Political Systems in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe – Comparative Studies

The comparative studies concerning the political systems of European countries have been developed in recent decades. However, they concentrate first of all on the “old” EU member states, i.e. generally the Western Europe. There is a small number of comparative works dealing also with the Union’s members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), i.e.: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Although there are many differences between these states and other EU countries, there are substantial and sometimes surprising similarities as well. This concerns particularly the EU members or still associate members from the Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as Cyprus, Malta and Turkey) which are closest to the CEE countries in terms of political and economic changes. Comparing the political systems of both groups of countries allows for the analysis of very important political and socioeconomic processes (led by the democratization and development of the market economy), the components of political systems, the political culture, the role of contemporary ideologies in shaping political systems as well as particular domestic and external policies (as outputs of political systems). The key question in this context is to what extent different political phenomena are shaped by the specific domestic factors (historical and current ones) and to what extent by “external” factors, mainly the integration with the EU and globalization processes. All these interesting though difficult research questions suit very well the subject of the workshop within the ECPR Joint Sessions event. It can be a fantastic forum of exchange of ideas between the social scientists working on the aforementioned issues in Europe and elsewhere.