Book review: Tim Haughton (editor), Party politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Does EU membership matter?

Abstract:

This is a book review by Danica Fink-Hafner. The reviewer describes the book as consisting in eight chapters starting with Tim Haughton's chapter defining some key questions on the role of EU membership on party politics in Central and Eastern Europe. It is followed by chapters on assessing the impact of the EU on party politics in Hungary (Agnes Batory), Poland (Aleks Sczerbiak and Monika Bil), Estonia (Allan Sikk), Slovenia (Alenka Krašovec and Damjan Lajh), the Czech Republic (Vít Hloušek and Pavel Pšeja) and Slovakia (Tim Haughton and Marek Rybář). The concluding chapter by Stephen Whitefield and Robert Rohrschneider attempts to answer the question whether the relationship of European and integration issues to the broader issue bases of party competition has changed in the period from just before and just after the EU membership.