Europeanization or Instrumentalization? Comparing Legitimacy Strategies of Political Parties from Ukraine and Georgia

The paper aims at both theoretical and empirical analysis of Europeanization (socialization) processes of domestic political actors in a situation, where the country in question is neither a member state of the EU, nor does it benefit from the membership perspective that is clearly and officially formulated by the EU institutions. Conceptually, it is assumed that European party federations and the EURONEST Parliamentary Assembly are among the key channels of socialization for political parties in the Eastern Partnership countries. Are these channels effectively used by the parties in question to adapt and socialize to the EU normative environment? Does this affect programmes, organization, strategies, behaviour of those parties? Or are these changes superficial at best, whereas the channels are actually used to transfer domestic political cleavages and conflicts to the European level? How are they used by political parties to increase their international standing and legitimacy at the cost of their domestic political opponents? How do these parties use the issue of European integration of their country in domestic political and electoral struggle? Empirically, the paper draws on extensive field research conducted in Ukraine and Georgia in June 2014.