Conditionality and Compliance in the EU's Eastward Enlargement: Regional Policy and the Reform of Sub‐national Government
James Hughes,
Gwendolyn Sasse and
Claire Gordon
Journal of Common Market Studies, 2004, vol. 42, issue 3, 523-551
Abstract:
Studies of EU conditionality assume one basic premise: that it exists and works because there is a power asymmetry which enables the Commission to impose the adoption of the acquis on the CEECs as a precondition of their entry to the Union. Thus this literature posits that there are clear causal relationships in the use of conditionality to ensure policy or institutional outcomes. Existing studies of enlargement conditionality analyse its correlation with macro‐level democratization and marketization. This article, however, takes a policy‐tracking approach to analyse how conditionality was actually put into operation in policy‐making and institution‐building in the fields of regional policy and regionalization in the CEECs. The research draws on interviews conducted with officials in the Commission and in CEEC delegations in Brussels to illustrate the views of key actors, and to examine the interactions between the Commission and the candidate countries. By studying the policy process, the article demonstrates the fluid nature of conditionality, the inconsistencies in its application by the Commission over time, and the weakness of a clear‐cut causal relationship between conditionality and outcome in this policy area. By charting the changes in the Commission's approach over time, and illustrating the diverse responses of the CEECs, this study confirms the need for a more nuanced approach to the concept of EU conditionality, and argues for a logic of differentiation in the study of its impact on the CEECs.
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9886.2004.00517.x
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:42:y:2004:i:3:p:523-551
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott
More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().