ABSTRACT
The Europeanization of candidate states has become a separate research field in the Europeanization literature, which used to be associated with member state Europeanization. For a more comprehensive approach to Europeanization and enlargement, Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier offer three explanatory mechanisms for rule adoption in non-member states: the external incentives model, the lesson-drawing model and the social learning model. The external incentives model as a rationalist bargaining approach follows a logic of consequences, one that treats actors as strategic utility maximizers. The lesson-drawing model, which is usually neglected in the literature, is based on the idea of non-member states adopting European Union (EU) rules without the motivation of EU incentives. The social learning model is rooted on the sociological institutionalism. The pull-and-push model suggests that EU push and domestic pull empower each other at decision-making level. A credible and conditional EU membership perspective is widely recognized in the literature as vital for the EU to promote domestic change in candidate states.
