PARTY COMPETITION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: A COMPARISON OF WEST-EAST AND CANDIDATE COUNTRIES

Year 2019, Issue: 25, 27 - 40, 25.10.2019

Alper Bulut

https://doi.org/10.18092/ulikidince.499366

Abstract

Partiler arası iç rekabetin dinamikleri Avrupa entegrasyonu konusunda partilerin siyasi yaklaşımını nasıl etkilemektedir? Partilerin Avrupa entegrasyonu konusundaki  duruşları, iç politikadaki mevcut pozisyonlarına bakarak anlaşılabilir mi? Mevcut literatür her iki sorunun cevabının da olumlu olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Bu çalışma söz konusu bu bulguların Avrupa Birliği aday ülkeleri için de geçerli olup olmadığını anlamayı hedeflemektedir. Bulgular Batı Avrupa temelli bu bulguların mevcut aday ülkeler için de geçerli olabileceğini göstermektedir. Elde edilen analizin sonuçları Sırbistan, Bosna-Hersek ve Makedonya'nın Doğu Avrupa ülkeleri ile, Türkiye'nin ise Batı Avrupa ülkeleri ile benzer eğilimler taşıdığını ortaya koymaktadır. 

Keywords

European Union, Candidate Countries, Party Politics

PARTY COMPETITION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: A COMPARISON OF WEST-EAST AND CANDIDATE COUNTRIES

Abstract

  How
does the domestic structure of party competition affect parties’ political
support for European integration? Is it possible to estimate a party’s position
about European integration by looking at its political stance in domestic
politics? Previous research has proved that the answer to the above questions
is “yes”. This article aims to explore whether these findings travel to the
candidate countries that are going to join the European family in a near
future. Our findings show that this model is applicable to candidate countries.
The results, on the other hand, suggest that the four candidate countries Serbia,
Bosnia Herzegovina, and Macedonia introduce similar patterns with East European
countries whereas Turkey is more similar to West Europe in terms of the
structure of party competition. 

Keywords

European Union, Candidate Countries, Party Politics

References

• Arnold, H. (2007) “Political Arguments Against Turkey’s Accession to the European Union”, Internazionale Politik und Gesellschaf 3: 101-113.
• Budge, I. (2000) “Expert Judgments of Party Policy Positions: Uses and Limitations in Political Research”, European Journal of Political Research, 37(1): 103–113.
• Erdogdu, E. (2002) “Turkey and Europe: Undivided but not United”, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Volume 6, 2: 40-51.
• Franklin, M. (1992) “The Decline of Cleavage Politics”. In Mark Franklin, T. Mackie and Henry Valen (Eds.), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Grigoriadis, I.N. (2006) “Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: Debating the Most Difficult Enlargement Ever”, SAIS Review, 26(1): 147-160.
• Hix, S. and Lord, C. (1997) Political Parties in the European Union, New York, St. Martin’s.
• Hix, S.(1999a), “Dimensions and alignments in European Union Politics: Cognitive Constraints and Partisan Responses”, European Journal of Political Research, 35: 69-125.
• Hix, S. (1999b). The political system of the European Union, London, Macmillan.
• Hooghe, L., and Marks, G. (1999) “Making of a Polity: The Struggle Over European Integration”. In Herbert Kitschelt, Peter Lange, Gary Marks and John Stephens (Eds.), Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (pp. 70-97). Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Hooghe, L., Marks, G. and Wilson, C. (2002) “Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European integration?”, Comparative Political Studies, 35: 965-989.
• Inglehart, R. (1990) Cultural Shift in Advanced Industrial Society, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
• Inglehart, R. (1997) Modernization and Postmodernization, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
• Ladrech, R. (1994) “Europeanization of Domestic Politics and Institutions: The Case of France”, Volume 32, 1: 69–88.
• Lane, D. (2002) The Legacy of State Socialism and the Future of Transformation, New York, Rowman and Littlefield.
• Lipset, S. and Rokkan, S. (1967) “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An introduction”. In Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (Eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Crossnational Perspectives, 1-64, New York, Free Press.
• Marks, G. and Wilson, C. (2000) “The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration”, British Journal of Political Science, 30: 433–459.
• Marks, G., Hooghe, L., Nelson, M. and Edwards, E. (2006) "Party Competition and European Integration in the East and West : Different Structure, Same Causality", Comparative Political Studies, 39: 155.
• Marks, G., Hooghe, L., Steenbergen, M. and Bakker, R. (2007) “Cross-Validating Data on Party Positioning on European Integration”, Electoral Studies, 26(1): 23-38.
• Marks, G., Wilson, C.. and Ray, L. (2002) “National Political Parties and European Integration”, American Journal of Political Science, Volume 46(3): 585-594.
• Öniş, Z. (1999) “Turkey, Europe and Paradoxes of Identity: Perspectives on the International Context of Democratization”, Mediterranean Quarterly, 10(3): 107-136.
• Steenbergen, M. and Marks, G. (2007) “Evaluating Expert Judgments”, European Journal of Political Research, 46: 347–366.
• Tavits, M. and Letki, N. (2009) “When Left is Right: Party Ideology and Policy in Post-Communist Europe,” American Political Science Review, 103: 555-69.
• Tsebelis, G. and Garrett, G. (2000) “Legislative Politics in the European Union”, European Union Politics, 1: 9: 9-36.
• Williams, S. (1990) “Sovereignty and Accountability in the European Community”, The Political Quarterly, 61(3): 299-317.