CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Vladeva, Magdalena |
|---|---|
| Title | Europeanization of the Western Balkans: What Drives Montenegro on This Path? |
| Summary | Despite the great expectations among the policy-makers and scholars created more than a decade ago that the Western Balkans (WBs) would repeat the successful story of Europeanization of the CEECs via EU enlargement and accession conditionality, nowadays most of the literature of Europeanization of the WBs suggests that there is only a shallow Europeanization as a result of the historical, geographical, political and economic background of the region against the backdrop of the EU approaches and strategies that more often than not are ambiguous. The country that seems is refuting these pessimistic views and makes progress towards prosperous Europeanization hand in hand with the accession talks is Montenegro. This thesis deals with the question: What accounts for Montenegro’s Europeanization? The research question has been explored by putting Montenegro in a broader context within the Western Balkans. This research aims to give an explanation by looking into the domestic factors, or more precisely investigates the motivations, understandings and the limitations of the civil servants dealing with the accession talks and the process of European integration. Montenegro is currently involved in the process of accession talks which facilitates the process of Europeanization. Moreover, the presence of the European idea in terms of wide political and social consensus on the European Integration accounts for the Montenegrin Europeanization. By the same token, important observations are the absence of opened questions with the neighbouring countries and the absence of veto players that also raise the credibility of the membership perspective for the country. Drawing on these findings there is a need of deep contextualization of each country of the Western Balkans regarding the process and prospects of Europeanization. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/vladeva_magdalena.pdf |
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