The Receiving End: Politics in the Candidate Countries

Abstract

Previous chapters have contained frequent references to the politics of enlargement within the EU. But domestic factors came into both sides of the equation: neither the EU nor an applicant country is a unitary actor, and behaviour in the accession process owed much to changing political incentives at home. This book is about how the EU exercised influence rather than about the CEE countries’ transition from communism per se, so it does not contain a detailed analysis of their processes of democratisation or economic reform. Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland were selected for the case-studies because of their chosen destination — EU membership — rather than for their starting-points. However, political context determines how influence works, so it affects the changes provoked by EU pressure.