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European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual

I Europeanization travels to the Western Balkans Europeanization travels to the Western Balkans. Enlargement strategy, domestic obstacles and diverging reforms Europeanization via enlargement and post-communist transformation Top-down EU conditionality versus contextualized domestic influences Unpacking domestic contexts and challenging factors in the Balkans The strength ofEUdomestic allies The weight of structure The breaks of stateness Assessing the role of the EU The methodological approach EU rules and degrees of domestic adoption Outline of the book and findings Structure of the volume and individual contributions Domestic responses and explanatory factors Notes The Stabilization and Association Process. A framework for European Union enlargement?The SAP: building on the experience of Eastern enlargement?The dangers of comparison Implementing the SAP: good, but could be better Progress towards membership: ambiguous commitment?Progress towards membership: increasing differentiation?Shifts in the supply side of enlargement Conclusions Notes II Europeanization in consolidated states The trials and triumphs of Europeanization in Croatia. The unbearable weight of structure and state-building?Structure: the persistent influence of the initial conditions of transition Structure, corruption and clientelism Structure and the limits of neoliberal economic policies Stateness: the complications of building a sovereign nation-state A preoccupation with nation Stateness: the orientation of foreign policy and regional cooperation Stateness and cooperation with the ICTY Stateness and Croatia’s European future Conclusions Notes EU political conditionality towards Serbia. Membership prospects vs. domestic constraints Costs and incentives: an explanatory framework Serbia 1993—2003: from non-recognition of the ICTY to the extradition of Milosevic —2000: non-cooperation due to lack of incentives and illiberal elites —3: thepro-EUgovernment and uneasy relationship with the ICTY Domestic constellations of power that facilitated compliance Serbia 2003-8: more declaratory than substantial cooperation with the ICTY EU leverage and reluctant cooperation amidst political turbulence Increased leverage increases compliance?-12: strengthening of EU allies Conclusions Notes EU conditionality as a transforming power in Macedonia. Evidence from electoral management Transposition and implementation of electoral standards EU conditionality and elections Electoral problems in Macedonia: domestic obstacles Legal Framework Electoral administration Implementation of and respecting the Electoral Code The clientelistic pattern of Macedonian politics The logic of clientelism Ethnic divisions and clientelism Elections, clientelism and conditionality Conclusions Notes EU administrative conditionality and domestic obstacles. Slow, hesitant and partial reform in post-communist Albania The evolution of the EU’s administrative criterion What administrative capacities does the EU require?The reinforcement of the administrative criterion Administrative reforms and the weight of the past in Albania Politicization of the state, 1992—7 The foreign drive to re-build a scattered state, 1997—2000 The application of EU leverage Targeting and monitoring EU assistance Upgrading of institutional relations Half-hearted reforms and partial compliance Political resistance and the deficient working of new legal models, 2000—5 The test of the 2005 turnover Conclusion Notes Where does the European Union make a difference? Rule of law development in the Western Balkans and beyond A two-dimensional approach to the rule of law and the role of EU conditionality in recent judicial reforms Defining the dimensions of the rule of law The EU’s role in establishing rule of law Change in judicial capacity Western Balkans: partial and incoherent reforms Serbia: donor-driven, incoherent judicial reform Albania: lack ofjudicial capacity persists Membership countries: considerable EU-driven change Neighbourhood countries: moderate progress after reorientation Persistence in the judicial impartiality dimension Western Balkans: limited change Serbia: absence of transformative change despite commitment Albania: lack of results and overall progress Membership countries: power struggles and legal incoherence Neighbourhood countries: persisting old patterns of behaviour An inappropriate reform approach?Conclusions III Europeanization in contested states State-building without recognition. A critical retrospective of the European Union’s strategy in Kosovo (1999—2010)1 Conceptualizing the role of EU in Kosovo It is complicated: the constellation(s) of foreign presence in Kosovo2 The EU presence in Kosovo: a multi-layered actor in a complex environment The limits of the European Union’s role as a state-builder in Kosovo Economic recovery: money is not enough Institution-building: slow progress, looming problems Political stability: at the expense of multi-ethnicity?Security guarantees: no peace without enlargement?Conclusion Notes Building environmental governance in potential candidate countries. Environmental impact assessment