DISSERTATION

 

The European Union’s Political Membership Conditionality: Myth or Reality?

 

  • Dissertation Abstract 
  • Chapter 1: Introduction: The State of Research on Conditionality 
  • Chapter 2: Theory and Data on EU Conditionality and Case Compliance
  • Chapter 3: Testing the Theory: Insights from the Turkish Case, 1993-1999
  • Chapter 4: Testing the Theory: Insights from the Turkish Case, 1999-2005
  • Chapter 5: Testing the Theory: Insights from the Romanian Case, 1993-2005
  • Chapter 6: Conclusion: Implications of the Argument   
  • Appendix: List of coded documents and news stories

 

 

PUBLICATION

 

Book Review

Ulrich Sedelmeier’s Constructing the Path to Eastern Enlargement: The Uneven Policy Impact of EU Identity, for Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35 (2), January-February 2007: 483-485.

 

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

 

Article Project

“Is Politics what’s behind European Union Membership Conditionality? Insights from Turkey and Romania”

 

Abstract Theoretical literature on the European Union (EU)’s political membership conditionality focuses more on conditionality’s democratizing impacts on EU applicants than conditionality itself. Seldom have researchers investigated whether the EU applies conditionality to consistently seek democratization prior to membership. To fill this gap, the paper studies conditionality vis-à-vis two cases, < xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" prefix="st1" namespace="">Turkey and Romania. I argue that true conditionality should signal exclusive linkage between EU demands for compliance with the formal democratization criterion and rewards in the accession process. Coding the EU’s conditionality signals for “exclusiveness of democratic linkage”, I find differential formal conditionality in the two cases. I conclude that the EU’s costs of “absorbing” Turkey and Romania trump concerns about democratization in determining the Union’s willingness to deploy political conditionality.