Abstract
While national governments in candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been the key gatekeepers in determining the implementation of the EU’s democratic conditionality, they have nevertheless acted under domestic constraints while subject to direct pressure from Brussels. Within this interactive dynamic, the filtering role of intermediary actors in domestic politics and their influence in facilitating or, alternatively, complicating the impact of conditionality becomes obviously important. In particular, attention is given to the central part played by political parties in these new democracies as well as the media and - in line with the approach of this study in focussing on interactions within the dynamic of enlargement - the impacts they have on public opinion, not to mention the influence the latter may have on the former. At the same time, the pressures of the accession process and its Europeanising effects will be taken into account. How did these intermediary actors fit into the push/pull dynamics of EU enlargement?
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Notes
K. Lawson, ‘When linkage fails’, in K. Lawson and P. Merkl (eds), When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organisations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 16–17.
C. Anderson, ‘When in doubt, use proxies: attitudes towards domestic politics and support for European integration’, in Comparative Political Studies, October 1998, p. 571.
For example, ibid., p. 586; R. Cichowski, Choosing Democracy: Citizen Attitudes and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union, EUI working paper RSC no. 2000/12, European University Institute, Florence, 2000, p. 27.
P. Mair, ‘The limited impact of Europe on national party systems’, in K. Goetz and S. Hix (eds), Europeanised Politics?: European Integration and National Political Systems, special issue of West European Politics, October 2000, pp. 27–51.
See the comments on Mair’s sceptical view in P. Lewis, The Impact of the Enlargement of the European Union on Central European Party Systems, SEI Working Paper No. 71, Sussex European Institute, 2003.
T. Risse, ‘A European identity? Europeanisation and the evolution of nation-state identities’, in M. Green Cowles, J. Caporaso and T. Risse (eds), Transforming Europe: Europeanisation and Domestic Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 200–3.
E. Stadtmüller, ‘Polish perceptions of the European Union in the 1990s’, in K. Cordeil (ed.), Poland and the European Union (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 35.
See G. Pridham, ‘Complying with the European Union’s democratic conditionality: transnational party linkages and regime change in Slovakia, 1993–98’, in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 7, November 1999, pp. 1221–44.
G. Pridham, ‘Romania and European Union accession: the domestic dimension’, in The Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, vol. 1, no. 2, November 2001, pp. 41–2.
For example, the 2000 Commission report on Slovakia referred briefly to ‘the internal tensions within the four-party coalition government’, including the Hungarian party’s threat to leave it, which ‘have negatively affected the smooth progress of some politically sensitive elements of the pre-accession legislative agenda’ (European Commission, 2000 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress towards Accession, Brussels, 2000, p. 16).
See P. Lewis, Political Parties in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 143–6.
E. Giatzidis, An Introduction to Post-Communist Bulgaria (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 56.
F. Kalambayi, ‘Position of the mass media on the map of players and problems inherent to Romania’s accession to the European Union (a summary)’, in The Map of Players and Issues of the Accession to the European Union (Bucharest: Open Society Foundation, 2003), p. 122.
UNDP, A Decade Later: Understanding the Transition Process in Romania — National Human Development Report, Romania 2001–2 (Bucharest: UNDP, 2002), p. 48.
G. Pridham, Latvia’s EU Accession Referendum, 20 September 2003, Referendum Briefing No. 10, 2003, European Parties Elections and Referendums Network (EPERN), University of Sussex, p. 8.
For example, in Slovakia it was observed that during 2001 citizens were becoming increasingly interested in the details of Slovakia’s EU entry while, at the same time, being critical of the lack of information on the issue (O. Gyárfášová and M. Velšic, ‘Public Opinion’, in G. Mesežnikov, M. Kollár and T. Nicholson (eds), Slovakia 2001: a Global Report on the State of Society, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2002, p. 22).
This is for instance very noticeable in the Czech Republic where according to surveys the public put the media significantly ahead of government representatives, academic institutes, members of parliament and political parties as a credible and preferred source of information on EU accession (K. von Schnurbein, Der Tschechische EU-Beitritt: Politischer Prozess wider die Offentliche Meinung?, Bonn, Zentrum für Europaische Integrationsforschung, Working Paper C 105, 2002, p. 9).
C. Haerpfer, ‘New democracies barometer: attitudes towards EU accession in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia’, in Z. Mansfeldová and M. Klima (eds), The Role of the Central European Parliaments in the Process of European Integration (Prague: Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences, 1998), pp. 196–8.
GfK Slovakia, Public Awareness Campaign: Research on EU Information Sources and Target Audiences in the Slovak Republic and a Proposal for Communication Strategy on the EU in the Slovak Republic (Bratislava, 1998), p. 40.
I. Shikova and K. Nikolov, The Political Economy of the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union: a Case Study of Bulgaria (Sofia: Bulgarian European Community Studies Association, 1999), p. 29.
E. Stadtmüller, ‘Polish perceptions of the European Union in the 1990s’, in K. Cordeil (ed.), Poland and the European Union, pp. 41–2; I. Brinar and M. Svetlicic, ‘Enlargement of the European Union: the case of Slovenia’, in Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 6, no. 5, December 1999, p. 814.
This paragraph is based on various sources: Haerpfer, ‘New democracies barometer’, in Mansfeldova and Klima (eds), The Role of the Central European Parliament, pp. 187–96; I. Brinar, ‘Slovenia: from Yugoslavia to the European Union’, in K. Henderson (ed.), Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 253.
A. Bozóki and G. Karácsony, ‘Membership without belonging?: Hungary into the European Union — a historic step passively approved’, in Central European Political Science Review, Fall 2003, pp. 28–30; and, Pridham, ‘Latvia’s EU Accession Referendum’, p. 6.
See M. Kucia, ‘Public opinion in Central Europe on EU accession: the Czech Republic and Poland’, in Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, March 1999, p. 151.
Latvian Facts, Attitude in Society toward Latvia’s European Union Membership: Survey Result Analyses, Riga, April 2003, pp. 15–16.
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© 2005 Geoffrey Pridham
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Pridham, G. (2005). The Political Arena and Intermediary Actors in Candidate Countries: Political Parties, Opinion-makers and Public Impacts. In: Designing Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230504905_5
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