With the enlargement of the EU to 27 member states in 2007, this thesis considers the transition process of Romania and Bulgaria from the fall of communism in 1989 to accession to the European Union in 2007. The research focuses on the political and economic reforms of Romania and Bulgaria, using a chronological approach, to explore the concept of EU impact on countries in transition. The thesis focuses specifically on the ideas of European conditionality and leverage, in order to answer questions on the importance of the EU’s external influence on these two countries, as well as discussing future implications for candidate countries in transition.

Post-conflict peacebuilding in Iraq started in 2003 following the military invasion by the Coalition of Willing forces. Since 2003, numerous actors have involved themselves in Iraq’s peacebuilding including governments, NGOs, the UN and the international financial institutions. Also, various activities and actions have been implemented in the humanitarian, political and economic domains. Today, all the indicators show that the country still faces the challenges of conflict, chaos as well as weak social and economic development. Many scholars attribute that to the deteriorating security conditions, which raises the questions of why does the country still face insecurity and why has peace not been consolidated? This research examines the impact of donors’ conditionality on post-conflict peacebuilding in Iraq. As the liberal peace is the basis of contemporary practice of peacebuilding, this research draws on the liberal peace theory as a point of departure. The Liberal peace is used as theoretical lenses in order to understand donors’ strategies and arguments in the context of Iraq, according to two main themes, political and economic transition. Overall, this research finds that the donors’ policy packages focused on how to build liberal democratic and a free market state. Donors, primarily the US, aimed at enhancing their control over the political process and formed the political structures according to their interests foremost and not according to the public will. The local community has not been adequately engaged or consulted. Also, transforming Iraq into a free-market economy by relying on the private sector to stimulate economic growth and restricting the role of the state while the country faces security problems has led to weak outcomes in all social and economic sectors.

A number of recent studies suggest that EU conditionality is a weak mechanism for democracy promotion to third countries if EU does not offer the reward of membership. EU democratic conditionality has been criticized for many shortcomings even in the context of enlargement, especially for unclear demands, vague benchmarking, moving targets, and politicized decision-making. Present thesis discusses whether the view that conditionality has exhausted its potential for democracy promotion still holds true in one country of Eastern Partnership, Moldova. The EU explicitly offers only carrots short of membership. I find that, among these, visa free regime is the most rewarding. But while visa liberalization coupled with tactics of "half opened, half closed doors" seems potent enough to drive democratic change and consolidation, it is evident that EU did little to address the shortcomings of democratic conditionality of 2004-2007 enlargement. The pattern of ill specified demands and unclear benchmarking perpetuates and is a major source of disappointment.

The conditionality agreements of the International Monetary Fund have received a significant amount of criticism from the 1980s and 1990s and into the 2000s.  Critics have found little reassurance from the IMF\'s attempts to reform conditionality after 2000.  The 1980s marked a time where conditionality on IMF loans required structural adjustment and the imposition of austere fiscal measures.  The streamlining initiative in 2000 possessed only slight quantitative modification to lending conditionality.  However, recent changes in the Fund\'s lending policy occuring between 2007 and 2012 may finally display the institution\'s ability to listen, learn, and adapt policy toward a conditionality regime utilizing policy outside of the neoliberal framework.  This thesis examines these new policies and their implications for neoliberalism where the term represents an approach to economic growth that demands privatization, deregulation, and  weakening the role of the public sector.  It provides a history of conditionality reforms and positions the most recent reforms in lending policy in the evolving neoliberal context. / Master of Arts

The aim of this essay was to study the European Union’s (EU) role as a democracy promoter and its impact on Croatia’s democratization process. Croatia is a candidate country for membership in the EU which creates a possibility for impact and democracy promotion. The aim is met by studying the following questions:  In what way has the EU promoted democracy in Croatia? How did Croatia respond? To what extent has the EU contributed to Croatia’s democratization process?   Croatia is treated as a case study of the EU’s democracy promotion and the method used was qualitative text-analysis. The result of the study shows that the EU has considerably contributed to the consolidation of democracy in Croatia. However the EU’s democracy promotion is characterized by conditionality and Croatia’s interest in becoming a part of the EU has been essential for influence. Finally a discussion of to what extent the EU has contributed to the democratization of Croatia is provided.

