Puzzles of EU and NATO Accession of Post-Communist Countries

Abstract

Accessions of post-communist countries to the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) represent puzzles. While many such countries were granted a membership or a prospect of membership in these organisations, other European post-communist countries were not offered accession or the prospect of membership in the EU and NATO. The question is which factors account for such significant variation in accession to the EU and NATO among European post-communist countries. This article uses statistical analysis to determine which factors affect the accession of 25 European post-communist states to the EU and NATO in 1997–2010. The study shows that the level of democracy is positively associated with accession to NATO and the EU. Conflicts have a negative impact on the NATO enlargement, while the level of economic development has a positive effect on EU enlargement. Being a post-Soviet country has a negative effect on both NATO and EU accession.

Key Words:

• European Union
• NATO
• enlargement policy
• post-communist countries
• post-Soviet countries

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC, 2–5 September 2010. I am thankful to anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions and to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University for hosting me during my research on this project.

Notes

With exceptions of such post-Soviet countries as Kazakhstan and Russia, geography is unlikely to be a major factor since such countries as Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova have common borders with the existing NATO and EU members, e.g. Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. In addition, the NATO recognition of Georgia as a likely member of NATO implies that its geographic location and that of neighbouring countries, such as Azerbaijan and Armenia, is not a major factor.

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Partial correlations of the post-Soviet dummy variable and the Freedom House Democracy Index (−0.66) and the GDP per capita (–0.11) are statistically significant, respectively, at the 0.1% level and the 5% percent level. Partial correlations of the Post-Soviet variable with the Polity Democracy Index and GDP per capita produce similar results.

The main determinants of EU and NATO accession remain the same when the log of GDP per capita is used as a measure of economic development.