Bulgaria y Rumanía en la UE: ¿fin de la carrera o aún más obstáculos por delante?

Dos nuevos miembros ingresaron en la Unión Europea el 1 de enero de 2007. La pregunta es: ¿están preparados para serlo? Bulgaria y Rumanía ingresaron en la UE el 1 de enero de 2007. De esta forma se convirtieron en los miembros más recientes (el 26° y 27°) de la Unión. Han sido muchos los que se han mostrado preocupados, y con razón, del hecho de que la inclusión de tal cantidad de países pequeños, relativamente pobres y post-autocráticos, durante la quinta ronda de ampliaciones pueda suponer una carga demasiado pesada para la estructura institucional europea, aún sin reformar. Esta preocupación ha sido especialmente honda en el caso de Bulgaria y Rumanía, supuestamente los menos preparados de los antiguos países comunistas. En este documento trataremos de aclarar la pregunta de si estos dos países de Europa sudoriental están preparados para asumir las responsabilidades derivadas de la pertenencia a la Unión, y de si su inclusión en la UE acarreará demasiados problemas a los Estados miembros actuales. Aunque el análisis se centrará fundamentalmente en la fase previa a la adhesión de estos dos países, también analizará someramente la fase posterior, en la que, presumiblemente, Bulgaria y Rumanía podrían aplicarse una condicionalidad limitada y una supervisión internacional en determinadas políticas. Por último, la experiencia de estos dos países de Europa sudoriental supondrá un modelo para los Estados miembros candidatos y potenciales que aspiren a ingresar en la Unión en un futuro no demasiado lejano

Consolidating democracies : the theory and practice of democratization in post-communist Eastern Europe (1989-2000)

Defence date: 9 March 2003Examining Board: Prof. Grzegorz Ekiert (Harvard University) ; Prof. Peter Mair (Leiden University) ; Prof. Philippe C. Schmitter (EUI) ; Prof. Jan Zielonka (EUI, supervisor)First made available online on 25 April 2018This thesis generally deals with the process of démocratisation in post-communist Eastern Europe. Specifically, it explores the latter stages of this process: the consolidation and persistence of democracy, following the demise of the ancien regime and the conclusion of democratic transition. In other words, it tries to describe the conditions for and consequences of increased regime stability and legitimacy after the actual establishment of democracy. In theory, this usually happens after the initial holding of free and fair elections and the fulfilment of some other minimal criteria of political democracy like the existence of a multiparty system, the protection of the freedom of speech and the pluralism of media, the adoption of the constitution and the foundation of the basic political institutions of a democratic state. In practice, the consolidation of democracy is a never-ending process and even long-established democracies periodically face the problems of deconsolidation and reorganisation of their internal structure. This research, which began in the second half of the 1990s, has followed the majority of these scientific trends quite closely and has taken over some of the theoretical ideas, conceptual tools and research methods of the previous analytical explorations of Eastern Europe and other regions of the world. It has become progressively integrated within the mainstream comparative démocratisation studies, which was, and continues to be, the predominant research current focusing on democratic transition and consolidation. At the same, this thesis has acquired certain independent normative features and tried to comprehensively describe the conditions for consolidation of democracy in a post-communist context. The critical analysis of most of the recent theories of démocratisation has proceeded by testing several alternative hypotheses regarding the future of democracy in the region. Moreover, the normative research on the establishment of political democracy in Eastern Europe has been supplemented with an original method of conceptualising and measuring the degree of consolidation and the quality of democracy. Together with the extensive theoretical analysis of the different paths towards démocratisation, the final empirical section, featuring the innovative statistical Index o f Démocratisation (IDEM), are the two most significant contributions of this thesis

Conceptual Definitions and Measurement Indicators of the Quality of Democracy: An Overview

http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/WP-Texts/05_05.pd

O processo de institucionalização da condicionalidade política na União Européia e sua eficácia como um instrumento de promoção da democracia

Promotion Political conditionality has been institutionalized in many international institutions since the end of the 1990s. These institutions have been making it more explicit the importance of the respect, on the part of its participants, of the Rule of Law, Human Rights and Democracy, and have been creating mechanisms of control and promotion of these principles. The form how these principles have been institutionalized, and the available instruments to guarantee their compliance, the effective compliance, and its effects upon Member-States varies with each institution. The present article analyses the case of the European Union. Despite the consensus about democratic values among its founding members, it was only in 1997, with the Treaty of Amsterdam, that they became a formal condition to participate in the process of integration. This article addresses firstly, how, and why political conditionality has been institutionalized in the European Union, exploring two factors in particular: the process of enlargement, and specific political crises. In addition, the article inquires whether political conditionality can be considered an effective instrument of democracy promotion. It analyses whether interventions in favor of democracy have a qualitative effect upon domestic governments, in other words, it explores the limits of the use of the political conditionality as an instrument of defense and promotion of democracy