Euroopan ja Pohjoismaiden poliittiset järjestelmät, 5 op

CONTENTS. In some countries, the building of a democratic state does not happen as spontaneous historical development but under external political conditionality, so called ’soft’ power. This course focuses on the European Union's enlargement policy in the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Croatia (EU-member from 2013), Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia – by studying the potential and actual effects of this policy.

What kind of democratisation and state building processes can we trace from the Western Balkans? And, what kind of effect has the EU's 'membership conditionality' had on these paths in single countries? How well do 'the steps taken on the accession road’ indicate the country-level progress in these respects? What role has conditioned democratisation, in the end, had in relation to the wider political stabilisation in the region?

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – with a rising need for fast and effective decision making, and various (more or less temporary) exceptional measures restricting individual and social life – has very concretely highlighted the potential tension between democracy and state. Simultaneously, the pandemic treats a concrete test to the consolidation of democratic state in the Western Balkan countries and, in the end, to the successfulness of the EU's conditionality policy.

The course approaches this topic in two ways: First, by tracing single Western Balkan countries' politico-governmental paths from the 1990s until today, and considering the role of the EU's political conditionality in these processes. And second, by providing concrete historical, comparative and index-based tools for empirical democracy and state building research.

LECTURES:

1. Contents of the course: Introduction to the topic, structure of single lectures. Course evaluation and other practical issues.

2. Democratic state – theoretical definitions and applications. Political indices as tools for measuring of democracy and state building. Yugoslavia dissolution and birth of the Western Balkans.

3. EU enlargement and the Western Balkans: The evolution of enlargement policy, membership conditionality, and the political progress in accession countries.

4. Regional ’top country’ – Croatia before and after the EU membership.

5. Open membership negotiations – EU candidate Montenegro.

6. Membership negotiations with many open questions – EU candidate Serbia.

7. The 'name dispute' – EU candidate North Macedonia.

8. Regional exception – EU candidate Albania.

9. ’Potential EU candidates’ – Bosnia and Herzegovina & Kosovo.

10. Regional ’big picture’ – evolving democratic state in the Western Balkans and in today’s Europe. Prospects for future EU enlargements.