The role of the EU in promoting good governance in Macedonia: towards efficiency and effectiveness or deliberative democracy?

Abstract

Good governance has been used as a development tool by international organizations and the European Union (hereinafter: EU) which has included it in cooperation agreements and promotes it within its Enlargement Policy. This paper analyzes the good governance approach in the EU's relations with Macedonia and its effects on the country's democratic policy making. The analysis shows that the Europeanization of Macedonia has an impact on the democratic processes in the country with sub-optimal results as its technocratic approach in assessing the country's readiness for EU membership has proved to be detrimental for the deliberative democratic processes. The intensive pressure for effectiveness and efficiency results in finding short cuts in rule transfer through copying and pasting legislation from member states and limiting the democratic policy making to political deliberation rather than to wide policy consultations between state and non-state actors.

Keywords:

• Europeanization
• good governance
• effectiveness
• efficiency
• deliberative decision making
• Macedonia

Notes

Also commonly known as the Badinter Arbitration Commission. The commission was set up by the Council of Ministers of the European Community on 27 August 1991 to provide the Conference on Yugoslavia with legal advice.

Fostered through the Thessaloniki process promoted in 2003.

Notably the enlargement fatigue after the accession of Bulgaria and Romania and the failure of the Constitutional treaty.

Where the 2005 EU candidate country status and the recognition of the constitutional name of the country by the United States of America did not help the Social Democrats to stay in power after the 2006 Parliamentary elections; the critics on the new government to provide policy dialogue; the intensified negotiations for resolution of the name issue with Greece; the blockage of the NATO accession which was followed by the early parliamentary elections in 2008.

Since the independence of Macedonia in 1991, Skopje and Athens have been locked in a dispute over the use of the name Macedonia. The constitutional name Republic of Macedonia was opposed by Greece to provoke ambiguity between the country and the adjacent Greek region of Macedonia. The dispute is under international mediation within the United Nations where the Republic of Macedonia entered into membership under the provisional reference the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after the two countries signed Interim Accord in 1995. Republic of Macedonia applied for membership in NATO and the EU under the provisional reference and is experiencing blockade from Greece, contrary to what the Interim Accord regulated. For this reason Republic of Macedonia instituted proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Greece in 2008. The ICJ ruling that “the Hellenic Republic, by objecting to the admission of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to NATO, has breached its obligation under Article 11, paragraph 1, of the Interim Accord of 13 September 1995” (Summary No.2011/6) was made on 5 December 2011.