Impact of the Europeanization process on the transformation of the party system of Montenegro

Abstract

Europeanization and democratization are strongly connected processes in postcommunist European countries. The prospect of becoming integrated with the community of developed European countries is a key motivating factor for introducing changes in these countries, including Montenegro. Burdened by its recent history, Montenegrin society is undergoing significant transformations of all aspects, including its party system. Some serious work has been done in the field of studying the processes involved in the Europeanization of national party systems. Constituting the European Union (EU) has started to have a more important top-down impact and therefore the transformation of the party systems which has followed has become more evident and interesting. In this paper we accept the definition of the term ‘Europeanization’ given in one of the most important works in this field, namely, The Europeanization of National Political Parties—Power and Organizational Adaptation by Thomas Poguntke, Nicholas Aylott, Elisabeth Carter, Robert Ladrech and Kurt Richard Luther. Following this, we understand Europeanization as institutionalization of the European political system which has certain effects on domestic structures and member states and, concretely, intraorganizational change in national political parties as a result of the ongoing process of European integration. A legitimate question can be posed here: what kind of impact can Europeanization have on the transformation of the party systems of states in such an early accession phase as Montenegro finds itself in? Namely, a Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Montenegro and the EU was signed on 15 October 2007 and will come into force when it is ratified by all 27 EU members, the European and the Montenegrin Parliament, which could take some time. Candidacy for EU membership will be requested by the end of 2008 and further dynamics of the accession process will depend on many external and internal circumstances. Some of the main premises for detecting the Europeanization process are missing. For example, Montenegro does not have representatives in the European Parliament and therefore political parties’