processes in Bosnia-Herzegovina Environmental governance: a definition The environmental impact assessment process: EU norms and their reception in BiH The Bosnian EIA process Analysis of the REC data Activities Funding Qualitative data Weak state capacity?Conclusion Notes Secessionism, irredentism and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Squaring the circle?Conceptualizing secessionism and irredentism The secessionist challenge in the Balkans Factors favourable to Europeanization Factors impeding Europeanization Secessionism meets Europeanization The way ahead Notes When Europeanization hits limited statehood. The Western Balkans as a test case for the transformative power of Europe Hitting its borders: the domestic impact of Europe on the Western Balkans Statehood in the Western Balkans: the missing link The EU as a state-builder?Conclusions Note Bibliography

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When Europeanization hits limited statehood. The Western Balkans as a test case for the transformative power of Europe
TanjaA. Borzel Introduction Research on Europeanization and domestic change is thriving. With the borders of the European Union (EU) having moved eastwards, we have been awarded yet another real-world experiment on the domestic impact of the EU. As in case of the Central and Eastern European (CEE)...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Europeanization travels to the Western Balkans
Europeanization travels to the Western Balkans. Enlargement strategy, domestic obstacles and diverging reforms Arolda Elbasani Introduction During the 1990s, the Western Balkans1 have dominated academic attention as a region of violent conflicts and delayed transitions when compared to...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Europeanization travels to the Western Balkans. Enlargement strategy, domestic obstacles and diverging reforms
Arolda Elbasani Introduction During the 1990s, the Western Balkans1 have dominated academic attention as a region of violent conflicts and delayed transitions when compared to the smooth and peaceful transformations elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). However, the region’s reputation...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Where does the European Union make a difference? Rule of law development in the Western Balkans and beyond
Martin Mendelski Introduction This chapter examines the effects of European Union-driven rule of law reforms in two Western Balkan countries, Serbia and Albania, between 2002 and 2010. I compare their development with that of European Union (EU) member countries, Romania and Bulgaria, and two...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
An overview of EU integration in the Western Balkans
In the history of EU enlargement, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have generally perceived the EU integration processes as a success story instrumental to their democratic consolidation, with notable improvements in rule of law and minority rights (Freyburg & Richter, 2010: 3). However, even before,...
(Europe: Continent of Conspiracies: Conspiracy Theories in and about Europe)
Western Balkans: partial and incoherent reforms
Serbia: donor-driven, incoherent judicial reform In 2002, Serbia’s judicial capacity could be characterized as mixed. On the one hand, the Serbian judiciary had, relatively, a lot of judges and high court budget allocations; on the other hand, low salaries, little computerization and the lack...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Western Balkans: limited change
Serbia: absence of transformative change despite commitment In Serbia, the absence of progress in the judicial impartiality dimension is reflected in all six indicators that haven’t changed much (see Table 7.2 above). The development of judicial impartiality in Serbia was initially constrained...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Secessionism, irredentism and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Squaring the circle?
Rafael Biermann Introduction The Balkans remains the prime arena of an ideational struggle between those elites opting for Europeanization, i.e. the transformation of the region along the norms which brought peace and welfare to Western Europe after two World Wars, and those nationalist forces...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Hitting its borders: the domestic impact of Europe on the Western Balkans
With its ‘big bang’ enlargement, the EU has sought to expand the reach of its transformative power to its new neighbours. While the CEE countries had made steady progress towards becoming consolidated democracies with functioning market economies, the Western Balkans remain ‘borderline cases’...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)
Statehood in the Western Balkans: the missing link
Veto players, norm entrepreneurs or formal and informal institutions affect the willingness of domestic actors to adopt EU norms and rules. Yet, empowering domestic reformists is not enough, if actors lack the necessary infrastructural capacities to introduce domestic change. The limited administrative...
(European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual?)