The overarching focus of this thesis is Serbian government strategies under the Serbian Progressive Party towards European integration based on a rationalist approach to Europe. Current research on Serbia assumes the rationalist approach whereby Serbian elites’ strategies towards EU integration are driven by the logic of consequences, in the calculation of benefits and losses resulting from EU membership. This study will take the analysis further by examining Serbian government strategies towards EU accession through the prism of rationalism as well as statecraft where the desire for power has been one of the main driving forces for the Progressives’ strategy to EU conditionality. The research will be a comparative case study using two distinct policy areas of Kosovo and media freedom in Serbia and argue that the Progressives have engaged in partial compliance with regard to Kosovo and fake compliance in the area of media freedom. Both cases have reputational costs of compliance but the differences in outcomes can be attributed to the extent of the EU’s competencies in each policy area and the visibility of Serbian compliance to conditionality. Media freedom, an internal issue, is a low visible area as media freedom legislation is namely in the hands of national governments, thereby limiting the EU’s capacity to regulate and enforce media freedom in some of its own member states as well applicants. Kosovo is a highly visible policy area as a consequence of the presence of external actors monitoring Serbian compliance, thereby increasing the EU’s capacity in this field and making Serbian compliance/non-compliance difficult to hide. Previous scholarship on EU integration in applicant states analyses the EU’s conditionality-driven approach which enforces compliance on acceding countries. However, the thesis seeks to contribute to the existing research by questioning the sustainability of such an approach and the EU’s legitimacy as a normative power seeking to export its values to accession countries. Serbia, is an example within a national context, that seeks to elucidate this argument especially in light of the EU’s exchange of regional stability (Kosovo) for external lenience on matters of democracy (media freedom).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:761299 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Dragojlov, Aleksandra |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/115510/ |
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