The European Union and democratization in Central and Southeastern Europe since 1989

A central tool of the European Union (EU) to promote the democratization of post-communist Europe have been the conditions it has attached to the offer of accession. Yet EU’s influence varies across countries, and over time between the periods before and after accession. A key factor limiting the EU’s democratizing impact are domestic costs of complying with the EU’s conditionality: the more governments rely on illiberal and undemocratic means to maintain power, the less influence the EU has. Moreover, even if the domestic adjustment costs are not prohibitively high, for EU conditionality to bring about, or lock in democratic change, the positive and negative incentives relating to the benefits of EU membership have to be credible. The limited credibility of sanctions against backsliding in new members and of the reward of accession for current candidate countries in Southeastern Europe is a key explanation for the setback in the EU’s democratizing role during this decade

Europeanization beyond Europe

Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence (Ftii) är ett parjämförelsetest som mäter spädbarns intresse för ett nytt visuellt stimuli när detta presenteras tillsammans med ett stimuli redan känt för spädbarnet, kallat nyhetspreferens. Även om Ftii har visat sig fungera väl vid bedömning av spädbarns kognitiva nivå kan testet förbättras på ett antal punkter. För att uppnå reliabla resultat har försökspersonerna ofta testats vid ett flertal tillfällen. För att undersöka möjligheterna att ytterligare validera erhållna resultat från Ftii har en version av Ftii skapats för att utföras med en ögonrörelsemätare. Denna version, kallad Ftii-Ö, har testats med hjälp av en spädbarnsgrupp och en vuxengrupp för att på så sätt utvärdera för och nackdelar med ett test utfört på ögonrörelsemätare. Resultaten från studien visar att  spädbarnsgruppen uppvisar nyhetspreferens i de båda testen, och att Ftii-Ö för spädbarnsgruppen ger liknande resultat som Ftii

Claims of a ‘new intergovernmentalism’ in European integration have been overstated

Several authors have argued that European integration is becoming characterised by a form of ‘new intergovernmentalism’, with increasing numbers of decisions made through intergovernmental forms of decision-making such as those in the European Council. Frank Schimmelfennig assesses how accurate this perspective is. He argues that intergovernmental policy coordination of the kind described by these authors is a far from novel phenomenon and originated in its present form during the 1970s. As such the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ appears to be more about a specific set of policies rather than European integration as a whole

The normative origins of democracy in the European Union: toward a transformationalist theory of democratization

Institutional democratization has made considerable progress in the history of the European Union (EU). Mainstream theories of democratization, however, fail to capture this process because they are wedded to the nation-state context. This paper therefore proposes a transformationalist theory of democratization beyond the state. EU democratization results from the conflict about the redistribution of political competences between institutional actors in a multilevel system, in which liberal democracy is the shared norm of legitimate authority. To the extent that institutional actors, who push for further integration in order to increase efficiency, undermine existing democratic institutions at the national level, their competitors can put into question the legitimacy of integration by invoking the shared liberal democratic community norms and shame them into making democratic concessions. The normative origins of democracy in the EU are illustrated in case studies on democratic membership conditionality, legislative rights of the European Parliament, and the institutionalization of human rights in the E

Good Governance and Differentiated Integration

The study of European integration has traditionally focused on organizational growth: the deepening and widening of the European Union (EU). By contrast, this article analyzes organizational differentiation, a process in which states refuse, or are being refused, full integration but find value in establishing in-between grades of membership. It describes how the EU’s system of graded membership has developed, and it explains the positioning of states in this system. The core countries of the EU set a standard of good governance. The closer European countries are to this standard, the closer their membership grade is to the core. Some countries fall short of this standard and are refused further integration by the core: their membership grade increases with better governance. Other countries refuse further integration because they outperform the standards of the core countries: their membership grade decreases as governance improves. These conjectures are corroborated in a panel analysis of European countries

Europeanization beyond Europe

This article reviews the literature on Europeanization beyond the group of EU member, “quasi-member” and applicant states. It uses the analysis of Europeanization in the applicant states for membership as a theoretical starting point to ask if, how and under which conditions we can expect domestic effects of European integration beyond Europe. Focusing on Europeanization effects in the areas of regionalism, democracy and human rights, the article collects findings on the strategies and instruments as well as the impact and effectiveness of the EU. The general conclusion to be drawn from the theoretical as well empirical literature is one of low consistency and impact

Graded membership in the European Union: good governance and differentiated integration

The study of European integration has traditionally focused on organizational growth: the deepening and widening of the European Union (EU). By contrast, this article analyzes organizational differentiation, a process in which states refuse, or are being refused, full integration but find value in establishing in-between grades of membership. It describes how the EU’s system of graded membership has developed, and it explains the positioning of states in this system. The core countries of the EU set a standard of good governance. The closer European countries are to this standard, the closer their membership grade is to the core. Some countries fall short of this standard and are refused further integration by the core: their membership grade increases with better governance. Other countries refuse further integration because they outperform the standards of the core countries: their membership grade decreases as governance improves. These conjectures are corroborated in a panel analysis of European countries