Domestic Capacity as Knowledge about European Integration: A Comparative Analysis of Governance Actors in Serbia

Domestic capacity is critical in accounting for outcomes of Europeanization in post-Communist countries. Approaching domestic governance actors as an epistemic community around the EU accession, we define capacity as knowledge of the European integration processes and mechanisms. Quantitative text analysis of the epistemic dimension of discourse of government, opposition and civil society actors before and after Serbia obtained EU candidate status demonstrates that all actors increase their knowledge about Europeanization over time. However, the EU accession advantages government actors who overtake civil society actors. Also, the discourse of all domestic actors converges on the same aspects of the EU integration, further exposing the weakness of civil society. New measures of differential capacity of domestic governance actors reveal (re)configuration of their interactions over time. We advance discursive institutionalist approach to Europeanization by looking beyond the normative content of discourse and showing how structural features of discourse can explain domestic transformation.