Europeanization and party system mechanics: comparing Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro

Abstract

About a decade ago distinctions between ‘old’ European Union (EU) members and prospective members started to be made in the literature. Pointing out differences between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU member states has become a common approach in the current Europeanization literature since the 2004 EU enlargement wave. By now the number of countries expressing an interest in European integration processes has grown: differences have also increased among the prospective member states. Their geopolitical statuses and internal characteristics have brought about different characteristics and dynamics in the Europeanization process which still have to be fully researched. These ‘grey zones’ include analyses of domestic factors. So far they have usually been cited in the Europeanization literature as important variables, but they are still mostly treated as ‘a black box’ or have only been partially revealed (e.g. by taking into account veto players, NGOs, domestic costs, etc.). Of course, in the search for an answer to the question why governments facing very similar EU pre-conditions behave very differently in fulfilling them it is very important to look at the whole range of relevant international, regional and domestic political characteristics. By focusing on domestic factors in this paper we seek to contribute to closing the mentioned gap in research. Our focus is further narrowed to national party system mechanics in their responses to EU demands. We hypothesize that possible explanatory variables leading to the very different characteristics seen in party system mechanics are: (a) the institutionalization of the party system; (b) the European socialization of national parties; and (c) the characteristics of voters’ attitudes to their country’s integration with the EU. The hypothesis is tested on three countries with different relations with the EU at the time of writing: Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. While testing the hypothesis we also take into account common Europeanization (European Union) pressures and common characteristics (controlled variables) such as former communist rule, involvement in a war and a postponed transition to a democracy. For the analysis we use data gathered within the framework of several research projects