CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Xhafa, Ingrid |
|---|---|
| Title | The Europeanization of the Western Balkans |
| Summary | Since the end of communism in the early ‘90s, the Western Balkans has been undergoing a triple transformation: building a sustainable democracy, undertaking economic reforms, and moving towards European Union (EU) accession. Despite 25 years of transformation, the region continues to exhibit tendencies towards backwardness, violence and instability. The EU also seeks to transform the region in order to secure stability, prosperity and well-functioning democratic societies. The EU has used the same membership conditionality mechanism in the Western Balkans as it has in the Central Eastern Europe enlargement. However, since the EU made its commitment to enlarge to the Western Balkans at the 2003 Thessaloniki Council, the region has made very little progress towards adopting the necessary reforms. Domestic factors in the Western Balkans have delayed the post-communist transformation process. Yet, research on whether these domestic factors weaken the transformative power of the EU in the same way is limited. This project investigates the role of political culture in mitigating the assumed transformative power of the EU. It examines if the political culture of the Western Balkans plays a salient role in shaping national responses to the externally transformative power of the European community. A cross-national comparison methodology is used to compare the democratic political culture in four Western Balkan countries: Albania, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro. A small number of experts in EU issues, civil servants, professors and think tank researchers from Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia have been interviewed regarding their perception of the role of political culture in the Europeanization of the Western Balkans. The thesis concludes with some general reflections on the role of political culture in the Europeanization process. It suggests that the EU should take in consideration the impact of domestic political when it develops pre-accession initiatives for prospective counties. |
| Supervisor | Puetter, Uwe |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/xhafa_ingrid.pdf |
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