“Potemkin Europeanisation”?

Abstract

After the EU’s Eastern enlargement of 2004, it became clear that some of the reform in the former candidate countries resembled a Potemkin village: behind a gleaming façade lingered a grimmer reality. Party politics in Central Europe proved to be a case in point. The following article argues that party systems in the region only underwent “Potemkin Europeanisation”—essentially enjoying a “liberal consensus” thanks to a “camouflage effect” of the Europeanisation processes—in 1998–2004. Using case studies of party competition in Poland and Hungary in 1998–2004, it draws broader theoretical conclusions about the persistence of traditional cleavages as organizing principles of party systems in Central Europe, as well as the nature of EU influence on the modus operandi of party politics in candidate countries.