Europeanisation of political parties and the party systems in Serbia and Croatia : between reality and illusions

The problem of the influence of the Europeanisation process on party systems became a "hit" at international conferences in European studies and political sciences just after the "big-bang" EU enlargement in 2004. Although in the last ten years this research has often encompassed the party systems of many Central and Eastern European countries, it still seldom includes the post-Yugoslav states. On the other hand, although some scholars had assumed that the EU's impact on party politics (including both political and organisational changes) in the new member states would be greater than in the old EU countries (EU-15), in general their assumptions have not been confirmed. Of course we can find exceptions, though, and in the author's opinion one of these is the Serbian party system. In the first part of the paper the author deals with conceptualisation of the Europeanisation of political parties, examining theoretical problems above allconnected with the question of how we should measure the significance of the influence of Europeanisation on domestic party politics. The second part of the article is devoted to the problem of Europeanisation of Serbian and Croatian parties as well as the party systems in both investigated countries. To examine this question, four of the five elements (leaving aside government-party relations) of Ladrech's approach to the Europeanisation of national parties will be used.