Money, power, glory: the linkages between EU conditionality and state capture in the Western Balkans

Abstract

The Western Balkan countries are stuck in a hybrid status quo on their way to democracy. Traditional arguments related to cost-benefit calculations, national identity or conflicting objectives fail to explain the observed decoupling between gradual improvements in formal compliance with membership criteria and stagnating, if not declining, democratic performance. We explain the limited impact of the EU's political conditionality in the Western Balkans with rampant state capture and proceed to unpack how EU conditionality has effectively contributed to the consolidation of such detrimental governance patterns. First, EU pressure for simultaneous economic and political reforms opened opportunities for business actors to build powerful clientelist networks that reach into politics. Second, top-down conditionality has weakened political competition and mechanisms of internal accountability and deliberation. Finally, formal progress towards membership and high-level interactions with EU and member state officials legitimize corrupt elites. A congruence analysis of the Serbian case provides empirical evidence for the hypothesised linkages between EU conditionality and state capture.

Rule of law and democracy in the Western Balkans: addressing the gap between policies and practice

“…No doubt, this is area in which the doctrine of the separation of powers serves the ends of the rule of law, yet neither of the two principles alone are not able to answer the trends of state capture and the crisis of constitutionalism in which (non-) elected clientelistic elites are given the power to legislate, govern and impact on state institutions, including the judiciary. More precisely, most of the regimes in the WB, as a result of the high party discipline, strong control over the parliamentary majority, and legitimized corrupt elites (Richter and Wunsch 2019) have been able to create the legal basis for their contentious actions and practices. Accordingly, there is a common mantra under which every conduct and action, no matter how controversial, is at least formally in agreement with positive legal order.…”

“…Prominent explanations of the rule of law and democratization nexus in the WB are offered by the academic literature which observes that political elites rely on informal structures and clientelism and control of the media (Keil 2018), and even the regular manufacture of crises to undermine democracy and the rule of law (Kmezić and Bieber 2017). Similarly, by factoring informal domestic politics Richter and Wunsch (2019) have provided fresh evidence on how widespread state capture prevents governments in the region from pursuing effective democratic transformation.…”

The EU’s stability-democracy dilemma in the context of the problematic accession of the Western Balkan states

“…The timing of this latest setback for the EU's Western Balkan strategy is problematic from both a stability and democracy perspective. An increasing perception amongst the individual Western Balkan states is that the membership perspective offered to them by the EU back at the Thessaloniki Summit (and reiterated since) is less than credible (Richter and Wunsch 2020). At the time of the Thessaloniki Summit, the EU was undeniably the main player in the Western Balkans security complex, but in the years since Russia and China have increased their presence (Markovic-Khaze 2018).…”

“…Much of the literature on the shortcomings of the EU's promotion of democracy in the Western Balkans has centred on evaluating the 'ineffective' utilization of conditionality by the EU to induce democratic reform (Anastasakis 2008;Freyburg and Richter 2010;Bieber 2011;Richter and Wunsch 2020). However, an increasingly invoked argument is that the EU's biggest barrier to effective democracy promotion has been the dilemma between pursuing democracy or stability, and contradictions found in those two distinct approaches within the EU's various neighbourhood policies (Andrés Viñas 2009;Börzel and Lebanidze 2017;Kovačević 2018).…”

Trade liberalisation and opening in post-soviet limited access orders

“…The existing literature has so far dealt with negative effects of EU political conditionality and assistance in the areas of good governance, human rights protection and democracy. Researchers identified state capacity and domestic incentives for state capture as key intervening variables in that respect (see, for example, Börzel and Pamuk 2012;Shyrokykh 2017;Richter and Wunsch 2020). With our focus on the effects of EU trade liberalisation on economic and political opening, we add a new aspect to this debate.…”