The paper analyses the impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) on good governance in the partner states. The European Neighbourhood Policy constitutes one of the most recent and innovative foreign policy tools of the European Union and the promotion of good governance lies at the heart of this new framework. The findings of this paper suggest that the influence of the European Neighbourhood Policy in triggering governance reforms has been limited. Since the formal launch of the policy in 2004, both quantitative and qualitative assessments produced by organisations such...
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Practitioners and academics alike consider a strong civil society as key to combating corruption. However, there is only limited evidence of the effectiveness of civil society as an anti-corruption actor. Although having received more attention in recent years, the role of civil society in anti-corruption continues to be an under-researched topic, and it remains largely unclear what role civil society can and should play in the fight against corruption.
The Slovak Republic experienced widespread corruption extending to every aspect of public life in the post-communist years of the 1990s. In the...
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Lately Croatian officials have received positive signs with regard to the progress of their country towards the EU membership. Nevertheless Croatia still needs to fulfil a number of conditions as required by the EU pre-accession conditionality method. This method is considered to be among the most successful foreign policy instruments the EU has implemented so far. During the last two enlargement processes, it proved itself to be able to align the post-communist candidate countries with the EU acquis communautaire. However EU conditionality has not been exempt from criticisms, many of...
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The end of communism in Central and Eastern Europe symbolized a period full of hope for a future different from the recent past. Two decades on, most of the optimism has died out and post-communist countries of Eastern Europe are struggling with more than just the regime's legacy. Corruption is one of the key issues that the countries of Western Balkans need to overcome in order to part from the past. Much investment has been made in fighting corruption, through a variety of tools: from providing legal structure to empowering...
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The celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in East Central Europe was accompanied by the usual soul-searching customary at such moments. After successfully completing their EU accession, most countries in the region experienced the full brunt of an economic crisis and their politics after EU accession reflected some disappointment. While their overall democratization seems incontestable, particularly in comparison with the less successful eastern half of post communist Europe, many of the expectations of 1989 were not fulfilled. Among the disappointments, the persistence of corruption...
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