There are various potential mechanisms of international socialization through which states can be inducted to the norms and rules of an international community. On the one hand, externally driven socialization processes, in which the socialization agency plays an active role in exporting its norms to non-member states, can be distinguished from domestically driven socialization, in which domestic actors have an interest in importing external norms and the community organizations remain a passive source or model. On the other hand, socialization may follow different logics of action (March and Olsen, 1989, pp. 160–62). According to a ‘logic of consequences’, the socialization process is driven by cost–benefit calculations of instrumentally rational actors and, if successful, leads to sustained behavioural adaptation and compliance. In contrast, the ‘logic of appropriateness’ assumes that actors are motivated by identities, values and norms. Among alternative courses of action, they choose the most appropriate or legitimate one. Successful socialization results in a change of interests and identities. A combination of these distinctions yields the typology of socialization mechanisms and strategies depicted in Table 4.1 (adopted from Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, 2005a).
In reinforcement, the socialization agency seeks to condition the behaviour of the socializee through external incentives and disincentives; in persuasion, it tries to convince the socializee of the appropriateness of the community
norms. In lesson-drawing, the socializee adopts community norms and rules for instrumental reasons – to replace failed institutions or enhance the effectiveness of domestic policies. Finally, imitation is characterized by the adoption of community norms regardless of their perceived utility.
They are taken for granted and copied as ‘the way things are done’ in the international community.
Table 4.1 Socialization mechanisms
Logic of action
Logic of consequences Logic of appropriateness Role of Active Reinforcement Persuasion
socialization Passive Lesson-drawing Imitation agency
This is an analytical typology. In reality, various socialization mechanisms are at work simultaneously and socialization agencies pursue different strategies in combination. It is possible, however, to distinguish a dominant strategy for each socialization agency, which may vary in different historical and geographical contexts. Before the end of the Cold War, the EU played a predominantly passive role in Central and Eastern Europe.
With the exception of Yugoslavia, the EU had not established formally institutionalized relations with the CEECs or their economic organization, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), and it did not have an explicit policy to transfer its norms and rules to the East (van Ham, 1993). However, it served as a model of regional organization for the anti- communist opposition in these countries. When the opposition came to power in the democratic transitions of 1989/90, they defi ned the ‘return to Europe’ as their core foreign policy orientation and immediately declared EU membership their central foreign policy objective.
In a parallel move, the EU gave up its predominantly passive role and defi ned support for the liberal-democratic transformation of the CEECs, and the establishment of close institutional relations with them, as a core task for the post-Cold-War era. The main strategy it chose to pursue this task was conditionality. Conditionality is a socialization strategy based on the mechanism of reinforcement. EU conditionality sets the adoption of the community and acquis rules as a condition for reaping the benefi ts of support by and institutional relations with the EU – such as fi nancial aid, technical expertise or trade preferences. With each step in the deepening of institutional relations, the benefi ts increase – but so do the conditions attached
to them. Full membership in the EU comes at the end of the conditionality ladder, including open access to the internal market, entitlement to subsidies such as payments from the Common Agricultural Policy and the Structural Funds, and participation in EU decision making. By granting these benefi ts to countries that fulfi l the conditions and excluding countries that do not, the EU creates selective external incentives for sustained compliance with its rules.
Already in January 1989, the European Parliament demanded that
‘reference to human rights should fi gure’ in the Trade and Cooperation Agreements the EU was beginning to negotiate with the CEECs and should be mentioned specifi cally in the negotiating mandates given to the Commission.3 In April, the Council made resumption of the negotiations with Romania conditional upon this country’s compliance with its human rights commitments in the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) framework.4
In May 1992, the Council underscored that ‘respect for democratic principles and human rights … as well as the principles of a market economy, constitute essential elements of cooperation and association agreements between the Community and its CSCE partners’.5 Henceforth, the EU added a clause to the agreements, which stipulated a suspension of the agreements if CEECs fail to comply with these principles. In November of the same year, the Council approved guidelines for its PHARE (Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Economic Reconstruction) assistance programme, which made aid conditional upon the ‘state of advance of the reforms in each of the benefi ciary countries’.6 In July 1993, the new TACIS (Technical Assistance for the Commonwealth of Independent States) regulations strengthened conditionality, too: ‘The level and intensity of the assistance will take into account the extent and progress of reform efforts in the benefi ciary country.’7
At its Copenhagen Summit in June 1993, the European Council established the ‘stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities’ as the sine qua non political condition of accession to the EU. The importance of minority rights was underscored by the ‘Pact on Stability in Europe’ launched in May 1994 at the initiative of French prime minister Edouard Balladur, which called upon all EU membership candidates to settle their border and minority confl icts and provide for minority protection in a series of bilateral negotiations and treaties. The concrete terms of the treaties were left to the negotiating parties but it was understood that without such a settlement, the road to accession would be blocked.
