Institutional change and Europeanisation: explaining regional policy reform in Turkey

Abstract

This article engages in a search for 'causes of effects' in order to disentangle the relative roles played by the European Union (EU) and domestic factors in Europeanisation processes in a candidate country where the credibility of EU conditionality is low. Unlike former candidate countries where the EU impact has been limited but significant, the article finds a differentiated pattern of Europeanisation in Turkey where the EU plays an indirect role and domestic party politics a causal role in institutional change in regional policy. In this pattern, the EU is a passive provider of institutional templates, which domestic actors in power chose to emulate.