Driver, Conductor or Fellow Passenger? EU Membership and Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Although accession to the European Union created some expectations of change, an examination of party politics in the new member states of Central and Eastern Europe between 2004 and 2008 indicates that EU membership had only a limited impact on party organization and programmes across the region. Nonetheless, in the realm of party politics the EU acted as a constraint, a source of spill-over and a point of reference.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Earlier versions of the papers in this volume were presented at the ECPR General Conference in Pisa in September 2007 and at a Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) funded workshop in London in May 2008. I thank the contributors for their input, willingness to respond to constructive criticism, and patience. We are grateful to all those who commented on the papers, especially Zsolt Enyedi, Seán Hanley, Paul Lewis and Ingrid van Biezen who acted as discussants at the London workshop. Thanks are also extended to Agnes Batory, Vít Hloušek, Pavel Pšeja, Allan Sikk and Aleks Szczerbiak for comments on a draft of this paper and to Harvard University's Center for European Studies for providing such a congenial location to edit the collection and write this opening contribution.

Notes

See, for example, Milada Anna Vachudova and Liesbet Hooghe, ‘Postcommunist Politics in a Magnetic Field: How Transition and EU Accession Structure Party Competition on European Integration’, Comparative European Politics, Vol.7, No.2 (2009), pp.179–212; Milada Anna Vachudova, ‘The European Union: The Causal Behemoth of Transnational Influence on Postcommunist Politics’, in Mitchell A. Orenstein, Stephen Bloom and Nicole Lindstrom (eds.), Transnational Actors in Central and East European Transitions (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2008); Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelemier (eds.), The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2005); Heather Grabbe, The EU's Transformative Power: Europeanization Through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006); Geoffrey Pridham, Designing Democracy: EU Enlargement and Regime Change in Post-Communist Europe (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005); Tim Haughton ‘When Does the EU Make a Difference? Conditionality and the Accession Process in Central and Eastern Europe’, Political Studies Review, Vol.5, No.2 (2007), pp.233–46.

Even some accounts that do look at the Europeanization of political parties are focused mostly on the accession period: for example, John Ishiyama, ‘Europeanization and the Communist Successor Parties in Post-Communist Politics’, Politics and Policy, Vol.34, No.1 (2006), pp.3–29; on trans-national parties see, for example, Giorgia Delsodato, ‘Eastward Enlargement by the European Union and Transnational Parties’, International Political Science Review, Vol.3, No.2 (2002), pp.269–89; Abby Innes, ‘Party Competition in Post-Communist Europe: The Great Electoral Lottery’, Comparative Politics, Vol.35, No.1 (2002), pp.85–104; and Paul G. Lewis, ‘EU Enlargement and Party Systems in Central Europe’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.21, No.2 (2005), pp.171–99.

See, for example, Tim Haughton and Darina Malová, ‘Open for Business: Slovakia as a New Member State’, International Issues and Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, Vol.12, No.2 (2007), pp.3–22.

See, for example, the collections of articles under the title ‘Is East-Central Europe Backsliding?’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.18, No.4 (2007); and Ol'ga Gyárfášová, Grigorij Mesežnikov and Daniel Smilov (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2008).

Vlad Sobell, Central Europe Unhinged (London and Hong Kong: Daiwa Institute of Research, 2006).

Paul G. Lewis and Zdenka Mansfeldová (eds.), The European Union and Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).

Robert Rohrschneider and Stephen Whitefield, ‘Political Parties, Public Opinion and European Integration in Post-Communist Countries: The State of the Art’, European Union Politics, Vol.7, No.1 (2006), pp.141–60. However, there were some eurosceptic parties: see Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, ‘Contemporary Euroscepticism in the Party System of the EU Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.43, No.1 (2004), pp.1–27.

Robert Ladrech, ‘Europeanization and Political Parties: Towards a Framework for Analysis’, Party Politics, Vol.8, No.4 (2002), pp.389–403.

Peter Mair, ‘The Limited Impact of Europe on National Party Systems’, West European Politics, Vol.23, No.4 (2000), pp.27–51.

Thomas Poguntke, Nicholas Aylott, Robert Ladrech and Kurt Richard Luther, ‘The Europeanisation of National Party Organisations: A Conceptual Analysis’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.46, No.6 (2007), pp.747–71.

Ibid.

See, for instance, Geoffrey Pridham, ‘Patterns of Europeanization and Transnational Party Cooperation: Party Development in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Paul G. Lewis (ed.), Party Development and Democratic Change in Post-Communist Europe (London: Cass, 2001), pp.178–98; Geoffrey Pridham, ‘Complying with the European Union's Democratic Conditionality: Transnational Party Linkages and Regime Change in Slovakia, 1993–1998’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.51, No.7 (1999), pp.1221–44; and Maria Spirova, ‘Europarties and Party Development in EU-candidate States: The Case of Bulgaria’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.60, No.5 (2008), pp.791–808.

Attila Ágh, Eastern Enlargement and the Future of the EU27 (Budapest: Together for Europe Research Centre, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2007).

Tapio Raunio, ‘Why European Integration Increases Leadership Autonomy within Political Parties’, Party Politics, Vol.8, No.4 (2002), pp.405–25.

Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

Frank Schimmelfennig, Stefan Engert and Heiko Knobel, International Socialization in Europe: European Organizations, Political Conditionality and Democratic Change (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006).

Raunio, ‘Why European Integration Increases Leadership Autonomy’.

Anand Menon, Europe: The State of the Union (London: Atlantic Books, 2008), p.220.

Seán Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-wing Politics, 1989–2006 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p.191.

See Sikk's contribution to this volume.

Juliet Johnson, ‘The Remains of Conditionality: The Faltering Enlargement of the Euro Zone’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol.15, No.6 (2008), pp.826–41.

The most striking example in the region was the 1998–2002 coalition in Slovakia: see Geoffrey Pridham, ‘Coalition Behaviour in New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe: the Case of Slovakia’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.18, No.2 (2002), pp.75–102.

Szczerbiak, ‘“Social Poland” Defeats “Liberal Poland”?: The September–October 2005 Polish Parliamentary and Presidential Elections’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.23, No.2 (2007), pp.202–32; Tim Haughton and Marek Rybář, ‘A Change of Direction? The 2006 Parliamentary Elections and Party Politics in Slovakia’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.24, No.2 (2008), pp.232–55.

Algis Krupavicius, ‘Lithuania’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.46, Nos.5–6 (2007), pp.1019–31 (p.1027).

Jānis Ikstens, ‘Latvia’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.46, Nos.5–6 (2007), pp.1012–8.

Alexandr Vondra, ‘Energy as a Topic of the Czech EU Presidency’, speech delivered in Prague, 23 May 2008, available at <http://www.vlada.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=38402>, accessed 25 June 2008.

Tim Haughton, ‘For Business, For Pleasure or For Necessity? The Czech Republic's Choices for Europe’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.61, No.8 (2009), pp.1371–92.

Poguntke et al., ‘The Europeanisation of National Party Organisations’.

Pavel Pšeja, contribution to the discussion at Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies workshop, London, May 2008.

Zsolt Enyedi and Paul G. Lewis, ‘The Impact of the European Union on Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Lewis and Mansfeldová (eds.), The European Union and Party Politics, pp.231–50 (p.245).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Haughton

Tim Haughton is Senior Lecturer in the Politics of Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Birmingham. He is currently undertaking research on party politics in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and the electoral fortunes of ‘new’ and ‘populist parties’ and has embarked on an ESRC-funded project examining National Preference Formation in three new EU member states: Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.