Environmental Network Governance in Southeastern Europe: Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs in the Shadow of the EU

Abstract

This article examines how norm entrepreneurs achieved their environmental policy goals in Southeastern Europe under conditions hostile to the emergence of network modes of governance. Empirical data suggest definite causes and preconditions for their success, in the teeth of a steeply hierarchical State that strongly preferred economic development at all costs. Conditions in Romania before accession to the European Union (EU) resembled those in the contemporary Western Balkans, raising the expectation that developments there may follow a similar pattern. If so, then EU accession conditionality, which transitionally and informally subordinates the governments of accession candidates to the European Commission, should likewise facilitate the mobilisation of transnational governance networks to challenge these governments to respect environmental values. Within this brief window of opportunity, entrepreneurs have been able to prevail even when their only ‘weapons’ were strategic discourses deployed in the shadow of the EU.