4
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe
Illiberal Regimes and the Leverage of the
European Union
Milada Anna Vachudova
Department of Political Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The European Union may well be presiding over the most successful democracypromotion
program ever implemented by an international actor. All of the
states that have become credible future EU members over the last decade
are making progress toward liberal democracy and more transparent market
economies. The puzzle is one of causation: Does the EU only accept liberal
democracies? Or does the condition of being a credible future EU member
create incentives for political actors to make their political agendas compatible
with liberal democracy and the state’s bid for EU membership?
The convergence that we see toward liberal democracy today is all the more
puzzling given the divergence in regimes in the region some fifteen years ago. In
some postcommunist states, democratically elected governments began laying
the foundations of liberal democracy and implementing comprehensive economic
reforms immediately after the collapse of the communist regime. By
liberal democracy, I mean a political system where state institutions and democratically
elected rulers respect juridical limits on their powers and political
liberties. They uphold the rule of law, a separation of powers, and boundaries
between the state and the economy. They also uphold basic liberties, such as
speech, assembly, religion, and property. Important for our cases, they do not
violate the limits on their powers or the political liberties of citizens in order to
suppress rival political parties or groups.
In other postcommunist states, however, one faction monopolized power
and created the conditions of illiberal democracy for their own political and
economic gain. In illiberal democracies, important requirements of EU membership
were at loggerheads with the sources of the political power of ruling
elites. Progress toward membership in the EU was slow or absent. Even as
the EU began to implement the conditionality of the preaccession process, it
had little success in changing domestic policies in illiberal democracies: governments
turned their backs on the benefits of EU membership to protect their
power and rent-seeking opportunities.
82
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 83
The condition of being a credible future EU member impacted domestic
politics in illiberal democracies in a number of ways that are more complicated
and intriguing than simple conditionality. I argue in this chapter that over time
the EU’s leverage strengthened the hand of liberal forces against illiberal ones:
not in a duel where good vanquished evil, but in an iterated electoral game
where sooner or later most political actors – especially political parties – saw
the benefits of moving their own agenda toward compatibility with the state’s
bid for EU membership. As postcommunist politics has demonstrated over and
over again, with a little fine tuning most political actors – however dispirited,
discredited, or despised – can find their way back into the political game and
indeed back into office. Only in the run up to joining the EU, there is a twist:
the EU’s leverage helps set the parameters and write the rules of the game.
How does EU leverage translate into domestic political change in illiberal
democracies? I have identified four mechanisms, two that operate before and
two that operate after what I call “watershed elections.” These are the elections
in which illiberal elites that have monopolized power since the end of
communism lose power decisively, and are forced to leave office.
Before watershed elections, moving toward European integration and away
from international isolation serves as a focal point for cooperation among
opposition parties and groups that have in most cases been highly fragmented
and querulous. The second mechanism is adapting: the prospect of joining
the EU creates incentives for opposition politicians to adapt their political
and economic agendas to come closer to satisfying the expectations of the EU
and other international organizations such as the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
After watershed elections, straightforward conditionality is at play: moving
forward in the EU’s preaccession process and receiving various intermediate
rewards are tied to adopting laws and implementing reforms. Second, the
process itself serves as a credible commitment to reform. Reversing direction
becomes very costly for any future government. As candidates move forward in
the process, governments are locked into a predictable course of policy making
that serves as an important signal to internal and external economic actors.
Through the preaccession process, the EU bundles together the influence of
many international organizations and other international actors and sustains
this influence over time.
The five cases that I explore – with the corresponding watershed election
years in parentheses – are Romania (1996), Bulgaria (1997), Slovakia (1998),
Croatia (2000), and Serbia–Montenegro (2000).1
I am not arguing that the wish
1 It is debatable whether the 2000 elections in Bosnia–Herzegovina count as full watershed elections,
because the nationalists stayed out of power only briefly. The 2006 elections may have
come closer, but the 2008 elections were a step backward. Serbia–Montenegro did have decisive
watershed elections in 2000, but political parties have adapted to the Western liberal democratic
and economic agenda only slowly. It is significant that Bosnia–Herzegovina and Serbia are the
states where fundamental questions of statehood remain unsettled or unresolved.
84 Milada Anna Vachudova
to join the European Union influenced how voters cast their ballots in these
elections: in all five cases, voters had more immediate reasons to vote against
the incumbents.2
Instead, EU leverage contributed to a redirection of domestic
politics that occurred in two steps: First, the EU and other international actors
helped shape the agendas of the opposition parties that were waiting in the
wings to win these elections. Second, once in power, these parties set in motion
a reform process that has sometimes slowed down, but that has never derailed,
thanks to the strictures of the EU’s preaccession process, and this despite subsequent
political turnovers and even the return of the formerly illiberal parties to
power. As the reform momentum becomes locked in, it triggers – in most cases –
another wave of adapting as many of the formerly illiberal parties adjust their
political agendas to be compatible with liberal democracy and comprehensive
economic reform. For the country’s future democratic trajectory, this second
wave of adapting is the most significant aspect of political change. I also explore
briefly why adapting has not worked in the case of Bosnia–Herzegovina.
Scholars have only begun to explain the substantial variation in the policies
and the institutions adopted by the so-called early reformers, but the question
of why postcommunist governments with liberal preferences adopted generally
liberal policies is ultimately not that puzzling. For my cases, I have therefore
selected those countries that were dominated by illiberal rulers for a substantial
period of time after 1989, but that eventually changed course toward liberal
democracy. In the cases of Serbia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, the mechanisms
that I identify have functioned weakly, and the status of Bosnia–Herzegovina
as an international protectorate split in two by the Dayton Agreement means
that they have functioned differently. And although all six countries have made
progress, exploring the variation in the speed and content of that progress helps
illuminate the domestic conditions that determine how well external incentives
can help overcome illiberal rule.
This chapter is organized into five parts. The first part will show the divergence
in political and economic trajectories among postcommunist states after
1989 and the signs of convergence among credible future EU members over the
last decade. The second part will explore the theories that help us understand
the influence of international actors on democratization in general, and the
impact of the EU on candidate states in particular. The third part will explain
the mechanisms of focal point for cooperation and adapting. The fourth part
will explain the mechanisms of conditionality and credible commitment to
reform. The fifth part will explore alternative mechanisms that could drive
political change, looking at the recent cases of “democratic breakthroughs” in
postcommunist states that are not in the EU membership queue.
