ABSTRACT
Introduction The two previous chapters have shown how public administrations and parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms have been transformed in the Baltic states. Adaptations were made through different forms of soft governance mechanisms. Both chapters identified micro-processes involving a host of different regulators and models. A number of international organizations and associations were active as transmitters of ideas and rules. Even though EU members were not obliged to follow any specific model, states tended to follow similar trajectories. This chapter deals with adaptation processes relating to political parties, which are bound to national politics but also constitute examples of transnational actors.1 We will see similar soft governance mechanisms at work here as well. The case selected for analysis, that of the Estonian Social Democratic Party (SDE, founded in 1990), has been subjected to such softer forms of governance.2 Through investigating various “meditative” activities relating to discussions or deliberations at seminars or conferences – where experience and knowledge are exchanged – this chapter reconstructs the micro-dynamics of transnational relations. The chapter shows how these dynamics, along with the motivations of individual leaders, affect a political party, for example, its policy and programmatic development. The dissemination of ideas and norms has been influential during the post-communist transformation of Estonian social democracy. A core feature of the process by which the SDE party was created and transformed, in a post-communist and national context where communism was discredited, has been the desire to appear to be a Western/European and modern political party. The chapter explores how the party has sought to develop into a modern social democratic party by involving itself in a range of transnational networks and activities and by embracing the organizational and programmatic ideals or preferences of social democratic parties in Northern or Western Europe. The SDE party has claimed to have “a modern social democratic ideology” (Mikkel 2006: 24). In an interview with the author, party chair Ivari Padar (since Finance Minister) said that the party has learned “what a modern social democracy is today” and that they also “teach” what constitutes modern social democracy, outside Estonia, notably to Russians.
