Product Description

Europe Undivided analyzes how an enlarging EU has facilitated a convergence toward liberal democracy among credible future members of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe. It reveals how variations in domestic competition put democratizing states on different political trajectories after 1989, and how the EU's leverage eventually influenced domestic politics in liberal and particularly illiberal democracies. In doing so, Europe Undivided illuminates the changing dynamics of the relationship between the EU and candidate states from 1989 to 2004, and challenges policymakers to manage and improve EU leverage to support democracy, ethnic tolerance, and economic reform in other candidates and proto-candidates such as the Western Balkan states, Turkey, and Ukraine. Albeit not by design, the most powerful and successful tool of EU foreign policy has turned out to be EU enlargement - and this book helps us understand why, and how, it works.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #649755 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 354 pages

Robert O. Keohane, Professor of International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School
"Europe Undivided is an exemplary work of the new comparative-international politics. It is a subtle and substantial analysis of how asymmetric interdependence and meritocratic European Union membership criteria combined to enhance the influence of the EU on domestic political reforms in Eastern Europe."

Review
Europe Undivided is an exemplary work of the new comparative-international politics. It is a subtle and substantial analysis of how asymmetric interdependence and meritocratic European Union membership criteria combined to enhance the influence of the EU on domestic political reforms in Eastern Europe. (Robert O. Keohane, Professor of International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School )

In this important study, Vachudova develops an original and compelling analysis of how variations in domestic competition and changes in EU leverage combined to shape postcommunist political and economic pathways in East Central Europe. (Valerie Bunce, Professor and Chair of Government, Aaron Binenkorb Chair of International Studies, Cornell University )

A scrupulous, clearly organized, and highly informative analysis of one of the great success stories of our time. Vachudova combines the methods of comparative politics and international relations to explore the very direct connections between political change in Central and Eastern Europe and the influence of the European Union over the fifteen years from the velvet revolutions of 1989 to the eastward enlargement of the EU in 2004. (Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University )

Customer Reviews

Explaining EU Enlargement - past, present and future
I had to read one chapter of this book for a university class, but found myself unable to stop there. It provides an excellent review of the EU's conditionality and the effects this has had on the democratic consolidation of new Member States. The author's precision insight into the political situation of these countries took me by surprise. Moreover, she is able to bring across the complex EU bureaucracy in succint and understandable terms. This is quite an achievement in just one book. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding the complexity and possible outcome of the EU enlargement.