2 For the argument that the prospect of EU membership does impact how voters cast their ballots,
see Joshua A. Tucker, Alexander C. Pacek, and Adam J. Berinsky, “Transitional Winners and
Losers: Attitudes toward EU Membership in Post-Communist Countries.” American Journal of
Political Science, 46, No. 3 (2002), pp. 557–71.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 85
divergence and convergence in the postcommunist world
The collapse of communism between 1989 and 1991 throughout the region,
accompanied by the end of the Soviet Union, was a critical juncture for the
political development of all East European states. For many, it was also a period
that set in motion forces seeking national independence: the “communist”
region went from nine states in 19893
to twenty-seven in 1995. By 1995 the
spectrum of political outcomes among these twenty-seven states ranged from
liberal democracy to rigid authoritarianism.4
It was not surprising that states
emerging newly independent from the Soviet Union after over seven decades of
Soviet communism would initially follow trajectories different from those of
states in East Central and Southeastern Europe. But the variation among the
states of East Central and Southeastern Europe was also striking, ranging from
liberal democracy in Poland and Hungary to authoritarianism and war in the
disintegrating Yugoslavia.5
A decade later, do we see a convergence toward liberal democracy among
the subset of postcommunist states that are credible future members of the EU?
By plotting the scores that these states have received from Freedom House and
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, respectively, we can
see such a convergence. Figure 4.1 shows that in 1997 the six states in this study
were receiving low scores for both political freedom and economic liberalization,
putting them far behind East Central Europe’s early reformers and in close
proximity to states such as Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Figure 4.2 shows that in
2003 all but Bosnia–Herzegovina had pulled away from the post-Soviet states
on their political freedom scores.6
In comparison to 1997, Bulgaria, Romania,
3 The Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, Albania,
and Yugoslavia. For the 27 postcommunist states on the European continent (without the
“east” of unified Germany), see Figure 4.1.
4 For a careful analysis of divergence among postcommunist states, see David Cameron, “The
Quality of Democracy in Post-communist Europe.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2005.
5 For a more comprehensive treatment of political outcomes in the CEE states, see Valerie Bunce,
“The Political Economy of Postsocialism.” Slavic Review, 58, No. 4 (1999), pp. 756–93;
Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson, eds., Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern
Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003); Jacques Rupnik, “The Post-communist Divide.” Journal of Democracy, 10, No. 1 (1999),
pp. 57–62; and Milada Anna Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration
after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6 Excluding the Western Balkan states from the group of EU candidates, David Cameron finds
that between 1991 and 2001 the ten EU candidates extended rights and liberties so that they
were comparable to those in many EU member states. But the other postcommunist states
actually experienced a decrease in the average score; in the latter group, rights and liberties
were, on average, less extensive and secure in 2001 than they had been in 1991. David Cameron,
“Post-communist Democracy: The Impact of the European Union,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 23(3),
pp. 185–217.
86 Milada Anna Vachudova
Poland
Georgia
Armenia
Belarus
Turkmenistan
Tajikistan
Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
Ukraine
Moldova
Romania Bulgaria
Macedonia
Russia
Kazakhstan
Albania
Kyrgyzstan
Croatia
Slovakia
Latvia and
Lithuania
Slovenia
Estonia
Czech
Hungary
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
7.00
1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00
Economic Liberalization (EBRD)
more economic liberalization
Democracy(NIT)
betterdemocracy
figure 4.1. Democracy and economic liberalization in the postcommunist region
in 1997. The democracy scale runs from the lowest score (=1) to the highest
score (=7). The economic liberalization scale runs from the lowest score (=1) to
the highest score (=4.3). Sources: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
1 Transition Report 1997 (London: European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, 1997); Freedom House, “Table 2: Nations in Transit Scores 1997
to 2003.” In Nations in Transit 2003 (New York: Freedom House, 2003). Available
at <http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/nitransit/2003/index.htm>. Accessed
13 March 2007.]
Croatia, and most dramatically Slovakia had made substantial progress in
catching up with the early reformers with political and economic reform.
We can also point to a variety of other measures that indicate progress
and convergence after 1995. Elections are free and fair and, except perhaps
in Serbia, all of the mainstream parties are committed to the democratic rules
of the game. Ethnic minorities are in a better position in Romania, Slovakia,
and Croatia, with no signs of reversal. Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro have
established democracies that function quite well, given that these states have
only recently emerged from authoritarianism and war that implicated all three
polities in state-sponsored genocide. Governments are now cooperating extensively
with the ICTY, and full cooperation from Belgrade seems to be only a
matter of time. All of the formerly illiberal democracies have made progress
toward the next milestone of EU membership – from a catapult into membership
on the part of Slovakia to the signing, finally, of an association agreement
between the EU and Serbia. There are still a myriad problems with the quality
of democracy in absolute terms in all of these states, but the relative progress
of each state since 1995 is indisputable.
It is more difficult to make the case, however, that Bosnia–Herzegovina is
overcoming the ethnic political divisions reified by the Dayton Agreement in
order to create a sufficiently functional central state that can prepare for EU
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 87
Slovenia
Poland
Hungary
Slovakia
Lithuania
Estonia
Latvia
Ukraine
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Armenia
Turkmenistan
Belarus Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Azerbaijan
Russia
Georgia
Moldova
Albania Macedonia
Serbia-Montenegro
Romania
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
7.00
1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00
Economic Liberalization (EBRD)
more economic liberalization
Democracy(NIT)
betterdemocracy
figure 4.2. Democracy and economic liberalization in the postcommunist region
in 2003. The democracy scale runs from the lowest score (=1) to the highest
score (=7). The economic liberalization scale runs from the lowest score (=1) to
the highest score (=4.3). Sources: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
Transition Report 2003 (London: European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, 2003); Freedom House, “Table 2: Nations in Transit Scores 1997
to 2003.” In Nations in Transit 2003 (New York: Freedom House, 2003). Available
at <http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/nitransit/2003/index.htm>. Accessed
13 March 2007.
membership. It is also more difficult to make the case that several Western
Balkan states – Albania, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro
– are converging with the frontrunners on the measures of economic
liberalization and economic institutional change alone. Indeed, as Figure 4.2
shows, they fit quite comfortably in the second group of slow-paced reformers.
Only Croatia shows signs of rapid economic progress. This is the finding
of George Georgiadis after analysis of the aggregate transition scores for
economic institutional change across the twenty-seven cases from 1991 to
2002. He argues that it is the ten candidates for EU membership that form
a group within which countries are converging economically, with Croatia
knocking at the door.7
There are good reasons, however, that we may expect
that progress in the EU’s preaccession process, tied to greater access to the
EU market and more foreign investment, will eventually help bring economic
liberalization and institutional improvements even in the other Western Balkan
states.
7 George Georgiadis, Adapting by Expectation: Early EU Polices in the CEE Region and the
Consolidation of the Two “Orbits” of Post-communist Economic Transformation. Working
Paper No. 05–02 (Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2005).
88 Milada Anna Vachudova
One of the most difficult issues in studying democratization is untangling
political change from economic upswings and downturns, and from changes
in the way that ruling elites administer the economy. In the postcommunist
region, fifteen years of data reveal that greater political freedom, more economic
liberalization, and better economic performance have all gone hand in hand.
