Why has the EU's promotion of Rule of Law (RoL) triggered different and largely surface-thin reforms across countries subject to a similar frame of enlargement in the Western Balkans (WB)? We hypothesize that the domestic (non)enforcement of EU promoted rules depends on the mobilization of politically autonomous constituencies of changeorganized advocacy groups and autonomous state institutionswhich amount domestic accountability. The empirical investigation focuses on the prosecution of political corruption as empirical foci to assessing the travails of EU-promoted rules in the domestic context. Specifically, we trace the role of (1) EU's RoL promotion strategy, (2) political resistance and (3) domestic accountability in explaining different records of prosecution of political corruption in Albania and Croatia.

No abstract

During the course of approximately one year - from early 2015 until March 2016 - over 800,000 people crossed four countries on the Western Balkan route: Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. These countries' ability to organize the refugees' transit in an orderly manner was described as a humanitarian approach. Due to the transit nature of the passage of the refugees, the crisis could have been seen as having little impact on the countries beyond technical issues like registration, accommodation and transportation. This article, however, looks at what happened on the ground as the crisis was developing and in the year following the closure of the refugee route. It claims that the securitization of migration took place as a consequence of the refugee crisis. However, the securitization of migration in the Balkans has certain specifics. What kind of security discourse developed, and which policy measures were adopted? These aspects are analyzed in this article.

Why has the EU's promotion of Rule of Law (RoL) triggered different and largely surface-thin reforms across countries subject to a similar frame of enlargement in the Western Balkans (WB)? We hypothesize that the domestic (non)enforcement of EU promoted rules depends on the mobilization of politically autonomous constituencies of changeorganized advocacy groups and autonomous state institutionswhich amount domestic accountability. The empirical investigation focuses on the prosecution of political corruption as empirical foci to assessing the travails of EU-promoted rules in the domestic context. Specifically, we trace the role of (1) EU's RoL promotion strategy, (2) political resistance and (3) domestic accountability in explaining different records of prosecution of political corruption in Albania and Croatia.

No abstract