Gwendolyn Sasse

Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU’s Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe

Introduction The Logic of Enlargement Conditionality and Europeanization Communist Legacies and Regionalization The Commission, Conditionality and Regional Policy Monitoring Conditionality and Compliance Transition, Enlargement and Regionalization: A Comparison of Hungary and Poland Elites and the Capacity for Europeanization Conclusion Bibliography Statistical Appendix

The European Neighbourhood Policy: Conditionality Revisited for the EU's Eastern Neighbours

Abstract The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is modelled on the institutional and procedural experience of the EUs eastward enlargement, although it explicitly excludes a membership perspective. It thus aims to define an alternative incentive for domestic reform in neighbouring countries, referred to as ‘a stake in the internal market’. This article suggests that the ENP amounts to a form of ‘conditionality-lite’ for non-candidate countries. Within the ENP the key defining elements of conditionality—clear incentive and enforcement structures—are vague for both the EU and its neighbouring countries. Thus, the ENP is conceptually and empirically weak when measured against a simple, rationalist conditionality model. In line with the alternative understanding of conditionality as a process rather than a clear-cut variable, the main function of the ENP is twofold: it provides an external reference point which domestic political actors in the ENP countries can choose to utilise when it fits their agenda (both pro-EU or anti-EU); and a loose framework for socialisation. This process of socialisation involves both the EU and the ENP countries. Through an analysis of the ENP process in Ukraine and Moldova it concludes that while the ENP tries to prevent a repeat of the EUs ‘rhetorical entrapment’ in further eastward enlargement, it paradoxically paves the way for a ‘procedural entrapment’ in ENP countries that harbour membership aspirations and provides a momentum, though not a guarantee, for conflict resolution.

The politics of EU conditionality: the norm of minority protection during and beyond EU accession

The norm of minority protection is often singled out as a prime example of the political impact of European Union (EU) conditionality on the ethnically diverse states of Central and Eastern Europe. The EUs ‘minority condition’ is best understood as a political and social construct rooted in European security concerns. As such, it has had very ‘real’ effects, both intended and unintended, and direct and indirect. This article extends the study of EU conditionality by including the post-accession period, and by concentrating on the politics surrounding conditionality. As the cases of Latvia and Estonia demonstrate, high-intensity EU involvement during the accession process did generate a rationalist momentum for legislative change, and formal compliance gave rise to a perception of behavioural change. However, socialization effects can point in the opposite direction of the rationalist momentum that informs formal legal change and thereby ‘lock in’ deeper structural problems and contradictory behavioural trends.

A Research Agenda for the Study of Migrants and Minorities in Europe

I. Definitions and Policy RelevanceMigration and minority policy issues are now at the forefront of the political debate in Europe. Both issues denote a dynamic and rapidly changing set of sensitive political, economic and social questions that affect domestic and international policy-making. They have developed a distinctly European and EU dimension, and the parallel processes of EU constitution-making and enlargement have underscored the relevance of these issue areas. The current political context in Europe – between the first and second round of the EU’s eastward enlargement and at a time when the whole notion of an EU constitu-tion and future enlargement (in particular in the case of Turkey) have been called into question by the French and Dutch rejections of the Constitutional Treaty – makes discussion about minority and migration issues particularly relevant. This special issue places these issues in a set of research trends and tries to define a new research agenda.The terms ‘migrant’ and ‘minority’ share an underlying definitional impreci-sion that blurs the respective fields of study and policy-making as well as the linkages between the two. Moreover, some countries (e.g. the UK) explicitly refer to migrants as ‘ethnic minorities’, thereby adding to the confusion. This special issue adopts sufficiently broad definitions of ‘migrants’ and ‘minori-ties’ to facilitate dialogue beyond narrow specialized circles without, however, glossing over meaningful distinctions. Thus, the term ‘ethnic minorities’ can subsume a range of migrant groups, while the term ‘national minority’ is reserved for established minorities claiming minority rights (e.g. forms of

Saying `Maybe' to the `Return to Europe' Elites and the Political Space for Euroscepticism in Central and Eastern Europe

A major challenge for EU enlargement is how to communicate the benefits of membership to electorates. Given the weak penetration of party systems in the Central and East European countries, subnational elites have an important role in shaping voter preferences. Attitudes among subnational elites to EU enlargement are examined in three leading candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe: Hungary, Slovenia, and Estonia. The results are based on large-scale elite interviews conducted in 1999-2000 in key regional cities. The research demonstrates that subnational elites are disengaged not only structurally from the European integration project, since the negotiations involve the Commission and national governments, but also in their opinions. The subnational elites tend to view EU membership as a national issue and irrelevant for their level, and are poorly informed about EU activities that benefit them. The article suggests that this disengagement of subnational elites constitutes a space for the mobilization of Euroscepticism from below.

Linkages and the promotion of democracy: the EU's eastern neighbourhood

The EUs eastern neighbourhood with its considerable divergence in regime types is a more challenging testing ground for democracy promotion than Central and Eastern Europe. This article explores the diversity of the international linkages in the eastern neighbours (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and the role these linkages play in domestic politics. International linkages are filtered and activated by domestic politics. If diverse linkages reinforce domestic political competition, they can contribute to the creation of democratic openings. Conversely, in the absence of domestic political competition, international linkages can insulate a regime from internal pressures for reform, in particular if the linkages are deep and undiversified. This article focuses on one causal mechanism, namely stateness issues acting as a filter for international linkages.