Figures 4.1 and 4.2 show a correlation between a country’s political freedom
rating and its implementation of economic reform. That is, the higher a country
is rated for the quality of its democracy, the more progress it has generally
made in market reform. Similar patterns emerge using different indices for
economic reform, such as those of the World Bank, against the Freedom House
democratization index.8
There is also a correlation between the completeness
of economic reforms and the level of aggregate social welfare ten years after the
transition began. That is, those countries that put in place the most rapid and
complete economic reforms recovered most quickly, registered the highest levels
of economic growth, and generated the least increase in income disparities.9
All
of this is important because it shows that there is relatively little tension between
the democratic and economic reforms that are requirements of EU membership,
and in particular that economic liberalization does not come at the cost of the
well-being of the general population. In Latin American states, for example,
the relationship between democratization and market liberalization that we see
in Figures 4.1 and 4.2 would look quite different.10
international actors and democratization
The impact of international actors on democratization, and on domestic political
change more generally, is now one of the most exciting areas of study in
comparative politics.11
This is something of a departure from past scholarship.
8 Using a World Bank/EBRD Structural Reform index against Freedom House data, others
have averaged the scores received for each year between 1990 and 2000 for a similar result.
See Chap. 9 in Thomas Oatley, International Political Economy: Interests and Institutions
in the Global Economy, pp. 379–92 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004), at p. 386; and
Anders ˚Aslund, Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc, p. 362
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, Transition Report (London: EBRD, 2000).
9 World Bank, The First Ten Years: Analysis and Lessons for Eastern Europe and the Former
Soviet Union (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002), pp. 16, 73–4, 107.
10 Among other factors, the structural changes that these states experienced under communism,
including high levels of literacy and low levels of income inequality, made labor forces relatively
well prepared to adjust to and profit from market liberalization and the proximity of the
wealthy EU market. It is also likely for some countries that the EU’s insistence that economic
liberalization be accompanied by institutional change helped create a better functioning market
economy. See Valerie Bunce, “Rethinking Recent Democratization, Lessons from the Postcommunist
Experience.” World Politics, 55, No. 2 (2003), pp. 167–92; and Philip G. Roeder,
“The Revolution of 1989: Postcommunism and the Social Sciences.” Slavic Review, 58, No. 4
(1999), pp. 743–55.
11 Philippe C. Schmitter, “The Influence of the International Context Upon the Choice of
National Institutions and Policies in Neo-Democracies.” In The International Dimensions of
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 89
In the literature on democratization in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, or
Africa, the impact of external actors on democratic consolidation has usually
been considered harmful or at best indifferent. The exception is democratization
on the European continent, where the prospect of joining the EU is credited
with supporting transition and consolidation in Portugal, Spain, and Greece as
well as in the postcommunist states that are nearby.12
The democratization of communist states seemed in many ways incomparable
to democratization in other parts of the world, owing to the uniqueness
of communism’s impact on the polity, economy, and society.13
However, the
behavior of ruling elites when seizing and holding power in that gray zone
between liberal democracy and outright authoritarianism – be it called illiberal
democracy, electoral democracy, hybrid democracy, or competitive authoritarianism
– is in many respects similar across countries and regions. This
chapter contributes to the recent comparative politics literature on the origin,
the dynamics, and the demise of such democratic hybrids.14
It demonstrates
how the EU has played an important role in loosening the grip of elites that
seek to perpetuate illiberal democracy. And in contrast to democracy promotion
efforts by other international actors, it explains how the EU has had a
sustained impact on the quality of the democratization and economic reform
efforts that have followed regime change.15
In the study of EU enlargement to include postcommunist states, there is
broad agreement that the EU’s preaccession process has brought potent if
uneven conditionality and socialization to bear on domestic politics in the
Democratization: Europe and the Americas, Expanded Edition, Laurence Whitehead, ed.,
pp. 26–54 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Laurence Whitehead, “Three
International Dimensions of Democratization.” In International Dimensions, Laurence Whitehead,
ed., pp. 3–25, and the other contributions to this volume. See also Geoffrey Pridham,
Eric Herring, and George Sanford, eds., Building Democracy? The International Dimension of
Democratization in Eastern Europe (London: Leicester University Press, 1997).
12 Geoffrey Pridham, ed., Encouraging Democracy: The International Context of Regime Transition
in Southern Europe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991); and Laurence Whitehead,
“Democracy by Convergence: Southern Europe.” in International Dimensions, Laurence
Whitehead, ed., pp. 261–84. See also Daniel Ziblatt and Nick Biziouras, “The State and the
Shadow of the European Union: Party Politics and the Politicization of the State in Southern and
Eastern Europe.” Paper presented at the European Union Studies Association Ninth Biennial
Conference, Austin, TX, 2005.
13 Valerie Bunce, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review, 54, No. 1 (1995),
pp. 111–27; in debate with Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “The Conceptual
Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to
Go.” Slavic Review, 53, No. 1 (1995), pp. 173–85.
14 Terry Lynn Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America.” Journal of Democracy, 6,
No. 3 (1995), pp. 72–87; Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs,
76, No. 6 (1997), pp. 22–43; Larry Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes.” Journal of
Democracy, 13, No. 2 (2002), pp. 21–35; and Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of
Competitive Authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy, 13, No. 2 (2002), pp. 51–65.
15 For variation in Western influence on competitive authoritarian regimes in different regions
of the world, see Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “Linkage versus Leverage: Rethinking
the International Dimension of Regime Change.” Comparative Politics, 38, No. 4 (2006),
pp. 379–400.
90 Milada Anna Vachudova
candidate states. Most studies focus on how the institutions and the content
of domestic policy making have been influenced by EU conditionality during
the negotiations for membership.16
But those states where illiberal democracy
took hold and economic reforms were neglected had a long way to go in their
relationship with the EU before they could begin negotiations, or even obtain
candidate status.17
Although neglecting the impact of EU conditionality on
specific policy areas18
and state institutions, in this chapter I seek to shed light
on the mechanisms by which EU leverage undermined illiberal regimes, and
then locked in progress toward liberal democracy and economic liberalization
after these regimes were ousted.
Here it is important to take a step back and look at the nature of the relationship
between the EU and its democratizing postcommunist neighbors. Despite
fears of diminished national sovereignty and increased economic vulnerability,
EU membership rapidly emerged as a matter of national interest after 1989 in
many of the early reformers because it offered substantial geopolitical, sociocultural,
and, most important, economic benefits. But between 1989 and 1994,
the EU and other international actors had little impact on the course of political
change: they reinforced liberal strategies of reform in some states, but failed
to avert, end, or significantly diminish rent-seeking strategies for winning and
exercising power in others. The turning point occurred in 1995 as the EU made
it clear that for those states recognized as credible future EU members, compliance
with EU requirements would be rewarded by EU membership – and that
the voluntary decision to apply for EU membership would subject a candidate
to a battery of unilateral monitoring and reporting.
