The Limits of Leverage and Linkage in the European Neighbourhood

Abstract

Leverage is often seen as the most powerful foreign policy instrument at the disposal of the EU, in particular if it comes with the conditional promise of accession. After the breakdown of Soviet communism and hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU’s political accession conditionality has been credited with having contributed significantly to peace, stability, and democratization in these transition countries (Pridham 2005; Vachudova 2005; Schimmelfennig et al. 2006). Others have emphasized linkage as an additional or alternative explanation for the transformation of the post-communist countries (Kopstein and Reilly 2000; Levitsky and Way 2005). In this view, proximity to the EU and a benign neighbourhood generate intense and beneficial diffusion effects that help with political and economic reform. The two approaches have, however, not been examined comparatively for the EU neighbourhood countries.