The Role of European Union in Changes of Political Debates and Discourse in Strategic Documents: The Case of Regional Development Policy in Slovenia

The issue of regional development is especially challenging in the case of post-socialist countries. Shortly after systemic, constitutional changes in those countries regional development was placed on the back burner. In the following years, this topic has become prioritized, whereas the EU has played especially important role. The aim of this paper is to observe the influence of the EU on possible changes of political debates and discourse in key strategic documents in the field of regional development policy. The analysis will embrace three time periods: 1) after Slovenian independence; 2) EU accession period; 3) full EU membership period. The empirical analysis will consist of two steps: analysis of political debates in the National Assembly when adopting relevant strategic documents, and analysis of discourse of the same documents. For this purpose, a computer assisted qualitative text analysis (applying MaxQDA software) with content analyses method will be conducted.