Introduction: Europeanization and party politics in the territory of former Yugoslavia

The study of national political parties and the European Union (EU) has evolved over recent years in two directions. The first direction one might term ‘levels of analysis’, in which research focuses on the relationship between the European, national, and in somecases, the sub-national, level of party relationswithin theEU. Thiswould include the organizational development andactivities of transnational party federations (or Europarties), the development of programmatic positions on theEUamongnational parties, etc. Itwould also include the analysis of the pattern of competition within the European Parliament between party groups and the impact of the EU on national party systems. The second direction in which national political parties havebeen approachedwithin the context of the ‘impact of Europe’ has been related to EU enlargements. The establishment of a scholarly connection between European integration on the one hand, and the dynamics of national political parties on the other, was originally confined to political phenomena in Western Europe. This is not surprising as the first studies explaining the emergence of Europarties, analysis of direct elections to the European Parliament, and soon thereafter individual party stances vis-à-vis the EC/EU, began to emerge at the end of the 1970s when competitive party systems were located exclusively in this area of Europe. This changed with the processes associated with the accession to the EU of a number of post-communist countries in 2004. From the late 1990s onwards, scholars investigated the impact of theEUon the emerging political systems and economies of these countries, in many cases under the label of ‘Europeanization’. During the pre-accession period, approaches to the study of parties and elections in these countries were based on those developed to study competitive elections in the West. Thus models of voter volatility, party organization, etc., were incorporated into analytical frameworks for Central and Eastern European (CEE) parties and party systems. By the early 2000s, however, adjustments based upon empirical political reality promoted new advances in the study—and expectations—of parties and the EU inCEE countries. Rates of electoral volatility, in general, have remained high compared to theWest; Eurosceptic public opinion has been changing (often with ups and downs in the specific country’s success in relations with the EU); party organization remains weak; etc.Apart from these ‘generic’ features, it should benoted that inmanypostcommunist countries Europeanization under the slogan ‘returning to Europe’ became anew ideology supported bymanypolitical parties aswell as an informed positive opinion among decision-makers and opinion-formers, making the EU a credible alternative for CEE post-communist countries during the 1990s. Since EU