ABSTRACT
The European Union, unlike the United States, does not have an explicit, elaborate doctrine of ‘democracy promotion’ let alone a ‘democratic mission’. Yet it may be considered over the last decade as possibly the most successful democracy promoter of an entire array of international actors involved. The EU’s most successful democracy promotion programme is otherwise known as the EU ‘enlargement process’. Between 2004 and 2007 most of post-communist EastCentral Europe joined the Union, a success for which it has received little credit from the citizens of old member states or from the political elites of the new members who are the main beneficiaries of the process. It therefore raises several related questions about the nature of the EU’s contribution to democratization. How has the EU’s democratic conditionality developed and what are the costs and benefits for the Union as well as for its prospective members? How effective is conditionality in the post-accession phase? And can an approach that has worked successfully in Central Europe be replicated in the Balkans or elsewhere? Can democracy promotion via enlargement be pursued in the future in spite of reluctant public opinions in the older member states and even in a new candidate country such as Turkey? Is the EU’s role as an external democratizer designed merely for its immediate periphery and can it work without the perspective of EU accession? In trying to address these questions, we shall distinguish between two main approaches to the ‘Europeanization’ of what used to be known as post-communist Eastern Europe: the transformative power associated with the consolidation of democracy in the Central European process of EU accession; the democratization in post-conflict Balkans under the conditions of weak states or ‘Europeanized’ protectorates. We shall conclude with some reflections about the limits of conditionality and the impact of democratization of the periphery on the EU itself.
