The EU and Member State Building

European Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans

Soeren Keil editor Zeynep Arkan editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:3rd Dec '14

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The EU and Member State Building cover

This book critically examines the process of statebuilding by the EU, focusing on its attempts to build Member States in the Western Balkan region.

This book analyses the European Union's policies towards, and the impact they have, upon the states of the Western Balkans, and assesses how these affect the nature of EU foreign policy. To this end, it focuses on the tools and mechanisms that the EU employs in its enlargement policy and examines the new instruments of direct intervention (in Bosnia and Kosovo), political coercion (in the case of Croatia and Serbia in relation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), and stricter conditionality in the Western Balkan countries.

The book discusses the key aim of this special form of statebuilding, which is to establish functional liberal-democratic states in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia in order for them to join the EU and to cope with the responsibilities and pressures of membership in the future. However, the authors argue that while the EU sees itself as an international actor that promotes and protects liberal-democratic values, norms and principles, its experiences in the Western Balkans demonstrate how the EU´s actions in the region have undermined the basic principles of democratic decision-making (such as the European support for impositions in Bosnia) and international law (Kosovo), and have consequently contributed to new tensions (see police reform in Bosnia, and the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia) and dependencies.

This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, EU politics, global governance and IR/Security Studies in general.

‘This volume seeks explain why the EU has been able to transform, even strengthen, the states in the Western Balkans. The EU does so through state building, yet it faces local resistance. Contributions by leading experts of the region explain the specifics on the ground and help to explain the difficult path these countries face from the demise of Yugoslavia to possibly joining the European Union. This volume brings to the fore the weakness in the EU external policy approach of reaching out to the political elites in the countries of the Western Balkans without giving a clear signal – a policy that clearly has had at best mixed results in the region. This path-breaking book is a must read for anyone with an interest in the developments in South Eastern Europe.’ – Amy Verdun, University of Victoria, Canada

ISBN: 9780415855181

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 498g

264 pages