Political Parties, Public Opinion and European Integration in Post-Communist Countries

The accession of post-Communist states to the European Union has important implications for EU governance and for our understanding of the political dynamics of integration processes. Existing literature, we argue, may be inadequate, primarily because it has assumed basic value consensus at mass and elite levels over market structures and the predominance of instrumental reasoning about integration. Neither of these assumptions, however, is tenable for post-Communist states. We seek, therefore, to develop an alternative theoretical framework for understanding the integration of post-Communist societies and point to promising avenues for future empirical research.