Europeanization of Green parties in the new member states: The cases of Poland and the Czech Republic

This thesis provides a descriptive study comparing the change, or lack thereof, in levels of Europeanization of the Czech and Polish Green parties between the 2004 and 2009 elections to the European Parliament. The aim is not to explain, but to observe the extent to which Europeanization has occurred and assess what, if anything, this can teach us more broadly about democracy in the European Union with a particular focus on the second-order nature of European elections. Organizing Europeanization into cooperative and communicative varieties reveals a deficit in the communicative Europeanization among the two parties. It is suggested that further communicative Europeanization of national political parties may be the key to overcome the second-order nature of the European Parliament elections.