Fast-Track EU Conditionality and the Democracy-State Nexus: Exploring Croatia and Serbia

My paper would contribute to the purposes of the workshop by illuminating the historical interplay of democratization and state-building in the Western Balkans, notably in Croatia and Serbia. The EU’s enlargement policy in the Western Balkans has focused on fast, elite-driven changes towards liberal democratic political institutions and a market economy, as represented by the Union itself, notably its “old” member states. The countries of the region, the objects of this EU-policy, can be defined as ”young democracies” and more or less “young states”, with the heavy burden of a conflictual past and without strong historical experiences of “liberal democracy” or “stable institutions” – the values and properties of regime and government that the EU is calling for in its political membership conditions. However, V-Dem, WGI, BTI, and other relevant indices show how in the two “top” countries of the region, EU-member Croatia and candidate Serbia, the level of “liberal democracy” has, year by year, showed serious weakening during the 2010s, which means almost a U-turn – for “political stability” or “stateness” these indices show, in turn, stable or even slightly positive trend. Therefore, more critically oriented studies are also needed for the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of conditioned democratization and its consequences on state building. My workshop paper seeks to assess the role of the method applied in democratization – in this case conditioning the targets to “fast-track” liberal democracy – in explaining the historical dynamic between regime change and state consolidation in Croatia and Serbia. It does this by means of comparative empirical analysis based on relevant democracy/state indices, research literature, political speeches and reports, historical event data etc., and it evaluates what consequences EU conditionality has had in these two countries between 1990 and 2018.