In its 1997 Opinion on the applications for membership and in subsequent annual progress reports, the Commission has regularly evaluated the political
conditions in all candidate countries. Based on these opinions and reports, the Commission made recommendations on the beginning of accession negotiations and later pointed out reforms that needed to be undertaken before the conclusion of accession negotiations.
Conditionality also shapes the acquis transfer. The EU sets the adoption of the acquis rules by the applicant countries as the central condition of membership and links accession to progress in the transfer and implementation of EU rules. In 1997, the Commission stated that ‘the actual timetable for accession will depend primarily on the progress made by individual countries in adopting, implementing and enforcing the acquis’
(quoted in Avery, 2004, p. 37). Correspondingly, the EU refused to set a date for the end of negotiations and for accession until the end of 2000.
The EU’s socialization strategy can be further characterized more precisely as intergovernmental reinforcement by reward. Under a strategy of reinforcement by reward, the socialization agency withholds the reward if the target government fails to comply with its conditions, but does not intervene either coercively or supportively to change the cost–benefi t assessment of the target government by infl icting extra costs (reinforcement by punishment) or offering unconditional assistance (reinforcement by support). In the EU case, countries that fail to meet the criteria are simply denied assistance, association or membership and left behind in the competition for EU funds and the ‘regatta’ for accession. Only in a few early and minor cases did the EU suspend existing agreements (Romania 1989, Yugoslavia 1991), and it has never invoked the 1992 ‘human rights clause’ in Central and Eastern Europe to terminate agreements that had already been in force.
The EU generally thus does not infl ict extra punishment (in addition to withholding the conditional reward) on non-compliant governments.
Although EU members have participated in UN sanctions and NATO military interventions against Yugoslavia, the EU as an organization has not been prominently involved in these coercive measures.
On the other hand, the EU does not give extra support to those who fail to meet the conditions either. Rather, the EU regularly exhorts the CEEC governments that it is their own responsibility to create the conditions to be rewarded. To be sure, the EU does provide funding for projects designed to promote democracy and human rights in Central and Eastern Europe directly. In 1992, both a PHARE Democracy and a TACIS Democracy Programme were launched; both were merged in 1997 as the PHARE and TACIS Democracy Programme (PTDP). Since 1999, the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) has been the most important EU programme to promote liberal democracy in third countries.
In comparison with the rewards-based technical and fi nancial assistance under the main PHARE and TACIS programmes, however, direct support
was rather marginal. According to Karen Smith (2001, p. 49), only 1 per cent of the EU’s total aid budget was dedicated to the direct support of democratization in the CEECs. The typical biennial budget for PTDP in the 1990s was in the range of €40 million, and according to the Programming Document of EIDHR for the years 2002–4, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Serbia–
Montenegro, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine have been allotted a total of €12.8 million.8 Yet the 1997–98 PHARE budget alone was €1.6 billion.
In addition, EU conditionality is predominantly intergovernmental. It targets governments directly and seeks to infl uence their material and social cost–benefi t calculations, rather than interacting with non-governmental actors in the target countries such as social movement organizations, interest groups, parties or business actors. Governments are the recipients of fi nancial and technical assistance, and agreements and treaties are also negotiated and concluded with governments. Bureaucratic actors, intergovernmental or interbureaucratic relations, and a top–down process of rule transfer also dominate the process of acquis transfer. The EU mainly relies on intergovernmental bargaining and privileges central governments and bureaucracies in the CEECs that it charges with implementing EU rules (Grabbe, 2001). Even in social policy, where transnational networks were in place and societal actors should have played an important role, they had no input (Sissenich, 2002). By providing assistance to civil society and education projects, the EU uses the transnational, societal channel of socialization mainly for its secondary and complementary strategy of reinforcement by support.
