The Limits of Europe : Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration

This book was conceived out of a hunch that the construction of Europe, including the evolving community’s territorial expansion, was more deeply contested than one would conclude from the official narrative in recent decades about enduring commitments to democracy and human rights. The challenge was two- fold—how to use the theories and methods of political science and the vast resources available in the EU’s many historical archives to analyse and explain the arc of EU constitutionalization and enlargement over time, and how to do so in a manner that also speaks to regional integration processes in other parts of the world.To this end, I decided to focus not on states’ decisions to seek membership nor on the community’s readiness to admit particular applicant states, but on the more fundamental and long- neglected question of how a regional community decides which states are eligible for membership. This focus would reveal a great deal, I suspected, about how political actors understand the nature and the limits of the regional community that they are building and re- building with every decision they make. Such a study of the conceptual and geographic limits of Europe acquired a whole new significance as debates over cultural identity gained salience across the community. Cover The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestaion of Regional Integration Copyright Preface and Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Tables Note on Archival Sources PART ONE: QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS 1: The Question of Membership 1. The question and its significance 2. Insights and gaps in the scholarly literature 3. Defining membership eligibility 4. The argument and alternative explanations, in brief 5. Empirical design and methods Regional case selection—why study Europe? Country-caseselection—which cases and why? Dependent variables and analytical methods Genealogy of membership norms Statistical analyses of eligibility positions Causal-processtracing of eligibility decision-making 6. Plan of the book 2: Explaining Membership Eligibility 1. A constructivist theory of regional community The nature of regions and regional community The nature of membership norms The contestation and evolution of membership norms External challenge Internal challenge Rhetorical inconsistency Shift in public opinion How membership norms matter Normative guidance Normative empowerment Membership norms and community decision-making 2. Alternative explanations Physical geography Treaty rules Regime type Commercial interests Security interests 3. Conclusions PART TWO: MEMBERSHIP OUTCOMES 3: The Evolution of EU Membership Norms 1. A community of non-Communiststates, 1957–1961 2. A community of parliamentary democracies, 1962–1969 3. A community of liberal democracies, 1970–2005 4. A divided community, 2006–2020 5. Conclusions 4: EU Membership Eligibility in Statistical and Comparative Perspective 1. Data and methods 2. Explanations and hypotheses Membership norms Geography Treaty rules Regime type Commercial interests Security interests 3. Cross-tabulationanalysis Membership norms Geography Treaty rules Regime type Commercial interests Security interests 4. Discussion of cross-tabulations 5. Logistic regression analysis 6. Qualitative Comparative Analysis PART THREE: MEMBERSHIP PROCESSES 5: Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Non-CommunistStates, 1957–1961 1. Opening to Greece 2. Opening to Turkey 3. Opening to Spain 4. Conclusions 6: Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Parliamentary Democracies, 1962–1969 1. Rejecting Spain 2. Confirming the opening to Turkey 3. Suspending the opening to Greece 4. Conclusions 7: Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Liberal Democracies, 1970–2005 1. Reopening to Greece 2. Reopening to Spain 3. Reaffirming the opening to Turkey 4. ‘Neither open nor closed’ to Ukraine 5. Conclusions 8: Membership Eligibility in a Divided Europe, 2006—2020 1. Bargaining over the opening to Turkey 2. Bargaining over Ukraine 3. Conclusions PART FOUR: CONCLUSIONS ANDIMPLICATIONS 9: Rethinking Europe, Rethinking Regions 1. The construction of Europe Quantitative analyses Normative eras and decision-makingeffects An illustration: Greece and Europe over time Alternative explanatory 2. Understanding regions and regional integration 3. The future of Europe The future of enlargement The Turkey question Differentiated integration and disintegration The EU as a bastion of liberal democracy The orientation and effectiveness of EU foreign policy APPENDIX: Imputing missing Freedom House data from V-Dem data Bibliography Index Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around the EU. As this book demonstrates, the limits of Europe are determined by the values shared at particular moments in time by the leaders of the community's member states, regardless of their particular policy preferences. These membership norms shape the community's decisions on enlargement by empowering certain political forces and disempowering others. And contrary to conventional wisdom, these norms have changed considerably over time. The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration uses a novel combination of normative genealogy, statistical analysis and detailed tracing of EU decision-making on Greece, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine to demonstrate that changing membership norms have had a stronger impact on the community's enlargement since the 1950s than treaty rules, the location of the states seeking membership, or even the commercial or security interests of member states. This book is a multi-method study of the European Union's decision-making on enlargement over seven decades, showing how membership norms shape decision-making on which states are considered eligible to join the EU and which are not.