The European Union and Consolidating Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Since the integration process commenced, there has been debate over whether the countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen a surge or decline in democracy after signing accession treaties to join the European Union (EU). Drawing upon a sample of 24 Central and Eastern European countries, I test whether EU candidates and members have experienced an increase in levels of democracy since the onset of accession, as opposed to their non-EU neighbours. I also test the effects of EU candidacy and membership on state-level civil liberties and political rights. These analyses are conducted while controlling for relevant factors: gross domestic product per capita, trade openness and type of democratic — parliamentary versus presidential — system. All countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have complete and comparable data available are included in the empirical analysis. In conclusion, I find that there is a positive and significant relationship between integration and civil liberties.

Keywords:

• European Union
• accession
• enlargement
• democracy
• Central and Eastern Europe

Acknowledgement

I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Gregg B. Johnson, Harvey Palmer, Jason Sorens, Tim Boylan and the participants of the University at Buffalo Graduate Workshop in the Department of Political Science.

Notes

1. In this paper, democracy is operationalized based on Polity IV’s ‘polity’ score, which is comprised of three main components of democracy: executive constraints, civil liberties and political rights.The terms, civil liberties and political rights, refer to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index.

2. Dahl (1971, 3) proposes eight institutional guarantees that are necessary conditions for democracy:1. Freedom to form and join organizations;2. Freedom of expression;3. Right to vote;4. Eligibility for public office;5. Right of political leaders to compete for support and for votes;6. Alternative sources of information;7. Free and fair elections; and8. Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference.

3. Ellison (2008) argues that Hungary, in particular, underwent a period of political decentralization in the 1990s, only to recentralize in 1996 with the introduction of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) II administrative units (a category used by Eurostat, which includes Hungary, in addition to other CEECs and EU members). The NUTS II administration units were set up to manage EU pre-accession and structural and cohesion funds. This process of recentralization also contributed to the passage of legislation without undergoing parliamentary procedure.

4. The first criterion for membership laid down by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 (The European Union 2007) states that acceding countries must practise ‘the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities’.

5. A country is considered an accession state if it has signed an Accession Treaty. The eight CEECs that joined in 2004 signed their Accession Treaties in 1998 (it was later updated in 1999). Romania and Bulgaria signed their Accession Treaties in 2005.

6. All countries that had complete and comparable data were used in the analysis. Countries excluded, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, did not have complete data available and were dropped from the models.

7. All CEE countries that had data available were included in the dataset to avoid selection on the dependent variable. Non-regionally integrated countries and integrated countries were also included in the dataset. Regional integration is an ideal independent variable to explain the causality of democracy because membership in a regional institution provides political stability. Rome, Italy.