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This article is based on a comparative analysis of five major Slovenian parliamentary political parties at the time of the elections of deputies to the European Parliament (EP). The electoral campaigns of individual national political parties were scrutinized, with a special consideration of organizational features and strategic activities linked to the dynamics of the European Union (EU). The essence of the study lies in the detection of changes in political party election activities brought about by the impact of EU processes. The EU's political, social and economic influence on the national political discourse through analysis of the EP electoral campaign structures and identities complements the more conventional approach to investigating the Europeanization of national political parties, with a conceptual framework based on Ladrech's (2001) attempt to embrace the Europeanization phenomenon. Consequently, the emphasis is on identifying programmatic and organizational changes, patterns of party competition and relations beyond the national party system. Party references to transnational interactions and networks, cooperation with foreign national and supranational party structures or representatives, the organizational and power relations of electoral campaign teams, the relevance of EU issues and institutions' assessments and the perception of the pro and contra EU dimension therefore make up the core elements of this paper.

"This book offers crucial perspectives on the utilization of online social networks in political discourse and how these alterations have affected previous modes of correspondence, highlighting key issues through theoretical foundations and pertinent case studies"--

"This book offers crucial perspectives on the utilization of online social networks in political discourse and how these alterations have affected previous modes of correspondence, highlighting key issues through theoretical foundations and pertinent case studies"--

The Europeanization of national political parties is one of the most important topic areas in the Europeanization literature. Slovenian parties have slowly started to act in the arena of the European Union (EU) since the 1990s, and questions regarding the degree of their Europeanization have become increasingly relevant. In light of Ladrech's conviction that the clearest types of evidence of Europeanization may be found in programme changes, we focus our research on party manifestos. By conducting a computer-assisted content analysis of 65 manifestos between 1990 and 2014, we were able to examine the presence of EU-related topics and the frequency of reference to these topics, utilizing a quantitative measure of party Europeanization. We conclude that the presence of Europe in Slovenian parliamentary party manifestos is a consequence of an incremental process that intensified with the turn of the millennium and peaked with Slovenia's accession to the EU. In addition, we observe that the interaction of variables has an important effect on the salience of Europe in manifestos, with the variables involved in a mutual feedback process, thus indicating that size, governmental status and EU party links matter. In the case of fringe parties, party family proved relevant as well.

The paper analyses the common one-dimensional simplifi cation of the complex socio-political reality conventionally recognised as the left-right continuum in Central and Eastern European post-communist countries. Due to the intense European integrating processes of this post-communist region the investigation of the potentially distinct general understanding of one of the most universally applied tools for distinguishing political actors holds even greater importance. According to Kitschelt's fi ve-dimensional theoretical framework of the post-communist context and by employing data mining techniques, the paper examines core standpoints that defi ne one's position on the left-right axis in the investigated region. The paper lends additional weight to the intuitive initial assumption of our research that has been frequently discussed in the relevant literature and somewhat confi rms a person's attitude to the previous regime as the most important divide in the political space of Central and Eastern European post-communist countries.

Local urban development is not determined by a collection of non-political and essentially technical measures prepared by professionals and civil servants in municipalities, but in fact strongly depends on the political nature of policy decisions and organised local interests. The planning of local urban development is, therefore, significantly influenced by political decisions based on the promises set out by political parties in their programmes. Thus, the direction of local development and the dynamics of urban growth cannot be fully understood without a thorough understanding of the views presented in party programmes. This paper aims to map the differences in Slovenian parliamentary party preferences related to local urban development across the political spectrum as well as over time (from 1990 to 2014). By implementing computer-assisted content analysis of 96 party programmes and election manifestos conventionally recognised as thematic text analysis, we identified an alarming image of the political landscape of Slovenia concerning topics related to local urban development. The analysis revealed that the majority of parties utilise local urban development concepts on a declarative level, with most dimensions of sustainable urban development being virtually absent.

Despite being coined by international forums and promoted chiefly by international/supranational organisations and clubs, sustainable development is a concept that in essence rests on and is largely determined by the local level. The local level's primacy in terms of introducing the principles of sustainability is openly stipulated by Agenda 21, thus providing the impetus for local sustainable development strategies – Local Agenda 21. These community-specific, long-term visions of sustainable co-existence serve as an important strategic tool for overcoming challenges communities may face while maintaining the general idea of the future. As prime standardised artifacts, local sustainable development strategies represent an excellent insight into the capacity of an individual community to achieve a sustainable future and deal with potential challenges. In this paper, we analysed four such visions of a sustainable future for two city and two minor Slovenian municipalities in order to examine their capacity to develop into sustainable communities. By employing George and Kirkpatrick's (2006) framework for assessing sustainable development strategies, we identified useful and problematic aspects of the documents prepared by the city and town municipalities. The analysis showed that the transition period in Slovenia has left a significant impact on development planning and its consequences have yet to be fully resolved.

The paper discusses the degree of normative sustainability achieved by selected regimes according to their sustainable development strategies. Focussing on Agenda 21, the Mediterranean Strategy of Sustainable Development, the European Union's renewed Sustainable Development Strategy and Slovenia's Development Strategy, the paper draws on Becker et al.'s cross-disciplinary concept of sustainability and the operationalisation of normative sustainability. On the basis of the analysis of objectives and rationales behind the investigated strategies as well as examination of the general context, the paper puts forward the differences between the examined regimes and explores the possible factors inducing them. The paper concludes with a general observation that the analyzed regimes reflect a fair degree of normative sustainability.

In 2004 female candidates won a relatively large proportion of Slovenian MEP seats due to effective institutional engineering and despite the: a)persistent dominating political culture (unfavourable to women in politics);b)predominant party-centric electoral system and election campaign; and c) further marginalisation of female candidates compared to male candidates in the printed media during the party-centric election campaign. Research findings support the thesis found in political party literature asserting political parties adapt to new electoral rules without radically changing how they function and without them struggling to change the dominant political culture and media reporting that is unfriendly to gender equality.