Pathologies of Europeanisation: Fighting Corruption in the Southern Caucasus

Abstract

In order to stabilise the post-Soviet region, the European Union seeks to transform the domestic structures of the Newly Independent States. In light of high adaptation costs, the lack of a membership perspective, and low levels of democracy, the prospects of Europeanisation appear to be limited. The Southern Caucasus belongs to the most corrupt countries in the world. While being least likely cases, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have responded to the EU's demands for good governance introducing formal institutional changes. Moreover, despite their differences in statehood, democracy, and power (a)symmetries with the EU, domestic institutional changes look very similar. This double puzzle is explained by differential empowerment. Instead of liberal reform coalitions, which are largely absent in the Southern Caucasus, the incumbent regimes have instrumentalised the EU, selectively implementing anti-corruption policies to gain and consolidate political power. As a result, the EU stabilises rather than transforms its neighbourhood.

Acknowledgements

We thank Liesbet Hooghe, Julia Langbein, Tatiana Skripka, Thomas Risse and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Research assistance of Esther Ademmer is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. The following draws on findings of the research project B2 ‘Gutes Regieren’ ohne den Schatten der Hierarchie? Korruptionsbekämpfung im südlichen Kaukasus im Rahmen der EU-Nachbarschaftspolitik, which was part of the Collaborative Research Center ‘Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood’, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (http://www.sfb-governance.de/teilprojekte/projekte_phase_1/projektbereich_b/b2/index.html). Besides the extensive analysis of primary EU and national documents, data for the empirical case studies on the three Southern Caucasus neighbourhood countries were collected during several extended field trips when extensive interviews were conducted with EU and domestic policy-makers, with representatives of civil society organisations and of companies, as well as with policy experts. For details see Börzel et al. (2008a, 2010a, b).

2. See ‘Azerbaijan: Ex-Minister's Trial Creates Political Sensation’, 5 March 2007, available at http://www.Eurasianet.org (accessed 30 September 2010).

3. BBC Worldwide Monitoring Service, Trans Caucasus Unit, 10 September 2008. The property of both ex-ministers was confiscated and auction in favour of the treasury in 2009.

4. World Data Bank: http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do (accessed 3 December 2010).

5. A comparison with Armenia, which is almost as dependent as Georgia on the EU and other external donors asking it to fight corruption but less democratic (see Ademmer and Börzel 2012) indicates that democracy is more important as a scope condition than power asymmetry.