How can we explain the choice of this strategy? Why did the EU focus on intergovernmental reinforcement by reward? I suggest that this choice has to do with the specifi c capabilities and cost–benefi t calculations of the EU and its member states and with the specifi c conditions of socialization in the CEECs.
First of all, the focus on rewards has to do with the specifi c capabilities of the EU: economic incentives of market integration, protection and subsidies are the EU’s main assets. In contrast to NATO, it does not have the military power to intervene militarily against massive human rights violations;
in contrast to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) or the Council of Europe, it lacks specifi c expertise in democratic institution building.
Most importantly, however, reinforcement by reward is generally a low- cost strategy. First, the cost of sanctioning non-compliance is usually lower than in the case of punishing and supporting. If target states do not comply, reinforcement by punishment requires infl icting extra costs and reinforcement by support requires the transfer of extra assistance, whereas under reinforcement by reward, the socialization agency just waits and sees.
Second, in reinforcement by reward, the rewards are paid only after the successful adoption of norms, whereas reinforcement by punishment or support requires costly coercive and supportive engagements the success of which is uncertain. Third, a strategy of reinforcement by reward avoids the ‘moral hazard’ problems of reinforcement by support: governments cannot count on receiving EU assistance by just remaining ‘needy’ and not adapting to EU rules. For these reasons, a socialization agency prefers, ceteris paribus, rewarding to punishing or supporting. It will only engage in the more costly strategies if it is vulnerable to negative externalities from developments and policies in the target states and if reinforcement by reward is not suffi ciently effective to control these negative externalities.
Yet EU vulnerability is low. First, the EU’s economic stakes in the CEECs are low in general; the CEECs pose no military or economic threat. CEECs do not possess strategic resources and their share of foreign trade has remained below 5 per cent for the EU as a whole throughout the 1990s.
The material effects of war as well as political and economic deterioration in Central and Eastern Europe on the West have been small and manageable.
Western countries have been able to protect themselves effectively against a massive infl ow of refugees or migrants (see Lavenex, 1998). Second, the international socialization of the CEECs is generally regarded as a low- priority issue in EU societies. No Western government had to fear domestic pressure if it was miserly with support to the CEECs and if it opposed or sought to put off enlargement.
The predominance of intergovernmental reinforcement can be attributed both to the nature of the rules and the state-centric domestic structures in the CEECs. First, the adoption of general liberal rules and the EU acquis require changes in the organization and the laws of the target state. Therefore intergovernmental reinforcement is the more direct channel of infl uence.
Second, the domestic structure of the CEECs is in general characterized by the weakness of society vis-à-vis the state. This is obvious in the presidential systems of government that prevail in the former Soviet republics but also applies to the parliamentary democracies of Central Europe. Even here, political parties have been organized top–down, have no or weak roots in society and social organizations, and depend on the state for their resources.
A powerful civil society has failed to emerge despite promising beginnings in the revolutions of 1989. Rather, levels of political participation have declined. This domestic structure gives both governments and parties ample space for discretionary decision making and strongly limits the infl uence of societal actors on day-to-day policy making (see, e.g., Ágh, 1998, pp. 52, 106; Kaldor and Vejvoda, 1999, pp. 11, 19–22).
To be sure, candidate governments are generally subject to the most powerful sanctioning mechanism of society – electoral confi rmation and
defeat. Yet if elections are to serve as a reliable instrument of conditionality, a majority of the electorate must either identify itself strongly enough with
‘Europe’ or be suffi ciently concerned with the opportunity costs of non- compliance to make a conscious choice for reform-oriented political parties.
However, it seems that actual voting behaviour is more strongly shaped by immediate concerns with personal security and welfare than by concerns about the government’s compliance with European norms. Most often, changes in government have been caused by societal dissatisfaction with the hardships of economic shock therapy, economic mismanagement by the incumbent government, and corruption scandals. Dissatisfaction has turned against both reform-friendly and reform-adverse governments (Jasiewicz, 1998, p. 186; Pravda, 2001, pp. 26–7).