Voting "à la carte": Electoral Support for the Radical Right in the 2005 Bulgarian Parliamentary Elections

This paper explores the sources of votes for radical-right parties using the example of electoral support for the Attack Party in the 2005 Bulgarian parliamentary elections. It expands theoretical propositions on the presence of extremist parties in electoral politics by proposing an analytical model which explains radical-right voting as the result of disequilibria between political supply and voter demand in the electoral market. The paper argues that support for the radical right represents unmet voter demand and combines à la carte elements of single-issue politics, xenophobia, protest and charismatic political agency in electoral choice valid for individual voters but not for clearly identifiable cohorts of voters. The paper examines the evidence on electoral support for the Attack Party against the premises of the à la carte model – the structure of electoral competition, radical-right political agency, and voter preferences – and finds that the radical-right vote in the 2005 election validates its key proposition: electoral support for the radical right lacks coherent social structure and correspondence between voter expectations and party programmatic appeal. Based on the Bulgarian case study the paper concludes that the ability to offer voting choices à la carte, regardless of its ideological positions and the political expectations of its own electorate represents a resource for the sustained presence of the radical right in the electoral market

Returning to Europe as Reluctant Europeans: Revisiting Trends in Public Support for the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe Twelve Years after the 2004 EU Accession

This paper examines less discussed aspects of Euroscepticism in Eastern Europe as a component of the institutional history of the 2004 EU enlargement. A focus on public support for European integration allows us to evaluate the consequences of the EU’s enlargement policy from the perspective of democratic legitimacy, as public attitudes demonstrate how institutions live up to the expectations of the citizens in a democratic setting. It also allows us to relate the legislative history of the eastward enlargement to its social impact and domestic political implications. The paper posits Euroscepticism as an unexpected outcome of the legal-institutional implementation of the EU enlargement policy. It argues that while East-European Euroscepticism defies clear categorisation as it fails to demonstrate consistent longitudinal trends not consistent across its performance evaluation, identity, and democratic legitimacy dimensions, it is indicative of the disconnect between the adjustment dynamics of the EU accession of Eastern Europe, accomplished at the elite level, and the broad-based public response to it. The core of East-European Euroscepticism is declining public trust in the European Union, its policies, institutions, and the economic benefits it generates against the background of general dissatisfaction with the workings of national and European democracy. The East-European publics have become increasingly sceptical of their representation as citizens whose voice ‘counts’ in the EU. They perceive the EU as less relevant to their personal situation although it represents well the interests of the Member States. Such contradictory evidence suggests that the conventional measures of Euroscepticism as a pan-European phenomenon need to be re-examined by exploring trends of continuity and change in public support for the EU in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of the 2004 enlargement

Revisiting China’s Market Economy Status: State Capitalism within the Liberal Trading System

This paper examines the question of China’s compliance with market economy principles. China has reformed away from central planning in the past four decades, but has it achieved a fully-fledged market economy? The paper sheds new light on the contested nature of China’s market economy status from a political economy perspective. It draws on the Varieties of Capitalism analytical framework. The paper explains China’s status as a market economy as the product of a national model of state-dominated institutional complementarities between high levels of trade openness and domestic regulation, including nonmarket principles for the deployment of financial resources and labour

Revisiting China’s market economy status: state capitalism within the WTO liberal trading system

This paper examines the question of China’s compliance with market economy principles. China has reformed away from central planning in the past four decades, but has it achieved a fully-fledged market economy? The paper sheds new light on the contested nature of China’s market economy status from a political economy perspective. It draws on the Varieties of Capitalism analytical framework to posit China’s market economy status as the product of its national model of state-dominated institutional complementarities between high levels of trade openness and domestic regulation, including nonmarket principles for the deployment of financial resources and labour

The European Dimension of the Political Representation of Minorities

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East-European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the Elections for Members of the European Parliament. This paper focuses on the European elections as a form of political representation of ethnic minorities. It studies the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the electoral behavior of ethnopolitical parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 Elections for European Parliament

NAFTA and the European Referent: Labor Mobility in European and North American Regional Integration. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No.1, June 2003

The election of Vicente Fox in Mexico and of George W. Bush in the United States led to a short-lived bilateral “honeymoon” in 2001 that waned prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, not after them. One aspect of the honeymoon period involved recurrent allusions to a European referent for NAFTA in US and Mexican press coverage of a possible immigration policy initiative. In several declarations, most notably President Fox’s speech at the Ottawa summit of the NAFTA partners in 2001, he spoke of his vision of a border-free North America where workers enjoyed freedom of movement. The seeming European referent for NAFTA, then, was freedom of movement within the European space guaranteed European citizens under Articles 48 and 49 of the Treaty of Rome. If President Fox and other advocates of a US-Mexico immigration policy initiative actually espouse an Article 48-like freedom of labor mobility within NAFTA, they would appear to be overlooking fundamental differences between regional integration in North America and Europe. We suggest that the Turkish-EU and Moroccan-EU relationships constitute a more appropriate European referent for NAFTA than Article 48. Turkish and Moroccan bids for membership in the EC and EU failed for many reasons, but above all because of the prospect for large-scale emigration by Turks or Moroccans to other member-states long after the end of a transition period

Pristop baltskih držav k Natu in Evropski uniji

The article explores the processes of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and EU (European Union) enlargement with respect to the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It assumes that Western Europe is an established security community and seeks to determine the consequences of any imminent Baltic accession for the geopolitical configuration of Europe. Given their proximity and complex relationship with Russia, the future institutional affiliation of the Baltic states can be regarded as a test of the probability and direction of change in the density and characteristics of the Western security community. The article draws a conclusion about the necessary, however contested, character of the Baltic states\u27 future membership in the Euro-Atlantic structures. Baltic accession would reinforce the community configuration prevailing in the region, and facilitate NATO\u27s transformation from a military alliance into a political union. However, the same process still presents a number of challenges: the extension of the security community is not necessarily beneficial for its environment.Članek proučuje procese širitve Nata in Evropske unije s stališča baltskih držav: Estonije, Latvije in Litve. Avtorica predpostavlja, da je zahodna Evropa že vzpostavljena varnostna skupnost. Na tej podlagi želi določiti posledice neizbežnega pristopa baltskih držav za geopolitično podobo Evrope. Glede na bližino in kompleksnost odnosov z Rusijo imamo lahko bodočo institucionalno včlanitev baltskih držav za preizkus verjetnosti in smeri sprememb, ki bo pokazal pomen in značilnostih zahodne varnostne skupnosti. Avtorica izpeljuje sklep o nujni, čeprav tudi sporni značilnosti bodočega članstva baltskih držav v evroatlantskih strukturah. Pristop baltskih držav bo okrepil obliko skupnosti, ki prevladuje na tem območju, in omogočil preoblikovanje Nata iz vojaškega zavezništva v politično unijo. Seveda pa ti procesi prinašajo tudi številne izzive. Širitev varnostne skupnosti namreč ni nujno koristna za njeno okolje