The German Reunification in Parallel with the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union: Two Roads towards Political Integration

The thesis argues that the reunification of Germany and the eastern enlargement of the European Union represent two types of democratization through political integration that occurred after the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The German exemplar stands for an immediate integration with no preconditions and no foregoing reforms on either part but, instead, employing a simple transfer principle and economic backing of the 'accepting' entity. The Eastern enlargement is a model for the opposite process - a gradual, long-term integration through 'political conditionality' until candidate states reach a political and economic level comparable to the level of the accepting unit. Since both ways of integration are diverse, the final results differ as well. While the eastern enlargement was successful in terms of economics and political stabilization in the new EU member states that are, however, skeptical towards further deepening of the European integration, the unified Germany suffers from economic difficulties and, in the Eastern parts, from the rise of post-communist party and nostalgia. After outlining a theory of two types of integration in the opening chapters, the third chapter proceeds to examining how both integrations came about and how they were legally carried out. The..