The EU and Southeastern Europe: the rise of post-liberal governance

Abstract

This article suggests that EU governance in Southeastern Europe reproduces a discourse in which the failures and problems which have emerged, especially in relation to the pace of integration and the sustainability of peace in candidate member states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, have merely reinforced the EU's external governance agenda. On the one hand, the limitations of reform have reinforced the EU's projection of its power as a civilising mission into what is perceived to be a dangerous vacuum in the region. On the other hand, through the discourse of post-liberal governance, the EU seeks to avoid the direct political responsibilities associated with this power. Rather than legitimise policy making on the basis of representative legitimacy, post-liberal frameworks of governance problematise autonomy and self-government, inverting the liberal paradigm through establishing administrative and regulatory frameworks as prior to democratic choices. This process tends to distance policy making from representative accountability, weakening the legitimacy of governing institutions in Southeastern European states which have international legal sovereignty but lack genuine mechanisms for politically integrating society.

Notes

1 This article focuses on the pre-accession states, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

2 For example, see the UK Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague's view of the need to extend the EU's ‘strong outside pressure’ to overcome the political blockages to reform in Bosnia, in N Morris, ‘Bosnia is back on the brink of ethnic conflict, warns Hague: Shadow Foreign Secretary fears “Europe's black hole” is slowly falling apart again’, Independent, 12 August 2009, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnia-is-back-on-the-brink-of-ethnic-conflict-warns-hague-1770638.html, accessed 18 September 2009.

3 See D Chandler, International Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance, London: Routledge, 2010.

4 European Commission, European Governance: A White Paper, Brussels, 25 July 2001, at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2001/com2001_0428en01.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009. For a development of the policy discourse of governance, see, for example, the seminal World Bank papers highlighting the shift towards institutionalist approaches: Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth: A Long-Term Perspective Study, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1989; Governance and Development, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1992; The State in a Changing World: World Development Report 1997, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; and Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

5 A Ghani & C Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

6 See, for example, F Trauner, ‘From membership conditionality to policy conditionality: EU external governance in South Eastern Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(5), 2009, pp 774–790; H Grabbe, The EU's Transformative Power: Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006; and M Leonard, Why Europe will Run the 21st Century, London: HarperCollins, 2005.

7 See, for example, I Manners, ‘Normative power Europe: a contradiction in terms?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(2), 2002, pp 235–258; H Sjursen (ed), ‘Special Issue: What Kind of Power? European Foreign Policy in Perspective’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13(6); and R Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, London: Atlantic Books, 2003.

8 International Commission on the Balkans, The Balkans in Europe's Future, 2005, p 11, at http://www.cls-sofia.org/en/books/the-balkans-in-europe-s-future-28.html, accessed 18 September 2009.

9 See Michel Foucault's discussion of the development of institutionalist approaches in the critique of liberal assumptions of the autonomous subject in inter-war Germany, especially the links between the Frankfurt school of critical theory and the Freiburg school of ordo-liberalism, both heavily influenced by the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. M Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p 120.

10 For institutionalist approaches the problem is not the economic and social relations per se but the formal and informal institutions of the societies concerned, which are held to prevent or block the market from working optimally. See the theoretical framing developed in DC North and RP Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973; DC North, Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: Norton, 1981; and North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

11 European Commission, Regional Strategy Paper 2002–2006: CARDS Assistance Programme to the Western Balkans, 2001, p 11, at http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2001/ec_balkans_22oct.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009.

12 Ibid. See also H Storey, ‘Human rights and the new Europe: experience and experiment’, Political Studies, 43, 1995, pp 131–151.

13 EastWest Institute and European Stability Initiative, ‘Democracy, security and the future of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe: a framework for debate’, 2001, p 18, at http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_15.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009.

14 Ibid, p 18.

15 The EU's process of governance regulation of Southeastern Europe has involved close integration with a large number of non-EU actors, such as the OSCE, UN agencies and the international financial institutions, and a variety of informal and ad hoc institutional experiments, with leading examples being the Contact Group, the EU-led Stability Pact, the Peace Implementation Council (for Bosnia) and the International Steering Group (for Kosovo).

16 See, North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, pp 93–94.

17 C Whitlock, ‘Old troubles threaten again in Bosnia: 14 years after war, leaders suggest US should step in to rewrite treaty’, Washington Post, 23 August 2009, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/08/22/ST2009082202479.html?sid=ST2009082202479, accessed 18 September 2009.

18 European Commission, Regional Strategy Paper 2002–2006, pp 10–11.

19 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process for South East Europe: First Annual Report, COM(2002)163 final, 4 April 2002, p 8, at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2002:0163:FIN:EN:PDF, accessed 18 September 2009.

20 A Cerkez-Robinson, ‘Bosnia's ethnic divisions are evident in schools’, Associated Press, 22 August 2009, at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jtMzf4gX7WCrEY0Zz7aMNZV7uP3gD9A82CJG0, accessed 18 September 2009.

