Top Down Europeanization and Domestic Codification: EU Reform Pressures and Implementation Capacity in Kosovo’s Public Administration

In the EU’s enlargement policy, the ‘fundamentals first’ principle prioritizes progress in the rule of law, public administration reform, and economic governance before advancing to other areas of the acquis. This sequencing reflects the view that credible accession requires functioning democratic institutions, a professional and depoliticized civil service, and stable administrative structures capable of implementing EU law. Public administration reform, while not an acquis chapter, forms a core component of the EU’s ‘fundamentals first’. Accordingly, under EU reform conditionality, Kosovo has created a dense architecture of institutional and legal mechanisms for EU acquis approximation in the field of public administration reform. This includes inter-institutional coordination structures, mandatory EU compatibility checks in drafting, dedicated approximation documents and parliamentary screening procedures. However, despite this institutional codification of rules and procedures, a persistent gap remains between formal alignment and effective implementation. Using Europeanization as a guiding conceptual research framework and drawing on functionalist accounts of EU integration, the paper examines how ‘top down’ pressures associated with EU enlargement have led to the codification of new institutional rules and procedures for domestic policy making and legislative drafting, and what (un)intended effects this has had on implementation capacity. Empirically, the study focuses on a qualitative within-case analysis of Kosovo’s post Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) public administration reform framework. Through process tracing of one flagship reform area within public administration reform (PAR), such as civil service reform, the study reconstructs how EU requirements are translated into domestic legal provisions, organizational changes, and everyday administrative routines.The paper argues that functional pressures associated with EU conditionality have produced a form of ‘codified compliance’ that results in centralized coordination and agenda setting in the core decision-making while simultaneously increasing formal obligations that overload weak administrative structures. This in turn, generates a pattern of controlled dependence where Kosovo appears highly aligned with EU standards on paper, but implementation capacity and domestic room for maneuver are constrained in ways that are not fully captured by existing Europeanization accounts. The findings seek to refine Europeanization theory-building beyond EU borders by specifying the mechanisms through which conditionality in public administration creates both institutional adaptation and implementation barriers in Western Balkans states. Moreover, the paper also engages with ongoing policy debates about how to calibrate EU conditionality and support in line with administrative and implementation capacities.