The 'New' Ukraine: A State of Regions

The Ukrainian state that emerged from the Soviet Union in 1991 is a historical novelty. While Ukraine’s current borders go back to 1954, the year of Crimea’s transfer from the RFSFR to the Ukrainian SSR, an independent political entity had never existed within these territorial boundaries prior to 1991. ‘Ukraina’ translates as ‘borderland’ and encapsulates a key feature of modern Ukraine: its history as a space between the Habsburg, Russian, Ottoman and Soviet empires. Ukrainian nation-building is ‘an undertaking to transform the peripheries of several nations...into a sovereign entity able to communicate directly with the larger world’ (Szporluk, 1997: 86). Internationally, this historical development links Ukraine to Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Black Sea region. All four empires left their cultural mark on Ukraine, and the Soviet period, in particular, accounts for a complex institutional and socio-economic legacy. Domestically, the disparities between the different territorial components – their ethnic, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic cleavages, historical memories and different political and foreign policy orientations – make Ukraine’s single most important characteristic its construction as a state of regions. This emphasis on regional differences neither calls Ukraine’s territorial integrity into question nor does it preclude the prospect of successful post-Soviet transition and stateand nationbuilding. It simply highlights the fact that the regional factor was bound to shape Ukraine’s post-Soviet political and economic development. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse the potential for conflict in Ukraine hinged on questions about the feasibility of an independent Ukraine and its territorial integrity. Ukraine’s possible disintegration along an east–west territorial divide appeared to be the predominant internal challenge. Russia’s hesitant recognition of independent Ukraine and Ukraine’s economic dependence on Russia led Western academics and policy-makers to focus on the potential for instability in Ukraine (Rumer, 1994; Larrabee, 1994). The east–west divide figured prominently in Western accounts of post-Soviet Ukraine and was often tied to speculations about a break-up of Ukraine and its security implications for Europe (Holdar, 1995). Additionally, Crimea emerged as a potential violent flashpoint. Comparisons with the wars in former Yugoslavia were

Comparing Regional and Ethnic Conflicts in Post-Soviet Transition States

The rapid retreat of communism from Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s was closely chased by an upsurge of violent upheavals that are almost universally referred to as ‘ethnic’ or ‘nationalist’ conflicts. One of the most common observations on the conflicts that arose from the collapse of communism is that they are an echo of earlier struggles. This view is shared across the spectrum of thinkers on nationalism, from Modernists to Marxists, and to those who favour a primordialist account of the origins of nationalism. For a Modernist liberal like Ernest Gellner Soviet communism was an ‘intervening’ force that ‘defeated’ nationalism so long as it captured and controlled the state. In this sense, communism had been a deep freeze for nationalism, and its demise had thawed conflicts whose outcome, even within his own schema, was difficult to predict (Gellner, 1997: 86). Similarly, the Modernist Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, argued that ‘fear and coercion kept the USSR together’ and helped to prevent ethnic and communal tensions from degenerating into mutual violence. The nationalist disintegration of the USSR, according to Hobsbawm, was more a ‘consequence’ of the breakdown of the regime in Moscow than a ‘cause’ of it (Hobsbawm, 1990: 168). Primordialistinspired understandings of conflicts are generally the provenance of parties to the conflict, though the crude stereotyping of ‘ancient hatreds’ is often widely disseminated by policy-makers and journalists interested in the promotion of specific global or regional security frameworks. We do not propose to challenge the notion that many potential nationalist, ethnic and regional conflicts in the Former Soviet Union were kept dormant under communism. As Ian Lustick has demonstrated, suppression or control is a remarkably effective means of conflict regulation in deeply divided societies (Lustick, 1979 and 1993). Furthermore, the control regime of the USSR cynically manipulated nationalisms by the use of quasi-federal institutional devices, in particular the theoretical right of union republics to secession and pseudo-cultural rights. This helped not only to secure internal stability, but also to project an external image of the Soviet Union as a model of a multinational state for anti-colonial movements in the Third World. The hollow Soviet claim to be the ‘sentinel for self-determination’, as Walker Connor phrased it,

The Maidan in Movement: Diversity and the Cycles of Protest

Abstract The Maidan protests provide us with insights into Ukrainian society and the dynamics of mobilisation more generally. Based on the EuroMaidan Protest Participant Survey, on-site rapid interviews with protesters, interviews with politicians, activists and journalists, and focus groups with ordinary citizens and activists, this essay maps the actors, claims and frames of each phase in the protest cycle. It highlights the diversity of actors and the inability of activists and party leaders to coordinate as the central features of the protests. Our analysis reveals the fluid and contingent nature of cleavages commonly portrayed as fixed and politically salient.

The Role of Regionalism

Abstract: Although Ukraine’s regional divisions are often thought to be detrimental to state-building and democratization, they have in fact been a source of strength and helped to prevent tilts to the political extremes.