The EU’s leverage was animated by the fact that the substantial benefits
of EU membership – and the costs of exclusion – create incentives for states
to satisfy the entry requirements. Following this logic alone, we may conclude
that the benefits of EU membership for postcommunist states must be immense:
At no time in history have sovereign states voluntarily agreed to meet such
vast domestic requirements and then subjected themselves to such intrusive
16 Heather Grabbe, “How Does Europeanisation Affect CEE Governance? Conditionality, Diffusion
and Diversity.” Journal of European Public Policy, 8, No. 4 (2001), pp. 1013–31; and
Beate Sissenich, “State Building by a Nonstate.” Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, 2003. See also the contributions to Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds., The
Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
17 For the groundbreaking study on how the EU and other international actors used conditionality
and socialization to change the treatment of ethnic minorities, see Judith Kelley, Ethnic Politics
in Europe: The Power of Norms and Incentives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2004).
18 See Rachel Epstein, “Cultivating Consensus and Creating Conflict: International Institutions
and the (De)politicization of Economic Policy in Post-communist Europe.” Comparative Political
Studies, 39, No. 8 (2006), pp. 1019–42. Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the European
Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004); and Liliana B. Andonova, Transnational Politics of the Environment.
The EU and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2003).
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 91
verification procedures to enter an international organization. A steady flow
of aid, expertise, trade, and foreign direct investment is diverted away from
states that fail to enter the queue to join an enlarging EU along with their
neighbors toward those that succeed. The costs of exclusion can weigh heavily
on relatively rich states as well as poor ones. Walter Mattli has shown that
economic integration can cause three kinds of negative externalities for states
left outside: trade diversion, investment diversion, and aid diversion. These
costs help explain the applications of rich West European states as well as
relatively backward states from postcommunist Europe for EU membership.19
The potential political will to satisfy the EU’s entry requirements set the stage
for the effectiveness of conditionality within the EU’s preaccession process. As
I will show in the next two sections, this process has mediated the costs and
benefits of satisfying EU membership criteria in such a way as to make compliance
attractive – and noncompliance visible and costly. In addition to the
benefits and the requirements of membership, there are three characteristics of
the preaccession process – of the way that the EU applies political and economic
conditionality – that have made the EU’s leverage effective. They are
asymmetric interdependence, enforcement, and meritocracy.20
These characteristics
amplify the incentives to comply with the EU’s membership requirements
because they make the EU’s threat of exclusion, as well as its promises
of membership, more credible. Power in this interdependent relationship flows
from asymmetry, and the ECE states have much more to gain from the relationship
than the EU.21
Such patterns of asymmetrical interdependence have
determined relations between the EU and candidate states in the past – and
also among EU member states during major treaty negotiations.22
Meanwhile,
the monitoring of the progress of candidates in satisfying EU requirements
through annual reports and through chapter-by-chapter negotiations on the
acquis communautaire have built an imperfect but high level of enforcement
into the preaccession process.
Although asymmetric interdependence and enforcement both give credibility
to the EU’s threats of exclusion, meritocracy gives credibility to its promises
of eventual membership. So far the EU has adopted a roughly merit-based
approach: an applicant’s place in the membership queue has corresponded to
the progress it has made toward fulfilling the EU’s requirements. The European
Commission’s evaluations and the European Council’s decisions about
the status of candidates or protocandidates have been accepted as reflecting
19 Walter Mattli, The Logic of Regional Integration, Europe and Beyond (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
20 For a fuller discussion, see Vachudova, Europe Undivided, Chap. 5.
21 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little Brown,
1977).
22 Andrew Moravcsik, “Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional
Statecraft in the European Community.” International Organization, 45, No. 1 (1991),
pp. 19–56; and Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power
from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), Chap. 1.
92 Milada Anna Vachudova
accurately the state of compliance.23
In the run-up to the 2004 enlargement,
with certain exceptions, the right balance was struck: candidates were neither
too confident (thanks to asymmetric interdependence), nor too disingenuous
(thanks to enforcement), nor did they despair that the system was stacked
against them (thanks to meritocracy). In subsequent years, however, the system
has worked less well: Bulgaria and Romania are widely seen to have been
admitted prematurely, with insufficient enforcement in areas such as the rule
of law and public administration reform. The decision on Turkey’s eventual
accession, moreover, is now widely recognized as a matter of EU domestic
politics and not of merit.
The very extensive requirements of EU membership are mostly a product of
the very high levels of integration among EU member states. For the rest, they
were not designed to coax and cajole every conceivably “European” state into
making itself desirable. In the middle of the 1990s, the emphasis was rather
on keeping unqualified states outside of the EU. By the late 1990s, however,
enlargement and foreign policy had become closely intertwined, as it became
clear that the EU’s leverage on aspiring members was the most powerful and
successful aspect of the EU’s emerging foreign policy. Recognizing this, EU
leaders made the prospect of EU membership the cornerstone of the EU’s
foreign policy toward the Western Balkans in the EU-led Stability Pact for
Southeastern Europe in 1999. It was in this region, after all, that the EU’s
credibility as a foreign policy actor was most clearly at stake. The Stability Pact
opened the EU’s official membership queue in 1999 to eighteen candidates and
protocandidates.24
For the illiberal democracies in the EU’s membership queue, the EU’s
approach gradually became one of explicit democracy promotion – this was
weakest in the cases of Romania and Bulgaria, and most overt in Serbia–
Montenegro and of course Bosnia–Herzegovina. What turned out to be important
was that the meritocracy principle was extended across time in one country
as well as across countries. In other words, however dismal a country’s past
record of respecting democratic standards and human rights, it could “rehabilitate”
itself by implementing the necessary reforms under a future government.
Serbia–Montenegro became a credible future member of the EU in 1999, and
as such had a clear and relatively certain track toward membership despite
23 This was put to the test in 2005 by the European Council’s decision to put on hold the start of
negotiations with Croatia because of the government’s failure to cooperate fully with the ICTY
in delivering an indicted war criminal, General Ante Gotovina, to the Hague. Despite protests
that the state administration had been cooperating, the Croatian government responded with
a number of initiatives to improve compliance, reforming the military, the police, and the
judiciary.
24 Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus,
and Malta joined the EU in May 2004, leaving Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia,
Albania, Serbia–Montenegro, and Bosnia–Herzegovina at various points in the membership
queue.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 93
the fact that the regime of Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c was still firmly in place. In
Slovakia, commenting on the intransigence of the regime of Vladim´ır Meˇciar,
the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Hans Van den Broek, explained
in the spring of 1998 that “The question is not whether Slovakia will enter the
EU, but when this will take place. The answer is in the hands of the Slovak
government.”25
regime change in illiberal democracies
There is substantial evidence that the quality of political competition determined
the early trajectories of postcommunist states. I argue that under conditions
of limited political competition, rent-seeking elites could win and hold
power by further suppressing rival groups, promising slow economic reform,
and exploiting ethnic nationalism – all the while extracting significant rents
from slow economic reform.26
Several other scholars have offered compatible
explanations for the variation in political outcomes that we observe after
1989. These include the configuration of domestic elites at the moment of
regime change;27
the outcome of the first democratic elections;28
and the character
of political competition in the new polity.29
There is a separate though
related debate about additional domestic factors that brought to power the
regimes that presided over the ethnic cleansing and war that accompanied the
disintegration of Yugoslavia.30
The mechanisms that I highlight in this article
all work to improve the quality or character of political competition by breaking
the concentration of power in the hands of illiberal elites, and eventually
changing the positions of major, formerly illiberal political parties.
