THEORIES OF DEMOCRATIZATION: LOCATING EU CONDITIONALITY IN THE BIGGER THEORETICAL PICTURE

Abstract

One of the primary goals of the European Union’s membership conditionality is to promote stability and de-mocracy outside its immediate borders. Thus, being subjected to EU conditionality can be a factor affecting democratization processes in candidate countries. The article attempts to locate the study of EU-induced de-mocratization within the bigger theoretical picture of democratization studies. This article starts with a dis-cussion of different theories and approaches to the study of democratization, including the theory of norm diffusion (Risse, 1999) and the theory of linkage/leverage (Levitsky and Way, 2002). After indicating how the study of EU-induced democratization can be and has been approached within those theories, and the arti-cle proceeds with an outline and analysis of a rather new approach utilizing an External Incentives Model (Schimmelfennig, 2003), which stemmed from the growing body of free-standing research dedicated specifi-cally to the problem of Europeanization. Thus, the article demonstrates that the study of Europeanization of candidate countries not only invited the application of pre-existing theoretical frameworks from different subdisciplines but also produced a new theoretical framework dedicated specifically to the study of Europe-anization.