"European Neighborhood Policy: Political Conditionality and its Impact on Democracy in Non-Candidate Neighboring Countries"

The paper analyzes the potential impact of the EU’s European Neighborhood Policy on democracy and human rights in the partner countries. On the one hand, the political conditionality advocated in the ENP documents is consistent with the general approach the EU has taken toward the institutionalization of its relations with nonmember countries. A data-based analysis of the political impact of Partnership and Cooperation Agreements with the Eastern European ENP countries and of the Barcelona Process shows, however, that political conditionality has been neither consistent nor effective and there are no reasons to believe that this will change under ENP. I argue that this is not primarily due to the inconsistency of political conditionality but to the combination of weak external incentives and high domestic adaptation costs. A case study of Belarus illustrates this conjecture