In the relationship between the EU and all credible future members, we can
expect compliance with EU requirements when ruling elites consider that a
closer relationship with the EU will bolster their popularity, and when the EU’s
conditions for moving forward are compatible with the ways that they win and
25 “Hans Van den Broek: Slovensko m´a svoj osud vo vlastn´ych ruk´ach.” SME (18 June 1998).
26 Vachudova, Europe Undivided, Chaps. 1–2.
27 Michael McFaul, “The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions
in the Post-communist World.” World Politics, 54, No. 2 (2002), pp. 212–44.
28 M. Steven Fish, “The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-communist World.” East
European Politics and Societies, 12, No. 1 (1998), pp. 31–78.
29 Conor O’Dwyer, “Runaway State Building: How Political Parties Shape States in Postcommunist
Europe.” World Politics, 56, No. 4 (2004), pp. 520–53; Mitchell Orenstein, Out
of the Red (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001); and Anna Grzymała-Busse,
“Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe.” Comparative
Political Studies, 36, No. 10 (2003), pp. 1123–47.
30 See Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions, The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and
the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Ellen Comisso, “Is Breaking Up
Hard to Do? Security, Nationalism and the Emergence of Sovereign States in the Balkans.” Paper
presented at the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, Washington,
DC, 2005.
94 Milada Anna Vachudova
hold power at home.31
For illiberal regimes, satisfying the requirements of EU
membership was far too costly, as these were in direct conflict with the interests
of their domestic power bases. The EU’s leverage was only marginally effective
in moderating the domestic policies of illiberal governments directly, though
the EU and other international actors may have frightened some regimes away
from further antidemocratic excesses. And here analysis of the involvement of
a myriad international actors in the wars in the former Yugoslavia must stand
alone.
I argue that the relationship between the EU and credible future members
helped change the domestic balance of power in illiberal states against rentseeking
elites, undermining the strength of their domestic power bases. The key
was the impact of the EU’s active leverage on opposition political parties and
other groups in societies. These domestic actors served as interlocutors between
the EU and the citizens, and they were the only realistic vehicle for rapid change
given the intransigence of the ruling political parties. It was the interplay of
domestic opposition actors and the EU’s leverage (and not external pressure
alone) that helped bring about political change. Ultimately EU leverage helped
create what the illiberal democracies were missing at the moment of transition:
a more coherent and moderate opposition, and an open and pluralistic political
arena.
Focal Points of Cooperation
Ending exclusion from Europe and securing EU membership became a focal
point for cooperation among very different opposition political parties and
civic groups. In Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, and Serbia, small parties and factions
of the center left and center right competed and feuded with one another,
substantially weakening the power of moderate voices in parliament through
wasted votes and infighting. Liberal, pro-Western actors in these countries had
little or no history of cooperation in an opposition movement against communism
to help establish habits of compromise and organizational strength.
Meanwhile, the ruling political parties worked hard to undermine and divide
the opposition parties by manipulating the electoral law, labeling critics of
government policy as unpatriotic, and also engaging in physical harassment in
all of the cases except Bulgaria. Although their differences on matters of social
and economic policy spanned the entire moderate (and sometimes immoderate)
political spectrum, electoral defeats and harassment by the regime showed that
the opposition forces would have to band together in order to unseat the ruling
elites. Some Western actors took a very direct role in trying to unite the feuding
opposition parties in Slovakia, Croatia, and Serbia and the nonnationalist
parties in Bosnia–Herzegovina around a European agenda.
31 Kelley, Ethnic Politics in Europe; and Vachudova, Europe Undivided. For the related external
incentives model, see the contributions to Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, eds., The Europeanization
of Central and Eastern Europe.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 95
Reproaching the ruling elites for forsaking the country’s place in Europe –
and promising to move the country decisively toward Europe – formed part
of the opposition agenda upon which all parties and other opposition groups
could agree. In some cases, this was very concrete: In Slovakia, the opposition
parties agreed to satisfy all EU requirements in an attempt to rejoin the first
group of countries joining the EU. In Serbia, the forces opposing the Miloˇsevi´c
regime all agreed on ending Serbia’s exclusion from Europe – but they were far
from agreeing on cooperation with the ICTY, or understanding the scope of
the compliance that would be demanded of them on the road to the EU.32
Why would opposition forces in these illiberal democracies need European
integration as a focal point for their cooperation? After all, they could unite
simply in opposition to the illiberal regime. However, international actors
including the EU signaled that only certain groupings of opposition elites would
be acceptable partners for the return to Europe, ending the practice of some
opposition elites of episodic cooperation with the illiberal rulers and preventing
the defection of others. The goal of rejoining Europe is important for another
reason: it lays out some map for what will happen after regime change, whether
or not the parameters of this effort are well understood.
Adapting
Western actors offered information to opposition political elites that were
adapting to a political and economic agenda compatible with liberal democracy
and comprehensive market reform. Parties of the center right and center left
had been neither strong nor unified in these countries after 1989, nor had
they necessarily been “moderate” or “liberal.” Over time, many opposition
politicians have substantially shifted their positions on ethnic minority rights
and on economic reform to make their parties fit the increasingly attractive
pro-EU space in the political spectrum. What motivated individual political
elites was in each case a different mixture of political calculation, on the one
hand, and a desire to learn about and promote European norms and values, on
the other. But in most cases the steady defection of politicians from the ruling
parties suggested that these individuals considered the political prospects of the
opposition parties more attractive than the short-term gains of remaining part
of the ruling clique.33
Western representatives of international institutions, governments, and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) were on hand with information for opposition
politicians and local civil society leaders on the substance of a liberal
democratic agenda, placing particular emphasis on political accountability, on
32 See the translated issues of the first EU-focused publication in Belgrade, Evropski Forum, with
articles and editorials by Serbian and Montenegrin politicians. Available in translation on my
website.
33 Pavol Demeˇs, leader of the Third Sector, interview in Bratislava, 1998 and 2005. Interviews
with former opposition members in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Sarajevo in 2004 and 2005.
96 Milada Anna Vachudova
fostering an open pluralistic political arena, and on rights for ethnic minorities
within this arena, ideally decoupling questions of ethnicity from those of citizenship.
Many different Western organizations and governments were involved
in supporting opposition groups with financial assistance and interacting with
opposition elites through countless meetings, workshops, and conferences in
national capitals and abroad.34
Local opposition elites often moved directly
from Western-funded NGOs or academic institutions into politics. EU leverage,
in concert with the influence of other international actors, strengthened
pro-EU civic groups and shaped how opposition parties portrayed themselves
in the election campaign, which parties they chose to cooperate with before
and after the elections, and how they governed once in power.
