Transnarodowa współpraca partii politycznych (TPC) – przypadek państw postjugosłowiańskich

Abstract

In the literature on the Europeanisation of political parties and party systems, transnational
party cooperation (TPC) is very often treated as a special and unique kind of Europeanisation
of national political parties. In the case of CEE groupings, the term TPC includes various kinds
of European partners, from Europarties, through political groups in the European Parliament
to sister parties from other, mainly West European states. The Europarties’ role has been
perceived as “stimulating and supporting” the process of the development of parties in this
region; adapting them to the European mainstream. The paper investigates the impact of TPC
on political parties from selected post-Yugoslav countries, and tries to determine whether
this cooperation has led to changes in their programmes or internal organisations. The article
also explores if it caused any changes in domestic party systems of analysed countries. To
explain the impact of TPC on domestic groupings, the concept of policy transfer has been
applied.
Keywords: transnational party cooperation (TPC), transnational party actors (TPA),
Europeanisation of political parties, political parties, post-Yugoslav countries