What factors affect the relationship between the EU and accession candidate states? How to explain the "double bluff" of European enlargement, where candidate states are pretending to reform and the EU is pretending to be open to further enlargement? These questions continue to be a puzzling subject of scholarly debate. A set of hypotheses can be drawn by the literature on Europeanization and compliance. Broadly speaking, these hypotheses fall into two general categories: internal and external factors. We will examine certain factors presumed to be relevant for the dynamics of European enlargement such as the favourable public support, the political and economic transformation in candidate states, the existence of conflicts, and the EU's internal crisis management. For that reason, we will elaborate on the idea of different paths of European enlargement adopting a qualitative comparative perspective. More specifically, our study will apply fsQCA on the Western Balkan (potential) candidate states.