Scholars studying the incidence and success of democratization have turned
in recent years to the role of NGOs and civic groups in mobilizing the population
against undemocratic leaders.35
In many cases international actors have
been linked to civic mobilization, for example, through funding for NGOs,
election monitoring, and advising. Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik note the
“virtuous circle” between Polish domestic organizations and their Western
partners, which provided support critical to establishing a strong civil society
in Poland in the early 1990s. The most support was channeled to the three
states that needed it least – Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic – at
the expense of “deepening vicious circles” elsewhere.36
But by the late 1990s,
Western funding for and attention to NGOs in other postcommunist countries
had increased substantially.37
A virtuous circle emerged most clearly in Slovakia.
Local NGOs played a special role, compensating for the weakness of
opposition parties with extensive surveillance and criticism of the illiberal government,
and eventually creating the momentum for cooperation among the
opposition parties. Since then, the Slovak model for turning civil society against
illiberal rulers has been exported by Slovak NGOs to Croatia and Serbia with
Western assistance.
Another factor that paved the way for local politicians adapting to an
EU-compatible agenda was that the EU enlargement process helped break
34 The organizations included the British Council, the British Know How Fund, the Charles
Mott Foundation, the EastWest Institute, the Foundation for a Civil Society, the International
Republican Institute, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the National Democratic Institute.
35 Pavol Demeˇs and Joerg Forbrig eds., Reclaiming Democracy: Civil Society and Electoral Change
in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund, 2007.
36 Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, “Civil Society From Abroad: The Role of Foreign Assistance in
the Democratization of Poland.” Working Paper No. 00–01, 48–49, Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs, Harvard University, 2000.
37 Robert Benjamin, National Democratic Institute, interview in Washington, DC, 2003. For the
debate, Sarah E. Mendelson and John K. Glenn, eds., The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical
Look at Building Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2002); and Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, eds., Funding Virtue: Civil Society
Aid and Democracy Promotion (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
2000).
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 97
the information monopoly of the illiberal regime. Evaluations of a country’s
progress within the EU’s preaccession process provided a powerful alternative
source of information on the political and economic performance of the government.
Although the Commission does not have an information strategy as
such, it does make an effort to explain fully and publicly its assessments of
the states involved in the preaccession process.38
As the enlargement project
has continued, EU leaders have became more willing to take decisive stands on
issues of domestic politics in the candidate countries, leading to very specific
demarches against the Meˇciar government in Slovakia and outright coaching
of the opposition elites in Serbia.
The EU’s vocal criticism – echoed by a growing number of local civil society
groups and opposition parties – gradually helped reveal that illiberal ruling
parties were not, despite their claims, leading the countries to prosperity and to
Europe. This criticism undermined the political strategies of ethnic nationalism
and economic corruption used by rent-seeking elites and suggested alternative
strategies that were compellingly usable for opposition elites. It countered two
messages: that ethnic nationalism was about protecting the nation, and that
slow reform was about protecting the average citizen. The role of the EU in
changing the information environment echoes Jack Snyder’s argument that
“the influence of the international community may be essential to help break
up information monopolies, especially in states with very weak journalistic
traditions and a weak civil society.”39
staying the course after watershed elections
Illiberal regimes lost elections in Romania in 1996, in Bulgaria in 1997, in
Slovakia in 1998, in Croatia in 2000, and in Serbia–Montenegro in 2000. The
two most compelling reasons for these defeats were the peril of monopoly,40
and the toll of economic deterioration or crisis. The peril of monopoly is analogous
to the problem encountered by the communist regimes: as the only actor
with any political power before 1989, the communist party could reasonably
be blamed for everything that went wrong. The new governments in all five
cases moved rapidly to implement political and economic reforms and move
the country forward in the EU’s preaccession process.
Once a state becomes enmeshed in the EU’s preaccession process, the high
costs of pulling out of this process have motivated even previously illiberal
ruling parties to adopt political strategies that are compatible with qualifying
38 Pierre Mirel, interview in Brussels, 2003. Interviews with other Commission officials in Brussels,
2005.
39 Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict, p. 355 (New
York: Norton, 2000).
40 I am indebted to Valerie Bunce for this concept.
98 Milada Anna Vachudova
for EU membership. After the watershed elections, we see little backsliding as
successive governments make progress on political and economic reform. They
may move forward quickly (Slovakia) or very slowly (Serbia), but there have
been no sharp reversals of policy, despite electoral turnover. After the assassination
of Prime Minister Zoran Ðin ¯di´c in March 2003, Serbia–Montenegro
suffered a severe slowdown in reform, but by 2004, reform had accelerated
and moving up in the EU’s preaccession process was fixed again as the goal. A
similar slowdown in reform occurred in Serbia 2007, but was again followed
by renewed momentum in 2008.
Sooner or later, more open political competition in combination with the
costs of being excluded from Europe has driven most political parties in the
candidate states toward a consensus on qualifying for EU membership. This can
be understood as the second phase of adapting: now it is the formerly illiberal
rulers who adapt their political agendas to EU membership. Political parties
learn that they can adapt their agendas to the expectations of the EU and other
international actors – and, in some cases, get back in the political game very
quickly. The most dramatic turnarounds were by the PSDR in Romania and the
HDZ in Croatia.41
Upon winning reelection in 2000 and 2004, respectively,
both parties continued to satisfy EU requirements – and on some measures did
a better job than their predecessors.
Besides the Radicals and perhaps the Socialists in Serbia, there are virtually
no parties left in any countries in the EU queue that openly oppose qualifying for
membership and that might win elections or take part in a governing coalition.
In the toughest cases, particularly Serbia, the adaptation of formerly illiberal
elites has been more of a trickle than a flood, but even members of Miloˇsevi´c’s
Socialist party are seeking to become informed about the EU; the reform wing
of the party is happy to adopt EU membership as a forward-looking economic
program.42
Still, it is easy to see why adapting has not worked across the
board in Serbia: Serbia’s unresolved national and territorial issues – especially
Kosovo – provided an appealing and ongoing platform for Serbia’s nationalist
parties (why change?). But it is political party elites in Bosnia–Herzegovina
that challenge more profoundly the adapting mechanism: Although leaders
of all three constituent nations speak in favor of European integration, they
are unwilling to make the constitutional compromises that would allow the
state to adopt and implement EU rules. The domestic power of the ruling politicians
– especially those elected in 2008 – is based squarely on ethnic identity,
ethnic rivalry, and ethnic clientelism, making the EU’s leverage much less
effective. To put it another way, Bosnia–Herzegovina may still be waiting for
true watershed elections for a long time.
41 On the turnaround of PSD leader Ion Iliescu, see the interviews by Vladimir Tismaneanu
in The Great Shock at the End of a Short Century: On Communism, Post-communism and
Democracy (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by New York: Columbia
University Press, 2006).
