviewers were previously trained by the project leaders on how to conduct interviews with members of parliament. On average each interview lasted for about 30 minutes. The questionnaire was divided in to three main sections: identity, representation and scope of governance. Closed format questions where applied.

²This cleavage is no longer relevant because of the appearance of the NMSS party and its rise to power in 2001–2005, the economic crisis which hit Bulgaria in the late 1990s, and accusations of corruption which have undermined the legitimacy of the party system as a whole.

³Obviously there are limits to this exercise of classification, since the criteria on the grounds of which a political party has been assigned to this or that family were the political programme of a party and the personal judgment of country experts participating in Intune.