3.2 Impact on politics

Studies of the EU’s impact on the politics dimension of candidates – political parties and interest groups – are only slowly starting to emerge. Analyses of the Europeanisation of interest groups are still particularly rare .(but see Perez-Solorzano Borragan 2004 , 2005 ). There is a larger literature on the Europeanisation of political parties and party systems in the candidates, but it is considerably smaller than the literature focused on the polity or policy dimensions of the EU’s impact. Studies of EU conditionality often overlook the area, as the EU makes few deliberate attempts to exercise influence on party systems. The exception are cases in which the EU rather openly took sides in national elections against nationalist and/or authoritarian parties (see e.g. Pridham 2002 ; Rybar and Malova 2004 ; Vachudová 2005

), but such studies are then usually placed within the context of the EU’s impact on democratisation, rather than the party system. However, while studies of the Europeanisation of political parties in the older member states find that the EU only has a limited influence on national party systems (Mair 2000

), the EU’s impact in East Central Europe might be more significant. The unconsolidated party systems of the eastern candidate countries may be more susceptible to influence, not least through European transnational party organisations that have been particularly active (Dakowska 2002 ; Lewis 2003 ; Pridham 1999 ; Pridham 2005

: 164-166). Furthermore, the reactions in the candidate countries’ party systems to the question of EU membership have attracted considerable attention. One particularly prominent focus in this area is on Euroscepticism in the party systems of candidates/new members (Ágh 2002 ; Batory and Sitter 2004 ; Henderson 2005 ; Kopecký and Mudde 2002 ; Lewis 2005 ; Taggart and Szczerbiak 2004 ).

Another central focus is the politics of the accession referenda (Baun et al. 2006 ; Cini 2004 ; Fowler 2004 ; Hanley 2004 ; Henderson 2004 ; Krašovec and Lajh 2004 ; Mikkel and Pridham 2004 ; Szczerbiak 2004 ; Szczerbiak and Taggart 2004a ,b , 2005 ).

Analyses of the EU’s impact on party competition are often more critical of the EU’s impact than the bulk of the studies that analyse the EU’s impact on democratisation. The latter studies – usually set within the broader discipline of International Relations – often find that the EU had a positive, or at worst no, impact. By contrast, a number of studies (usually from a Comparative Politics perspective) suggest that the EU’s influence might have been detrimental to democracy in the candidate countries (see e.g. Grzymala-Busse 2004 ; Grzymala-Busse and Innes 2003 ; Hughes 2001 ).

For example, the EU’s main impact on national party systems that Mair (2000 ) identifies, namely the de-politicising effect of a domestic consensus on integration, which hollows out political competition, is exacerbated in the context of accession and post-communist transition. Innes (2002 : 101-102) suggests that the EU ‘could have a debilitating effect, arresting party developments by excluding from political competition those substantive, grass-roots, ideological policy conflicts around which western European party systems have evolved’. Similar criticism has been levelled against the impact of the EU on the development of domestic civil society organisations. Paradoxically, EU efforts to strengthen environmental NGOs in the CEECs had the reverse effect of undermining them by usurping their agenda and divorcing them from grassroots support and activism (Fagan 2005 ; Fagan and Jehlička 2002 ; Fagan and Tickle 2001 ; for a less pessimistic view, see Stark et al. 2005 ).

Another ambiguous effect of the EU on democratic consolidation in the candidates – which has been also observed in the member states – is the strengthening of executives vis-à-vis parliaments (Goetz 2005 ; Grabbe 2001 ; Raik 2002 ; Sadurski 2006 ). As Sadurski (2006 : 7) puts it: ‘Enactment of EU-related laws was often fast-tracked, with little or no serious parliamentary discussions, and with the executive controlling the process throughout. This was perhaps no bad thing, given the notorious inefficiency and incompetence of parliamentary institutions in post-communist states, and was arguably the only way to ensure that the enormous body of EU law was transposed into domestic legislation. … [However], it strengthened the executive bodies over their parliamentary equivalents, a secretive procedure over fully transparent ones, and the quick-fix pace of decision-making over comprehensive deliberation. [The goal of accession] gave the executive more power to by-pass parliament and to justify the centralisation of decision-making by the emergency-like circumstances.’