RESULTADOS GENERAL DE ENESA 2011

This chapter examined the main concepts used in this thesis, namely Europeanisation, conditionality and democratic consolidation, and outlined the theoretical framework that underpins the empirical analysis that follows. The objective of this chapter was to provide conceptual clarity and to ground the dissertation in existing research, while also demonstrating how the thesis advances existing findings through the questions it studies. It first examined Europeanisation as the framework for studying the impact of the EU on member states and candidate countries. The examination of Europeanisation foremost focused on the evolution of this concept from its inception with relevance to the member states to its extension to the candidate countries for membership. Looking into the variety of theoretical understandings of this phenomenon, the chapter singled out the instrument of conditionality as a defining feature of the Europeanisation of candidate countries, which is in the focus of this dissertation.

The next section of the chapter examined two approaches for the study of conditionality, through the external incentives model and by studying conditionality as a process over time for the purposes of grasping its changes, as well as formal and informal influences. It focused on the understanding of political

conditionality, specifically in relation to national minority policies. The analysis of conditionality unpacked the dominant external incentives model and its critiques for the purposes of analysing the impact of the EU on minority protection policies. By studying the outcome of conditionality, the external incentives model does not provide tools for further examination of EU’s interaction with the domestic political structure and its impact on the policies. The primary difficulty in this respect is that the external incentives model considers EU conditionality as an independent variable, thereby neglecting its politicised and constructed nature. In light of these difficulties of framing the analysis in this framework, the chapter examined the process based approach to conditionality which underscores its constructed nature and the need to analyse the construction and application of conditionality over time. Having in mind nature of the national minority policy area and the intention of this research to examine the operation of EU conditionality, the chapter uses this definition for the purposes of the study. This framework recommends examining the EU’s impact on minority politics by tracing the construction of the minority criterion in the EU and national political discourse, official and unofficial documents, in order to understand the EU’s role. Having determined the flexibility of these rules in the EU context, the research will focus on outlining how has conditionality developed and been implemented, as well as the similarities and differences between the two cases between 1997 and 2012. In this time period 2005 is considered as a breaking point of two periods studied separately.

Section three reflected on the implications of Europeanisation by conditionality for the democratic consolidation in the conditions of post- communism. It examined how the thesis approaches democratisation and democratic consolidation and the role of multiethnicity in these processes. In fact, the management of inter-ethnic relations was posed as an essential element of democratic consolidation. It also showed that academic literature considers the prospects for democracy building in multi-ethnic societies are bleak. On the other hand, the chapter uncovered the main debates over the accommodation of national minorities through the institutional setting and the lack of an EU consensus on this issue, thus outlining the complexity of setting criteria in this policy area. Overall, this section by recognising the significance of international actors, specifically the EU, in the management of domestic minority policies, underlines their position an integral actor in the democratic consolidation of the

societies examined, laying grounds for the last research question of the dissertation.

The fourth section examined the relationship between the processes of Europeanisation and democratic consolidation, by studying the findings of the literature on the Eastern enlargement and the specificity of the Western Balkans in general. While recognising the literature’s positive assessments of this relationship, the chapter has also shown the conditions under which conditionality can undermine the consolidation process. Specifically in the national minorities’ policy, the involvement of the EU in highly politicized issues can also lead to further inter-ethnic polarisation. In the Balkans, as outlined in the introduction and in this chapter the EU has obtained a much more interventionist role and thus the scope for influencing democratic consolidation is higher.

Building upon these findings, the thesis will extend the study of Europeanisation by conditionality in relation to national minority policies to the Western Balkans. Conceptually, due to the flexible nature of the minority criterion, conditionality is approached as a process and over time. In light of the findings of this chapter, the thesis fills both a conceptual and an empirical gap in academic literature. In relation to the former, it reflects on the study of Europeanisation by conditionality in the candidate countries and its relationship with democratic consolidation. More specifically, it illustrates the potentially divergent trends between the two phenomena by unpacking of the inconsistencies in the study of non-acquis conditionality. At the same time, it also demonstrates the integral role of domestic actors in the conditionality mechanism. Empirically, the thesis addresses a gap in the study of the Western Balkans, as a region with increased salience of the minority issue. In addition, as was shown in the analysis, the EU has been increasingly involved in this region by extending its political conditionality. The different contextual conditions and the extensive role of the EU create new circumstances for the study of Europeanisation by conditionality which are addressed in this thesis. The former are examined in the following chapter which provides a background on the national minority issue and relationship with the EU in both countries under examination, setting grounds for the empirical chapters that follow.

4. Macedonia and Croatia – the minority question and relationship with