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With the "promise of Thessaloniki" in 2003, the European Union paved the way for the countries of the Western Balkan toward membership. The accession process is framed by the strategy of political conditionality, according to which candidate countries must meet criteria in various areas in order to advance. However, the policy changes often remain formal reforms that do not necessarily translate into substantial improvements. The presence of an active domestic civil sector is a key factor in fostering the implementation of EU-induced reforms. Civil society organizations (CSOs) can do this inter alia by advocating for change, supplying information, or acting as local watchdogs. This research explores the empowerment of civil society through the EU accession process and takes the policy area of inter-ethnic relations as example to analyze their impact. Based on both document analysis and interviews with key players on the ground, the findings show a rather disillusioning picture: both the empowerment of CSOs through the EU accession process and their impact on inter-ethnic relations is limited. The domestic political context is identified as common cause for the shortcomings of both variables.

"New political parties have regularly appeared in developed democracies around the world. In some countries, environmental issues, immigration concerns, economic decline, or regional issues have been rallying points for new political parties, while in other countries these same issues were addressed very quickly by established parties, and new parties have failed to emerge." "Much recent research cannot explain why under certain circumstances new or neglected issues lead to the formation of new parties. This study explains the emergence of new political parties by utilizing a novel theoretical framework to demonstrate the crucial interplay between established parties and possible newcomers. Deriving testable hypotheses from a simple theoretical model, the book proceeds to a study of party formation in 22 developed democracies. New or neglected issues still appear as a driving force in explaining the emergence of new parties, but their effect is partially mediated by institutional factors, such as access to the ballot, public support for parties, and the electoral system." "Altering Party Systems supports in part the existing theoretical work, but it also advances new insights. The theoretical model pinpoints problems of research design that are hardly addressed in the comparative literature on new political parties. These insights from the theoretical model lead to empirical tests that improve on those employed in the literature and allow for a much-enhanced understanding of the formation and the success of new parties."--Jacket

AbstractNull hypothesis significance testing has plagued our disciplines for a longer time than is appreciated and despite of various repeated discussion the inherent problems of this approach have not been taken into consideration. Thus, a more radical change in our approach to uncertainty is necessary which also requires changes in publication decisions.

At the end of its sixth legislative term the European Parliament adopted a rule change subjecting all final passage votes on legislative matters to roll call votes. Some studies use this rule change to assess whether roll call votes are characterized by more or less party discipline. Cautioning against such simple comparisons I propose to estimate in this article the extent to which members of the European Parliament are subject to party pressure. Comparing the results from the beginning of the sixth and seventh legislative term shows that in final passage votes the average party pressure has decreased considerably after the rule change.

AbstractAs James Johnson largely restates many of my points raised in my overview of rational choice contributions to political science, I focus in my response on one point of disagreement. While Johnson implies that rational choice models have no empirical content, I argue that this is based on a very partial reading of several contributions. As Johnson refrains from offering any indications on what social science theory, according to his standards, actually has empirical content, his critique is unsatisfying.

My article on some limitations of Qualitative Comparative Analy-ses (QCA) in Political Analysis (Hug 2013) aims at warning scholars who use this method about its sensitivity to measure-ment error and problems that arise when employing it for in-ductive purposes.

AbstractTwenty years ago the publication of "Pathologies of rational choice" by Donald Green and Ian Shapiro (1994) stimulated a large debate about the usefulness of rational choice approaches in political science. While the publication of this book has fruitfully led rational choice scholars to be more attentive to links between theoretical models and their empirical implications, some misunderstandings about the theoretical contributions of this approach still affect the discipline. Based on a brief summary about the debate I show the directions in which the rational choice literature has evolved and discuss some recent significant contributions.