The thesis examines the effectiveness of acquis communautaire on anti-discrimination with a focus on the Roma minority in the EU accession state - Hungary. Therefore, it critically evaluates the European Union’s (EU) competence in terms of monitoring and enforcement of relevant legislation, such as the Race Equality Directive 2000/43/EC (RED), which is central to the research question. The thesis argues that the EU needs to demonstrate a firmer grip on this issue along with a consistent application of its legislation including the RED under the acquis communautaire in order to have a visible impact on the ground. The scenario is compounded by the implementation and enforcement mechanisms of Hungary despite having an elaborate legal and policy framework for minority protection. The doubt on the ‘political will’ of both the EU and Hungary emerged repeatedly throughout the thesis, which signifies the relative weight of the topic. An empirical study conducted through expert interviews in Hungary supplemented the existing data and enabled to identify the ‘causal factors’ behind the implementation and enforcement issues of policy and legislation under the auspices of the RED. The thesis concludes that legislation will prove to be impracticable; unless and until societal dialogue can be established, especially between the minority and the majority at a local level. Thus, there is scope for making recommendations in line with the identified ‘causal factors’ from interdisciplinary perspectives in the context of the competences of both the EU and Hungary.

Conditionality refers to the program policies required by international institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), in order for countries to be eligible to receive access to resources provided by such institutions. In the case of the IMF these resources are available in the form of loans. The proper role of conditionality as a component of the Fund's financial arrangements with developing nations has been a topic of debate in both the political science and economic fields of study. On the political science side the argument has centered on whether or not austere and structural conditionality can in effect cause political dissent in the developing nations, and whether or not the process of conditionality violates the sovereign rights of nations. In this research study three Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina, and Costa Rica) were utilized as case studies to try and determine whether or not their was a casual link between the implementation of IMF conditionality and instances of political dissent manifested as protests, riots, and strikes. Evidence of political dissent directly related to the implementation of IMF conditionality was found in all three case studies at varying levels. The instances of political dissent were then analyzed individually and as a group to try and determine specific cause, group dynamics, and the economic context in which they took place. The study concluded that as practiced in the 1990s and early 2000s conditionality can interfere with the democratic process in developing nations. / Master of Arts

In this thesis it is attempted to shed some light upon the limits and effectiveness of the role of the European Union (EU) as a normative power has played in the transformation of Turkish politics especially in the case of human rights issues. First of all, this study reviews the original and current debates over the civilian and normative power Europe ideas, searches to find common elements underlying those accounts and assesses to what extent they offer an adequate categorization of the EU&rsquo / s international significance. One of the main arguments of this thesis is that the EU is generally considered as the catalyst or the anchor of the reform process in the candidate countries to become members. With this in mind, an account of the development of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality vis-&agrave / -vis the third countries and the typology of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality within the framework of enlargement are also examined. The massive wave of transformation with regard to human rights issues undertaken in Turkey during its pre-accession relations with the Union is a case point in this thesis. Within the scope of the study, it is attempted to analyze the impact of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality upon the related state of affairs in Turkey with a view to exploring to what extent and under what conditions it could be regarded as the independent variable of the domestic reform process in the country.

Since the drafting of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality bill in 2009, the condition for LGBT individuals has deteriorated. In response, Obama administration unveiled several punitive measures to pressure Ugandan government to drop the legislation, including the withdrawal of development aid. This article will essentially consider and assess the effect of US policy to link aid conditionality to a country’s record on LGBT rights. Is aid conditionality an effective instrument in yielding meaningful political and social changes? Under what conditions can transnational advocacy help transform international LGBT norms into domestic practices? What is the role of state in discourses about sexualities? The diffusion of LGBT rights requires not only external pressure from international actors to ensure compliance but also an understanding of domestic moral and political discourses that might challenge the validity of the norm itself.

<p>The general aim of this paper is to describe how the European Union can affect and transfer their conditionality politics to the Western Balkan countries. A specific purpose of this study is to describe and explain what we in this paper consider to be a specific additional membership criterion, regional cooperation that has been especially designed for this region. The point of departure for this paper is Europeanization theory that will be used to study the European Union’s impact on non EU-members in Europe. The theoretical Europeanization mechanisms are taken from Heather Grabbes “Europeanization model”. A descriptive case study method together with a theory consuming method will be used. After the wars in former Yugoslavia the now independent countries started in their own pace to move closer the European Union. The problems the individual countries faced in the beginning of the 21^st century were much a consequence of the war. This lead the European Union to establish a special political and economical regional framework, where regional cooperation was emphasized. Regional cooperation developed into one of the most important elements in the EU´s relation with the countries and is made a specific requirement under the Stabilization- and association process. Implications this paper makes are that regional cooperation can be considered as a specific requirement the EU use in the Western Balkan countries membership process and that EU have a series of “influencing tools” which works to promote regional cooperation in the Western Balkans.</p><!--EndFragment-->