21 Ibid.

22 European Commission, Regional Strategy Paper 2002–2006, p 9, emphasis added.

23 R Keohane, ‘The ironies of sovereignty: the European Union and the United States’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(4), 2002, pp 743–765; S Krasner, ‘The case for shared sovereignty’, Journal of Democracy, 16(1), 2005, pp 69–83; and Ghani & Lockhart, Fixing Failed States.

24 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process and CARDS Assistance 2000 to 2006, European Commission Paper for the Second Regional Conference for South East Europe, 2001, p 3, at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/archives/seerecon/region/documents/ec/ec_sap_cards_2000–2006.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009.

25 European Commission, Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA), at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/how-does-it-work/financial-assistance/instrument-pre-accession_en.htm, accessed 18 September 2009.

26 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process and CARDS Assistance 2000 to 2006, p 3.

27 See, for example, European Commission, Kosovo (under USCR 1244) 2005 Progress Report, SEC(2005)1423, 9 November 2005, at http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_2005/pdf/package/sec_1423_final_en_progress_report_ks.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009.

28 European Union, Review of the Stabilisation and Association Process, European Union General Affairs Council Report, 11 June 2001, No 9765/01, at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/09765.en1.html, accessed 18 September 2009.

29 Ibid, IIIc, emphasis added.

30 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process and CARDS Assistance 2000 to 2006, p 7, emphasis in the original.

31 Ibid, emphasis in the original.

32 Ibid, p 8

33 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process for South East Europe, p 4.

34 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process and CARDS Assistance 2000 to 2006, p 3.

35 European Union, Review of the Stabilisation and Association Process, III.

36 European Commission, Regional Strategy Paper 2002–2006, p 24.

37 Ibid, p 25.

38 European Commission, The Stabilisation and Association Process and CARDS Assistance 2000 to 2006, p 3.

39 Ibid.

40 European Commission, Regional Strategy Paper 2002–2006, p 37.

41 Ibid, p 38.

42 C Bickerton, ‘Rebuilding states, deconstructing statebuilding’, paper presented at the SAID Workshop, University of Oxford, 28 April 2005, at http://www.said-workshop.org/Bickerton.paper.doc, accessed 18 September 2009. See also J Heartfield, ‘European Union: a process without a subject’, in CJ Bickerton, P Cunliffe & A Gourevitch (eds), Politics without Sovereignty: A Critique of Contemporary International Relations, London: UCL Press, 2007, pp 131–149; and H Grabbe, ‘Europeanisation goes east: power and uncertainty in the EU accession process’, in K Featherstone & CM Radelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

43 See, for example, W van Meurs & S Weiss, Qualifying (for) Sovereignty: Kosovo's Post-status Status and the Status of EU Conditionality, Discussion Paper, 6 December 2005, Guetersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2005; and D Chandler (ed), Peace without Politics? Ten Years of International Statebuilding in Bosnia, London: Routledge, 2006.

44 ‘Little chance of Bosnia joining EU by 2014’, B92, 22 August 2009, at http://www.b92.net/eng/news/region-article.php?yyyy=2009&mm=08&dd=22&nav_id=61301, accessed 18 September 2009.

45 See P Ashdown, ‘The European Union and statebuilding in the Western Balkans’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 1(1), 2007, pp 107–118.

46 D Farrell, ‘Democracy promotion, domestic responsibility and the impact of international intervention on the political life of Republika Srpska’, unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, January 2008.

47 G Venneri, ‘The EU “hands-off” statebuilding: from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kosovo’, paper presented at the International Studies Association's 49th Annual Convention, San Francisco, 26 March 2008.

48 See European Stability Initiative, The Worst in Class: How the International Protectorate Hurts the European Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Berlin: ESI, 2007, at http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_98.pdf, accessed 18 September 2009; and T Muehlmann, ‘Police restructuring in Bosnia-Herzegovina: problems of internationally-led security sector reform’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2(1), 2008, pp 1–22.

49 See, for example, the Oxford Research International report for the United Nations Development Programme, The Silent Majority Speaks: Snapshots of Today and Visions of the Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2007, at http://www.undp.ba/download.aspx?id=1127, accessed 12 October 2009.

50 See, for example, the 280-page document outlining the timetable for implementing the EU's medium priorities, European Partnership for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Medium Term Priorities Realisation Programme, Sarajevo: European Directorate for Integration, nd.

51 See further J Poels, ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina: a new “neutral” flag’, Flagmaster, 98, 1998, pp 9–12

52 See Chandler, Peace without Politics?

53 See Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Arithmetic of Irresponsibility—Political Analysis of Bosnian Domestic and Foreign Affairs, Sarajevo: FES, 2005.

54 Keohane, ‘The ironies of sovereignty’, pp 755–756. See also R Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp 187–194.