ABSTRACT
The question is why such a difference in performance is observable? What explains the varied Europeanization of these two countries to which the EU has extended the membership perspective? The external incentives model is largely credited for having provided a credible explanation of the EU’s impact on the political governance of Central and Eastern European candidate countries through the accession process (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004). Sizable and credible incentives offered by the EU in the form of a membership prospect formed the basis of a strong conditionality policy which the EU used to press for democratic reforms and to monitor compliance with its core political values (Grabbe 2001; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004; Vachudova 2005). The reward was big and tangible, to compensate the incumbents for perceived losses of power or popularity after introducing unpopular reforms. The disincentives were indirect but powerful too and manifested themselves in the form of exclusion from the group of countries advancing towards accession, i.e., costs related to benefiting from accession later rather than sooner. A lot less explanatory power is attributed to the socialization of Eastern European elites and societies into the European mainstream after the collapse of the communist regimes. In general, analysts recognize the permissive societal consensus about a fast “return to Europe” but the perceived legitimacy of the process is not given much weight in explanatory accounts of Eastern European compliance with EU democracy conditionality. Some scholars have proposed strategic socialization as an avenue for channelling EU influence on non-EU countries (Schimmelfennig 2005; Schimmelfennig et al. 2006). Those studies have however conceptualized socialization in rational terms similar to the incentive-based approach of conditionality and, in essence, argue against the constructivist emphasis on social learning and persuasion for instigating behavioral change. Domestic conditions have also featured less in Europeanization analysis. Domestic veto players are considered stumbling blocks for EU influence (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004) but the nature of their resistance to compliance with EU requirements is under-conceptualized. A key obstacle to transparent governance and EU-compliant performance has been the temptation for rentseeking of incumbents in power profiting from privileged access to monopoly rents in the partially reformed transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (Hellman 1998; Vachudova 2005). Yet the EU incentives are believed to have been strong enough to suppress such tendencies, even though the postaccession developments in Bulgaria and Romania cast doubt on this statement. Domestic reluctance to comply with the EU’s political conditions has also come from within the political systems of the new democracies, from unreformed judiciaries, corrupt enforcement bodies or radicalized societal groups (Noutcheva and Bechev 2008). The analysis has nevertheless concentrated on how EU conditionality successfully overcomes the obstructing influence of such veto players. When applied to Croatia and Turkey, the Europeanization framework needs to take domestic factors seriously in order to account for observable outcomes.
