EU Transformation Strategies and the Rule of Law in Weakly Governed States.

Two fundamental insights are shaping contemporary international politics. The first, which represents a sharp departure from Realist theory, is that regime type really matters for a host of international public goods (from inter-state security and economic relations to intra-state conflict, the spread of crime and disease, to corruption and economic growth). The second insight is that while the need to encourage the transformation of weak and/or autocratic states into effective, open ones, is greater today than ever before, both our theoretical and empirical knowledge about the range of tools which the West can wield in this cause are woefully underdeveloped. On the hard edge of the spectrum of intervention, since the end of the Cold War, the end of bipolarity, the erosion of state sovereignty norms and the global spread of democracies, has resulted in the proliferation of the use of military means and neo-trusteeships to facilitate "forced democratization". Yet the costs - in terms of both blood and treasure - have been high, and the results mixed at best. On the other end of the spectrum, given the growing threats from weak and failed states, Western policy makers are increasingly impatient with the wielding of "soft power" instruments alone; notably financial and technical aid administered through bilateral or multilateral aid organizations. This paper will examine the main "third way" through which the West has attempted, particularly over the last decade, to engage transitional and weak states, and to transform them into better governed democracies; namely through their conditional induction into regional liberal communities. Using EU transformative engagement strategies towards Romania, Turkey, Serbia and Ukraine, as a leading example of this phenomenon, we draw on a multi-year, comparative qualitative study, to undertake an evaluation of whether, how and to what extent EU strategies (both enlargement and non-enlargement) have an impact on the development of rule of law conditions in targeted countries. The findings of the paper go against the grain of much of existing EU external relations literature, and provide more generalizable lessons on the dynamics of external influence on domestic democratic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]