ABSTRACT
The eastward enlargement, or expansion of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), respectively, is likely to transform the political and economic landscape of Europe. Yet there has been little analysis of the relationship between the two parallel processes. Instead, two separate literatures approach eastward enlargement from different angles. The literature on accession to the EU focuses primarily on more institutional, formal agreements and procedures, and less on the politics of the accession process (see Avery and Cameron 1998; Grabbe and Hughes 1998; Mayhew 1998; for conceptual work, see Schimmelfennig 1998; Sedelmeier 1998). Indeed, there has been little attention to the politics of European enlargement, that is, how it came about (for an exception, see Sedelmeier 1998). The question is important because neither EU enlargement nor NATO expansion was clearly envisioned in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The EU had taken steps, with the Single European Act, the common market project of ‘Europe 92’ and the Maastricht Treaty, to deepen European integration; many saw the potential of widening to a group of ‘fragile democracies’ in the East as undesirable if not destabilizing.
