Bulletin n. 1-2/2014
November 2014
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Milada Anna Vachudova
    EU Leverage and National Interests in the Balkans: The Puzzles of Enlargement Ten Years On
    in Journal of Common Market Studies , Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2014 ,  2014 ,  122-138
    EU enlargement continues in the Western Balkans in the 2010s because the underlying dynamics remain largely unchanged: EU Member States still see enlargement as a matter of national interest, bringing long-term economic and geopolitical benefits. The risk of instability in the Western Balkans has made the dividends from the EU's ‘democratizing effect’ especially substantial. I argue that the enlargement process continues to have a ‘democratizing effect,’ as Western Balkans candidates and proto-candidates respond to the incentives of EU membership: political parties have changed their agendas to make them EU-compatible, and governments have implemented policy changes to move forward in the pre-accession process. Yet the EU is taking on candidates with difficult initial conditions. I explore the changes the EU has made in order to exercise its leverage more effectively in the Western Balkans and check whether these helped overcome the pre-accession process' earlier problems with expertise, consistency and legitimacy.
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