EU Rule of Law Conditionality: Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ Promotion in the Western Balkans?

Abstract

This chapter investigates persistence of limitations to rule of law reforms in the Western Balkan EU candidate countries. Contrary to initial hopes that the ongoing approximation of the Western Balkans to the EU will gradually introduce the liberal democratic form of government, based on the rule of law, to the six non-EU Western Balkan nations, serious backsliding in terms of democracy and the rule of law can be observed throughout the region over the past decade. By looking closely into case studies of Serbia and Macedonia this chapter offers a fuller picture on why does Europeanisation by rule of law promotion trigger rather surface-thin reforms across the Western Balkan aspiring Member States. Converging the set of newly adopted laws and features of the crisis of democracy and rule of law over the past five years, research suggests that, despite constitutional guarantees and the adoption of relevant legislation, rule of law in the region still remains deficient owing to shortfalls in norm implementation, the obstructing role of ‘gate-keeping’ elites and the absence of internal agents of change and lack of EU’s standards in the field of rule of law.