42 Official, interview in Belgrade, 2004.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 99
Conditionality
Conditionality has played a key role in ensuring the implementation of political
and economic reforms by the governments that succeeded the illiberal
rulers in power. The character of the EU’s preaccession process required implementation:
in order to deliver on promises to improve the country’s standing,
opposition politicians had to follow through with extensive reforms once in
office. Opposition politicians knew that their preelection rhetoric would be
judged against their postelection actions in the EU’s monitoring reports. The
tasks at hand and the payoffs for these politicians have varied enormously. In
1998, Slovak party leaders worked to correct the political transgressions of
the previous regime and catch up with ECE frontrunners in the negotiations in
order to join the EU in the first wave in 2004. In 2000, Serbian party leaders
began cooperation with the ICTY and attempting basic economic reforms in
order to end Serbia’s isolation and acute economic backwardness, and in hopes
of signing an association agreement with the EU.
The EU’s leverage compels all governments to tackle certain politically difficult
and inconvenient reforms, such as creating an independent civil service,
reforming the judiciary, or accelerating bank privatization, and to stick to
them over time. Ultimately the preaccession process is centered on a strategy
of gatekeeping: if a candidate does not comply, it can be held back from the
next stage in the process. For the first eight postcommunist candidates, the
main stages were as follows: (1) beginning screening; (2) opening negotiations
after satisfying the Copenhagen Criteria; (3) closing particular chapters in the
negotiations; and (4) completing the negotiations. A candidate could move up
thanks to accelerated reform, or slip back as a sanction for unfulfilled promises
to implement reform – though toward the end of the process the decision to
admit eight postcommunist states all at once in 2004 was a political one. For
Bulgaria and Romania, a fifth step has been added consisting of a final evaluation
of their administrative capabilities with the possibility of postponing
accession by one year.
For the Western Balkan states, several stages have been added at the front
end of the process: (1) a feasibility study for opening negotiations on an association
agreement, called the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA);
(2) negotiating the SAA; and (3) signing the SAA.43
For Slovakia, the challenge
was getting the green light to begin negotiations with the EU. For Bulgaria
and Romania, it was the implementation of the reforms demanded by the EU
for membership that was the greatest hurdle, because of corruption and weak
state capacity. For Croatia, economic reforms are well under way, but cooperation
with the ICTY and reform of state institutions connected to the secret
services and the military prevented the start of negotiations for membership.
43 This is not without precedent: in the early 1990s, the EU did attach conditions to signing an
association agreement, then called a Europe Agreement, with the first round of postcommunist
applicants, though it did not do much to enforce them.
100 Milada Anna Vachudova
Serbia–Montenegro shares all of Croatia’s problems, and the economy and
general state capacity are very weak, although the territorial definition of the
state remained unresolved for so long. But in the spring of 2005 the Commission
assessed Serbia–Montenegro’s progress positively in its feasibility study,
and negotiations on an SAA started in late 2005 – and the agreement was
finally signed in April 2008 (in an overt move on the part of the EU to bolster
European forces in the upcoming May elections). What is important here is
that once illiberal rulers are forced to exit power, EU conditionality kicks in
and promotes progress regardless of how far behind a country finds itself on
the road to joining the EU.
Credible Commitment to Reform
Economic actors have had every reason after 1989 to question how far postcommunist
states would go in implementing liberalizing reforms. Indeed, many
have stopped at some kind of partial economic reform that privileges insiders
and fosters corruption. How can postcommunist governments signal that they
are serious about reform?44
Equally important to the conditionality mechanism
in motivating reform is the fact that the EU preaccession process serves
as a commitment device. For domestic and foreign economic actors, especially
investors, progress in the EU’s preaccession process serves as a credible commitment
to ongoing and predictable economic reforms and also to certain ongoing
political reforms, especially pertaining to state regulation of the economy. Most
simply, as Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor argue, “institutions affect action
by structuring expectations about what others will do;” for economic actors,
the preaccession process created expectations that comprehensive economic
reforms would proceed apace.45
Elsewhere governments also become members
of regional organizations in order to signal their commitment to ongoing
reform by tying the hands of the country’s current and future governments
through the rules of the organization.46
Once a candidate is well on the way to joining the EU, the costs of losing
ground or reversing course became prohibitive – for any government. At the
same time, the fact that qualifying for EU membership is such a mammoth
project of domestic politics compelled all mainstream political parties to reach a
consensus about the underlying thrust of political and economic reform.47
The
44 Stephen Haggard and Steven B. Webb, “Introduction.” In Voting for Reform: Democracy,
Political Liberalization, and Economic Adjustment, pp. 1–36, 21 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
45 Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms.”
Political Studies, 44 (1996). pp. 936–57, 955.
46 Jon C. Pevehouse, “Democracy from the Outside-In? International Organizations and Democratization.”
International Organization, 56, No. 3 (2002), pp. 515–49.
47 For the related argument that liberal democracies make more durable alliance commitments to
one another, see Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, “Democratic States and Commitment in International
Relations.” International Organization, 50, No. 1 (1996), pp. 109–39.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 101
EU’s good opinion also became a direct factor in the decisions of foreign
investors, whereas credit rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard and
Poor adjusted credit ratings in reaction to EU assessments and to the release
of the EU’s Regular Reports.48
The exigencies of the EU’s preaccession process
thus assured economic actors that the commitment to liberal economic reforms
would be protected from two threats: from economic downturns and from
government turnover. Continuing economic reform becomes clearly the most
likely ongoing strategy for current and future governments.
The credibility of the commitment to ongoing economic reform in the context
of the EU’s preaccession process thus serves as a very important signal
for domestic and international economic actors, promising them a stable
business environment and access to the entire EU market.49
Lisa Martin
argues that the forms of international cooperation that offer states the highest
benefits require them to make credible commitments to one another. She
finds that for democracies the concerns of economic actors about the credibility
of commitments are decreased by the participation of legislatures in
international cooperation. In the case of EU candidates, progress in the preaccession
process signals a seriousness of commitment not only to the EU itself
as it weighs a candidate’s suitability for membership, but also to a range of economic
actors as they weigh a country’s suitability for investment.50
Progress in
the preaccession process builds credibility in the eyes of economic actors using
a similar mechanism as legislative participation; namely, it makes extrication
from and violation of international agreements very difficult.
