Pre-accession and Neighborhood: The European Union's democratic conditionality in Turkey and Morocco

This essay, after describing how the instrument of political conditionality has developed within the framework of the pre-accession policy and how it has become an important element of the European Neighbourhood Policy, focuses on the EU's implementation of political conditionality. It will look at the specific content of EU political priorities in two case studies: Turkey and Morocco. In particular two questions are addressed: is the specific content of the EU's political conditions useful for the country's democratization process and what is the level of determinacy of the EU's political conditions? These questions stem from two assumptions: first, that the Union's democratic conditionality can have an impact on democratization only when the Union's political conditions address the main democratic shortcomings of the country; and second, that high determinacy of the conditions not only acts as a road-map for the target government of what precisely it needs to do, but also enhances the credibility of the conditionality as it narrows the scope for interpretation and eases the monitoring of compliance. In order to explain the differences in the EU's implementation of political conditionality, two main factors are taken into consideration: 1. the EU's role as a democracy promoter conflicting with its role of international security agent or preserver of the national interest of some member states; 2. the existence of international or regional alternatives to integration or cooperation with the EU