Domestic political constraints for the eu's democracy promotion: A comparative analysis of democratic consolidation performances in croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

This comparative study is an inquiry into democratization reforms from selected Western Balkan countries to offer a generalizable explanation for democratic consolidation. Even though all post-Yugoslav societies have a similar background, have started their state-building processes simultaneously, and have been in contact with the EU as the agent of 'democratization promotion', their democratic consolidation performances vary. While some of them -Slovenia and Croatia- achieved a certain level of democratic consolidation in the early phase of their transition, some others are still defective democracies according to worldwide democratic governance indexes. In this regard, this study aims to find out what explains the varying democratization experience across Western Balkan countries- namely Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Building upon Tolstrup's (2013) analytical framework, which emphasizes the significance of gatekeeper elites' role in controlling and using the external actor's democratization influence, this research explains the variation across the selected cases and also seeks to complement the aforementioned framework as it focuses on how and under what circumstances the political elites embrace democratic reforms. By examining critical junctures in each country's historical democratization processes, the study suggests that the interests of the political elites, their connection to the pro-European agenda, features of the playing field -power distribution and institutional settings- are the dimensions that define the differences in domestic political contexts.