All together, the reforms of the economy that are implemented as part of the
effort to qualify for EU membership, and the credible commitment to ongoing
reform that comes from moving toward membership in the EU’s preaccession
process, bring significant economic benefits. These include a better business
environment, higher regulatory quality,51
higher levels of domestic and foreign
investment, and greater opportunities for trade. They overlap, of course, with
the economic benefits of being an EU member. But the two mechanisms I
have emphasized here – conditionality and credible commitment – highlight
the benefits of the process of joining the EU for candidates, as opposed to the
benefits they get once they are in. And the drive to EU membership, by forcing
economic restructuring, improves performance in the world economy over
the long run. Most important, the mechanisms of conditionality and credible
commitment help explain why, as discussed above, future governments in the
48 Joly Dixon, European Commission, interview in Brussels, 1998.
49 For the related argument that voters who are “winners” from the economic transition support
EU membership as a guarantee that economic reforms will not be reversed, and therefore cast
their vote for pro-EU parties, see Tucker, Pacek, and Berinsky, “Transitional Winners and
Losers.”
50 Lisa Martin, Democratic Commitments, Legislatures and International Cooperation (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
51 Walter Mattli and Thomas Pl¨umper, “The Internal Value of External Options.” European
Union Politics, 5, No. 3 (2004), pp. 307–30.
102 Milada Anna Vachudova
candidate states, despite their very different political profiles, do not halt or
reverse reform. Indeed, these mechanisms trigger another wave of adapting as
formerly illiberal (or even authoritarian) political parties, such as the HDZ
in Croatia, transform themselves and adopt positions that are consistent with
Western liberal democracy and economic reform.
is the european union really needed?
My aim in this chapter is to identify the specific mechanisms that translate
international influence into domestic political change, breaking the hold of
illiberal rulers on power and sustaining democratic and economic reforms in
the context of EU enlargement. The open question is whether the prospect of
EU membership is a necessary condition for postcommunist states to transition
toward liberal democracy and comprehensive economic reform. We can point
to recent democratic breakthroughs in Ukraine and Georgia as cases where
illiberal leaders have been unseated by civic democratic movements in countries
that have no officially recognized prospect of becoming EU members.52
What remains to be seen, however, is whether comprehensive reforms can
be sustained without the discipline of the EU’s preaccession process and the
ultimate carrot of full membership.
Following on the Orange Revolution in the autumn of 2004, the government
of Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko pledged comprehensive political
and market-oriented reform and sought the prospect of EU membership as
an anchor for Ukraine’s democratic revolution.53
The EU refused to recognize
Ukraine as a prospective EU member, and explicitly stated that the Action Plan
signed with Ukraine as part of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) is
not a first step toward membership. At the close of 2004, Ukrainian leaders
refused to sign a five-year ENP Action Plan that did not recognize Ukraine as a
credible future candidate for EU membership; the time span of the Action Plan
was consequently reduced to three years.54
Given the economic costs alone for
Ukraine of being excluded from the internal market, it is not surprising that
Ukraine’s new Western-oriented leaders would have such an intense preference
for EU membership.
The ENP can be credited with providing an established framework that the
European Commission could use to respond immediately to Ukraine’s aspirations
for closer relations after the October 2004 Orange Revolution. The ENP
gave the EU a way to pledge political and economic support for Ukraine, without
forcing the EU to respond with a yes or a no to Ukraine’s membership bid
at a time when EU governments were in no mood to take on a new candidate.
52 Michael Mc Faul, “Transitions from Postcommunism.” Journal of Democracy, 16, No. 3
(2005), pp. 5–19. See also Demeˇs and Forbrig,“Reclaiming Democracy.”
53 See Lucan Way, “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution: Kuchma’s Failed Authoritarianism.” Journal
of Democracy, 16, No. 2 (2005), pp. 131–45.
54 Interview with official of the European Commission, Brussels, December 2004.
Democratization in Postcommunist Europe 103
Indeed, with a little imagination, the ENP can be understood as a way for the
Commission to help Ukraine begin the long and laborious preparations for EU
membership on the gamble that once it is (more) fit to enter, EU leaders will
find it impossible to reject it.
Three positive scenarios are possible for Ukraine as well as Moldova and
perhaps Georgia. The first is that the ENP will only be a stopgap measure and
the EU will recognize them as future candidates. The second is that the carrot
of full participation in the internal market will become a credible reward for
more limited compliance with EU rules, and that this will sustain at least some
momentum in the reform process. The third is that reform will be maintained
without any significant EU involvement, opening up a different trajectory of
political change and opening up the possibility that the illiberal regimes in this
study did not need EU leverage to maintain a new course.
The preliminary evidence from Ukraine, however, is not very promising: The
Yushchenko government’s plans for reform became bogged down in Ukraine’s
fractious parliament and its incompetent and corrupt public administration.
Both the conditionality and the credible commitment mechanisms might have
helped, though the time span has been too short to conclude that there is not
durable forward momentum to reform without them (consider how slowly
Serbia has made progress since 2000). In the parliamentary elections in March
2006, Yushchenko’s party lost its majority in parliament. It remains to be
seen whether all of the mainstream political parties in Ukraine will adapt to
a Western agenda and successfully implement the reforms of the state and the
economy that would have to precede any serious bid for Ukraine to become a
candidate for EU membership.
conclusion
I have made the case for the important independent effect of EU leverage on
domestic political change in illiberal democracies under quite different domestic
conditions. By no means does EU leverage erase or even diminish many
domestic differences: but it does improve the quality of political competition,
whereas it narrows the parameters of domestic policymaking as states comply
with EU rules in order to qualify for membership. We see significant – though
certainly far from complete – convergence among candidates as they get closer
to qualifying for EU membership.55
Under the right conditions, free and fair
elections provide opposition parties and civic groups the opening they need to
end illiberal rule. Working in synergy with such forces, the EU’s leverage has
had a hand, over time, in creating those conditions and making the political
systems of the illiberal states more competitive. On many fronts, keeping ruling
elites within the parameters set by the EU’s preaccession process signifies
an outstanding success: respect for basic democratic standards, more robust
55 For a discussion of the high levels of dissatisfaction with democratic institutions in many
postcommunist states, see Cameron, “The Quality of Democracy.”
104 Milada Anna Vachudova
political competition, better protection of ethnic minority rights, ongoing
reform of the economy, and, in some cases, cooperation with the ICTY.
All of this, however, does not by itself guarantee a high quality of democratic
policymaking or governance. We certainly see a great deal of variation in
political and economic performance once illiberal rulers are unseated. It is
clear that the EU’s leverage cannot work alone but only in synergy with the
efforts of domestic political elites and groups. And despite the progress these
states are all making toward a common goal, what stands out on final analysis is
the diversity that stems from three main factors: (1) the nature and competence
of domestic elites; (2) the effectiveness of civic groups that push for reform,
accountability, and transparency; and (3) the domestic conditions that have
to be addressed. There can be no comparison to the challenges faced by the
ex-Yugoslav states that have to come to terms with the wars and overcome
the ethnic divisions and the economic backwardness that they have caused.
Because the problems are so diverse, this chapter has instead focused on the
relative progress that each state has made since watershed elections took place.
If ten years from now the EU has coaxed Serbia and even Bosnia–Herzegovina
down the road to where Slovakia stands today, then there will be no doubt
about the effectiveness of EU leverage in overcoming illiberal rule.