Aim of the conference
In light of multiple challenges posed by future enlargements, it seems necessary to review the impact of the EU’s democracy promotion and to understand which lessons can be learned when the EU’s conditionality is put to the test. Which lessons can we draw from the troubled contexts of the democracies in Eastern Europe and the EU’s use of conditionality in strengthening judicial reform and fighting corruption?
A completed ‘big-bang’ enlargement in 2004 with 8 Central and Eastern European countries and Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 offers a reasonable timetable and data to analyze divergent patterns and domestic responses to the EU’s conditionality. Further, important lessons of the CEE’s experience with EU conditionality can be drawn for Western Balkans and Turkey. We aim to analyze domestic reactions to EU’s benchmarks and how political elites choose to (not-) comply with external mechanisms of pressure. At the center of the debates we put the search for causal mechanisms in the interplay between external, domestic elites and domestic pecularities.
To approach the complex interaction between the EU’s strategies to foster reform, institutional as well as behavioral change, and finally domestic reactions, we invite PhD researchers and experts to the conference, who will present their research and experience from various interdisciplinary perspectives (in particular from a political science, legal and economical perspective).
Following main theoretical and empirical research areas shall be adressed:
1. Theoretical concepts and pitfalls of EU’s democracy promotion and compliance in Eastern Europe, Western Balkans and Turkey
- Conceptual and methodological refinements of external democracy promotion
2. Judicial and anti-coruption reforms in reluctant contexts
- Defining troubled contexts: the political, legal and cultural contexts of the CEE, Western Balkans and Turkey
- Constituents of judicial and anti-corruption reforms
- Measuring compliance
- Effects of non-compliance
3. Political and institutional actors involved in domestic reforms Power elites
- The Role of Constitutional Courts
- The Role of Judicial Councils
- Anti-corruption institutions
4. The EU’s strategy to strengthen judicial and anti-corruption reform in Eastern Europe, Western Balkans and Turkey
- Assessing pre- and post- accession political conditionality
- Mechanisms and strategies of political conditionality
- Learning by doing? EU’s strategies under review
5. Domestic compliance to severe political conditionality
- Adoption versus implementation: institutional building, maintaining and disrupting
- Unintended consequences
- Domestic strategies of derailing compliance
6 Lessons learned
- Tailor-made approaches versus ‘one size fits all’
Conference details
Target group: Researchers (PhD candidates, Post-docs), policy makers and practioners
Costs: Due to the generous funding of the International Graduate Academy (University of Freiburg) we are able to cover all the accomodation and lodging costs. We offer several travel grants based on a letter of motivation.
Conference venue: Studienhaus Wiesneck of the Institute for Political Education of Baden- Württemberg (http://www.wiesneck.de)
Submission deadline: Abstracts must be received electronically by the chair committee* by 25June 2012.
Notification: 30 June 2012
Applications: The recommended length for abstracts is 500 words. They must be drafted in English and must connect an empirical question with a theoretical approach and concept in order to be accepted. Comparative approaches (across countries and across time) are encouraged. Applications for participation should include a short CV (1 page).