EU-Turkey Pre-Accession Policy and Its Impact on Democracy and State Quality

Abstract

An important question raised by many political scientists is the impact of the EU enlargement policy on the democracy and state quality of candidate countries. It concerns not only the previous enlargement rounds (first of all the Southern and later the Eastern enlargement), but also the current process. The present determinants such as enlargement fatigue and more cautious EU enlargement strategy allow for a hypothesis that the aforementioned impact is changing. This article analyses the case of Turkey. Assuming a new institutional approach, the author intends to answer the question how the institutional framework changes of the EU enlargement policy (the principles of the enlargement strategy as well as formal and informal rules and mechanisms), particularly the EU-Turkey pre-accession policy influence the consolidation of the Turkish democracy as well as the redefinition of state model and state-citizens relations. Another question is also worth analysing: Will the negative developments (e.g., deficits of the principle of conditionality or politicization of the enlargement process) stop definitely the changes in Turkey driven by the pre-accession process - that is, the transformation of hegemonic nature of the state to build more liberal-democratic and citizen oriented regime? It is argued that there are other factors which will enable the development of these processes even if the EU enlargement policy loses its effectiveness. However, in this case the result of the consolidation of the Turkish democracy is far more uncertain.