European Union's altered conditionality politics: Western Balkans case

This thesis analyses the differences in political content of the EU conditionality implementations, inter alia, Copenhagen political conditionality, by assessing the interstate relations beyond the EU enlargement politics. The thesis firstly acknowledges that in terms of the substance, the Commission and notably the EU member states did apply political conditionality extensively based on their political preferences, not only regard to the comparative regions' initial assessment with the EU membership but also due to temporal major shifts in international structure, mainly the multipolarist system and the EU's intentionally implemented global role and fragilities based on this role. It is argued that the conditionality politics has been gradually and strategically altered in this sense. Since the differences in applied political conditionality is not solely derived from the applicant states' approach on settled conditions by Commission, Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LI) theoretical approach is proposed, that focuses on distributional conflict argument on setting up the conditions from the first phase and member states' veto power on resolution process which is also affected by international politics as well. Regarding the conditionality politics of EU 2014 Berlin Process, the thesis predicts that the EU will formalize further political conditionality for the Western Balkan Region vis-à-vis its backwards conditionality implementations before 2025, the potential accession date of Western Balkan countries. The aimed contribution to the research literature is providing a historical oriented contemporary synthesis for EU conditionality politics and EU enlargement politics.