The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the quality of governance in Southern European states in the post EU integration era. To assess government performance I use measures of political freedom, human rights violations, government intervention, rule of law, and size of government. I also analyze the areas in which governance imporved most compared to others after the state joined the EU. This is a large-N analysis though I will also focus on 2-3 qualitative case studies and offer an in-depth look at those.
