From External Incentives to Internal Political Will: Explaining Formal Convergence Between the Candidate Countries and the EU Acquis in the Area of Social Policy

What is the role of the government political will to explain the formal convergence between the candidate countries and the EU acquis? This paper juxtaposes government political will operationalized as ideological orientation with external incentives model to account for the formal convergence in the area of social policy in seven candidate countries. To this end, the paper uses mixed methods design. It relies on a novel dataset measuring an annual degree of legal harmonization of Albania, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine between their signing of the association agreements and 2024. Furthermore, the paper present qualitative insights from in-depth interviews from Georgia and North Macedonia. Using panel regression models, the paper explores the effect of left-right ideological position of the ruling party of the leading coalition partner and credibility of external incentives operationalized as different milestones of integration (i.e., signing the SAA/AA, applying for membership, granting candidate status, and opening accession negotiations). Quantitative analysis shows that both variables are significant predictors of formal convergence laying ground for qualitative analysis into how exactly ideologies of ruling parties and personal views of single politicians can impact the outcome of reforms. As a result, the paper argues that external incentives are not the sole driver of convergence and their impact is limited by domestic political processes and institutional constraints.