From Harmonization to Normalization: The Changing Law-Making Procedures and Patterns During EU Accession in Turkey

While Europeanization is a driver of democratic consolidation, this paper argues that the procedural dimension of the EU accession process has generated significant, yet often overlooked, challenges for the procedural quality of law-making in candidate states. Responding to debates on the obstacles behind limited or distorted Europeanization, the study shows how the processual demands of alignment—particularly the volume and technical complexity of EU-related legislation, combined with externally induced and domestically reinforced time pressures—are associated with recurring patterns of procedural change that complicate the functioning of legislative democracy in specific contexts. Focusing on Turkey as a critical case of Europeanization beyond EU borders during the accession process, the paper examines law-making procedures and patterns from the launch of accession negotiations to their effective suspension (1999–2016). The analysis draws on parliamentary minutes addressing procedural change and legislative deliberation, European Commission Progress Reports, and Constitutional Court decisions, complemented by an original quantitative dataset covering all legislation adopted between 1991 and 2016, including information on the number of laws, their length, and the procedures under which they were enacted. This empirical material allows the study to identify systematic procedural adaptations during periods of intensive harmonization. The findings reveal that the accession process created an opportunity structure in which domestic political actors were able to justify departures from ordinary legislative routines by framing harmonization as a technical necessity requiring speed and efficiency. While early EU Progress Reports frequently praised Turkey’s “impressive legislative performance,” this emphasis on legislative output obscured a more profound institutional transformation in the law-making process. Interpreted through the de-parliamentarization thesis, this dynamic reflects a path-dependent shift in which procedural shortcuts adopted under the logic of efficiency facilitated a growing concentration of agenda-setting power within the executive, without necessarily altering the formal content of harmonized legislation. Crucially, the paper shows that once institutionalized, these exceptional procedures were not confined to EU-related reforms but were increasingly instrumentalized by domestic actors to advance political agendas beyond the scope of accession. The impact of EU integration thus operated not merely as external pressure, but through its interaction with domestic incentives, enabling the strategic use of procedural flexibility under the rhetoric of integration-related urgency. By situating Turkey’s experience within a broader comparative perspective, the paper highlights parallels with the Central and Eastern European countries whose accession negotiations coincided with Turkey’s, as well as potential implications for current candidate states in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership. Overall, the paper contributes to debates on Europeanization by demonstrating that law-making procedures constitute a contested space in which external integration processes and domestic political strategies interact, producing institutional consequences that shape the democratic quality of the law-making process.