Croatia and Serbia: Two Roads Diverged or Wandering Down the Same Path? Institutionalization and Europeanization of Party Systems Since the 2000 Democratic Elections

The puzzle that animates this thesis is this: why has Croatia's party system institutionalized quickly while Serbia's has experienced another period of fluctuation? Moreover, why did Europeanization have positive effects on the stabilization of party systems in Croatia while the process has coincided with an increase in party system volatility in Serbia? Since volatility scores are expected to decrease over elections as voters and elites gather information from each other and the EU, electoral volatility should decrease with the adoption of pro-EU policies as all major parties develop a pro-EU platform. By analyzing electoral volatility scores, we can see the effect of information, which brings about institutionalization of party systems, on Europeanization as well. My hypothesis is that the process of information gathering by political elites over the course of multiple elections has been much higher in Croatia than in Serbia due to Serbia's changing physical and political landscape since 2000. Because of this, the 2008 election shows another spike in volatility due to an increase in information from the 2007 election. Thus, volatility, in the case of Serbia, turned out to be a good thing: Voters abandoned nationalist, anti-EU parties as they learned more about them