Europeanization Subverted? The European Union’s Promotion of Good Governance and the Fight against Corruption in the Southern Caucasus

In order to foster peace, stability and prosperity in its near abroad, the European Union has invoked the European Neighbourhood Policy that seeks to transform the domestic structures of the Newly Independent States in the post-Soviet space thus building a ring of friends that share European norms and principles of democracy, rule of the law, market economy, and good governance. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that the EU’s capacity to hit across its borders and to realize its reform agenda seems limited. Moreover, most neighborhood countries appear to be stuck in transition and suffer from serious problems of both weak state capacity and defect democracy. Hence, EU efforts may also bear the danger of unintended and negative effects on the domestic structures of states, as its policies and institutions do not only empower liberal reform coalitions, to the extent that they exist in the first place, but can also bolster the power of incumbent authoritarian and corrupt elites. This paper intends to capture this dark side of Europeanization (Schimmelfennig 2007). It thus conceptualizes ENP as a political opportunity structure that provides opportunities and constraints to both supporters and opponents of the European Union’s reform agenda. Which of the two ultimately get empowered depends not only on the EU’s capacity to push for reforms but also on the pull of domestic actors.neighbourhood policy; EU-South-Eastern Europe; EU-South-Eastern Europe; governance; Europeanization; Europeanization

Pathologies of Europeanization: Fighting Corruption in the Southern Caucasus

Studies on “Neighbourhood Europeanization” have shown that the EU’s capacity to hit across its borders has been limited. Our paper argues that the EU has induced some formal institutional change, which, however, has helped to stabilize rather than change existing regimes. Thus, we do observe the Europeanization of domestic structures of formerly Soviet republics, which, however, appears to have opposite effects of what the EU intends to achieve with its ENP. In order to explore these pathologies of Europeanization, we focus on the EU’s attempts to promote good governance, and in particular the fight against corruption. The Post- Soviet area features some of the most corrupt countries in the world, including the Southern Caucasus region. High adaptation costs and limited incentives render Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia least likely cases for Europeanization and domestic change. Our comparative study will show that despite high misfit and low pressure for adaptation from above and below, all three have responded to the EU’s demands for good governance introducing similar formal institutional changes. Yet, rather than systematically fighting corruption, incumbent regimes have instrumentalized the EU selectively implementing anti-corruption policies to cut the power resources of their political opponents

The European Union’s promotion of good governance and the fight against corruption in the Southern Caucasus

1\. Introduction 5 2\. The Dark Side of Europeanization 6 2.1 The Power to Transform (EU Push) 6 2.2 The Disposition to Perform (Domestic Pull) 7 3\. External Push and Domestic Pull in the Southern Caucasus 8 3.1 High Misfit, Prohibitive Costs and Limited EU Push 8 3.2. Weak Pull and Strategic Elites 11 4\. Fighting Corruption in the Southern Caucasus 12 4.1 Introducing Institutional Change 12 4.2 Azerbaijan: Settling Internal Power Struggles 14 4.3 Armenia: Pleasing External Donors 16 4.4 Georgia: Consolidating New Power Structures 17 5\. Conclusions 19 Literature 21In order to foster peace, stability and prosperity in its near abroad, the European Union has invoked the European Neighbourhood Policy that seeks to transform the domestic structures of the Newly Independent States in the post- Soviet space thus building a “ring of friends” that share European norms and principles of democracy, rule of the law, market economy, and good governance. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that the EU’s capacity to hit across its borders and to realize its reform agenda seems limited. Moreover, most neighborhood countries appear to be stuck in transition and suffer from serious problems of both weak state capacity and defect democracy. Hence, EU efforts may also bear the danger of unintended and negative effects on the domestic structures of states, as its policies and institutions do not only empower liberal reform coalitions, to the extent that they exist in the first place, but can also bolster the power of incumbent authoritarian and corrupt elites. This paper intends to capture this “dark side of Europeanization” (Schimmelfennig 2007). It thus conceptualizes ENP as a political opportunity structure that provides opportunities and constraints to both supporters and opponents of the European Union’s reform agenda. Which of the two ultimately get empowered depends not only on the EU’s capacity to push for reforms but also on the pull of domestic actors

One size fits all?

With the end of the Cold War, states and international organisations have systematically mainstreamed good governance in their development strategies for third countries. The European Union is no exception. The promotion of good governance ranks particularly high in the EU’s “near abroad”, which has become a focal point for EU foreign policy making since the 2004/2006 enlargement rounds. This paper seeks to systematically compare the EU’s approach to promoting good governance in the Southern Caucasus. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are equally marked by bad governance. Arbitrary rule and pervasive corruption are common in all three countries. Nonetheless, they significantly vary with regard to the degree of statehood, and the quality of the political regime. Our aim is to explore to what extent these variations have affected the EU’s strategy of promoting good governance. Looking at the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), a rather recent policy framework, we seek to give some answers to the question whether the EU sticks to a “one-size-fits-all” approach, or whether it has started to practice some differential treatment

Structure of the Xi(b)(6227)(-) resonance

We explore the recently observed Xi(b)(6227)(-) resonance to fix its quantum numbers. To this end, we consider various possible scenarios: It can be considered as either a 1P or 2S excitation of the Xi(b) and Xi'(b)(5935) ground-state baryons with spin-1/2 or the 1P or 2S excitation of the ground-state Xi(b)(5955) with spin-3/2. We calculate the masses of the possible angular-orbital 1P and 2S excited states corresponding to each channel employing the QCD sum rule technique. It is seen that all the obtained masses are in agreement with the experimentally observed value, implying that the mass calculations are not enough to determine the quantum numbers of the state under question. Therefore, we extend the analysis to investigate the possible decays of the excited states into Lambda K-b(0)- and Xi(-)(b) pi. Using the light cone QCD sum rule method, we calculate the corresponding strong coupling constants, which are used to extract the decay widths of the modes under consideration. Our results on decay widths indicate that the Xi(b)(6227)(-) is a 1P angular-orbital excited state of the Xi(b)(5955) baryon with quantum numbers J(P) = 3/2(-)

Semileptonic transition of Sigma(b) to Sigma in light cone QCD sum rules

We use distribution amplitudes of the light Sigma baryon and the most general form of the interpolating current for heavy Sigma(b) baryon to investigate the semileptonic Sigma(b) -> Sigma l(+)l(-) transition in light cone QCD sum rules. We calculate all 12 form factors responsible for this transition and use them to evaluate the branching ratio of the considered channel. The order of branching fraction shows that this channel can be detected at LHC